The Greek and Eastern Churches/Part 2/Division 3/Chapter 1

by Walter Frederic Adeney

 

DIVISION III

THE RUSSIAN CHURCH

CHAPTER I

THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY IN RUSSIA

 

(a) Nestor, and later Chroniclers; French translations by L. Leger, 1884.

(b) Mouravieff, Hist. of the Russian Church, English trans., 1842; Ralston, Early Russian History, 1874; Morfill, Russia ("Story of the Nations"), 4th edit., 1890; Histories in Russian Language: Karamzin, Ustrialov, Sergius Soloviev, Bestryhev-Riumin, etc.

 

After the fall of Constantinople in the year 1453 the centre of gravity of Oriental Christianity gradually moves northwards. The process is slow, at first imperceptible, occupying one or two centuries, and only to be recognised as continuous and ultimate by after reflection. Nevertheless it is now the chief outstanding fact in the history of the Eastern Churches. The Sclav supersedes the Greek as the dominant race in Eastern Christendom; Moscow takes the primacy so long held by Constantinople; Russia becomes the most important part of the holy orthodox Church and the protector of the Christians in the Ottoman Empire.

"The conversion of Russia by the Greek Church," says Mr. Hore, "is the mightiest conquest the Christian Church has ever made since the time of the apostles."^[1] When we recollect what the conversion of the Teutonic races has meant to Europe and America and the world generally, we may hesitate to accept this unqualified assertion. But if we confine our attention to the East, it is safe to admit it as true within that area.

The vast area of Europe now known as Russia is peopled mainly by a Sclavonic race belonging to the Indo-Germanic, or Aryan, stock, but with a considerable admixture of Finnish and Scandinavian elements from the north-west, and Mongolians from the east. Most of the names that occur in the early legendary history are of a Scandinavian type. The very name Russia, formerly traced to the Rhoxolani who prove to be an Iranian people, is now generally identified with the Finnish Ruotsi, the name given by the Finns to the Swedes, and is supposed to be a corruption of part of a word meaning "rowers"^[2]—representing seafaring men, Vikings of the north, therefore people who had drifted far from the scenes of their ancestry.

Russia was late in coming into contact with civilisation. The name "Scythian" was vaguely used by the Greeks for the people north of the Euxine, but little was known of them. The Russian records begin with the chronicle attributed to Nestor, a monk born about a.d. 1056, who lived at Kiev and died about a.d. 1114, so that his time coincides with the beginning of the Norman period in England and the conquest of the Seljuk Turks in Armenia. He is regarded as the Livy or Herodotus of Russia, the father of its history, the writer who collects the legends of antiquity and brings the story down to the period of authentic history; but more is attributed to this celebrated monk than is now allowed to be his own work. Still Nestor is the first of the chroniclers. Here, then, we are more than a thousand years after the time of Christ before we come upon any record of Russian history.^[3] Nevertheless the Russian Church claims an apostolic origin. Did not Eusebius say that "Andrew received Scythia"?^[4] Out of this vague statement has grown the tradition that the apostle founded the Church at Kiev, planting the cross on the spot where the cathedral now stands. Nestor's traditional history of Christianity in Russia only carries this back to the end of the ninth century, where we may see the actual beginning of the Russian Church.

According to tradition, the first Russians to embrace Christianity were two princes of Kiev, Oskold and Dir, who invaded the Byzantine Empire in the year 866, and even succeeded in bringing up their warships under the very walls of Constantinople, when the patriarch Photius raised a storm which wrecked the vessels, by plunging the virginal robe of the mother of God into the sea, a miracle which resulted in the conversion of the pirates.^[5] The hymn of victory which concludes the office for the first hour in the daily matins of the Greek Church is said to celebrate this triumph. It is addressed to the Virgin Mary as a victorious general.^[6] The two converts are said to have carried the Christian faith back with them to Russia, and to have spread it in their dominions. According to Constantine Porphyrogenitus, who is followed by other Greek analysts, a missionary bishop was sent to the Russians by the emperor Basil the Macedonian (a.d. 867–886) and the patriarch Ignatius, and made many converts among them. Then among the Sees subject to the patriarch of Constantinople in Codinus's catalogue the metropolitan See of Russia appears as early as the year 891. Further, as in the case of the Goths, Sclavs serving in the imperial army adopted the religion of the empire. About the year 870, or a little earlier, two Greek brothers, Cyril and Methodius, carried on successful missionary work among the Sclavonic tribes of the Danube in and near Moravia, and translated the Bible, or at least part of the New Testament, into the Sclavonic language, for which, like Ulfilas with his Gothic version, they had to construct an alphabet. This was subsequently brought into Russia, where it helped to further the spread of Christianity.^[7] Thus it would seem that in various ways Christianity was penetrating into Russia during the ninth century, although little credence may be given to the legends, with their accompanying marvels, which offer to describe the process.

We come upon firmer ground when we reach the traditions contained in the chronicle of Nestor concerning the introduction of Christianity into Russia by the Princess Olga and her son Vladimir. Rurik, a Norseman who had first settled at Novgorod, one of the oldest towns in Russia, followed the course of common migration among his people, and travelled in a south-easterly direction till he reached Kiev, where he established himself and founded the State which subsequently expanded into the Russian Empire.^[8] Dying in the year 879, Rurik entrusted his son Igor to a chieftain named Oleg, who found him a wife in the person of Olga. This Princess Olga was the real founder of Russian Christianity. After the death of her husband she ruled his State during the minority of her son Sviatoslaff. If we are to accept the story preserved by Nestor we must see that Christianity was not then unknown at Kiev, because it tells how the princess went to Constantinople for the express purpose of learning about the true God; there she was baptised by the patriarch Polyeuctes, having the emperor, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, for her godfather. Olga became famous both for her wisdom and for her saintliness. "She was the forerunner of Christianity in Russia," says Nestor, "as the morning star is the precursor of the sun and the dawn the precursor of the day. As the moon shines at midnight, she shone in the midst of a pagan people. She was like a pearl amid dirt, for the people were in the mire of their sins and not yet purified by baptism. She purified herself in a holy bath, and removed the garb of sin of the old man Adam."^[9]

Olga's fierce, warlike son Sviatoslaff never submitted to the yoke of Christ; but he so far yielded to his mother's influence as to allow the open profession of Christianity among his people. In fact, very little persecution attended the introduction of the gospel into Russia, which in this respect was a noble exception to the usual experience among pagan nations. The chronicle only mentions two Christian martyrs during this period of the early evangelising of Russia, Theodore and John, who were put to death by the rage of the people because one of them refused to give up his son as a sacrifice to Perun, the Sclavonic god of thunder.

Sviatoslaff was killed in an ambush laid by the Pechenegs, a Mongolian tribe who had invaded Russia, and his skull was made into a drinking-cup. Thus perished the last pagan prince of the small territory out of which was destined to grow the vast empire of Russia. He had foolishly divided his dominion between his three sons, whose quarrels soon left only Vladimir, the third son, to whom his father had bequeathed Novgorod. This prince proved to be a strong man, who not only seized all the territory that had been assigned to his brothers, but added Galicia or "Red Russia." His name is of great importance in Church history, because he proved to be the Constantine of the Russian Empire. He not only adopted Christianity for himself, but he made it the State religion. Thus almost from the beginning the Church in Russia was a State Church.

The traditional story of the conversion of Vladimir preserved by the chronicler^[10] has the picturesque character of an early legend. We must give the first place to the influence of his grandmother, the capable and saintly Olga. Although she had brought him up in the truth of Christ, like Augustine, who had been privileged with the incomparable training of his mother Monica, Vladimir drifted away from the early influence when he attained to manhood and the absorbing interests of ambition. Still, as we follow the tradition, which has nothing improbable in this respect, we learn that he was not satisfied with the religion of his fathers. It represents how one after the other various parties press their religion upon him. First come the Mohammedans of Bulgaria, whose regulations he does not choose to comply with; next the Jews, boasting of the ancient glory of Jerusalem. "But where is your country?" asks the prince. "It was ruined by the wrath of God for the sins of our fathers," they answer. Vladimir will not accept the religion of a people whom their God has abandoned. Then come theologians from Germany with the Roman religion; but this is rejected as different from the religion of Constantinople in which Olga instructed her grandson. A philosopher of the Greek faith, the monk Constantine, has a better reception as he exposes the defects of other religions and eloquently expounds the Christian faith, and he is sent away loaded with presents. The story goes on to describe the extraordinarily cautious methods further employed by Vladimir in the choice of a religion. He discusses the question with his council, which decides to send commissioners, consisting of boyars—nobles of the highest rank—to make their observations of each religion on the spot. The authorities at Constantinople see their opportunity. The patriarch celebrates the Divine liturgy in St. Sophia with the utmost possible magnificence in the presence of the awed and astonished visitors from Russia. If this is a genuine tradition it describes a wonderful case of open-minded truth-seeking, justly rewarded with success.

On their return to Kiev the commissioners presented the report of the results of their investigations to Vladimir. They were not attracted by the Mohammedan worship of the Bulgarians, nor did they take to the Latin rites they witnessed in Germany. But they brought back a glowing account of what they had witnessed in the great cathedral at Constantinople, saying, "When we stood in the temple we did not know where we were, for there is nothing else like it upon earth: there in truth God has His dwelling with men; and we can never forget the beauty we saw there. No one who has once tasted sweets will afterwards take that which is bitter; nor can we now any longer abide in heathenism."^[11] This was before the sack of Constantinople by the Frankish and Venetian brigands in the so-called fourth Crusade. St. Sophia was still in its pristine glory before the barbarians had stripped it of its most magnificent decorations. These astonished ambassadors from the rude north found themselves in what was probably the finest building in the world and certainly the richest product of Byzantine art. Wherever they turned their eyes they saw gold, silver, precious stones, mosaic pictures, covering the whole surface of its walls and its wonderful soaring domes, while the elaborate brocaded vestments of the priests and the slow moving pomp of the service harmonised with the scene of surpassing magnificence. They were completely conquered.

It would seem then that where argument had failed ceremonial had succeeded, that what the monk had not been able to effect by his verbal exposition of doctrine the patriarch had triumphantly accomplished by the pomp and ceremony of a sumptuous ritual. Perhaps it would be more just to say that the emotional impression of the solemn service at Constantinople confirmed the intellectual conclusions which had preceded it at Kiev. Be that as it may, the fact is not a little significant that a religion which consists so largely in ceremonies should have been introduced most effectively into the country of its most extensive missionary triumphs under the influence of an impressive ceremony. Happily an inducement of a higher order is added as the final consideration which decided the cautious prince to decide for Christianity. The commissioners appealed to the memory of his grandmother Olga, saying, that if the religion of the Greeks had not been good she would not have embraced it. Vladimir was convinced, and simply asked, "Where shall we be baptised."

Another story, if it is more than a saga, does not show us his conversion in so pleasing a light. It would appear that Vladimir was besieging the Tauric town Cherson, then subject to the Greek Empire, when a traitorous priest within the walls sent him a note by means of an arrow, informing him that the way to take the city was to cut off its water supply in the aqueduct. The prince vowed that if he succeeded in taking the town he would be baptised, for was not his friend the priest a Christian? He took the town and kept his vow. Nevertheless, after his conversion Vladimir remained a gross, cruel sensualist, wading through blood to debauchery. He must have had great power at this time, for he was able to force the Emperor Basil to send him Anna, the emperor's sister, for his bride. The princess seems to have gone willingly, with the desire of carrying her religion into heathen Russia. Vladimir was both baptised and married at Cherson (a.d. 988), after which he restored the city to the Greek Empire. Thus again a Christian woman sat at the head of the Russian court and used her high influence to bring the people over to her faith. Anna had a much better opportunity than Olga. The ruler's grandmother had sown the seed; his wife reaped the harvest. In the interval of the two generations missionaries had been pouring over into Russia from the Byzantine Empire. Thus we may believe that Christianity was already working like leaven in the community, slowly permeating the mass, before the prince adopted it and proclaimed it as his own and the national religion. This fact renders the action of Vladimir entirely different from that of Clovis when he forced the Franks to follow him in adopting his newly accepted religion. This was indeed a great missionary era. It has been reckoned as part of the Dark Ages; but that judgment only applies to Western Europe. This period saw the spread of the gospel over Bulgaria, Hungary, Bohemia, Saxony, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Poland, and lastly, to a considerable extent over Russia.

We must not, therefore, regard it as a mere act of subserviency to tyranny, that on the demand of their master multitudes of the citizens of Kiev with their wives and children flocked to the Dnieper, and there received baptism from the Greek priests who had come over to welcome them into the Church. Still, the impressiveness and sincerity of the scene must have been maimed by the ugly threat which accompanied the prince's invitation, for he had issued a proclamation on the day before the ceremony, that "whoever, on the morrow, should not repair to the river, whether rich or poor, he should hold him for an enemy."

The acceptance of Christianity by Vladimir and his people from Constantinople opened the way for intercommunication between Russia and the Byzantine Empire. Commerce followed the gospel. Art and culture came in its train. A Christian civilisation now began to spread slowly through Russia. The consequence was that in the course of the next century this country, which we are now accustomed to think of as the most backward of European nations, became more advanced than Germany or even France. She took a foremost place in the early part of the Middle Ages. Byzantine culture was now at its height and incomparably superior to the rude condition of the Western nations; and Russia now came in for a share of this rich civilisation. This was seen most evidently in the erection of churches, which Vladimir zealously carried on throughout the towns and villages of his dominions. Like Rameses ii. in Eygpt, like Hadrian and Constantine and Justinian in the Roman Empire, Vladimir gave himself enthusiastically to building operations, and left his mark on his country for all time in the lasting records of public architecture. His first building was the church of St. Basil at Kiev, planted on the very mound that had formerly been sacred to the god Perun, and from which the national deity's image had been hurled down in the enthusiasm of the popular conversion. These churches were all of the Byzantine order, although subsequently the style was Orientalised, being modified under Persian, and much more under Mongolian influences, to which are to be attributed its characteristic bulbous domes.

But Vladimir was more than a church builder. He saw that his churches were supplied with priests; he also established schools and eagerly promoted the education of the children of the boyars. The bishops, not less zealous in pushing forward their missionary enterprises, penetrated into the interior of Russia as far as the cities of Rostoff and Novgorod, so that Christianity was rapidly spread over a considerable area of Russia. This however must be regarded as little more than the scattering of seed broadcast. Moreover, seeing that it was done in some degree as a measure of State policy, it must have been characterised at first by the superficiality which is always seen in missionary work carried on with the aid of this tempting but delusive assistance. Neither Constantine, nor Clovis, nor Vladimir could really convert a nation by court influence.

This new Christian movement in Russia, which had originated in Constantinople, continued for a considerable time to look to the Greek capital for its sustenance and guidance. Michael, a Syrian by birth, is reckoned the first metropolitan in Russia; he died before the cathedral at Kiev was completed, and was succeeded by a Greek named Leontius, whom the patriarch of Constantinople had appointed. In the year 993, Leontius solemnly consecrated the building, and Vladimir celebrated the occasion by making a grant to the Church out of all dues and fines, customs and taxes, crops and cattle throughout his dominion.^[12] For this reason the cathedral was called "The Church of the Tithes."^[13] The care of the building and the charge of the funds were entrusted to the priest Anastasius, whom Vladimir had brought from Cherson. From Greece also came the canons of the councils and the Greek laws for Church government. But from the first it was maintained that the Scriptures constituted the basis of Christian life and doctrine; and encouragement was given to the reading and study of the Bible. This characteristic of the Greek Church in contradistinction from the Roman passed over into the Russian Church, and is one of its happiest features.

Vladimir distinctly promised in his edict of the tithes—which might be called the Magna Charta or the "Bill of Rights" of the Russian Church—that neither he nor any of his descendants shall ever cite members of the clergy, their wives, monks or nuns, before the State tribunals, or usurp the judicial power which has been conceded to the Church. After enumerating a list of offences which he leaves the Church to deal with—such as divorce, poisoning, witchcraft, heresy, family wrongs—he adds: "In all these cases the Church is to pass judgment; but the prince and his boyars and judges shall not take cognisance of such judicial matters. These ecclesiastical privileges I have accorded to the holy bishops, in compliance with the decisions of the Church, and the seven œcumenical councils."^[14] Most of this only applies to clerical offenders. In the case of a judicial matter between an ecclesiastic and a layman the tribunal is to be mixed, partly civil and partly ecclesiastical. Further, the State shall interfere to punish anybody who infringes the judicial rights of the Church.

Here then we see a Church established by the civil authority, endowed with State funds, privileged to govern itself and discipline its clergy and other ecclesiastical persons, and granted immunity from interference in the exercise of its rights and privileges. As yet there was no idea of the supremacy of the head of the State in the government of the Church, such as has subsequently come about in the person of the tsar. Vladimir's edict offered the Russian Church greater freedom than the Greek Church enjoyed under the Byzantine emperors. Everything depended on the degree of respect shown to the spirit as well as to the letter of this fundamental charter of the Church. Now it became customary for the bishop of each district to be selected by the prince of that district. Theoretically that was not in accordance with canon law; and practically it gave great power to the civil governor, who of course would be likely only to nominate a candidate who was persona grata to himself. Then every bishop had the right to appoint the priests, deacons, and inferior church officers in his diocese, and also the archimandrites {i.e. the abbots and abbesses) of the religious houses. Thus a firm hand was kept on the personnel of the Church, even though liberty was granted it in the exercise of its guaranteed functions.

In the pursuit of his missionary enterprises the metropolitan Leontius formed five dioceses—the first five in Russia—namely, Chernigoff, near Kiev, Novgorod in the north, Belgrod and Vladimir far in the north-east, and Rostoff still farther off in the same direction. These were not equally successful. At the ancient city of Novgorod, from which the ruling family had migrated to Kiev, Joachim of Cherson, the newly appointed bishop, was able to take the daring action of throwing the statue of the national god Perun into the river, without meeting any opposition on the part of the inhabitants.^[15] On the other hand, the first two bishops of Rostoff were driven away by the fierce tribes from the surrounding forests. Now, as on other occasions, we find the most enlightened people and those most in touch with the central life of the nation quickest to receive the new message, while the remote inhabitants of lonely places—the "heath-men," as our ancestors called them—are slowest to abandon their pagan habits.

Vladimir repeated his father's mistake in dividing his territory among his sons, with the same disastrous consequences. The result was that his death in the year 1015 was followed by a period of disorder. In the end the supreme power was secured by Yasolaf, the eldest son, who had received Novgorod in his father's partition. He appeared as the avenger of his two brothers Boris and Gled, who, it is said, had been murdered by another brother Sviatopolk while in the act of prayer, so that they have come to be honoured in the Church as Christian martyrs. Sviatopolk had seized Kiev; but Yasolaf succeeded in driving him into exile, and so came into possession of the southern capital. He ruled as a Christian prince, and his name is famous as that of the founder of the Russian code of laws.^[16] His long reign was prosperous, and it saw a continuous spread of missionary activity throughout his dominions. Yasolaf not only confirmed the charter of rights which his father had conferred on the Church; he went further, and granted ecclesiastical personages exemption from all civil duties and payments. This was in accordance with precedents set by Constantine and Constantius in the Roman Empire. He took a personal interest in the study and translation of Greek Church writers, of whose works he collected a library at Kiev. At the same time he established schools for the training of candidates for the clerical office at the two chief towns—Kiev and Novgorod. Like his father, Yasolaf distinguished himself and immortalised his name by church building.

Earlier in this reign a prince named Mistislief built St. Saviour's Church at Chernigoff. This is reckoned the oldest church now standing in Russia. Yasolaf himself put up at Kiev the metropolitan cathedral, which he named St. Sophia, after Justinian's glorious temple, the ideal of all Greek and Russian churches. His son Vladimir built a second church of St. Sophia in Novgorod. Thus Russia had two modest copies of the famous Byzantine basilica—one in each of his capitals. The metropolitan Theopemptus—the first Russian metropolitan named by Nestor—came to consecrate the Kiev St. Sophia. On his death (a.d. 1051) occurred the first ecclesiastical breach with Constantinople. There had been war between the governments, in the course of which the Byzantine emperor, Constantine Monomachus, the third husband of the notorious Zoe, had put out the eyes of some Russian prisoners. Indignant at the cruel outrage, Yasolaf summoned the Russian bishops to elect a metropolitan from among themselves without reference to the patriarch of Constantinople, and they chose Hilarion, a peace-loving man of devout character, who was the first to move for reconciliation by seeking the benediction of Michael Cerularius the patriarch. This was granted, and thus the brief division between the two branches of the Eastern Church, the cause of which had been in no way ecclesiastical, was healed. The result of the reconciliation was a still closer connection between Constantinople and Russia. The patriarch's authority was being curtailed and crippled in the south by the inroads of the Turks and by the distracted condition of the Byzantine Empire, followed by attempts of emperors to effect union with Rome and the Western Church simply on political grounds, in order to obtain aid in withstanding the serious danger now menacing the empire. At this very time a vast new province of Christendom was opening up in the north and gratefully submitting itself to his rule. It looked as though what he was losing so disastrously in the old regions of the Eastern Church was about to be counterbalanced by splendid acquisitions of missionary achievements, first in Bulgaria, but afterwards and much more effectually in Russia. For some time this really was the case, and the See of the patriarch of Constantinople became more extensive than it had been for many years. Thus, while the emperors were losing ground till they were at their wits' end to see how to retain their throne, the patriarchs were actually gaining new provinces and rising in importance among the churches of the East. But the prospect soon darkened. During one century Russia was torn with internal dissensions, and the next century saw her devastated by a disastrous Mongolian invasion. By the time when she recovered and the Church was again in a flourishing condition, great changes had taken place at Constantinople. The Latin kingdom and its sham patriarchate had come and gone. Meanwhile a foundation was being slowly laid for a new patriarchate at Moscow, and so at length for the supremacy of Russia over the orthodox Church.

Brilliant as were the missionary achievements of this early period, it must not be supposed that Russia was completely Christianised throughout the length and breadth of her vast territory. The new movement was chiefly confined to the towns, and there principally carried on among the more intelligent classes. The mass of the people long remained in heathen darkness even after the State had provided them with a church, to which they were forced to submit outwardly while they knew little of the vital character and spirit of the gospel of Christ. Virtually the same heathenism has clung to the peasants in combination with their ignorant notions of Christianity right down to our own day. It is only by recognising this significant fact that we can account for the grotesque phenomena presented by some of the sects. These phenomena are the products of an amalgam of ancient Sclavonic heathenism with perverted notions of Christianity. In the twelfth century Christian marriage was only practised by the upper classes. The lower classes still continued to follow their old pagan rites. When schools were established by the State and an attempt was made to compel the attendance of the children, their parents wept, regarding literature as a dangerous kind of sorcery.

On the other hand, the leaven was working from the first, and some good results were to be seen throughout the population as a whole even in early times. Polygamy was abolished. The virtues of hospitality and philanthropy were recognised. Vladimir Monomachus wrote to his son: "It is neither fasting, nor solitude, nor the monastic life that will procure you eternal life. It is beneficence. Never forget the poor. Nourish them. Do not bury your riches in the bosom of the earth. That is contrary to the precepts of Christianity. Serve as father to the orphans, judge to the widows. Put to death neither innocent nor guilty; for nothing is more sacred than the life and the soul of a Christian."

There grew up in Russia a curious parallel to the custom of clinical baptism in the earlier days of the Church in the Roman Empire, as in the case of the deathbed baptism of Constantine the Great. It became customary for Russian princes to take the tonsure in the article of death. The tsars would smooth their passage to paradise by dying as monks.

The only literature known in Russia during these early times was religious or ecclesiastical, consisting of the Bible, the Fathers—especially St. Basil and St. Chrysostom, and lives of the saints; but some philosophy and so-called science were introduced. The romance of Barlaam and Josaphat was popular in Russia, as elsewhere throughout Christendom, in the early Middle Ages.

 

1. Eighteen Centuries of the Orthodox Greek Church, p. 7.
2. Rothsmenn or Rothskarlar.
3. The earliest date that can be assigned to the first redaction of the so-called "Chronicle of Nestor" is a.d. 1000; but in its present form it cannot be earlier than a.d. 1377, the date of the oldest MS., which was written by a monk named Laurentius in Suzdalj. The questions of the origin, sources, and dates of Nestor's chronicle are critically discussed in Die Entstehung Der Ältesten Russischen Sogenannten Nestorchronik, by Dr. Stjepan Sakulj, 1896.
4. Hist. Eccl. iii. 1.
5. Nestor, i.
6. The following are the words of this curious hymn, or rather anthem: Τῇ ὑπερμάχῳ στρατήγῳ τὰ νικητήρια, ὡς λυτρωθέντες τῶν δεινῶν, εὐχαριστήρια ἀναγράφομεν οἱ δοῦλοι σου Θεοκόκε, Ἀλλ' ὡς ἔχουσα τὸ κράτος ἀπροσμάχητον, ἐκ παντοίων ἡμᾶς κινδύνων ἐλευθέρωσον ἵνα κράξωμέν σοι χαῖρε νύμφη ἀνύμφευτε, Δόξα, καὶ νῦν.
7. Since the fourteenth century this version has undergone many revisions, apparently with the object of modernising it. The oldest MS. of the whole Bible is dated a.d. 1499. There are many MSS. of the New Testament of widely different recensions, some few as old as the eleventh, or even the tenth, century, among which is an Evangelistarium dated 1056. See Scrivener, Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, 4th edit., vol. ii. pp. 158-161.
8. Nestor, ii.
9. Nestor, vi.
10. Nestor, viii.
11. Ibid.
12. Modern missionary work, being voluntary and resting on free-will offerings, is frequently crippled for lack of funds. When one enquires how the missionary activity of earlier times was maintained various answers have to be given. Most of the evangelisation of the West was carried on by monks whose wants were supplied by their own monasteries, or who worked for bare subsistence in their new homes or accepted gifts from their converts. But under State religions State funds supported the work. This was the case in Russia. Of course government support had to be paid for in government control, although this was subject to a distinct right of the Church to administer its own canon law.
13. Dessatingya.
14. A copy of the edict, contained in a codex of the thirteenth century, is given in full by Mouravieff, Hist., Notes, pp. 357, 358.
15. Nestor, viii.
16. Known as Russkaya Pravada (Russian Law).