CRISTO RAUL.ORG '

THE UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY

FROM JUSTINIAN TO LUTHER. AD 518-1517

CHAPTER VII.

THE SLAVS AND THEIR MISSIONS

BEFORE considering the conversion of the Slavs, it is necessary to bring before our minds the map of central and eastern Europe from the seventh to the ninth century, as well as the modern divisions of the Slavonic races. These modern divisions are: (1) the great north-eastern branch, the Slavs of Russia; (2) the north-western branch, which includes the Poles, the Czecho-Slovaks of Bohemia and Moravia, and some broken fragments in the east of Germany, known as the Sorbs or Wends, Kashubians, and others; (3) the southern branch, which includes the Slovenes of Carinthia to the north-east of the Adriatic, the Croats, who come close to the Adriatic, and the Serbs, whose language is almost identical with that of the Croats. In spite of the traditional hostility which exists between the Bulgarians and the Serbs, the Bulgarians, a Turanian race by origin, are, in their language and civilization, Southern Slavs.

The original home of the Slavs was probably near the Vistula and the Pripet marshes, from which they spread in all directions. By about 700 they had reached their extreme western limits. The broken fragments of Slavonic races in modern Germany are the remains of tribes which then extended nearly as far west as Hamburg. They followed the course of the Elbe southward to Magdeburg, past Halle. Not only were Gnesen, Breslau, and Leipzig Slavonic, but Slavs also covered districts such as Brandenburg and Pomerania, now typically German. The eastern part of East Prussia was occupied by the Lithuanians, primitive cousins of the Slavs, and the heart of East Prussia belonged to a warlike and barbarous tribe akin to the Lithu­anians. These were the Pruzi, who were not converted until the thirteenth century. Their language was understood by a few people as late as 1684. When George I came to England from Hanover in 1714, a Slavonic language, Polabish, still lingered in his Hanoverian territory.

The above facts indicate that a vast Slavonic region, now called by German names, was left untouched by St. Boniface and other missionaries of Teutonic speech. And south-east of this great region, the settlement near the Danube of the Southern Slavs, and of Ural-Altaic tribes such as the Avars and Huns, had erected a thick wall of paganism between the Latin and the Byzantine provinces of the Christian Church.

The Southern Slavs, strictly so-called, must first claim our attention, and then the Moravians and the Bulgarians.

The Croats, moving towards Dalmatia, were the most western of the three great streams of Slavs which penetrated into the Balkan peninsula early in the seventh century. The second stream moved in the direction of Thessalonica, and the third towards Bulgaria, occupying districts which had been previously laid waste by the Avars. In the eighth century large numbers of the central horde of Slavs penetrated into the heart of Greece, and threatened to confine the Greek language and the Christian religion to the cities, just as the Teutonic tribes had threatened to shut up Roman civilization and Catholicism in the cities of the West. The Slavs in Greece, however, became quickly Hellenized, learning Greek as the Western barbarians learnt Latin, and in the ninth century they became Christian, during the reigns of the Emperors Michael III and Basil I.

The heroic defence of Constantinople in 626, when the subjects of the Emperor Heraclius repelled the huge forces of the Khagan of the Avars, secured the Balkans against future Avar molestation. The Avars, who had become a coalition of different races, were by this time a prey to internal dissensions, and among the peoples who were making good their own independence of the Avars were the Slavs within the Empire. The Croats and Serbs became in the time of Heraclius recognized and legalized vassals of the emperor, and welcomed teachers of the Christian religion. Some of the first converts were probably under the authority of the Bishop of Salona, who resided at Spalato after Salona was sacked by Avars and Slavs early in the seventh century. Others, farther east, were under the Bishop of Justiniana Prima, near the modern Skoplje, and later under the Bishop of Thessalonica. All these bishoprics were subject to Roman rule, though all did not employ the Western rite. Pope Gregory the Great had asserted his authority even over Justiniana Prima, to which city, as being his own birthplace, the Emperor Justinian had given primatial rights over northern Illyricum. The Croats, who were near to the Dalmatian towns which were Roman in origin and speech and faith, began to adopt Christianity in the seventh century, after the example of their Prince Porga. In the ninth century the work of their conversion was outwardly complete. Most of them became, and have remained, firmly attached to Rome, and in certain towns on the Adriatic Rome permitted the Roman mass to be celebrated in Slavonic, the liturgical books being until recently printed in the ancient Slavonic script known as Glagolitic. The Slovenes of Carinthia were under the rule of the Franks and formed part of the East Frankish Empire. They were reached by Latin priests who came from Salzburg and Passau in the eighth century, partly in order to minister to Bavarian settlers and their dependents.

The vicissitudes of Christianity among the ancient Serbs were more varied than among the Croats and Slovenes.

The first priests who labored among the Serbs were apparently Latin. And not only do the names of some ancient Serbian princes and the dedication of certain churches point to contact with the West, but a few quasi-religious terms in Serbian still indicate the same origin. Such words are oltar (sanctuary = altare), pogan (unclean = paganus), and raka (tomb or shrine = arca). The Latin priests were replaced by Greek priests about 732, in the time of Leo the Isaurian, when the region occupied by the Serbs was taken from Rome and attached to Constantinople. The work of Latin and Greek missionaries failed to be permanent, probably on account of their ignorance of Slavonic and their failure to provide church services in a language understood by the people. In the first half of the ninth century the Serbs to a great extent relapsed into paganism, and their second conversion did not take place until the time of the Emperor Basil the Macedonian (867-886). The first four years of Basil's reign were occupied with military operations against the Saracens. His fleet helped to free Ragusa, which was then being besieged by the Saracens, and he thereby strengthened his influence on the shores of the Adriatic. Impressed by the masterful energy of their benefactor, and alarmed by the threatening power of the Bulgars, the Serbs placed themselves under the suzerainty of Basil and accepted the religion of Byzantium. Missionaries were sent from Constantinople and made Ragusa their headquarters. The Serbian bishopric of Raska was probably founded about 870.

During the quarrel which broke out between Rome and Constantinople in the matter of the rival patriarchs, Photius and Ignatius, Mutimir, the Prince of Serbia, appealed to Rome for the royal crown and insignia. It is probable, but not certain, that this was the Mutimir 'dux Sclaviniae', to whom Pope John VIII sent a letter about 873, asking him to follow the example of his ancestors and to turn back to the ecclesiastical province of Pannonia, “where now, by the help of God, the new metropolitan is appointed”. The result of these negotiations with Rome is unknown, as Serbia hardly mattered at this time, when the question whether Bulgaria should belong to the Pope or to the Patriarch was hotly discussed between the two pontiffs. Serbia, from the time of its second conversion to the beginning of the eleventh century, was governed sometimes by the Greeks and sometimes by the Bulgarians, and in consequence was sometimes under the spiritual authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople and sometimes under that of the head of the Bulgarian Church. A little later, every effort which the Serbs made to gain political freedom meant an approximation to Rome; for to obtain support from the West in their struggle against the Greeks, the Serbs were obliged to recognize the Pope as their spiritual head. They had to choose between an Emperor and a Pope. They desired neither, but, owing to their geographical position, they could not do without one or other of them.

The real master-builder of the Serbian Church was St. Sava, whose life is full of dramatic movement and color. His original name was Rastko, and he was the youngest son of the 'great chief' (veliki zupan) of Serbia, Stephen Nemanja. On a visit to his father's court he met a monk who described with such fervor the monastic 'angelic' life on Mount Athos that the youth, under pretence of hunting, escaped to Athos and entered the Russian monastery of St. Panteleimon. His father sent soldiers to pursue him and they discovered his refuge. He met them, begged them to stay the night and return with him the next day. He then persuaded them to attend the midnight service and they consented, but tired with their journey they fell asleep in the church. In the meantime Rastko took the monastic vows in the monastery tower and received the new name of Sava, and when the morning came sent the soldiers away with his rich lay clothes and a letter to his parents.

Henceforth Sava appears repeatedly as the leading spirit amid his people. He was instrumental in founding the Serbian monastery of Chilendar on Mount Athos and vigorously promoted monasticism and learning. He took an equally active and useful part in political affairs, which were imperiled by divisions at home and Hungarian jealousy abroad. In the year 1219 he was consecrated the first (autonomous) Archbishop of Serbia at Constantinople by the Patriarch. He divided the country into eight dioceses, exclusive of his own see of and instructed the clergy in their duties. In 1220 his brother Stephen was crowned as 'king' with a royal crown which was procured from the Pope in order to weaken Hungarian and Latin opposition. He visited the Holy Land, everywhere celebrating the liturgy and distributing alms, and he bought from the Saracens the monastery of John the Baptist in the Jordan valley. In 1233 he appointed his own successor and afterwards again went to Jerusalem. On his way home he fell ill, stayed a few days at Constantinople, and died at Trnovo in Bulgaria on January the 13th, 1236. His body was taken to Serbia and buried at Milegevo. It was removed to Belgrad in March 1594 and a month later it was burnt by the Turks.

The conversion of the Moravians is an event of capital importance in the religious history of central Europe. The Moravians had been forced in 803 to pay tribute to the Franks, and missionaries were sent to them from the sees from which evangelists had gone to the Slovenes. Their success was very slight; the people disliked them as the servants of foreign nobles and the comrades of greedy soldiers. In the middle of the century the country became independent under the native prince Ratislav, who desired to have a Christian Church independent of the Franks and in connection with Constantinople rather than with Rome.

Ratislav visited Constantinople in person in 863 and requested that Christian teachers should be sent to Moravia. The Emperor Michael III (847-867) chose as these teachers Constantine (afterwards named Cyril) and Methodius. These two brothers were natives of the district of Thessalonica, a district which then abounded with Slavs. It is possible that they were themselves Slavs, as many Slavs had by that time gained a high social position. Methodius was governor of a Macedonian Slav district before he entered the monastic order, a man of practical mind and skill in administration. Constantine had been educated at the Imperial School, he was librarian of the Patriarchate, and a lecturer in philosophy. He had already distinguished himself as a missionary and preacher among the Jews and Muslims of the Khazars, a Finnish Ugrian race to the north of the Black Sea. For the Slavs he invented the alphabet known as Glagolitic, which in later times was replaced by the Greek alphabet with a few additional characters. The brothers translated the Psalms, the liturgy, and parts of the New Testament into a southern form of the Old Slavonic language, a rich language which at that period was on the eve of breaking up into the different Slavonic languages of later times.

In Moravia the brothers preached the Gospel for more than four years. By using the vernacular language in the services of the Church, they won a conspicuous success among the Moravians. The Frankish and Italian priests having attacked them for their innovation, they went to Rome in 867 and showed to Pope Hadrian II the books which they used in their church services. The Pope approved, and dismissed them with his blessing. Constantine, who on his death-bed took the name of Cyril, died in Rome in 869, and Methodius was then consecrated Bishop of Pannonia. He was thrown into prison as the result of the action of the German clergy, but released at the request of Pope John VIII in 873. He was then made Archbishop of Pannonia and Moravia, and converted the Bohemian Prince Borivoy and his wife. He died on April the 6th, 885. For a time the Moravian Church was Eastern. But the vigorous Moravian King Svatopluk (d. 894) from being a friend of Methodius became his opponent, and a new Pope, Stephen V (d. 891) forbade the use of the Slavonic liturgy. Under Svatopluk it seemed probable that the Southern Slavs might be joined with the North-western Slavs in one great kingdom opposed to the Germans. But early in the tenth century the Church and the kingdom both disappeared in consequence of the invasion of the heathen Ural-Altaic tribe, the Magyars. Then came Czech settlers from Bohemia, and in the next century Moravia was simply a Bohemian province, connected with the Western Church. The Slavonic liturgy, banished from Moravia, was destined to have incalculable influence as the liturgy of the Serbs, Bulgarians, and Russians down to the present day. The Rumanians also employed it until the seventeenth century, when they began to use Rumanian translations of the Slavonic liturgical books. For a long time the books of the Serbians and the Croats alike were written in the language of Cyril and Methodius, though first the alphabet and then the language underwent a change, and in the twelfth century we find Serbian recensions of Old Slavonic books.

After the death of Svatopluk the disciples of Cyril and Methodius in Moravia had to encounter a strong and bitter opposition, and were expelled from Moravia at the instigation of the German clergy. Some went to Serbia and Dalmatia. Others took refuge in Bulgaria, where they were well received and did good work on the Macedonian borders of the Bulgarian kingdom.

The conversion of Bulgaria, like that of Moravia, may be considered a jewel in the crown of the Church of Constantinople.

In the early years of the ninth century Christianity had made some way among the Bulgars, and under King Boris I (d. 907) it became the State religion of the country. Placed between the Christian Greek empire and Christian Moravia, he saw that he could not safely remain a pagan. Political motives did not exclude more pious incentives, and the arguments of his Christian sister and a captive monk are said to have paved the way for his conversion. He was baptized according to the Greek rite in 864, the Emperor Michael III acting as his sponsor. Eastern missionaries flocked to Bulgaria, and Boris crushed the opposition of his heathen nobility. Perplexed by small religious differences and annoyed by the reluctance of the Patriarch Photius to appoint a bishop for Bulgaria, he turned to Rome. Like Ratislav, he wished for order in the Church, but preferred that the centre of organization should not be too near himself. As Ratislav invoked the help of Constantinople, so Boris invoked the help of Pope Nicholas I, asking him to send a bishop and priests, and to give an authoritative answer to no less than 106 theological and social questions.

Pope Nicholas I then sent to Bulgaria Formosus, afterwards Pope, with suitable replies to the questions, both serious and ludicrous, devised by the brain of the Bulgarian prince. He promised that there should be a bishop and later an archbishop. The Patriarch Photius denounced this interference of Rome in Bulgaria; and as the new Pope Hadrian II would not nominate as archbishop a priest recommended by Boris, the Bulgarian turned his petitions again towards the East. An archbishop and ten bishops were the reward of this request, and the wisdom of it was recommended to the nation by the introduction of the Slavonic liturgy. Boris also sent his son Symeon to study in Constantinople. A vigorous educational movement began under the influence of Clement, a disciple of Cyril and Methodius, who founded a monastery at Achrida, which was made the seat of a bishopric in 879. Boris himself retired to a monastery in 888. He left it temporarily to depose his dissolute son Vladimir about four years afterwards, and died in the odour of sanctity after placing Symeon upon the throne.

Symeon's classical education, and his fondness for translating the works of St. Athanasius and St. Chrysostom, proved no hindrance to his military prowess. After some varying fortunes of war, he conquered the Magyars and inflicted crushing defeats upon the Greeks. He was lord of both Adrianople and Belgrad, and assumed the title of 'Tsar of the Bulgarians and Greeks'. As a natural corollary of this assumption of an imperial title by the Bulgarian prince, the Bulgarian archbishop became 'Patriarch'. This patriarchate, which came to include about forty bishoprics, was recognized by the Greek Emperor Romanus I in 927, the year of Symeon's death.

The Churches of Bulgaria and Serbia were soon afflicted by a heresy which bore a considerable resemblance to Manichaeism. The presbyter Kosma, who lived in the tenth century, ascribes the origin of the heresy to one Bogumil (dear to God), who lived in the days of the Orthodox Tsar Peter of Bulgaria. The heresy was strongly dualistic. The good God created the spiritual world; the rebel Satanailo, the evil god, created the material world in order to live in it. To save those men who had not yielded to Satanailo God sent His Logos, Michael the archangel, who assumed a phantom body and deceived Satanailo. Satanailo had deceived Moses when giving him the ten commandments, so the Old Testament was rejected except the Psalms. The New Testament was accepted, but the Church with its hierarchy and sacraments was repudiated, together with the veneration of saints and icons. Prayers were said in private houses. At first the Bogumili had no regular ministry, though in the twelfth century they had a supreme ruler or pope, called “Djed” (grandfather), and still later they are known to have had elders. Every member of the sect might become a teacher, and if a teacher he usually had twelve followers. Persons who expressed a wish to enter the community were solemnly received after undergoing a discipline of fasts, prayers, and confession. By preaching and by writing an active propaganda was carried on, the whole system and organization of the Greek Church was opposed, and the preachers of the 'new faith', by their strongly democratic principles, and their advocacy of Slavonic nationalism, gained a firm hold among the Slavs of the Balkan peninsula. They retained their influence in Serbia for two centuries, until they were crushed by Stephen Nemanja. In the meantime the Bogumili had carried their teaching to the West. The so-called Cathari of Toulouse were in communication with the Eastern Bogumili in 1223 and the connection appears to date back two centuries earlier.

After mentioning the Southern Slavs and the Bulgarians, it is necessary to say a little about the Rumanians and the Magyars.

The origin of the Rumanians has been keenly debated and it remains in considerable obscurity. They appear to be in the main the descendants of a people Latin in speech, and partly Roman in origin, who dwelt south of the Danube in the present Yugoslavia before the arrival of the Slavs. Shattered by this invasion, some maintained a nomad life in the different Balkan countries through which their descendants still wander, and are called by their neighbors Vlachs. Others, after living among the Slavs long enough to have their language loaded with Slavonic words, passed to the north of the Danube some time before the twelfth century, and absorbed any remnants of their Rumanian kinsmen who may possibly have survived the different waves of barbarian conquerors which had crossed over the present country of Rumania. There is no ancient Rumanian literature, and the language of the Church services was, as we have noted, Slavonic until the seventeenth century. They still retain some pagan Roman customs, but it can be assumed that south of the Danube they were Christians before the Slavs arrived. It is remarkable that the Rumanians are the only large body of Christians who speak a Romance language but are outside the Roman communion.

The land now called Hungary was partly in the possession of Slavs when, in 895, the Magyars, a fierce Ural-Altaic tribe akin to the Finns, poured into its fertile plains. They were seeking a new country after being heavily defeated by the Bulgarian Tsar Symeon. This intrusion of an alien race had an immediate and permanent effect upon European history and religion. It planted a new nation, heathen, but destined soon to become Christian, in such a position as to divide the Southern Slavs from the Slavs of Germany and Poland, and it caused the collapse of the Moravian kingdom. The result was that all the Western Slavs were cut away from Constantinople and the Eastern Church, and became impelled towards the influences of German civilization and Western Catholicism. These two streams of influence, German and Roman, became supreme within less than a hundred years after the Magyars entered Hungary, and were united in the person of the great German Emperor Otto I (d. 973). The Magyars were decisively defeated by him in 955, and then began to turn their aspirations towards something better than constant raids of savage warfare. Their Prince Geza, who had married a Christian wife, made friendly overtures to Otto I. The result was the arrival of Christian immigrants and missionaries, the most important of whom was Bishop Pilgrim of Passau (d. 991). Geza was converted and also his young son and successor, who was given the name of Stephen. Benedictine monks arrived in 995 and the work of conversion and civilization made rapid progress. That the missionaries were mostly Slavs, and probably Bohemian, is shown by the presence of Slavonic ecclesiastical words in the Magyar language. King Stephen (d. 1038) occupies a high rank in the band of Christian monarchs and won the title of saint. He is said to have received from Pope Silvester II, in 1000, a royal crown, and he obtained papal sanction for the ecclesiastical organization of his kingdom under the metropolitan see of Gran. Out of a gang of freebooters he formed a civilized state. In legislation and administration he followed German and, to a less extent, Slavonic models, and by bringing the Magyars within the sphere of Christianity he saved them from the ruin which overtook the once terrible race of Avars.

Farther north Otto I vigorously furthered the spread of Christianity among the Slavonic tribes known as Wends, who covered a wide extent of territory between the rivers Elbe, Saale, Oder, and Warthe. He made Magdeburg the seat of an arch­bishopric in 968 and it was in the monastery of Magdeburg that St. Adalbert of Prague, whose Slavonic name was Voytech, received his education. He was chosen to be the second bishop of Prague by the Emperor Otto II in 983, and received from him his investiture at Verona, and was consecrated by Willigis, Archbishop of Mainz, his metropolitan. He proved a strict censor of morals, and exerted himself to put down concubinage, polygamy, and other heathen practices. The Czechs were repelled by his severity and he left the country, taking refuge in the calm devotion that prevailed in the Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino. After a while he returned to Prague and founded a Benedictine monastery not far from the city. But his stay in his see was only brief. Many of his family were murdered, being suspected on account of their connection with the Poles and Germans, and he was treated with scorn. He therefore felt himself free to undertake missionary work elsewhere, and departed with two companions to preach the Gospel to the heathen Prussians in North Germany. There he was killed in 997 by a heathen priest; and though he cannot be called an apostle, he was an evangelist and martyr.

Bohemia aided the progress of Christianity among the Poles. The Poles on the Vistula first learned Christianity in the tenth century from monks of the Eastern Church. And late in that century Prince Mieszko, who had married a Christian Bohemian wife, was baptized by her chaplain Jordan, who became the first bishop of Posen. Mieszko's son Boleslaus Chrobry (d. 1025) combined his Christian convictions with very shrewd political insight. He made Gnesen a metropolitan see, severing it from the jurisdiction of Magdeburg, and transferred to it the relics of the martyr St. Adalbert of Prague. Under Gnesen he placed the bishoprics of Cracow, Breslau, and Kohlberg. None of these had been Polish cities, though all were Slavonic; the two former being Czech, while Kohlberg was situated amid the Slays of Pomerania. Boleslaus hoped to form a compact Polish Church which should be the Church of the large empire which he was building to resist the German advance from the West. His hopes were fruitless. Very soon after his death the enemies of Poland shattered his empire and a violent pagan reaction attended its downfall. Poland was reduced to a wilderness dotted with ruined churches. After much difficulty, Duke Casimir consolidated Church and State for a time. Boleslaus II also recovered some of Poland's lost provinces. But his lust, cruelty, and avarice brought him into collision with the Church, and he was excommunicated by St. Stanislaus, Bishop of Cracow, who placed the churches of the city under an interdict. Having vainly urged his satellites to kill the bishop, Boleslaus slew him with his own hand in the chapel of St. Michael, May the 8th, 1079. Thus another Slavonic country had its own national martyr, and Stanislaus became to Poland what Thomas Becket became to England.

The creation of Russia depended upon the union of two different factors. The first was the migration, probably beginning in the seventh century of the Christian era, which brought a body of Slays from the south-west of modern Russia to the north and to the south-east. These Slavs became simple agricultural people, making their little farms and villages amid the forests. The second factor was the great river Dnieper, which with its different branches formed a waterway connecting the Baltic with the Black Sea, the Scandinavians with the Greeks. Along the river there were built trading centers from which furs, honey, and wax could be sent to the South, and in the ninth century Swedish companies, the so-called Varangians, travelled along the Dnieper to Byzantium. Some of them remained in the Russian towns, and entered the military service of the Russians. The name “Rus” was originally the name of these hardy and adventurous Swedes, who first established themselves near Novgorod. It can hardly be doubted that in some cases they were invited by Slavonic and Finnish tribes to help them to settle their quarrels, but they began before long to rule over their hosts. They extended their power in different directions and they conquered Kiev. The importance of Kiev can be proved by the fact that in 86o the Princes of Kiev sent, though they sent in vain, a predatory fleet of two hundred ships to attack Constantinople. Another expedition against Constantinople resulted in a treaty which conceded great advantages to Russian merchants in Constantinople.

In 945 another treaty with the Greeks was made by Igor, the first historical Russian prince who is mentioned in contemporary foreign sources. This treaty shows that there were Christians among the followers of Igor; and we find from the Russian Chronicle that there was a cathedral at Kiev dedicated to St. Elias. Igor's widow, Olga, was already a Christian before she visited Constantinople in 957. She was the first Christian princess in Russia. Olga's grandson Vladimir I, a great prince and warrior, was destined to be the Clovis of his country. He invaded Byzantine territory, took Cherson, threatened Constantinople with his fleet, and obtained in marriage Anna, a sister of the Emperor Basil II, on condition of his accepting Christianity and sending an army to assist Basil. A story as picturesque as some of the stories of the introduction of Christianity among the English, tells how he received emissaries from various religions, Muslims, Jews, Western Christians, and at last a monk from Greece, and was deeply moved when the monk showed to him a picture of the Last Judgment. The story continues that he sent delegates to visit these religions in their various homes. They went last to Constantinople, and were so much overwhelmed with the beauty of the service in the majestic church of St. Sophia that they declared, “No man who has once tasted what is sweet will afterwards take what is bitter”.

Vladimir was baptized in 988, and after his return to Kiev hurled the idol of the thunder god into the Dnieper, and declared that he would treat as his enemy anyone who refused to be baptized. His people did not refuse; and they were baptized by the Greek clergy, who named them in droves. A metropolitan came from Constantinople in 991 to be the head of the Russian Church. After 1040 Kiev was the seat of the metropolitans. For more than two hundred years they were almost always Greeks, though in 1051 Hilarion, a native Russian, was appointed. His discourse 'On Grace and the Law' is one of the most ancient monuments of Russian literature and is written in the style of the later Greek rhetoricians. In spite of their Greek nationality the metropolitans formed a permanent and civilizing element in the midst of the quarrelsome independent principalities into which the country was divided. Kiev, as the home of the grand-prince, the head of a great family of princes, and as the centre of clerical and monastic life, did something to arrest Russian disintegration until the death of Yaroslav the Great, in 1054. After that year, the year of the fatal division of the Eastern and Western Churches, Kiev was repeatedly pillaged, and for a time the centre of political and commercial activities was Novgorod.

A few years earlier than 1054 there was built the stately cathedral of St. Sophia at Kiev. Not only does its name recall the great church at Constantinople which excited the wonder of Vladimir's emissaries. It is itself a noble monument of Greek Byzantine art, a square church with five apses and many domes. The great fresco of the head of Christ the Almighty, and the mosaic of His mother with her hands raised in prayer, are among the masterpieces of the eleventh century. These and the pictures of Greek fathers of the Church are of dignified severity. But the Greek artists allowed themselves some freedom on the staircase of the church, which they adorned with scenes from the hippodrome. The church is an embodiment on Russian soil of Byzantine tradition, a tradition that was never wholly lost amid the exuberant fantasies of later Russian art. In fact this tradition really enabled Russia to be herself. The Russian people while in its youth was grafted into the tree of a rich and ancient culture. It needed the support of this culture. In time to come Russia was to experience the influence of Poland and Italy, Germany, Holland, and France. Under these various influences it could not have developed its own spiritual life and consciousness if it had not possessed something which protected it from within, and this something was the orthodox faith. It is because of this faith that the good Russian believes, in spite of all obstacles, in 'holy Russia', a land beloved by God and with a vocation to fulfill.

CHAPTER VIII.

ROME AND GERMANY : EAST AND WEST SEPARATE