Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Although the Russian Orthodox church marked the millennium of its foundation in 1988 this was an extended process which began a century or more earlier. Byzantine sources speak of a Russian diocese established by the patriarchate of constantinople as early as 867. So momentous a development, declared Patriarch photios ( c .810– c .895), demonstrated that the warlike Russians could now be considered ‘subjects and friends’ of the Byzantine empire. By 874, these ‘subjects and friends’ had clearly gained sufficient status to be accorded an archbishop, although the location of his seat remains unclear. The evidence of early Russian Christianity is scant; all the more gratifying, then, to learn of Russian Christians acting as co-signatories of a Russo-Byzantine treaty in 944. Some may have acted as supporters for the Kievan princess Ol'ga when she decided to link herself, and therefore, potentially, her subjects, with the Byzantine world by accepting baptism in Constantinople c .960. This was the first such symbolic act at her level of society, but it was not to meet with favour among her immediate successors. A determined pagan revival in the Kievan realm over the succeeding twenty-five years is reported in the later chronicles of kiev and there is some archaeological evidence to support this. In the event, Ol'ga's policy prevailed. By the end of the tenth century the Kievan elite ... log in or subscribe to read full text