Oxford history of the christian church

3. Caucasian and North Pontic regions: Russia.

Rather more successful was the consolidating missionary work begun much earlier in the Caucasus and the North Pontic areas. ¹⁶ This had already been much in the mind of patriarchs such as Nicholas I Mysticus. He was particularly assiduous in supporting Peter the metropolitan of Alania in the central Caucasus, an area converted at the end of the ninth and beginning of the tenth centuries. Like many other metropolitans Peter felt keenly his isolation from the capital. The Patriarch wrote on his behalf to the ruler of Abasgia and also sent Peter a series of sympathetic but bracing letters assuring him that he was not forgotten but adding that he knew quite well that he had been sent not to luxury but to 'labours and tolls and difficulties'. ¹⁷ Problems concerning the outlying rights of the metropolitan of Alania continue to figure in the late tenth- and early eleventh-century registers of Sisinnius II and Eustathius. Metropolitan Nicholas of Alania had problems of maintenance when he was detained by stormy seas on returning to his diocese and had to put up for a time in Cherson seeking help from the monastery of the Holy Epiphany at Kerasontus. ¹⁸ During this period the area in and around the Crimea, long firmly committed to Christianity and to Byzantium, provided valuable bases from which missionaries could work and was too an important political asset in controlling changing factors on the northern borders. Here the Khazars (converted not to Christianity but to Judaism) had by the tenth century declined and the two rising powers were the nomadic Turkic Pechenegs and the principality of Kiev dominated by the Scandinavian Northmen or Rus. The Pecheneg tribes, who in the late ninth century were moving westward into the steppe lands north of the Black Sea, were courted by Byzantine diplomats and their value to the Empire is stressed in the mid-tenth-century handbook of the foreign office, the De Administrando of Constantine VII. But though they figure prominently in the tenth and eleventh-century Byzantine foreign policy they do not appear to have been converted to Christianity. Perhaps their mobility militated against ecclesiastical organization if any such attempts were made.

It was otherwise with Russia. Here as usually the case political and religious considerations were closely linked. During the ninth and early tenth centuries Constantinople had been made aware of new dangers which threatened from the north-east. Varangian desire for plunder and then for regular trade agreements and the growth of the Kievan principality had evoked diplomatic and ecclesiastical approaches from Emperor and Patriarch. But though by the midtenth century there were evidently Christians in Russia there was no established link with the Orthodox Church.

In 957 the Kievan princess Olga, regent for her son Svyatoslav, made a spectacular visit to Constantinople. Here she was accepted as the spiritual daughter of Constantine VII and his wife Helena and was accorded a spendid reception and received into intimate imperial circles. Whether she was baptized in Constantinople on this occasion or previously in Kiev in 955 seems undecided ¹⁹ but she certainly must have had Christian contact in Kiev before she came south. Her links with Constantinople did not however prevent her from turning to the German Otto I in 959 shortly after her return home asking him to send a bishop and priests to Kiev. This he apparently did though without permanent results. But once again rival claims of Christian power in East and West had demonstrated to central and east European rulers that they had a choice of alignment.

In the event the Rus remained on the whole pagan until towards the end of the tenth century until political events forced Constantinople to realize the urgent need to bring Kiev within the Christian 'family of kings'. The threat had arisen in connection with Bulgaria. With the death of the ambitious Symeon in 927 and the succession of a more compliant ruler Bulgaria had for a time been under Byzantine influence. But the atmosphere changed to one of hostility in the 950s. Nicephorus II unwisely provoked the Bulgarians further by refusing customary tribute. He then called on Svyatoslav to suppress their attacks, only to find that by 969 the Kievan ruler was exercising his own control over Bulgaria to the exclusion of Byzantium. This would have meant the presence on Constantinople's northern borders of an unacceptably powerful neighbour. Nicephorus's successor John I Tzimisces was left with the double task of expelling Syvatoslav and subduing Bulgaria. He incorporated Bulgaria into the Empire and put an end to the highly-prized independent Bulgarian patriarchate. In 971 his victory over Svyatoslav (who was to perish on his way home) was sealed by a treaty with Kiev which secured an ally and provided a valuable source of mercenaries.

Despite his mother's baptism Svyatoslav, like many of his subjects, had been pagan. The formal conversion of the Kievan ruler and his state was to come a few years later. In 988-9 Kievan military aid saved the situation for Basil II who was fighting for his throne against powerful rebels. Some of the Varangians stayed on to form the core of the imperial bodyguard. The Kievan ruler, Olga's grandson Vladimir, was rewarded for this aid with the Emperor's sister Anna as bride, a mark of great favour as imperial princesses 'born in the purple' were not at that time normally betrothed to foreigners. A condition of the marriage was the acceptance of Christianity by Vladimir and by his subjects. ²⁰ In fact Anna seems only to have arrived after Vladimir had threatened Constantinople by attacking Cherson, though the precise sequence of events seems uncertain. But it is clear that this time the acceptance of Christianity by the Kievan ruler meant that his state, and later on other Russian regions, were firmly linked to the Orthodox Church under the guidance of the patriarchate of Constantinople. This momentous decision was given prominence in the Russian Primary Chronicle where the Kievan ruler is described as weighing up the merits of various faiths — Muslim, Jewish, and Christian, both Roman and Greek. Finally he decided for the Greek Church after the deep impression made on his envoys by the splendid liturgical rites in Hagia Sophia where he felt that God surely dwelt among men. It is generally agreed that much of this is legendary, but even so there are strands of truth. The Kievan ruler was not alone in being impressed by the splendour of Orthodox worship. Nor was he unaware of the political strength afforded to the ruler of a polity based on such close interdependence of church and state as prevailed in Byzantium. Conversion also meant close relations with a Christian world which offered more than statecraft and economic advantages. It opened the gateway to the civilization of the Hellenic world whose scholars had already provided the linguistic means whereby liturgical and theological works in a Slav language could be made available. While preserving its own ethnic characteristics Russia could thus share in the cultural riches of the Byzantine world particularly its art and its theological literature, its chronicles and its legal works. ²¹ It meant moreover that when the Greek and Balkan Churches were submerged for three centuries and more beneath Muslim rule, Orthodoxy could serve as a 'universal' force outside the bounds of the old Byzantine Empire.