Post by Deleted on Mar 16, 2018 20:16:50 GMT
"In 988, Kiev was the chief city of a loosely united federation of tribes and urban trading centers which bore the name Rus. Vladimir claimed to be a descendant of the Viking princes who had asserted political control in the late 800s over the native Slavic inhabitants of the land of Kievan Rus, a geographical area roughly equivalent to the present-day regions of Ukraine, Belorussia, and northwestern Russia. Little is known of the religion of the tribes of the tenth century Rus. Apparently it was animistic, with a multitude of deities and spirits associated with the meadows and woodlands. Each tribe honored those spirits which inhabited the locale where tribe members lived.
For a short time around the middle of the 900s, a woman, Princess Olga (Olha in Ukrainian) ruled the Rus confederation. (Olga had taken over as chief after her husband was killed in a rebellion.) She acted quickly and firmly to restore order in Rus and to consolidate her control, which she maintained until 962 when she turned power over to her son, Vladimir's father. In about 955, Olga became a Christian and was baptized in Constantinople. For the next five years, she tried unsuccessfully to promote Christianity as a religion for all her subjects but failed to persuade even her son to become a Christian.
After Vladimir became prince of Kiev in 978, he tried to impose a uniform religious system upon the people of Rus, with gods modeled after those worshipped by the Vikings. The chief god, for example, was Perun, who was much like Thor, the Viking god of thunder and war. Vladimir set up a shrine in Kiev with images of the gods he wanted his subjects to respect. It appears, however, that Vladimir's pantheon failed to replace the tribal animism of his subjects.
In the aftermath of this failure, Vladimir turned to Christianity and ordered his subjects baptized into Eastern Orthodoxy. The timing of Vladimir's conversion suggests that he adopted the new religion to serve his political interests, thus beginning a tradition that has run virtually unbroken throughout the history of the Russian Orthodox Church. The church has generally been willing to serve the interests of the government, even when the government has infringed upon the interests of the church. That precedent has continued to the present, even with a government fostering an atheistic ideology that views the traditional principles of the church as socially harmful.
The story of Vladimir's conversion, recounted below, need not to be read as a literal account. In fact, the story was not even written down until almost 100 years after Vladimir's death, and we cannot be certain that any single detail of it is precisely true. National legends are easily changed and embellished in oral retelling, and Nestor, the Christian monk who authored the first written version, obviously let his Christianity bias his report. We cannot tell whether Vladimir's consideration of what religion to pick for his people involved events even remotely like the ones in the story. But the power of this tale for the Russians lies not in the details of what actually happened but in the way the national memory has preserved it".
(quotation from Paul D. Steeves, Keeping the Faiths. Religion and Ideology in the Soviet Union (New York, 1989), 18-22.)
So, what is your opinion? Was is good to break idols and force Slavs to accept Orthodoxy? What is your thought on Vladimir's deeds? Would it be better for him to refuse Orthodoxy and accept Judaism? Would it be changed anything if Vladimir would be killed by raged pagans?
For a short time around the middle of the 900s, a woman, Princess Olga (Olha in Ukrainian) ruled the Rus confederation. (Olga had taken over as chief after her husband was killed in a rebellion.) She acted quickly and firmly to restore order in Rus and to consolidate her control, which she maintained until 962 when she turned power over to her son, Vladimir's father. In about 955, Olga became a Christian and was baptized in Constantinople. For the next five years, she tried unsuccessfully to promote Christianity as a religion for all her subjects but failed to persuade even her son to become a Christian.
After Vladimir became prince of Kiev in 978, he tried to impose a uniform religious system upon the people of Rus, with gods modeled after those worshipped by the Vikings. The chief god, for example, was Perun, who was much like Thor, the Viking god of thunder and war. Vladimir set up a shrine in Kiev with images of the gods he wanted his subjects to respect. It appears, however, that Vladimir's pantheon failed to replace the tribal animism of his subjects.
In the aftermath of this failure, Vladimir turned to Christianity and ordered his subjects baptized into Eastern Orthodoxy. The timing of Vladimir's conversion suggests that he adopted the new religion to serve his political interests, thus beginning a tradition that has run virtually unbroken throughout the history of the Russian Orthodox Church. The church has generally been willing to serve the interests of the government, even when the government has infringed upon the interests of the church. That precedent has continued to the present, even with a government fostering an atheistic ideology that views the traditional principles of the church as socially harmful.
The story of Vladimir's conversion, recounted below, need not to be read as a literal account. In fact, the story was not even written down until almost 100 years after Vladimir's death, and we cannot be certain that any single detail of it is precisely true. National legends are easily changed and embellished in oral retelling, and Nestor, the Christian monk who authored the first written version, obviously let his Christianity bias his report. We cannot tell whether Vladimir's consideration of what religion to pick for his people involved events even remotely like the ones in the story. But the power of this tale for the Russians lies not in the details of what actually happened but in the way the national memory has preserved it".
(quotation from Paul D. Steeves, Keeping the Faiths. Religion and Ideology in the Soviet Union (New York, 1989), 18-22.)
So, what is your opinion? Was is good to break idols and force Slavs to accept Orthodoxy? What is your thought on Vladimir's deeds? Would it be better for him to refuse Orthodoxy and accept Judaism? Would it be changed anything if Vladimir would be killed by raged pagans?
I'm just glad the bible was let in.
