RUSSIANS CONVERSION--GREEK AND LATIN CHRISTIANITY
So the scattered clans of the Slav race were roughly drawn together
into something resembling a nation by the strong arm of the
Scandinavian. But the course of national progress is never a straight
one. Nature understands better than we the value of retarding
influences, which prevent the too rapid fusing of crude elements. This
work of retardation was performed for Russia by Sviatoslaf. When,
instead of leaving his dominions to his oldest son, he divided them
among the three, he introduced a vicious system which was to become a
fatal source of weakness. This is known as the system of _Appanages_.
To his son Yaropolk he gave Kief, to Oleg the territory of the
Drevlians, and to Vladimir Novgorod. But as Vladimir quickly
assassinated Yaropolk, who had already assassinated Oleg, the injurious
results of the system were not directly felt!
Vladimir became the sole ruler. He then started upon a course of
unbridled profligacy. He compelled the widow of his murdered brother
to marry him--then a beautiful Greek nun who had been captured from
Byzantium--then a Bulgarian and a Bohemian wife, until finally his
household was numbered by hundreds. But this sensual barbarian began
to be conscious of a soul. He was troubled, and revived the worship of
the Slav gods; erected on the cliffs near Kief a new idol of Perun,
with head of silver and beard of gold. Two Scandinavian Christians
were by his orders stabbed at the feet of the idol. Still his soul was
unsatisfied. He determined upon a search for the best religion; sent
ambassadors to examine into the religious beliefs of Mussulmans, Jews,
Catholics, and the Greeks. The splendor of the Greek ceremonial, the
magnificence of the vestments, the incense, the music, and the presence
of the Emperor and his court, filled the souls of the barbarians with
awe--and the final argument of his _boyars_ (or nobles) put an end to
doubts: "If the Greek religion had not been the best, your grandmother
Olga, the wisest of mortals, would not have adopted it."
Vladimir's choice was made. He would be baptized in the faith of Olga.
But this must be done at the hand of the Greek Patriarch; so he would
conquer baptism--and ravish it like booty--not beg for it. He besieged
and took a Greek city. Then demanded the hand of Anna, sister of the
Greek Caesar, threatening in case of refusal to march on
Constantinople. Consent was given upon condition of baptism, which was
just what the barbarian wanted. So he came back to Kief a Christian,
bringing with him his new Greek wife, and his new baptismal name of
Basil.
Amid the tears and fright of the people, the idols were torn down;
Perun was flogged and thrown into the Dnieper. Then the old pagan
stream was consecrated, and men, women, and children, old and young,
master and slave, were driven into the river, the Greek priests
standing on the banks reading the baptismal service. The frightened
Novgorodians were in like manner forced to hurl Perun into the Volkhof,
and then, like herded cattle, were driven into the stream to be
baptized. The work of Olga was completed--Russia was Christianized
(992)!
It would be long before Christianity would penetrate into the heart of
the people. As late as the twelfth century only the higher classes
faithfully observed the Christian rites; while the old pagan ceremonies
were still common among the peasantry. And even now the Saints of the
Calendar are in some places only thinly disguised heathen deities and
pagan rites and superstitions mingle with Christian observances.
The conversion of Vladimir seems to have been sincere. From being a
cruel voluptuary and assassin, he was changed to a merciful ruler who
could not bear to inflict capital punishment. He was faithful to his
Greek wife Anna. On the spot where he had once erected Perun, and
where the two Scandinavians were martyred at his command, he built the
church of St. Basil; and he is now remembered only as the saint who
Christianized pagan Russia, and revered as the "Beautiful Sun of Kief."
So the two most important events considered thus far in the history of
this land have been, first, its military conquest from the North, and
second, its ecclesiastical conquest from the South. If the first
helped it to become a nation, the second determined the character which
that nationality should assume.
To explain one fact by another and unfamiliar and uncomprehended fact
is one of the confusing methods of history! In order to know why the
adoption of the form of religion known as the Greek Church so
powerfully influenced Russian development, one must understand what
that faith was and is, and the source of the antagonisms which divided
the two great branches of the Church of Christ--the Greek and the Latin.
The cause underlying all others is _racial_. It is explained in their
names. The theology of one had its roots in Greek Philosophy; that of
the other in Roman Law. One tended to a brilliant diversity, the other
to centralization and unity. One was a group of Ecclesiastical States,
a Hierarchy and a _Polyarchy_, governed by Patriarchs, each supreme in
his own diocese; the other was a _Monarchy_, arbitrarily and
diplomatically governed from one center. It was the difference between
an archipelago and a continent, and not unlike the difference between
ancient Greece and Rome. One had the tremendous principle of growth,
stability, and permanence; the other had not.
Such were the race tendencies which led to entirely different
ecclesiastical systems. Then there arose differences in dogma; and
Rome considered the Church in the East schismatic, and Byzantium held
that that of the West was heterodox. They now not only disapproved of
each other's methods, but what was more serious, held different creeds.
The Latin Church, after its Bishop had become an infallible Pope (about
the middle of the fifth century), claimed that the Church in the East
must accept his definition of dogma as final.
It was one small word which finally rent these two bodies of
Christendom forever apart. It was only the word _filioque_ which made
the impassable gulf dividing them. The Latins maintained that the Holy
Spirit proceeded from the Father--_and the son_; the Greeks that it
descended from the Father alone. It was the undying controversy
concerning the relations and the attributes of the three Members of the
Trinity; and the insoluble question was destined to break up Greek and
Catholic Church alike into numberless sects and shades of belief or
unbelief; and over this Christological controversy, rivers of blood
were to flow in both branches of Christendom.
The theological question involved was of course too subtle for ordinary
comprehension. But although men on both sides stood ready to die for
the decisions of their councils which they did not understand, there
was underlying the whole question the political jealousy existing
between the two: Byzantium, embittered by the effacement of its
political jurisdiction in the West, exasperated at the overweening
pretensions of Roman bishops; Rome, watching for opportunity to cajole
or compel the Eastern Church to submit to her authority and headship.
Such was the condition of things when Russia allied herself in that
most vital way with the empire in the East. It is impossible to
measure the importance of the step, or to imagine what would have been
the history of that country had Vladimir decided to accept the religion
of Rome and become Catholic, as the Slav in Poland had already done.
By his choice not only is it possible that he added some centuries to
the life of the Greek Empire itself, but he determined the type of
Russian civilization. When she allied herself with Byzantium instead
of Rome, Russia separated herself from those European currents from
which she was already by natural and inherited conditions isolated.
She thus prolonged and emphasized the Orientalism which so largely
shaped her destiny, and produced a nationality absolutely unique in the
family of European nations, in that there is _but one single root in
Russia which can be traced back to the Roman Empire_; and whereas most
of the European civilizations are built upon a Roman foundation, there
is only one current in the life of that nation to-day which has flowed
from a Latin source: that is a judicial code which was founded (in
part) upon Roman law as embodied by Justinian, Emperor of the Empire in
the East (527-565).