A History of the Vikings
Chapter 5
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Vladimir who decided the destiny of Russia when he became a convert to Orthodox Christianity and delivered the young soul of the country into the keeping of the Patriarch of Constantinople.
He was, of course, at the outset of his reign a heathen, and moreover a zealous one, since he owed the winning of Svyatoslav's throne to his heathen army from Sweden and he had therefore good reason to be distrustful of and antagonistic to the small Christian element in the population of Kiev who had been the subjects of Yaropolk. But with the increase of his power and authority he began to understand that heathendom was hindering himself and his barbarian people from enjoying the advantages of what he now believed to be the proper due of the Russian state, namely the respect and confidence of the civilized world. He knew that in Denmark at this very time King Harald Gormsson had secured the valuable friendship of the Emperor Otto by making Christians of the Danes, and Vladimir, no less prudent, likewise realized that the Christian faith, whether Roman or Greek, and the faith of Islam and also the Jewish religion, which last was now gaining ground among the Khazars, all possessed one common property of inestimable value in that their followers could gain admittance on terms of equality into civilized communities where a heathen would be abhorred. The story goes that Vladimir anxiously debated the merits of these many religions, even sending commissioners into foreign countries in order to report how the worshippers in each conducted their services, and that in the end the stately and lavish splendour of the divine ceremonies in the churches of Constantinople turned the scale in favour of Greek orthodoxy. But it is probable that the Prince of Kiev was less influenced by questions of dogma and ritual than by the cogent demands of a sudden political opportunity. 1 For it happened that the Byzantine emperor, Basil II Bulgaroctonos, sought in 988 the assistance of the Russians against the Greek rebel Bardas Phocas, whereupon Vladimir, swollen with pride, promised the help required of him on the condition that he received in marriage the hand of the emperor's sister Anna. A Russian army of 6,000 men was duly despatched to serve under the emperor, and Vladimir announced his conversion to the faith of the Orthodox Church; nevertheless Basil, when Phocas had been killed, kept most of the
1. The date and manner of Vladimir's conversion are both uncertain. The chief authority is E. Golubinsky, Istoriya Russkoy Tserkvy, Moscow, 1901-4, I, and a summary of his views is given by M. Spinka, Journal of Religion, Chicago, VI (1926), p. 40. According to Golubinsky, Vladimir was baptized in 987, that is to say two years before the attack on Cherson.
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Varangians in his employ and showed considerable hesitation in the matter of bestowing Anna upon the new convert who had been so recently not only a heathen but a polygamist of a most unsavoury sort. (1) The delay incensed Vladimir and he straightway led a force down the Dnieper and captured the Greek town of Cherson in the Crimea (989); the occasion was well chosen, for the Greek emperor had become involved in a war with the Bulgars and so could not come to the rescue of the colony; therefore he found it wisest to placate the ambitious and powerful lord of Kiev by sending the princess to him and conceding Cherson as her dower.
Thereafter Vladimir showed himself no less zealous for the cause of his new faith than had been Harald Gormsson in Denmark. He was determined that his realm, willing or unwilling, should be incorporated in Christendom, that he at its head, the brother-in-law of an emperor and the most important viking prince alive, should enjoy the respect and friendship of all Christian rulers, and that in consequence he should be in a position to extract the uttermost advantage from the trade that now flourished upon the Russian rivers. Accordingly he commanded the immediate conversion of all his people, and though perhaps he did not meet with the same astonishing success that Olaf Tryggvason was to have a few years later in Norway, he nevertheless succeeded in making clear to the world that Christianity was henceforth the official religion of the Russians. It was a conversion of much the same order as that famous change of faith enacted upon Thingvellir in Iceland in 1030 when nearly all men promised to declare themselves followers of Christ, but were yet allowed to practise privily their ancient and beloved rites. For heathendom still lingered in Russia, especially among the wild and remote Vyatiches and Kriviches, even though in name at any rate most men consented to become Christians. And in thus bringing Russia within the fold of the Greek Church Vladimir completed the memorable work of Oleg. Henceforth, heart and soul, his country was to become the foster-child of Byzantium. He turned roughly aside the wooing of Rome and held the young Russian Church in steadfast allegiance to the Patriarch. So there came to his principality the Greek hierarchy, Greek prayerbooks and sacred literature, Greek education, and Greek ecclesiastical architecture and art.
Sviatopolk the Accursed succeeded to the throne of his father
1. Vladimir's regiment of wives and concubines was of such notorious dimensions that a German chronicler calls him fornicator immensus et crudelis (M. G.H., Pertz, SS. III, p. 859).
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Vladimir, and he, wedded to the daughter of Boleslav of Poland and sure of Polish support, cared but little for the love of his own people. He murdered shamelessly and brutally two brothers and was afterwards so hated by the Russians that the prince and his city fell an easy prey to the armies of another son of Vladimir, Yaroslav of Novgorod. The new prince reigned, at first with a brother Mstislav as colleague, from 1019 until 1054, and in this period the state of Kiev advanced to a prosperity and brilliance such as it had not yet attained. Like his great contemporary, Cnut of England and Denmark, Yaroslav made his realm into a power of European importance. He overthrew the Patzinaks in a decisive battle and rid himself for ever of the danger from their raids; he increased his territories westwards, taking Belz in Galicia and subduing the peoples of the Polish frontier; he reconquered the Tchuds and founded Dorpat. Also he made important alliances with the royal houses of foreign countries; the daughter of Olof Skotkonung of Sweden was his wife; he married his sister to the king of Poland; he married a daughter to King Henry I of France, another to King Andrew I of Hungary, another to Harald Hardradi of Norway; three of his sons wedded German royalties, while a fourth married a princess of the Byzantine court. But it was not because of his conquests nor because of the brilliant alliances made by his family that Yaroslav is remembered with gratitude and that Kiev became a noble city; it is because he beautified his capital with fine churches and monasteries, including the lovely cathedral of St. Sophia; because he filled the town with scholars and artists; because he built ecclesiastical schools; because he ordered the translation of books into the Slavonic tongue; because he sought earnestly to revise, to codify, and to enforce the legal system of the Church and State.
Yet there was one venture of Yaroslav's, a foolhardy war with the Greeks, that ended in most disastrous failure. The origin of the quarrel was the murder of a Russian nobleman following upon a riot in Constantinople, and Yaroslav, believing that this was an occasion for him to make a final and supreme demonstration of his power, for the Byzantine empire was in the hands of the weaklings Michael IV and Michael V, prepared an enormous armament wherewith to attack the Byzantine capital; this force he entrusted to his own son Vladimir and despatched him on the luckless enterprise in 1043. The numbers of the Russians and their Scandinavian reinforcements were large, but their little boats were no match for the Greek triremes, even for the out-of-date
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and discarded ships that had to be recommissioned to oppose them, and they were to discover, moreover, that they were about to attack no irresolute foe; for when they arrived before Constantinople, it was to find that Michael V had been replaced by Constantine Monomarch. At first this great emperor, when Vladimir arrived near the capital, sought to avoid battle by negotiations, but the Russians refused to parley with him, and thereupon the Byzantine fleet was marshalled against them; once more the emperor invited his enemy to accept compensation for the murder of their countrymen, and again the Russians answered contemptuously, demanding impossible concessions. Then Constantine ordered three of his triremes to advance to the attack and immediately they destroyed seven Russian boats with Greek Fire; the rest of the Russian fleet took to flight, but a Greek detachment pursued them and finally Vladimir's army was overwhelmingly defeated on land. The prince himself escaped and made his way back to Russia, but most of his men who were not slaughtered on the field were captured and taken by the Greeks to the prisons of Constantinople. Seldom in all the long story of viking overboldness has an assault upon the strongholds of civilization met with defeat so crushing; seldom have the folly and presumption of a barbarian people been rewarded with a chastisement so salutary and so severe. (1)
During Yaroslav's reign the bond uniting the state of Kiev with Scandinavia not only remained unbroken but was strengthened by an increased intercourse between Scandinavians and Russians. The prince of Kiev had taken to wife the daughter of the king of Sweden; the fortress of Aldeigjuborg was granted to Ragnvald, jarl of Västergötland; the brother-inlaw of Yaroslav's Swedish wife, King Olaf the Saint of Norway, after his expulsion by Cnut, fled to the Russian court, and it was with a force given to him by Yaroslav as the nucleus of his army that he set forth upon the ill-fated endeavour to recover his lost kingdom that ended in the battle of Stiklestad. The young Magnus Olafsson, before his recall as king of Norway, spent many years with Yaroslav; Saint Olaf's half-brother, the splendid Harald Sigurdsson Hardradi, who had become a fugitive after Stiklestad, went
1. Michael Psellos, Chron., ed. Renauld, Paris, 1928, II, p. 8 ff. Michael Attaliota , p. 20 (Corp. SS. Hist. Byz. 34), Cedrenus, II, 551 (ib. 24). Note that the Russian chronicle (LVI) prefers to attribute the defeat of Vladimir's armament to a storm instead of the Greek Fire; it admits, however, that the remnant of the Russians was chased by fourteen of the emperor's ships.
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to Russia and was made a captain in Yaroslav's army; later he set off upon his famous adventures in Constantinople and the Mediterranean, but it was to Yaroslav that he sent his booty and prizes and it was to the Kievan court that he returned, there to wed the Grand Prince's daughter Elisabeth, before he journeyed back to his own country and won a crown in Norway. Small wonder, then, that although the Russian state was becoming more and more Slavonic as the years passed Thietmar of Merseburg could refer in 1018 to the inhabitants of Kiev as 'Danes'. (1)
Yet by the end of Yaroslav's reign the debt of Russia to her early Scandinavian princes was determined. They had given her political form, had organized and developed her river-trade, had chosen her creed, and had bidden her fashion herself upon the illustrious model of Byzantium. After his day the Slavonic element began to overshadow the Swedish in Russian society; intermarriage with the Slavs had left the aristocracy no longer of purely Scandinavian blood; Slavonic speech had become the official tongue of the Church; the Scandinavian visitors in the Russian towns passed through and did not settle therein, so that only the Slavonic and not the Swedish population increased. Svitjod hin mikla, Great Sweden, as Russia, the land of Kaenugard (Kiev) and Holmgard (Novgorod) was called, knew no more the armies of northern vikings who had laid the foundations of her fortunes, and now the multitudes of Slavs assumed the government and control of the country that as a result of Swedish daring and Swedish perspicacity had already won an honourable place among the Christian lands of Europe.
The memorable achievement of Yaroslav was to a large extent undermined by a complicated law of succession of his own making and by the muddling and quarrelling of his sons and grandsons. Unity vanished and a confederacy of small provinces, ruled by members of the ancient Scandinavian dynasty, but almost wholly Slavonic in speech and spirit, was left to battle with the disastrous and terrible invasion of the Polovtzi Turks that now began to break down the established trade-routes and was soon to cut off Russia from the Byzantine mainspring of her inspiration. Only Vladimir Monomarch (1113-1125) and his son Mstislav I (11251132) of Yaroslav's house regained at Kiev the power and glory that had been won by their viking ancestors, and with the death of Mstislav the great days of the principality ended.
The breaking of the Swedish connexion with north Russia did
1. M. G.H. (Pertz), SS. III, 871. The word Danes is here an equivalent of Scandinavians.
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