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.[1] 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.[2] 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
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Nestor, ii.
