.jpg)
Especially numerous sacrifices were made to the gods for victories over enemies, and early in his reign, Prince Vladimir was often forced to wage war, either to subjugate new tribes or defend himself from attacks by neighboring peoples. When, after a successful campaign against the Yatvingians, Vladimir offered thanksgiving sacrifices to the gods, the city elders and boyars said, "Let us cast lots for young men and maidens; whoever it falls on, we will sacrifice to the gods." At that time, a Christian Varangian lived in Kyiv, and the lot fell on his son, also a Christian. Envoys from the people came to the Varangian and said, "The lot has fallen on your son; the gods have chosen him for us to sacrifice." The Varangian refused to hand over his son, saying, "Your gods are not gods, but trees. God is one, Whom the Greeks worship and Who created heaven and earth and man, but your gods are made by human hands." The messengers conveyed this answer to the people. An enraged crowd of pagans approached the Varangian's house and demanded that he hand over his son. The Varangian replied: "If your gods are truly gods, then let them come and take my son from my arms themselves. What do you care about?" With these words, he seized his son in his arms and did not let him go, while the enraged crowd of pagans rushed upon the Varangian and his son and killed them both. For the first time, the walls of Kyiv were stained with the martyred blood of Christians.
But the pagan faith did not hold sway in Kyiv for long. The all-good God willed that the Rus' land not perish utterly in idolatry, but be enlightened by Christian truths and receive the path to salvation.
The pagan faith of the Slavs was too meager in content, too insufficiently nourishing for the mind and heart, to withstand the struggle with other religions, especially Christianity, for long. Frequent contacts with Greece (Eastern Romans/Byzantines), introducing the Rus' to the Greek way of life and their faith, led to an ever-increasing number of Christians in Kyiv. There were also many Christians in the prince's retinue, and their modest way of life, their strict and honest fulfillment of their duties, could not fail to attract the attention of Prince Vladimir. Successful victories and conquests, which expanded the principality's borders, power and autocracy, and, most of all, Prince Vladimir's willingness to discuss faith, attracted preachers from various countries to Kyiv, who never missed an opportunity to propose that the prince accept their faith.
The first preachers to come to him were ambassadors from the Bulgarians living on the Volga, proposing that he accept their Muslim faith. When the prince asked what their faith was, they replied: "We believe in God, who is in heaven, and we also have His prophet Muhammad, who gave us a law according to which we may have as many wives as we wish, but also gave us a law to be circumcised and not to eat pork or drink wine." The womanizing Prince Vladimir was pleased with Muhammad's teachings, which permitted polygamy, and he also liked the sensual paradise promised by Muhammad, with its beautiful houris. However, he disliked his other laws, especially circumcision and abstinence from wine, and he refused to accept the Muslim faith.
After this, Jews came to Prince Vladimir with an offer to accept their faith and praised their Old Testament law. When Prince Vladimir asked where their land and homeland was, the Jews replied: "Our God was angry with our fathers for their sins and scattered them throughout the world, so we have no homeland." The prince responded, "What do you want? Isn't it for the same thing to happen to us?" and banished them.
Ambassadors from the Pope and various German princes also came to offer their faith, but they had no success with Prince Vladimir.
After all, a Greek preacher came to Prince Vladimir and conversed with him at length about the Christian faith. Beginning with a narrative of the creation of the world, he explained to the prince all of Holy Scripture and all the prophecies concerning Christ's incarnation, His death on the cross, His Resurrection, and His ascension into heaven. At the end of his sermon, speaking of the future resurrection of all the dead and the future judgment and retribution of the righteous and sinners, he showed a picture of the Last Judgment and so powerfully affected the prince that he cried out in emotion, "Blessed are those who stand on the right hand, but woe to those on the left." The preacher responded, "If you wish to receive this blessedness, then be baptized."
But Prince Vladimir did not dare to change his people's faith on his own. Instead, he convened a council of boyars, told them of the various preachers' proposals, and asked them which faith to adopt. "Everyone praises their own faith," the boyars said. "Prince, choose wise men and send them to various peoples to observe how they serve God. Then, when they return, they will inform you and us, as eyewitnesses, which faith is best." Having heard this advice, the prince agreed with them and decided to send envoys to test the faith.
When the ambassadors returned, they reported having witnessed the worship of both the Bulgarians and the Germans, but what captivated them most was the worship of the Greeks. "When the Greeks brought us," the ambassadors said at the council, "to the place where they serve their God, we did not know whether we were in heaven or on earth, and we cannot forget what we saw and heard." The boyars told the prince: "If the Greek faith had not been good, your grandmother, Princess Olga, would not have accepted it, and she was a very wise woman." From that time on, Prince Vladimir began to seek an opportunity to convert from the pagan faith to the Greek faith.
But the stern prince-conqueror deemed it beneath him to ask the Greeks for enlightenment with Christian truths; he wished to conquer the faith itself with the sword. Vladimir held a council, and it was decided to gather an army, march on the Greek lands, and, having conquered the cities, obtain Christian teachers who would teach them their faith.
Arriving with his army on what is now the Crimean Peninsula, the prince laid siege to the city of Korsun, today's Chersonesos, but the siege was unsuccessful, as the city was heavily fortified. Prince Vladimir sent word to the besieged citizens that if they surrendered voluntarily, he would promise them clemency; otherwise, he would not lift the siege for three years, and if he took the city by force, he would not spare the inhabitants. The citizens refused to surrender voluntarily, but the city was taken due to the treachery of one resident. He fired an arrow into the prince's camp with a note attached, informing Prince Vladimir that if he dug up the water pipes on the eastern side of the city, he would deprive the city of its water. Prince Vladimir, having read the message, ordered his soldiers to find the water pipes on the eastern side of the city and dig them up, which was soon done, and the city, deprived of water, surrendered.
After conquering Chersonesos, Prince Vladimir sent ambassadors to the Greek kings demanding their sister, Princess Anna, as his wife, threatening to conquer Constantinople itself if he did not. The kings replied that they could only give the princess to him if he converted to Christianity. Prince Vladimir replied that he was ready to be baptized and asked that priests be sent to him along with the princess. With difficulty, the kings persuaded their sister to agree to marry the Rus' prince. "I'm going into captivity," the princess said, "it would be better for me to die here." The princess arrived by ship with priests and Metropolitan Michael at Chersonesos, where she was received with great honor by Prince Vladimir.
Shortly before the princess's arrival in Chersonesos, Prince Vladimir's eyes began to ache, rendering him almost completely blind. This illness led the prince to believe the gods were punishing him for his betrayal, but the princess, upon learning of this, sent a message to Prince Vladimir: "If you wish to be healed, be baptized quickly." Prince Vladimir agreed, and, enlightened by the Christian truths of the bishop who had arrived with the princess, he was baptized in the Cathedral of St. Sophia in Chersonesos. During his immersion in the font, the prince was miraculously healed of his blindness, and his retinue was baptized with him. This occurred in the year 988 AD.
After accepting baptism, Prince Vladimir returned to Kyiv, taking with him the priests and the bishop, as well as sacred vessels, crosses, icons and the relics of the holy martyr Clement, Pope of Rome.
Upon arriving in Kyiv, the prince's first order of business was the baptism of his sons, and then he diligently set about eradicating idolatry and destroying idols. To further convince the people of the powerlessness and insignificance of idols, Prince Vladimir ordered the chief god Perun to be toppled from a hill, tied to a horse's tail, and beaten with rods and sticks. He was then thrown into the Dnieper River and pushed away from the shore with poles so that he could not swim ashore.
The prince then decided to baptize the entire people, and on the appointed day, everyone was ordered to gather at the river, remove their clothes, and enter the water, men and women separately, holding infants in their arms. Anyone who did not come and be baptized would be considered an enemy of the prince. Almost all the inhabitants of Kyiv were baptized without question, reasoning thus: "If this faith were not good, the prince and the boyars would not have accepted it." Priests, at specially designated places, read prayers over groups of people, calling them by name, commanding them to immerse themselves in the water three times, and pronouncing the name of the Holy Trinity over them, according to the rite of baptism.
Beholding such a great multitude of people being baptized, Prince Vladimir was moved in spirit, raised his eyes to heaven, and prayed thus: "Lord God! You who created heaven and earth, look down upon Your newly baptized people and grant them to truly know You, the true God, and strengthen them in the Orthodox faith. Help me against my enemies, visible and invisible, and glorify Your Most Holy Name in the Rus' lands!" Thus began the baptism of Rus'.
After the baptism of the Kyivans, Grand Prince Vladimir ordered the construction of churches for the newly baptized on the sites where idols had once stood. On the hill where Perun had once stood, a church dedicated to St. Basil was built. Church services began to be conducted using books brought from Greece by Metropolitan Michael and the priests, in a language understood by our ancestors. Prince Vladimir also ordered the baptism of the people in all the cities and villages of Rus', and he and his priests began visiting the towns and villages, persuading the people to accept baptism.
The Metropolitan, along with the bishops who had arrived from Constantinople, and Dobrynya, Prince Vladimir's uncle, set out to baptize the people north of Kyiv and, preaching the Word of God, reached Novgorod the Great. Christianity did not spread quickly there, as no one had previously had any understanding of Christianity, and the people of Novgorod were much cruder in morals and customs than the people of Kyiv. It is believed that from Novgorod, the preachers traveled further east along the Sheksna waterway and reached Rostov, where paganism was particularly rampant. In Rostov, the preaching work of the first Rus' Metropolitan, Mikhail, ended in 990; he died in 991. Prince Vladimir was greatly saddened by the death of Metropolitan Mikhail, but another metropolitan, Leon, was soon sent. He dispatched Bishop Joachim Korsunin to Novgorod to instruct the newly converted. Under Joachim, paganism in Novgorod was finally eradicated. Concerned about the conversion of pagans, Prince Vladimir sent bishops to other cities of Rus' to spread Christianity.
At the same time, Prince Vladimir began to promote literacy. He ordered that children of boyars and nobles be taken and sent to book education.
Liturgical books also began to be rewritten, as those brought from Greece and Bulgaria were insufficient, and the number of Christians was growing, with new churches being founded. Furthermore, clergy were needed for the newly founded churches. As literacy spread, Rus' readers, deacons, priests, and even bishops appeared in Rus'. In 989, Vladimir desired to build a magnificent church dedicated to the Most Holy Theotokos, on the site of the death of our first martyrs for the faith, St. Theodore and John. Vladimir invited architects and artists from Greece to build and decorate it. The prince donated icons, sacred vessels, and crosses taken from Korsun to this church.
In 996, construction was completed. Vladimir, amazed by its grandeur, said: "Lord God, look down from heaven and visit what Your right hand has planted—this new people, whose hearts You have turned to know You, the true God. Look upon this church of Yours, which I, Your unworthy servant, have built in the name of the Mother who gave birth to You, the Ever-Virgin Theotokos. If anyone prays in this church, hear their prayer, for the sake of the prayers of the Most Pure Theotokos." Then he said: "I give this church a tenth of my estate and the money of my cities." Therefore, this church became known as the Tithe Church. The consecration took place with great celebration, after which Vladimir held a grand feast for the boyars and elders, and distributed alms to the poor and needy.
In his old age, Vladimir was distressed by the turmoil that broke out in Novgorod, where his son Yaroslav reigned. He fell ill. Grieving over his sins, he prayed before his death and, with bright hope in God's mercy, concluded his life's journey. He died on the 15th/28th day of July 1015; he was approximately 55 years old.