Unit 5: Reign of Volodymyr and Christianisation

This theme is dealt with in a lot of historical sources. The following citation is to illustrate this:

“The zenith of the state's power came during the reigns of Prince Volodymyr the Great and Prince Yaroslav the Wise. Both rulers continued the steady expansion of Kievan Rus' that had begun under Oleg.

Vladimir raised to power in Kiev after the death of his father Sviatoslav I in 972 and after defeating his half-brother Yaropolk in 980. As Prince of Kiev, Vladimir's most notable achievement was the Christianization of Kievan Rus', a process that began in 988. The Primary Chronicle states that when Vladimir had decided to accept a new faith instead of the traditional paganism of the Slavs, he sent out some of his most valued advisors and warriors as emissaries to different parts of Europe. The emissaries visited the Christians of the Latin Rite, the Jews and the Muslims, they finally arrived in Constantinople. They rejected Islam because, among other things, it prohibited the consumption of alcohol, and Judaism because the god of the Jews had permitted his chosen people to be deprived of their country. They found the ceremonies in the Roman church to be dull. But, at Constantinople, they were so astounded by the beauty of the cathedral of Hagia Sophia and the liturgical service held there, that they made up their minds there and then about the faith they would like to follow. Upon their arrival home, they convinced Vladimir that the faith of the Byzantine Rite was the best choice of all, upon which Vladimir made a journey to Constantinople and arranged to marry with Princess Anna, the sister of the Byzantine emperor, Basil II.

Vladimir's choice of Eastern Christianity may also have reflected his close personal ties with Constantinople, which dominated the Black Sea and hence trade on Kiev's most vital commercial route, the River Dnieper. Adherence to the Eastern Church had long-range political, cultural, and religious consequences. The church had a liturgy written in Cyrillic and a corpus of translations from Greek that had been produced for the Slavic peoples. The existence of this literature facilitated the conversion to Christianity of the Eastern Slavs and introduced them to rudimentary Greek philosophy, science, and historiography without the necessity of learning Greek. In contrast, educated people in medieval Western and Central Europe learned Latin. Enjoying independence from the Roman authority and free from tenets of Latin learning, the East Slavs developed their own literature and fine arts, quite distinct from those of other Eastern Orthodox countries. …”

The complete version of this text is at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kievan_Rus%27

Assignments

1) Give Ukrainian equivalents to the following:

Faith, paganism, advisors, to reject, consumption, permitted, dull, astound, ties, vital

2) Give definitions to the following:

Christianization, paganism, emissaries, Latin Rite, liturgy, rudimentary, orthodox, zenith

3) Answer the questions on the text:

1. Sviatoslav was pagan, wasn’t he?

2. Why did Volodymyr decide to accept a new faith?

3. Why did he send emissaries to different parts of Europe?

4. What kind of Christian rite was accepted by Volodymyr?

5. What consequences for Rus’ did the adoption of Christianity have?

4) Speak on this issue adding extra information from other sources.

5) What can you say about this statue?

Date: 2015-02-28; view: 1069