Chapter II: The Coming of the Varangians and the Building of Kievian Russia (2)

In no country was the transition from paganism to Christianity effected in so remarkable a manner as in Russia. Vladimir, who had shown much zeal in erecting and ornamenting statues of Peroun at Kiev and Novgorod, grew suddenly dissatisfied with the national worship, without at the same time feeling special attraction towards any substitute. While contemplating a desertion of the old religion he naturally wished to replace it with the most reliable form of faith obtainable, and for this purpose trusty counsellors were sent on a mission of inquiry to Rome, to Constantinople, to the Volga-Bulgarians (who had embraced Islam), and to the Jews--probably those dwelling among the Khazars. When the scattered envoys returned, the result of their investigations was laid before Vladimir, and this young man in search of a religion examined and compared the pretensions of the competing creeds. Circumcision and abstinence from wine put the cult of the Prophet out of court; the first of these objections applied equally to the Jewish doctrine, and the vagabond condition of its votaries offended the monarch’s idea of an established religion. The Romish faith was unacceptable by reason of the claims, which her head was beginning to assert, of supreme dominion in things spiritual and active interference in temporal matters; moreover, her ritual, especially as the Russians may have seen it practised in the infant churches of Bohemia, Poland, and Eastern Germany, was overshadowed and eclipsed by the splendid ceremonial of the Greek Church, particularly in the services of S. Sophia at Constantinople. “The magnificence of the temple, the presence of all the Greek clergy, the richness of the sacerdotal vestments, the ornaments of the altar, the exquisite odour of the incense, the sweet singing of the choirs, the silence of the people, in short, the holy and mysterious majesty of the ceremonies, all struck the Russians with admiration.”[15] The recital of these splendours inclined the Prince to a favourable consideration of the Greek faith, if indeed he had not previously had leanings towards that religion, and the finishing touch was added by an argument which appealed to his family pride. “If the Greek religion had not been the true religion, would your grandmother Olga, the wisest of mortals, have adopted it?” asked the partisans of the new doctrines; and the matter was settled. But Vladimir had a procedure of his own for the delicate process of changing his religion: not as a humble penitent was he going to enter the true Church. For the baptism of a sovereign prince an archbishop was an indispensable requisite, and it did not suit his ideas of dignity to apply for the loan of such a functionary to the Greek Emperors, who would have been only too glad to oblige him in the matter. Vladimir chose rather to capture his archbishop. For this purpose he engaged in one of the most extraordinary expeditions which history has furnished. Setting out from Kiev with a large host, he made his way down the Dniepr and along the Black Sea coast to the ancient town of Kherson, a self-governing dependency of the Eastern Empire. Closely besieging it, he was met with a desperate resistance, and only made himself master of the place by cutting off the springs which supplied it with water. From this position of vantage he sent to the brothers Basil and Constantine, who shared the Greek Imperial throne, a request or demand for the hand of their sister Anne. The circumstances of these princes did not admit of a refusal; the celebrated generals Bardas Sclerus and Phocas were in active revolt against the successors of John Zimisces, and another change of dynasty seemed imminent; consequently Vladimir’s suggested alliance was agreed to on the stipulation that he became a Christian and furnished the Imperial family with some Russian auxiliaries. The Princess Anne was despatched to join her destined husband, who was forthwith baptized by the Archbishop of Kherson in the church of S. Basil, and the marriage ceremony followed. The Prince returned to Kiev with his bride and a strange booty of priests, sacred vessels, and saintly relics, having restored unfortunate Kherson, for which he had no further use, to the Greek Emperors, and sent them the promised succours. By this satisfactory arrangement Basil and Constantine were able to conserve their possession of the Byzantine Empire, while Vladimir on his part “obtained the hand of the princess and the kingdom of heaven.”

Fantastic as this procedure of conversion may at first sight appear, there was probably sound policy underlying it; the Russians would be reconciled to the deposition of their wonted gods, and the acceptance of fresh ones from their old enemies, the Greeks, by the consoling reflection that their Prince had, at the sword’s point, “captured” the new religion from alien hands. Priests have taught that there is but one way of entering the true faith; Vladimir demonstrated that there are at least two.

The conversion of the people followed in due course; the wooden statue of Peroun, with its silver face and moustache of gold, was thrown down, flogged with whips, and hurled into the Dniepr, whose waters cast it up again on the bank. The affrighted people rushed to worship their old god, but the Prince’s men pushed him back into the current, and Peroun the silver-faced was swept down the stream and vanished into the purple haze “where the dead gods sleep.”

On the banks of the same river that had engulfed their fallen idol the inhabitants of Kiev were mustered by command, and after the Greek priests had consecrated its waters, into it plunged at a given signal the whole wondering multitude, men, women, and children, and were baptized in one batch. A like scene was enacted at Novgorod, with the substitution of the Volkhov for the Dniepr, and throughout Russia the transition was effected in an equally successful manner. No doubt the cult of the ancient pantheism lingered for a while, especially in the remoter districts, but it was merged in time in the saint worship of the new religion, and the old heathen festivals and year-marks became, under other names, those of the Christian calendar. The feast of Kolyada and the birthday of the Sun slid naturally into the celebrations of the Nativity without losing aught of its festive character. In similar fashion the institutions of the Greek Orthodox Church everywhere took root in the country till they became part of the life of the people. Kiev henceforth is a city of churches and shrines, with its Cathedral of S. Sofia and its Golden Gate, in ambitious imitation of Constantinople.

The adoption of Christianity in its Greek form exercised a momentous influence on the history of Russia. Up to this point she had been travelling in the same direction as the growing nations around her, and seemed destined to take her place in the European family; but by taking as her ghostly sponsor the decaying Byzantine State, which could scarcely protect its own territories, instead of cultivating the alliance of the all-powerful Roman Papacy, she prepared herself for a gradual isolation from Western civilisation and Western sympathy. For although the actual temporal power of the Holy See did not extend much beyond the immediate neighbourhood of the Eternal City, the moral ascendancy which the Church possessed over some fifteen kingdoms and a crowd of lesser states gave her the disposal of an ever-available fund of temporal support, and enabled her to extend her protection or assistance to all the bodies politic, great or small, within her communion. Witness, for instance, the vast armies she was able to send careering into the “Holy Land” on behoof of Jerusalem-bound pilgrims, and later, the troops she could raise from various parts of the Empire for the reinforcement of the Teutonic Order in its struggles with the heathen Prussians and Pomeranians. Russia, by her adoption of the Greek instead of the Roman faith, put herself beyond the pale of Catholic Christendom, and in the hour of her striving with the Mongol Horde could look for no help from Western Europe; when she emerged from that strife she was less European than Asiatic. In like manner the Greek Empire, two hundred years later, fell unbefriended into the hands of the Ottomans. And in civilisation as well as in war the dominions of the princes of Kiev suffered from their lack of intercourse with Rome; the visits of cardinals and nuncios would have served as a constant link between Russia and the West, and have stimulated the growth of towns in the wild lands that led up to the Dniepr basin. What in fact Rome did for Hungary, on the latter’s entry into the Latin Church--raising her from the position of a semi-barbarous state to that of an important kingdom--that might she have done under similar circumstances for the Eastern principality. There is, of course, another side to this reckoning; Russia, at least, was spared some of the distractions and unhappinesses which radiated from the throne of the apostles, while her very isolation in matters of religious polity helped to preserve for her a strong individuality which other Slav or Magyar nations lost as the price of their intercourse with Catholic-Teutonic Europe. Possibly her history is not even yet sufficiently developed for a final assessment of the matter, but for present purposes it is necessary to note a turning-point in her political evolution--a turn towards the East.

Although Christianity was become opposed to the practice of polygamy, Vladimir’s first act after his baptism had been to increase his connubial establishment by marriage with the Imperial princess. Three more sons had been added to his already ample family, and, disregarding the lesson of the disturbances which had followed the partition of the realm between himself and his half-brothers, the Prince resolved to parcel out his dominions among his surviving sons and his nephew. Eight principalities were carved out from the parent stem, and became each the share of a dependent kniaz, to wit, Novgorod, Polotzk, Rostov, Mourom, the Drevlian country, Vladimir (in Volhynia), Tmoutorokan, and Tourov.

In 998 the Russian arms were turned successfully against the Krovatians on the Galician frontier, and against the ever troublesome Petchenigs, who continued to disturb the southern borders at intervals during the reign.

Another war broke out later in the north. Vladimir had given refuge, and possibly support, to Olaf, aspirant to the Norwegian crown, then held by Erik, and when Olaf at last succeeded in ousting his rival, the latter, in revenge, “came into the realm of King Vladimir,” in the vigorous words of the Icelandic saga, and “fell a-harrying, and slew men-folk, and burnt all before him, and laid waste the land; and he came to Aldeigia-burg[16], and beset it till he won the stead. There he slew many folk and brake down and burnt all the burg, and thereafter fared wide about Garth-realm[17] doing all deeds of war.” It was four years before Vladimir was able to drive the “spear-storm bounteous Eric” away from his northern coasts. The date of this war is uncertain; probably it stretched into the second decade of the new century. Vladimir, who had lost his Imperial throne-mate in 1011, was confronted in 1014 with a domestic trouble of another nature; his son Yaroslav, Kniaz of Novgorod, refused to continue the yearly tribute which that principality was wont to pay into the Grand Prince’s treasury, and declared himself independent of Kiev. Vladimir made ready to march against his rebellious son, who on his part prepared to resist his angry father, but the sudden failing of the old man’s powers and an inroad of the perennial Petchenigs delayed the struggle. [Sidenote: 1015] Vladimir’s favourite son Boris, Prince of Rostov, was put in charge of the forces sent against the invaders, and during his absence the monarch ended his days at Berestov (a village near Kiev), leaving the succession to the Grand principality an open question.

The character of this Prince, to whom the Church gave the title of “Holy,” and who was commemorated by his subjects as “the Great,” is a difficult one for the historian to appraise. The excesses of a stormy and well-spent youth were atoned for, in the eyes of the monkish chroniclers, by an old age of almsgiving and other decorative virtues, and in most respects the doings of his reign gave evidence of wise and wary management. The splitting up of his kingdom was a flaw in his statecraft which had, however, the sanction of custom in the times in which he lived.

The only member of the Grand Prince’s family within reach of Kiev at the moment of his death was his nephew Sviatopalk, ruler of the province of Tourov, in which capacity, according to the contemporary Chronicle of Ditmar, Bishop of Merseburg, he had, at the prompting of his father-in-law Boleslas, King of Poland, raised a rebellion against Vladimir. The attempt was frustrated and punished by the imprisonment of the rebel and his wife, but apparently a reconciliation had taken place between the uncle and nephew, and Sviatopalk was at large, and, what was more important, on the spot when the throne of Kiev became empty. The boyarins of the court, ill-disposed towards a prince who was outside the immediate family of their late master, tried to keep back the tidings of his death while they sent messengers to recall Boris from his fruitless campaign against the Petchenigs. The corpse was wrapped round in a covering, let down by ropes from a palace window in the dead of night, and borne hurriedly to the church of the Bogoroditza (Mother of God) at Kiev. Rumours of the Prince’s death, however, began to fly about the city, and all precautions were rendered abortive by the tell-tale sight of the crowds which flocked to lament over his body. Sviatopalk proclaimed himself Grand Prince, rallied the boyarins to his side by a timely distribution of gifts, and then proceeded to strike, with the instinct of self-preservation, at the several kinsmen who were within reach. Prince Boris was surprised and slain one night in his tent near the banks of the Alta, being, the Chronicles relate, engaged in prayer at the time of his murder. This circumstance procured for him the posthumous honour of sainthood, and he became a national fetish in the calendar of the Russian Church. His brother Glieb, decoyed from his principality of Mourom by a feigned message from his defunct father, was waylaid while travelling down the Dniepr and met the same doom--shared also in the attendant glory of subsequent canonisation. Sviatoslav, Prince of the Drevlian country, taking natural affright at Sviatopalk’s deeds, which seemed to foreshadow the extinction of the sons of Vladimir, fled towards Hungary; at the foot of the Karpathian Mountains, however, he was overtaken and killed by the Grand Prince’s men. From this scene of slaughter and violence there escaped a shivering fugitive, the Princess Predslava, a daughter of the luckless house of Vladimir, who made her way with all speed to Novgorod; there she found her brother Yaroslav red with the blood of his subjects, shed in cold vindictiveness rather than in hot quarrel. The hideous wrath and dole called forth by the doings of Sviatopalk mastered all other passions, and led the Prince to throw himself on the goodwill of his misused people; and the men of Novgorod, foregoing their private griefs, turned their rage and their weapons against the monster of Kiev. [Sidenote: 1016] A thousand Varangians and fourteen thousand Russians marched southward with Yaroslav against Sviatopalk, who on his part had got together a large force, including a troop of Petchenigs. A battle was fought on the Dniepr banks near Lubetch, which resulted in the overthrow of the usurper, who fled to Poland, leaving the throne of Kiev to his triumphant rival.

Yaroslav did not remain long time in peaceable possession. Boleslas “Khrabrie,” the warlike King of Poland, having by the Peace of Bautzen composed his outstanding differences with the Germanic Kaiser (Heinrich II.), burst into Russia at the head of a large army, defeated Yaroslav on the banks of the Bug, and reimposed his son-in-law upon the people of Kiev. The ousted prince withdrew to Novgorod, and but for the insistance of his subjects would have sought sanctuary, as his father had done under similar circumstances, in Skandinavian lands. The Novgorodskie, not wishing to be left to the wrath of Sviatopalk, kept their prince with them by the simple expedient of destroying all the boats available for his flight. Sviatopalk himself smoothed the way for a renewal of the strife on more equal terms. The Poles had been distributed in scattered winter quarters throughout the province of Kiev, and Boleslas himself had established his court in the city. Possibly the Russian Kniaz was impatient of the prolonged presence of the Poles in his lands, and deemed that heroic measures were needed to hasten their departure; anyhow he devised and carried out the plan of a general massacre of the unwelcome guests. Boleslas hastily left Kiev with the remnant of his men, bearing with him as much treasure as he could lay hands on, and retaining in his hold the Red Russian towns on his border. The departure of the Poles brought as a consequence the onfall of Yaroslav, and Sviatopalk was obliged to seek support among the Petchenigs before venturing to take the field against his cousin. [Sidenote: 1019] The two forces met near the banks of the Alta, and there was waged a fierce and stubborn battle, the like of which, wrote the Kievian chronicler, had never been seen in Russia. Towards evening Yaroslav’s men gained the victory, and Sviatopalk, half-dead with fatigue, delirious with fear, and unable to sit his horse, was borne litter-wise through the whispering night in wild flight across a wild country, hunted ever by phantom foemen, and moaning ever to his bearers piteous entreaty for added speed. The fugitive checked his spent course in the deserts of the Bohemian border, where he died miserably, and contemporary legend, recalling the circumstances of his birth, asserted that he was born for crime. In which case he fulfilled his purpose.

Yaroslav was now master of Kiev and Novgorod and Grand Prince of Russia, but the family arrangements of Vladimir’s many heirs had not yet adjusted themselves. From Isiaslav, Kniaz of Polotzk, sprang a line of turbulent princes who contributed a fair share to the domestic troubles of Russia during the next hundred years.[18] Still more formidable for the time being was Mstislav, whose family portion was Tmoutorakan, a province bordering on the Black Sea. [Sidenote: (1016)] In conjunction with the Greek Imperial General Andronicus he had driven the Khazars from the Tauride and put a finishing touch to their existence as a European State. Other victories over the Tcherkess tribes in his neighbourhood swelled both his ideas and his resources, and he began to feel his remote steppe-girded province too small for him. In 1023, while Yaroslav was away in the Souzdal country, Mstislav burst with his warriors into the grand principality and seized upon Tchernigov in the Sieverski plain. The harassed Grand Prince fled to Novgorod--his usual city of refuge--and sent urgent messengers over the Baltic to call in the ever-ready Varangians to his aid. In response came a large force, led by one Hako (in the Russian Chronicle Yakun), who has come down to posterity as suffering from sore eyes and wearing a bandage over them broidered with gold--a human touch in the portrait of one of these half-mythical seeming vikings. The avenging army came into the Tchernigov land and met their foes on the banks of a small river, the two forces sighting one another just as night was falling and a nasty storm creeping upon them. As the storm broke over the Grand Prince’s host, accompanied by thunder peals and torrents of rain, out of the night there rushed in on them the war-men of the intrepid Mstislav, who rivalled with his wild battle-shock the tumult of the elements. In the darkness men fought hand to hand with a foe they could not see; the storm in the heavens rolled away, but the humans fought on, their arms flashing in the gleam of the stars, “a combat without comparison, murderous, terrible, and truly frightful.”[19] A charge by Mstislav and his body-guards decided the day--or rather the night--and Yaroslav fled from the field of this epic struggle to his haven in the North. Hakon of the sore eyes left on the ground his gold-wrought bandage as a trophy for the victorious Tchernigovskie. Mstislav did not push his advantage to the extent of depriving Yaroslav of his princely dignity, and five years later a pact was made between the brothers which left the younger in possession of the lands he had won east of the Dniepr. Yaroslav was thus enabled to turn his attention to the outlying regions of the realm, where his authority had lapsed during the long civil strife. In the year 1030 Livland was again brought under some sort of subjection, and the town of Youriev (the German Dorpat) founded near Lake Peipus. The domestic troubles of Poland, where Mieceslav II., son of Boleslas Khrabrie (who had died 1025), was waging a hotly contested war with his brothers and the Kaiser Konrad II., gave an opportunity for regaining the Red Russian towns which perennially changed hands according to the respective strength and weakness of the two countries. [Sidenote: 1031] Yaroslav, in conjunction with his half-brother, invaded Poland and wrested back the lost territory. In 1034 died Mstislav, at the end of a day’s hunting, having shortly before lost his only son Evstaf. Of all the sons of Vladimir this intrepid warrior “with dark face and large eyes” seems most to have enchained the imagination of the national chronicler.

Yaroslav, freed from the disquieting possibility of trouble which Mstislav must always have presented, made himself still more secure by seizing and imprisoning, on pretext of disaffection, Soudislav of Pskov, another member of the princely house. Shortly afterwards he was called upon to defend Kiev from an attack of the Petchenigs. Near the walls of the city Yaroslav joined issue with the barbarians, his vanguard consisting of Varangians, flanked right and left by the men of Kiev and Novgorod. After a battle which lasted till evening the Petchenigs broke and fled, leaving enormous numbers of dead on the field, and losing many more in crossing the rivers which impeded their flight. On the ground of this victory Yaroslav founded the Cathedral of S. Sofia, extending at the same time the boundaries of Kiev so as to include this building, and enclosing the city with a stone wall. Well might the Kievians rejoice as they watched the new works, which were alike the witness of their growing prosperity and a memorial of a past danger; they had at last grasped their nettle, and the might of the Petchenigs, which had hung so long like a menacing shadow ready at any moment to ride out of the steppe a grim reality, was for ever shattered. And as the new cathedral rose before them their hopes might soar to a point which would raise the mother of Russian cities to the level of Constantinople.

Amid their own congratulations and complacency came news of the misfortunes of a neighbouring and rival state; possibly across the border, through Krobatian and Drevlian lands, more probably by a less direct route, by word of merchants from the Oder and Weichsel filtering down from Novgorod or Polotzk, tidings would reach them of wild doings in Poland. Mieceslav II. had “passed in battle and in storm”; and diminished though his territories were under stress of German, Russian, and Bohemian filchings, they were more than a handful for his widow and youthful son to manage. Richense, daughter of Ehrenfrid, Pfalzgraf of the Rhine, tries to play the Queen-mother with the support of a hierarchy itself not yet firmly established; but she is no Olga, moreover she is a German. The bishops are German too, and throne, hierarchy, new religion, and all are involved in the whirlwind of a reaction that scatters them in all directions, Richense to the court of the Emperor in Saxony, her son, Kazimir, to France, where he enters the service of Mother Church as a monk of the celebrated Abbey of Cluny. Yaroslav, taking advantage of the weakness of his western neighbour, began in 1040 a series of campaigns against the tribes which inhabited the dense marsh and river-sected forests lying to the north-east of Poland, between Russia and the Baltic. The Yatvyags first occupied his attention, though it is doubtful if he acquired more than a transient sway over them. He next turned the weight of his arms against the Lit’uanians, upon a section of whom at least he imposed a tribute. The year 1041 found him actually in Polish territory, in the province or palatinate of Mazovia, which had separated from the lands of the Polish crown--if such a designation can be used during an interregnum--under the rule of a heathen noble named Mazlav, from whom the province took its name. Meanwhile the force of the reaction in Poland had spent itself, the bishops retook possession of their dioceses, and Kazimir was fetched, with the Pope’s permission, from the peaceful seclusion of the Burgundian monastery to the management of a country smouldering with the embers of anarchy and religious persecution. Yaroslav seized the opportunity to form an alliance with the young Duke of Poland, by virtue of which the contested Galician or Red Russian March was definitely ceded to the Grand Prince, who on his part helped Kazimir to defeat the rebel Voevoda[20] of Mazovia and reannex that province to his duchy. The good understanding between the princes was cemented by the marriage of Kazimir with Mariya, sister of Yaroslav.

Russia was thus freed from the apprehension of trouble both on the Polish frontier and on the side of the steppes, where the power of the Petchenigs was effectively broken. A new war-cloud, however, rose in the south, emanating from a quarrel among Greek and Russian merchants at Constantinople, in which one of the latter was killed. [Sidenote: 1043] Yaroslav demanded satisfaction from the Greek Emperor, Constantine Monomachus, and not obtaining it, he sent an army against the Greeks, confiding its direction to his eldest son Vladimir and a boyarin named Vyatcha. Scorning the overtures for peace which came at late moment from the frightened Emperor, the Russians met their enemies in a naval fight, wherein the Greek fire and the inevitable storm played their accustomed parts. Six thousand of Vladimir’s men were forced to abandon their damaged vessels and attempt to make good their retreat overland, led by Vyatcha, who would not desert them in their extremity. Constantine, instead of resting content with the victory which fortune had given him, or following it up with a vigorous pursuit, satisfied himself with half-measures, returning in premature triumph to his capital while he sent the remainder of his ships to hunt the Russians out of the Bosphorus. Vladimir meanwhile had rallied his fleet and turned fiercely at bay, destroying twenty-five of the Byzantine vessels and killing their admiral. Consoled by this success he returned home, carrying with him many prisoners. The division which had attempted the land passage was less happy; overpowered by a large Greek force near Varna, the survivors were taken captive to Constantinople, where many of them, including the brave boyarin, were deprived of their eyesight.

This was the last of the series of expeditions made by the early rulers of Russia against Constantinople, expeditions which suggest a parallel with those against Rome which exercised such a fatal fascination over the Saxon and Franconian Emperors of Germany at the same period. Not for many a long century were the Russian arms to push again across the blue waters of the Danube into the land of their desire. In 1046 peace was formally concluded between the two countries, and the blinded prisoners were allowed to return to their native land.

The remaining years of Yaroslav were years of peace and prosperity within his realm. Allied with the Court of Poland by the double marriage of his sister with Duke Kazimir, and of the latter’s sister with his second son Isiaslav, he was in like manner connected with the house of Arpad by the marriage of his youngest daughter Anastasia with Andrew I. of Hungary; with Harold the Brave, afterwards King of Norway, who espoused his eldest daughter Elizabeth; and with the royal family of France by the marriage of his second daughter Anne with Henri I. And not only by court alliances was the Russia of this period connected with the other states of Europe. Commerce had made great strides in the last half-hundred years, and Kiev, in the zenith of her fortunes, attracted traders from many lands; besides her 300 churches she had 8 markets, there were separate quarters for Hungarian, Hollandish, German, and Skandinavian merchants, and the Dniepr was constantly covered with cargo vessels. Novgorod was another important centre of trade and foreign intercourse. A more convenient medium of exchange, always a stimulating factor in commerce, was gradually superseding the hides and pelts which were the earliest articles of sale and barter; the first step had been to substitute leather tokens cut from the skins themselves, called _kounas_, from _kounitza_, a marten (being generally cut from a marten pelt). These were replaced, as silver grew more plentiful in the country, by coins of that metal, stamped with rude representations of the reigning prince.

Following the time-hallowed custom of his forbears, Yaroslav in his last days divided the lands of his realm among his surviving sons. (Vladimir, the eldest, had died in 1052.) Isiaslav became, after his father’s death, Grand Prince of Kiev, his four brothers being settled respectively in the sub-provinces of Tchernigov, Péréyaslavl, Smolensk, and Volhynia. Polotzk was still held by the other branch of the family. Yaroslav died at Voutchigorod on the 19th February 1054. On a winter’s day his corpse was borne in mournful procession along the snow-clad road to Kiev, there to rest in a marble tomb in a side chapel of the Cathedral of S. Sofia.

Under Yaroslav Russia enjoyed a prosperity and position that was lost in the partitions and discords of his successors, and this circumstance was probably responsible for the somewhat flattering estimate that was formed of his character by subsequent chroniclers.[21] As patron of Kiev and benefactor to the Church he was naturally glorious and good in the eyes of Nestor, and by some writers he has been styled “the Russian Charlemagne,” on account of the code of laws which he formulated for his country. Concerning his piety, he lived in an age when much giving from the State treasury to church or monastery counted for such, and it is recorded of him that his dying words charged his sons to “treat each other as brothers” and “have great tenderness” one for another. His own brother still lay in the prison that was his living tomb for over a score of years.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] Kiev was subsequently invested with a past of respectable antiquity, the consecration of its site being attributed to the Apostle Andrew; it makes its entry on the pages of the _Chronicle_, however, simply as a _gorodok_, or townlet.

[9] _Chronicle of Nestor._

[10] Schiemann, _Russland, Polen, und Livland_.

[11] Members of war council.

[12] _Kniaz_, Prince; _velikie-Kniaz_, Grand Prince.

[13] Now Iskorosk, on the Usha.

[14] Solov’ev.

[15] Karamzin.

[16] Old Ladoga.

[17] Old Skandinavian name for Russia.

[18] See genealogical table.

[19] _Chronique de Nestor._

[20] Although loth to introduce a fresh spelling for a word which has already been rendered in some dozen or more forms by English, French, and German historians, I have thought it best to follow the Russian orthography of this Slavonic title.

[21] Karamzin, Solov’ev, Schiemann, Rambaud, _Chronique de Nestor_.