The Icon and the Axe

Among the many Slavic principalities to accept the forms and faith of Byzantium, Kievan Russia--or Rus', as it was then called-occupied a unique place even from the beginning. Unlike the Balkan Slavic kingdoms, the Kievan domain lay entirely beyond the confines of the old Roman em-pireTlt was one of the last distinct national civilizations to accept Byzantine Christianity; the only one never clearly to accept political subordination to Constantinople; and by far the largest-stretching north to the Baltic and almost to the Arctic Ocean.

Culturally, however, Kiev was in many ways even more deeply dependent on Constantinople than many regions within the empire. For the Russian leaders of the late tenth and the early eleventh century accepted Orthodoxy with the uncritical enthusiasm of the new convert, and sought to transfer the splendors of Constantinople to Kiev in the wholesale manner of the nouveau riche. Prince Vladimir brought the majestic rituals and services of Byzantium to Kiev shortly after his conversion in 988; and, particularly under his

illustrious son Yaroslav the Wise, learned churchmen streamed in from Byzantium bringing with them models for early Russian laws, chronicles, and sermons. Great churches like Santa Sophia and St. George were named for their counterparts in Constantinople, as were the "golden gates" of the city.7

Suffused with a "Christian optimism, a joy that Rus' had become worthy of joining Christianity at the 'eleventh hour' just before the end of the world,"8 Kiev accepted more unreservedly than Byzantium itself the claim that Orthodox Christianity had solved all the basic problems of belief and worship. All that was needed was "right praising" (the literal translation of pravoslavie, the Russian version of the Greek orthodoxos) through the forms of worship handed down by the Apostolic Church and defined for all time by its seven ecumenical councils. Changes in dogma or even sacred phraseology could not be tolerated, for there was but one answer to any controversy. The Eastern Church first broke with Rome in the late ninth century, when the latter added the phrase "and from the Son" to the assertion in the Nicene Creed "that the Holy Spirit proceeds "from God the Father."

Nowhere was the traditional Eastern formula defended with greater zeal than in Russia. As if compensating for the relative lateness of their conversion, Russian Orthodoxy tended to accept unquestioningly Orthodox definitions of truth and Byzantine forms of art; but the complex philosophic traditions and literary conventions of Byzantium (let alone the classical and Hellenic foundations of Byzantine culture) were'ne'vSrpropeMy assimilated. Thus,farefuiiy,'Russia took over "the Byzantine achievement . . . without the Byzantine inquisitiveness."9

Working within this ornate and stylized Byzantine heritage, Kievan Russia developed two distinctive attitudes which gave an all-important initial sense of direction to Russian culture. First was a direct sense of beauty, a passion for seeing spiritual truth in concrete forms. The beauty of Constantinople and of its places and forms of worship was responsible for the conversion of Vladimir according to the earliest historical record of the Kievm~p€ii amp;^. This "Primary Chronicle"-itself a vivid, often beautiful work of literature-tells how Vladimir's emissaries found Moslem worship frenzied and foul-smelling, and "beheld no glory" in the ceremonies of Western Christians. But in Constantinople

the Greeks led,jjs_to_the.h.uUdJngs where they worship their God, and we knew"not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no_ such splendor or such beauty, and,,we are at a loss to describe it. We know only that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations. For we cannot forget that beauty. Every man,

after tasting something sweet, is afterward unwilling to accept that which is bitter. . . .10