Nevertheless the Russian Church claims an apostolic origin. Did not Eusebius say that "Andrew received Scythia"?[1] 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.[2] 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.[3] 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
- ↑ Hist. Eccl. iii. 1.
- ↑ Nestor, i.
- ↑ 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.
origin, sources, and dates of Nestor's chronicle are critically discussed in Die Entstehung Der Ältesten Russischen Sogenannten Nestorchronik, by Dr. Stjepan Sakulj, 1896.
