Czar Vladimir Converts to Christianity

This series has four easy 5 minute installments. This first installment: The Apostle Andrew Travels to the Dneiper.

Introduction
According to early Greek and Roman writers, Russia in their time was inhabited by Scythians and Sarmatians. The Greeks established commercial relations with the most southerly tribes. In the fourth and fifth centuries, during the migrations of the nations, Russia was invaded by Goths, Alans, Huns, Avars, and Bulgarians, who, however, made no settlements. They were followed by the Slavs, who are looked upon as the Sarmatians already mentioned.

The Slavs settled as far north as the upper Volga. The chief settlements were Novgorod and Kiev, which became the capitals of independent principalities, Novgorod especially becoming an important commercial and trading center.

The commerce northward through the Baltic was subject to the attacks of the Scandinavian Northmen, known as Varangians. They demanded tribute of the Slavs, and on its refusal attacked and captured Novgorod. A little later Novgorod established its independence as a republic; but within a few years we find this section controlled by a Varangian tribe from Rus, a district of Sweden. This tribe was led by three brothers, Ruric the Peaceful, Sineous the Victorious, and Trouvor the Faithful, who settled and ruled in different parts of the country.

In 864, on the death of his brothers, Ruric consolidated their territories with his, assumed the title of grand prince, peaceably took possession of Novgorod and made it his capital, naming the country Russia, after his native place.

With the advent of the Varangians the authentic history of Russia begins. The millenary of that event was celebrated in 1862 at Novgorod, as the foundation of the Russian empire.

Ruric died in 879. In the next hundred years his successors conquered many neighboring lands and added them to the empire. Kiev became the capital. Numerous invasions into the territory of the Greek empire were made and Constantinople was frequently attacked, resulting sometimes in repulse, and at others in exacting heavy tribute from the Eastern Emperor. Treaties were executed and a gradual growth of commerce and intercourse between the Greeks and Russians took place. Olga, the famous and popular widow of Ruric’s son, Igor, became a Christian and was baptized in Constantinople in 955, and during the rest of her life lent her powerful influence to the spread of the faith. And though her son, the emperor Sviatoslaf, remained a pagan throughout his reign, Christianity continued to grow, and the general Christianization of Russia during the reign of her grandson, Vladimir, was aided materially by the great example of the good queen Olga.

In 970 Sviatoslaf divided his empire among his three sons, Iaropolk I, Oleg, and Vladimir. After the death of Sviatoslaf in 972 civil war began between the three brothers. Oleg was killed and Vladimir fled to Sweden. In 980, supported by a force of Varangians, Vladimir returned, captured Novgorod and Kiev, and put Iaropolk to death. Under Vladimir, later known as Vladimir the Great, Russia increased in importance, and civilization was enhanced by the spread of Christianity through the missionary efforts of the Greek Church, now the Holy, Orthodox, Catholic, Apostolic, Oriental Church. It is, therefore, not strange that the Russian prelates were distinguished by their loyalty and fidelity to the Greek Church throughout the continued conflicts between it and the Roman Church which resulted in their separation in 1054.

In the fifteenth century, with the consent of the patriarchate of Constantinople, the Orthodox Graeco-Russian Church assumed national independence, and became the state church; and after the establishment of Muslim in Constantinople, since its capture by Mahomet II in 1453, the reigning Czar of Russia has come to be regarded not only as the temporal and spiritual head of the Greek Church by the great mass of adherents which form the bulk of the population in Russia, but also as the champion of all the followers of the church in Greece and throughout the orient.

The story of the introduction of Christianity into Russia presents an interesting psychological study of the growth and development of the religious sentiment inherent in man — be he never so brutalized and barbarous. One is reminded of the conversion of Clovis of the Franks in western Europe half a millennium earlier.

This selection is from A History of the Church in Russia by Andrew N. Mouravieff published in 1842. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Andrew N. Mouravieff was a Russian and a Christian historian.

Time: 988
Place: Kiev

The Russian Church, like the other orthodox churches of the East, had an apostle for its founder. St. Andrew, the first called of the Twelve, hailed with his blessing long beforehand the destined introduction of Christianity into our country; ascending up and penetrating by the Dnieper into the deserts of Scythia, he planted the first cross on the hills of Kiev. “See you,” said he to his disciples, “these hills? On these hills shall shine the light of divine grace. There shall be here a great city, and God shall have in it many churches to his name.”

Such are the words of the holy Nestor, the monk and annalist of the Pechersky monastery, that point from whence Christian Russia has sprung.

But it was only after an interval of nine centuries that the rays of divine light beamed upon Russia from the walls of Byzantium, in which city the same apostle, St. Andrew, had appointed Stachys to be the first bishop, and so committed, as it were, to him and to his successors, in the spirit of prescience, the charge of that wide region in which he had himself preached Christ. Hence the indissoluble connection of the Russian with the Greek Church, and the dependence of her metropolitans during six centuries upon the patriarchal throne of Constantinople, until, with its consent, she obtained her own equality and independence in that which was accorded to her native primates.

The Bulgarians of the Danube, the Moravians, and the Slavonians of Illyria had been already enlightened by holy baptism about the middle of the ninth century, during the reign of the Greek emperor Michael and the patriarchate of the illustrious Photius. St. Cyril and St. Methodius, two learned Greek brothers, translated into the Slavonic the New Testament and the books used in divine service, and according to some accounts even the whole Bible.

This translation of the Word of God became afterward a most blessed instrument for the conversion of the Russians, for the missionaries were by it enabled to expound the truths of the Gospel to the heathens in their native dialect, and so win for them a readier entrance to their hearts.

Oskold and Dir, two princes of Kiev and the companions of Ruric, were the first of the Russians who embraced Christianity. In the year 866 they made their appearance in armed vessels before the walls of Constantinople when the Emperor was absent, and threw the Greek capital into no little alarm and confusion. Tradition reports that “The patriarch Photius took the virginal robe of the Mother of God from the Blachern Church, and plunged it beneath the waves of the strait, when the sea immediately boiled up from underneath and wrecked the vessels of the heathen. Struck with awe, they believed in that God who had smitten them, and became the first-fruits of their people to the Lord.” The hymn of victory of the Greek Church, “To the protecting Conductress,” in honor of the most holy Virgin, has remained a memorial of this triumph, and even now concludes the Office for the First Hour in the daily Matins; for that was, indeed, the first hour of salvation to the land of Russia.

It is probable that on their return to their own country the princes of Kiev sowed there the seeds of Christianity; for, eighty years afterward, on occasion of a conference for peace between the prince Igor and certain Byzantine ambassadors, we find mention already of a “Church of the Prophet Elias” in Kiev where the Christian Varangians swore to the observance of the treaty. Constantine Porphyrogenitus and other Greek annalists even relate that in the lifetime of Oskold there was a bishop sent to the Russians by the emperor Basil the Macedonian, and the patriarch St. Ignatius, and that he made many converts, chiefly “in consequence of the miraculous preservation of a volume of the Gospels, which was thrown publicly into the flames and taken out after some time unconsumed.” Also in Condinus, Catalogue of Sees Subject to the Patriarch of Constantinople, the metropolitical see of Russia appears as early as the year 891.

Lastly, it is certain that many of the Varangians who served in the imperial bodyguard were Christians, and that the Greek sovereigns never lost sight of any opportunity of converting them to their own faith, by which they hoped to soften their savage manners. When the emperor Leo was concluding a peace with Oleg, he showed not only his own treasures to the ambassadors of the Russian prince, but also the splendor of the churches, the holy relics, the precious icons, and the “Instruments of the Passion of our Lord,” if by any means they might catch from them the spirit of the faith.

Some such influences as these, while Christianity as yet was only struggling for an uncertain existence at Kiev, produced in good time their effect on the wisest of the daughters of the Slavonians, the widowed princess Olga, who governed Russia during the minority of her son Sviatoslaf. She undertook a voyage to Constantinople for no other end than to obtain a knowledge of the true God, and there she received baptism at the hands of the patriarch Polyeuctes; the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus himself, who admired her wisdom, being her godfather. Nestor draws an affecting picture of the patriarch foretelling to the newly illumined princess the blessings which were to descend by her means on future generations of the Russians, while Olga, now become Helena by baptism — that she might resemble both in name and deed the mother of Constantine the Great — stood meekly bowing down her head and drinking in, as a sponge that is thirsty of moisture, the instructions of the prelate concerning the canons of the Church, fasting, prayer, almsgiving, and continence, all which she observed with exactness on her return to her own country.

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