Votian

The Votians, a Finnic people of Ingria between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Peipus, held an old pagan belief and were counted among the founders of Novgorod. The earliest record of them, in 1069, has them joining Polotsk in an attack on Novgorod, and in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries papal bulls listed them among the pagan tribes.

They long kept their holy shrines. After Novgorod fell in the 1470s, Moscow deported many Votes and pressed conversion harder, and in 1534 the Archbishop of Novgorod, Macarius, complained to Ivan IV that they were still practising their pagan beliefs.

The monk Ilja, sent to convert them, destroyed many of the old shrines, and the priest Nikifor continued his work. Slowly the Votes were converted and became devout Orthodox Christians.