Talk:Christianization of Kievan Rus'

Untitled

Christianity was accepted at Kyiv/Kiev before the Catholic/Orthodox split. Much of the behavior of the rulers and hierarchs around Kiev, document continued contacts with the West. That's why the general term was used, to underline this acceptance before the creation of separate Catholic and Orthodox jurisdictions. And this "ecumenical" behavior often continued after the Great Schism. See all five or so links for a broad, balanced overview. Genyo 17:57, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Ioakim Chronicle!

 the Ioakim Chronicle is cited to give the "aftermath" of the baptism of the Rus a very violent connotation.
While violence probably existed, it is a bit shoddy to be quoting a 18th century chronicle of shady authenticity.
Come on! Why not cite more reliable chronicles?!

--165.123.133.200 (talk) 13:45, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Ukrainians

Ghirlandajo, the Ukrainian people didn't just spring from the loins of Venus 200 years ago. They've been living in Ukraine for thousands of years. Trying to write them out of history smacks of colonialism, and academic literature doesn't support your point of view. —Michael Z. 17:15, 2004 Dec 29 (UTC)

Being a Ukrainian myself, I know perfectly well that Slavic *ancestors* of the present-day Ukrainians arrived to the territory of present-day Ukraine in 6th or 7th century AD. But the term Ukraine didn't appear until the 16th century, and the first to apply it to the left-bank Ukraine were Brethren of Sts Cyril and Methodios in the 1830s. Therefore, to say that Ukrainian Orthodox Church was founded in the 10th century is a complete nonsense. We may say that the Ukrainian church traces its roots to the baptism of Kiev or something like that, but to use the term Ukraine to the people of the 10th century is an anachronism. --Ghirlandajo 17:31, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Well, I believe neither exact term "Russian Orthodox Church" nor "Ukrainian Orthodox Church" were used in 988, but they both trace their roots to that year. Honestly, I don't know the political details of their split, but this article should respect the historic lineage of both. People who Volodymyr dunked in the Dnieper in 988 were of the ethnicity which today is called Ukrainian. It's not right to just blanket label it "Russian". —Michael Z. 19:55, 2004 Dec 29 (UTC)

Yes, Vladimir was a Ukrainian, Charlemagne was a German, Justinian was a Turk, and Julius Caesar was an Italian :) I see your logic now. It doesn't matter that Vladimir called himself /ruski/, and the church was called /russkaia/ at that time.

The East Slavic church (988) was headed by the Kievan metropolitan, the last of which moved to Vladimir in the 13th century, and then another metropolitan, St Peter, moved from Vladimir to Moscow, where the Russian metropolitans (later patriarchs) have been residing ever since that time. Ukrainian and Russian churches have been split in 1303 and united in 1686, and known under the name of Russian Orthodoxy. The Ukrainian Orthodox church of the Moscow patriarchate still controls most churches in Ukraine, including Kievo-Pecherskya Lavra.

But there is also a smaller, post-perestroika secessionist structure referring to itself as Ukrainian Orthodox church but not recognized by any patriarch in the Orthodox world. It presumes to trace its origin back to 1303, when the new metropolitan see was created in Kiev (not to be confused with the original see from 988, still continued by the Moscow partiarchate). ----Ghirlandajo 22:09, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Baptism of Kievan Rus

Dunking of Kiev was but an episode of the Baptism of Kievan Rus' as a whole. The whole idea of Vladimir was to christianize the whole state. And there is much more to be said about this important process. Vladimir dunked Novgorod and many others as well, by the way. So I suggest to expand the article and move it to Baptism of Kievan Rus'. (Of course, if someone dares to write a detailed account on the Kiev dunk, welcome...) Votes? Mikkalai 00:51, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Mikkalai, stop stretching so hard. . .you'll snap! There is no such thing as an event called the "Baptism of Kievan Rus'!" Novgorod caught on in 989 from what I've read! The event talked about here was the baptism of one city, Kiev. . .Ukraine's capital. I'm aware of how hard certain ideologies try to connect this city to "Russia," but it just doesn't work! Get over it! Genyo 23:59, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Genyo, you must've confused some things, haven't you? Here's scientific article being discussed, not an ukrainian nationalist's booklet. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Челдон (talk • contribs) 17:25, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

This may be a purely semantic debate, but I must note that there's a common Russian expression that refers to this event, its literal translation is "Baptism of Rus'". There was a celebration in Russia in 1988, it was also called "Millennial anniversary of baptism of Rus'". Vladimir was the head of the entire Russian state, and he intended to make Christianity its official state religion. Baptism of Kiev was a significant event on the road to christianization of the whole country. It is common to identify one with the other.

Of course, country as big as Kievan Rus' couldn't be converted in one day. This process took centuries. Some historical chronicles say that Rus' was visited by Apostle Andrew in 1st century AD. Even if it's true, his visit is not likely to have had any impact on religious beliefs of inhabitants of the area. First reliable records of Russians being converted into Christianity are dated by the middle of ninth century AD. First Christian church in Kiev was probably founded around 940. First Christian member of ruling family was princess Olga ( converted in 955 ). Paganism was mostly replaced with Christianity ( or rather, merged with it ) in Russia by 1100, but it lingered much longer in remote villages and among uneducated peasants. --Itinerant 23:55, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Revert wars

Ghirlandajo, what is your problem? I merely removed a link that was on the page twice (that's what redundant means). If it's important to you, then just add it back or leave a note. Don't get spiteful and start removing material that I and others have added. —Michael Z. 2005-02-3 21:15 Z

Some material removed

I removed a brief history of the Church of the Tithes because it deserves a separate article which I will start. The next paragraph is related to a general history of Russian Orthodox Church where this material is already covered. The final paragraph about celebration of the millennium should also be removed, at least in the current form. First of all, celebration of the anniversary of the event has a relatively small importance compared to the event itself. Secondly, the paragraph presented the celebration as if it was just a Ukrainian event and celebrated just by Ukrainian orthodox churches which was simply not the case. This event was equally important and widely celebrated by all orthodox Christians of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus'. Besides, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church did not exist as a separate entity in 1988 (except a small Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church). Both UOC-MP and UOC-KP came into existence only in early nineties. Irpen 22:27, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

Hi Irpen. The material about anniversary celebrations belongs at the end of this article, until it grows large enough to warrant an article of its own. I only know a bit about Ukrainian commemoration, and I hope that others add what they know. But if it gets removed, then we're waiting until a Millennium specialist shows up and writes a full-blown article.

As to your last point, I don't know the history or politics of the church(es) in much detail, but I do know that I was among at least tens of thousands of Ukrainian Orthodox and Ukrainian Greek Catholics here in Canada celebrating the Millennium, and friends of mine travelled to Rome for a very significant event. —Michael Z. 2005-02-4 00:38 Z

We may have the stub for Millennium celebration just to attract people to write more about it. However, for now I would limit it to the first paragraph that just mentions the fact that this date occurred in the recent past. I modified the paragraph to make it clear that not all but only some Eastern Orthodox churches have roots in the event. The second paragraph, however, is misleading even for a stub. It calls Ukrainian Orthodox Christians as members of UOC which did not exist at that time. Besides, while both Orthodox and Greek Catholic Christians are connected with the event of Vladimir's baptism through direct lineage of their churches, the Catholic and Protestant churches have no connection to the Baptism of Kievan Rus'. These churches arrived to Ukraine, Russia and Belarus' by completely independent paths and their membership is relatively small. Their celebration of the anniversary and the decision of the Pope to celebrate may be notable in different contexts such as, perhaps, ecumenism and attempts to resolve the Great Schism but not in the context of the Baptism of the Kievan Rus'. Of course, this is just my opinion.Irpen 07:07, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry Irpen, but I don't quite follow. If Ukrainian Orthodox Christians aren't members of UOC, then of what? The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church is not just a few folks praying in their basements. They have many established churches and large cathedrals in Canada, and elsewhere. Are Greek Catholic Christians not the same as the Catholic church? I didn't mean Roman Catholic; my understanding is that the Pope is the Patriarch of all Catholics including Eastern, in addition to being the Bishop of the Roman Catholic Church. Between the two churches, this accounts for millions of Ukrainians who celebrated the Millennium in 1988, and that's not even counting the Orthodox Ukrainians in Ukraine.

It's very discouraging going through this lengthy process just to get Ukrainians acknowledged here. First G insists that Ukrainians shouldn't even be mentioned; when I try to find a compromise, I get repeatedly reverted. Then you remove what I've written because it's only about Ukrainians (If it only mentioned Russians, would you have unilaterally excised the whole thing as unbalanced?). Then X vandalizes the page with a slur. I can't believe I haven't been called a nationalist yet.

I've spent hours merely trying to make what I think is a simple factual addition to this article, but I feel like I'm being attacked by a whole team. Does editing this article have to be "us against them"? —Michael Z. 2005-02-4 10:28 Z

Sorry, Michael. I just think that you should cool down a bit. Don't you think that there is no urgent need to mention the Pope in this particular article? The Pope had nothing to do with the baptism of Rus, after all.

What does matter, however, is that the church established by Vladimir in 988 naturally evolved into the present day Russian Orthodox church, as headed by the Patriarch of Moscow. You might have noticed that we don't press a point of continuity from the Baptism to the present Russian Orthodox church, from which a Ukrainian Orthodox church violently seceded several years ago (although it is not recognized by any other Orthodox church). If you insert the Ukrainian Catholic stuff, we will insert the point of continuity, and this will easily degenerate into revert wars.

Therefore, I propose to leave the modern situation aside or, at least, not to speak about the Milleniums of the Russian and Ukrainian churches separately but about the Millenium of the Eastern Slavic Christianity in general. Ghirlandajo 11:54, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Michael, I think no reasonable person would label you a nationalist for this. The discussion here is how to avoid factually misleading information and how to avoid unnecessary controversies which may touch too many nerves and result in revert wars. Xenia trolled and was quickly reverted. As for the specific points you make "If Ukrainian Orthodox Christians aren't members of UOC, then of what?". In 1988 they where either the members of the UAOC, mainly in the diaspora since UAOC was banned in the Soviet Ukraine, or of the ROC. UAOC was and still is quite an established church with reasonable, though unrecognized, canonical claims. But UAOC and UOC are different things. There are two UOC's in Ukraine now. One of them (UOC-KP) is indeed "secessionist" and uncanonical, as Ghirlandaj pointed out. The other one, UOC-MP, established in 1992 is a canonical autonomous church and it may very well gain an autocephaly in an established canonical way at some future point. "Are Greek Catholic Christians not the same as the Catholic church?" Of course they are not! Although they both recognize the primacy of the Roman Pope, in most other respects, the Greek Catholic Church is much closer to the Orthodox than to Catholic versions of Christianity.

If the article would have spoken of the celebration as of a solely Russian event, I would have considered that equally unacceptable. To speak about the Millennium in the contexts of Eastern Slavic Christianity is a good way to avoid the unnecessary controversies. Ghirlandajo's suggestion, that the claim of the ROC on the continuity and especially on its monopoly on the continuity should be also left out of this article is a very good one. The claim of the "natural evolution" of Vladimir's Church into ROC and especially the claim of the monopoly of ROC on such descendency is a hotly disputed topic even among the scholars. It belongs to different articles and there is no need to bring it in here unnecessarily. Similar considerations apply to the participation of the Roman Pope in the Millennium Celebration. It is the best way to avoid flames and revert wars. Irpen 17:56, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)

Ukrainian Greek Catholics are Roman Catholics. They are under the pope and thus are Roman Catholics.

On Vladimir's sons

Ghirlandajo, information about sons of Vladimir being sent to different parts of Rus' after 988 is not 'nonsense'. It comes directly from the Primary Chronicle: "In a year 6496 (988) (...) Vladimir (...) had 12 sons: Vysheslav, Izyaslav, Yaroslav, ... And he placed Vysheslav in Novgorod, Izyaslav in Polotsk, Svyatopolk in Turov, Yaroslav in Rostov; when Vysheslav died in Novgorod, he placed Yaroslav there, Boris in Rostov, Gleb in Murom, Svyatoslav in Drevlyan land, Vsevolod in Vladimir, Mstislav in Tmutarakan."

Chronicle does not clarify what exactly happened to princes of those cities. They probably didn't cooperate.

What evidence did you have that those cities had their own "princes"? We hear about only three principalities before that time: Novgorod, Polotsk, and the Drevlyans, and the fate of their previous sovereigns is quite well-known. There is no need to flood the article on christianization with your fantasies as to the meaning of Vladimir's temporal actions and the alleged fate of alleged sovereigns of other towns. Ghirlandajo 10:07, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Why do you think they didn't? Big cities like these couldn't exist without some sort of government. Kiev had princes as far back as 6th century. The only sovereigns of Novgorod and Drevlyan land we know about ( Oleg and Yaropolk ) were killed 10 years before baptism. Someone had to take their places.

If you can read Russian, check this out: http://rusograd.hotmail.ru/froyanov/froyanov2.html. It says literally: "By delegating his power through his children to remote city centers, Vladimir, apparently, physically eliminated local rulers in the places where they still existed (...) Thus, early history of christianity in the lands under Kiev's rule was washed in blood". And also this - http://www.rus-sky.org/history/library/dikiy/diky01.htm ( although this source is somewhat shady ): "Individual tribes that constituted Kievan state at the beginning of Vladimir's rule still had their hereditary or elective leaders and princes, but Vladimir gradually replaced them with his proteges".--Itinerant 18:59, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It should really be mentioned somewhere that the whole baptism affair was not started for purely spiritual reasons. Vladimir was using religion as a means of uniting Rus' under his rule. He tried it first with paganism, it failed. Christianity was merely his second attempt. --Itinerant 09:34, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Artcile's name

Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style: "If possible, make the title the subject of the first sentence of the article...". Logically the article must start with the words "Baptism of Kievan Rus'". If this article is about the baptism of Kiev, as Ghirlandajo suggests (the name of the article does not reflect its content), then the article must be moved to the appropriate title. Beit Or 06:47, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't make a fuzz at the moment. This is a minor point. When I have time, I will write sections about the baptism of areas other than Kiev. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 07:00, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't see how it matters. The article's intro must comply with the style guide and common sense, even if the article is underdeveloped now. Beit Or 08:58, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Merge proposed

I propose merging of Christianization of Kievan Rus' and Christianization of the Rus' Khaganate to Christianization of the Rus'. There's too much overlap (Christianization of the Rus' Khaganate is a short-term snapshot of part of the historical timeline given in Christianization of Kievan Rus'), it's confusing and misleading to have Christianization of the Rus' redirect to Christianization of the Rus' Khaganate, and the entire situation confuses the reader about the difference between the Rus' Khaganate and the Kievan Rus'. It seems to me that the matters will be clearer if the entire history of the efforts to convert the Rus' people to Christianity were covered in a single, orderly article. Some other articles, e.g. Varangians, are already linking to Christianization of Kievan Rus' as if the main/only article on the topic, since it is more comprehensive. I would suggest that the Khaganate stub can be merged into the Khaganate section at this article; this article moved to Christianization of the Rus' and its lead adjusted; and both longer titles (plus any incoming redirects to them) redirected to the short title Christianization of the Rus' (and to specific sections in it if necessary).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:01, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

• Comment - I agree wholeheartedly that it should be the one article, and that we have POVFORKS covering the same subject, but it really should go under "Christianization of Kievan Rus'". That is the official name of the epoch in which it took place, and under the ruling of Grand Prince (Vladimir) (enacted by his law forcing conversion). Rus' is a generic term which does not actually describe how reliable sources discuss it. The biggest spanner in the works has been the highly theoretical "Rus' Khaganate", and there's been a lot of POV pushing and 'borrowing' of RS content from what sources do not recognise as having anything to do with this "Rus' Khaganate" business. The subject is, indeed the "Christianization of Kievan Rus'", not the "Christianization of the Rus'". The longer title meets with precision over original research. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 21:49, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
• Strongly oppose. The articles cover two distinct events concerning two different states with two different capitals. I see no valid reasons for jumbling two reasonably well-developed articles into one heap. Wikipedia develops by specializing its coverage rather than vice versa. WP:POVFORK has nothing to do with the situation at hand. --Ghirla^-трёп- 12:18, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Which 'two different states' are you referring to? There are three articles, two of which are POV forks, the third (Rus' Khaganate) is theoretical/borderline WP:FRINGE at best which 'borrows' events from the single, mainstream supported subject. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 21:06, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

• Alternative proposal. One should simply redirect Christianization of the Rus' to Christianization of Kievan Rus' instead of Christianization of the Rus' Khaganate. I think this is a major source of the confusion. --Off-shell (talk) 20:42, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

As noted to Ghirlandajo, the Rus' Khaganate has been the centre of attention as WP:FRINGE by editors who are actually well versed in the history of the (Kievan) Rus' state. The entire "Christianization of the Rus' Khaganate" article is an WP:OR borrowing of mainstream research applied as WP:SYNTH to create an equally fringe article. I agree that it should be bypassed, but what remains is not two distinct narratives in Christianization of the Rus' and Christianization of Kievan Rus': they are one and the same subject. Duplication of a single subject (a three-way split at that) is not edifying for the reader. There simply isn't a legitimate argument for maintaining three articles on the self-same subject. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 21:26, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

• 2023 update: As already noted at Talk:Christianization_of_Kievan_Rusʹ#Merge_proposed, Christianization of the Rus' Khaganate is a WP:POVFORK that also violates WP:FRINGE by asserting the Rus' Khaganate really existed. Whatever is useful can be reinserted here. Therefore, I've WP:BOLDly merged them. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 17:54, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Christianity v paganism

Changing from Paganism to Christianity is just another form of paganism 2A02:C7C:4445:3300:2192:DE3:4E07:9A1E (talk) 13:39, 15 October 2022 (UTC)