Древняя Русь и Скандинавия: Избранные труды

Two of these entries were of crucial importance for the annalists’ conception of Slavic early history. The first one is devoted to the voyage of Apostle Andrew up the Dnieper, the second one concerns the earliest teachers of Slavic nations, St. Cyril and St. Methodius. The tale about St. Andrew was an elaboration of a popular in the Middle Ages apocryphic story about his voyage to the lands on the northern shore of the Black Sea[1362]. The Byzantine version of the apocryph became known in Rus’ by the end of the eleventh century and was used to proclaim the original holiness of the Rusian land predicted by St. Andrew. Having reached the Kievan hills, St. Andrew is said to announce: «So shall the favor of God shine upon them that on this spot a great city shall arise, and God shall erect many churches therein»[1363]. The story provided the «apostolic» background for Christianity in Rus’ and thus allowed the annalist to present Eastern Slavs as a chosen nation, even when pagans.

The second entry dealt with the introduction of Christianity among the Slavs by St. Cyril and St. Methodius[1364]. The information about their mission and activities in Moravia came to Rus’ from Bulgaria. Though the saints preached Christianity in Moravia, far from Eastern Europe, their reputation as the apostles of the Slavs as well as their introduction of Slavic script made the annalists represent them as successors of St. Andronicus, «one of the Seventy, a disciple of the holy Apostle Paul» and teachers of all Slavic peoples including those who habitated in Eastern Europe:

Since Paul is the teacher of the Slavic race, from which we Russians too are sprung, even so the Apostle Paul is the teacher of us Russians… But the Slavs and the Russes are one people[1365].

Both legends based on literary, Byzantine or South-Slavic sources, were crucial for the annalists’ concept of historia ecclesiastica of Rus’. They introduced Eastern Slavs into the Christian world even before the Slavs became Christians and emphasized the original belonging of the then pagan peoples to the true faith. In this perspective the Christianization at the times of Vladimir turned to be not an occasional act but the realization of inherent aspirations of the Eastern Slavs.

Contrary to the presentation of these paradigmatic concepts, the annalists’ depiction of events immediately connected with the penetration of Christian ideas into Eastern Slavic world could not have rested on written sources. Byzantine writers and church hierarchs paid little attention to confessional developments among «Northern barbarians». The annalists had to rely only on historical memory current among their contemporaries. These recollections, however, were few and vague. Oral tradition about the events of the ninth and tenth centuries consisted mostly of heroic legends about the deeds of the Russian princes and their champions. That was an «epic history» that emerged and took shape among the new warrior elite of the Old Russian state which consisted first utterly and later mostly of Scandinavians[1366].

Encounters with Christianity were not the theme of prime interest for the creators and transmitters of «heroic» historical tradition, so the recollections of Christian influences incorporated in the oral history that existed for about two centuries before it was put into writing were exceptionally scarce. In fact, the Russian annalists seem to know nothing about the spread of Christianity in Eastern Europe before the midtenth century when Kievan princess Ol’ga (< Helga) is told to have been baptized in Constantinople. This period of what one may call latent Christianity in Rus’ and the role the Varangians played in it is the subject of this article[1367].

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