Christianization of Kievan Rus'

[10] The Primary Chronicle (pages 7.21–9.4) records the legend of Andrew the Apostle's mission to these coastal settlements, as well as blessing the site of present-day Kyiv.

[10] Andrew supposedly travelled from Sinope towards Chersonesus (Korsun) in Crimea, up the river Dnipro, and reached the future location of Kyiv, where he erected a cross.

[11] Next, he is said to have journeyed north to the Slovenes near the future site of Veliky Novgorod, although he had a negative attitude towards their customs (particularly their washing in a hot steam bath, banya); then he visited Rome and returned to Sinope.

This conviction dictated the following interpretation: awed by the miracles they witnessed under the walls of the imperial capital and grief-stricken at the disaster that befell them, the Rus' sent envoys to Photius and asked him to send a bishop to their land.

He narrates how the Byzantines galvanized the Rus' into conversion by their persuasive words and rich presents, including gold, silver, and precious tissues.

He also repeats a traditional story that the pagans were particularly impressed by a miracle: a gospel book thrown by the archbishop (sic) into an oven was not damaged by fire.

One school of thought postulates that there was only one Christianization: wishing to glorify his ancestor, Constantine simply ascribed to Basil the missionary triumphs of his predecessor, Michael III.

In September 867, Michael was assassinated by Basil, who (together with a new patriarch, Ignatius) sent to the Rus' an archbishop who propped up the religious fervor of the local leaders with rich presents.

Parenthetically, the contemporaneous Christianization of Bulgaria was likewise effected in two stages: the Bulgars were offended when a simple bishop arrived to their capital from Constantinople and requested Pope Nicholas I to send them a higher-ranking church official.

[24] This pattern has parallels with the stories of Frankish historians about the multiple "baptisms" of the Norsemen, whose true intention was to get hold of the rich gifts accompanying the Christianization rituals.

Grigory Litavrin views the event as "a formal and diplomatic act making it easier to obtain advantageous agreements with the ruler of the Christian state.

In the Russo-Byzantine Treaty, preserved in the text of the chronicle, the Christian part of the Rus' swear according to their faith, while the ruling prince and other non-Christians invoke Perun and Veles after the pagan custom.

Alexander Nazarenko suggests that Yaropolk went through some preliminary rites of baptism, but was murdered at the behest of his pagan half-brother Vladimir (whose own rights to the throne were questionable) before his conversion was formalized.

Following this theory, any information on Yaropolk's baptism according to the Latin form would have been suppressed by the later Eastern Orthodox chroniclers, zealous to keep Vladimir's image of the Rus Apostle untarnished for succeeding generations.

[29] The Conversion of Volodimer[30] is a narrative recorded in several different versions in medieval sources about how Vladimir the Great converted from Slavic paganism to Byzantine Christianity in the 980s.

During the reign of Vladimir's son Yaroslav I, Metropolitan Ilarion authored the first known work of East Slavic literature, an elaborate oration in which he favourably compared Rus to other lands known as the "Sermon on Law and Grace"[citation needed].

But the only surviving work of lay literature, The Tale of Igor's Campaign, indicates that a degree of pagan worldview remained under Christian Kievan Rus'.