Troparion
in Tone 4
O Holy Prince Vladimir,
You were like a merchant in search of fine pearls.
By sending servants to Constantinople for the Orthodox Faith,
You found Christ, the priceless pearl.
He appointed you to be another Paul,
Washing away in baptism your physical and spiritual blindness.
We celebrate your memory,
Asking you to pray for the suffering Christians of Russia,
And for us, your spiritual Children.
Kontakion
in Tone 8
O Most glorious Vladimir,
in your old age you imitated the great Apostle
Paul:
He abandoned the things of a child,
while you forsook the idolatry of
your youth.
Together with him, you reached the fullness of divine wisdom:
You were adorned with the purity of holy baptism;
Now as you stand before Christ our Savior,
Pray that the suffering Christians of Russia may be saved!
Few names in the
annals of history can compare in significance with the name of Saint
Vladimir, the Baptizer of Rus, who stands at the beginning of the
spiritual destiny of the Russian Church and the Russian Orthodox people.
Vladimir was the grandson of Saint Olga, and he was the son of Svyatoslav
(+ 972). His mother, Malusha (+ 1001) was the daughter of Malk
Liubechanin, whom historians identify with Mal, prince of the Drevlyani.
Having subdued an uprising of the Drevlyani and conquered their cities,
Princess Olga gave orders to execute Prince Mal for his attempt to marry
her after he murdered her husband Igor, and she took to herself Mal's
children, Dobrynya and Malusha. Dobrynya grew up to be a valiant brave
warrior, endowed with a mind for state affairs, and he was later on an
excellent help to his nephew Vladimir in matters of military and state
administration.
The "capable girl" Malusha became a Christian (together with Great
Princess Olga at Constantinople), but she preserved in herself a bit of
the mysterious darkness of the pagan Drevlyani forests. Thus she fell in
love with the austere warrior Svyatoslav, who against the will of his
mother Olga made her his wife. The enraged Olga, regarding as unseemly
the marriage of her "housekeeper" and captive servant to her son
Svyatoslav, heir to the Great Kiev principality, sent Malusha away to
her own native region not far from Vybut. And there in about the year
960 was born the boy with the Russian pagan name Volodimir, meaning
peaceful ruler, ruling with a special talent for peace.
In the year 970 Svyatoslav set out on a campaign from which he was fated
not to return. He had divided the Russian Land among his three sons. At
Kiev Yaropolk was prince; at Ovrucha, the center of the Drevlyani lands,
was Oleg; at Novgorod was Vladimir. In his first years as prince, we see
Vladimir as a fierce pagan. He headed a campaign, in which the whole of
pagan Rus is sympathetic to him, against Yaropolk the Christian, or in
any case, according to the chronicles, "having given great freedom to
the Christians", on July 11, 978 he entered into Kiev, having become the
"sole ruler" of the Kiev realm, "having subdued the surrounding lands,
some by peaceful means, and the unsubmissive ones by the sword."
Though Vladimir indulged himself in a wild, sensuous life, he was far
from the libertine that they sometimes portray him as being. He
"shepherded his land with truth, valor and reason", as a good and
diligent master, of necessity he extended and defended its boundaries by
force of arms, and in returning from military campaigns, he made for his
companions and for all Kiev liberal and merry feasts.
But the Lord prepared him for another task. Where sin increases, there,
in the words of the Apostle, grace abounds (Rom. 5: 20). "And upon him
came visitation of the Most High, and the All-Merciful eye of the Good
God gazed upon him, and shone forth the thought in his heart, of
understanding the vanity of idolous delusion, and of appealing to the
One God, Creator of all things both visible and invisible." The matter
of accepting Baptism was facilitated through external circumstances. The
Byzantine Empire was in upheaval under the blows of the mutinous
regiments of Bardas Skliros and Bardas Phocas, each of whom sought to
gain the imperial throne. In these difficult circumstances the emperors,
the coregent brothers Basil the Bulgar-Slayer and Constantine, turned
for help to Vladimir.
Events unfolded quickly. In August 987 Bardas Phocas proclaimed himself
Emperor and moved against Constantinople, and in autumn of that same
year the emissaries of Emperor Basil were at Kiev. "And having exhausted
his (Basil's) wealth, it compelled him to enter into an alliance with
the Emperor of the Russians. They were his enemies, but he besought
their help," writes one of the Arab chronicles of events in the 980s.
"And the Emperor of the Russians consented to this, and made common
cause with him."
As a reward for his military help, Vladimir asked for the hand of the
emperors' sister Anna, which for the Byzantines was an unheard of
audacity. Princesses of the imperial lineage did not marry "barbarian"
rulers, even if they were Christians. At the same time the emperor Otto
the Great was seeking the hand of Anna for his son, and he was refused.
However, in Vladimir's case Constantinople was obliged to consent.
An agreement was concluded, according to which Vladimir had to send the
emperors six thousand Varangians, and to accept holy Baptism. Under
these conditions he would receive the hand of the imperial daughter
Anna. Thus in the strife of human events the will of God directed the
entering of Rus into the grace-filled bosom of the Ecumenical Church.
Great Prince Vladimir accepted Baptism and sent the military assistance
to Byzantium. With the aid of the Russians, the mutineers were destroyed
and Bardas Phocas killed. But the Greeks, gladdened by their unexpected
deliverance, were in no hurry to fulfill their part of the bargain.
Vexed at the Greek duplicity, Prince Vladimir "hastened to collect his
forces" and he moved "against Korsun, the Greek city," the ancient
Chersonessos. The "impenetrable" rampart of the Byzantine realm on the
Black Sea fell. It was one of the vitally important hubs of the economic
and mercantile links of the empire. This blow was so much felt, that its
echo resounded throughout all the regions of Byzantium.
Vladimir again had the upper hand. His emissaries, the commanders Oleg
and Sjbern soon arrived in Constantinople for the imperial daughter.
Eight days passed in Anna's preparation, during which time her brothers
consoled her, stressing the significance of the opportunity before her:
to enable the enlightening of the Russian realm and its lands, and to
make them forever friends of the Byzantine realm. At Taurida St Vladimir
awaited her, and to his titles there was added a new one: Caesar (Tsar).
The haughty rulers of Constantinople had to accede also in this, to
bestow upon their new brother-in-law the imperial insignia. In certain
of the Greek historians, St Vladimir is termed from these times as a
"mighty basileios-king", he coins money in the Byzantine style and is
depicted on it with the symbols of imperial might: in imperial attire,
and on his head the imperial crown, and in his right hand the sceptre
with cross.
Together with the empress Anna, there arrived for the Russian See
Metropolitan Michael ordained by holy Patriarch Nicholas II
Chrysoberges. He came with his retinue and clergy, and many holy relics
and other holy things. In ancient Chersonessos, where each stone brings
to mind St Andrew the First-Called, there took place the
marriage-crowning of St Vladimir and Blessed Anna, both reminiscent and
likewise affirming the oneness of the Gospel of Christ in Rus and in
Byzantium. Korsun, the "empress's dowry", was returned to Byzantium. In
the spring of 988 the Great Prince and his wife set out through the
Crimea, Taman and the Azov lands, which had come into the complexion of
his vast realm on the return trip to Kiev. Leading the princely cortege
with frequent Services of Thanksgiving and incessant priestly singing
they carried crosses, icons and holy relics. It seemed, that the
Ecumenical Holy Church was moving into the spacious Russian land, and
renewed in the font of Baptism, Holy Rus came forth to meet Christ and
His Church.
Then followed an unforgettable and quite singular event in Russian
history: the morning of the Baptism of the Kievans in the waters of the
River Dneipr. On the evening before, St Vladimir declared throughout the
city: "If anyone does not go into the river tomorrow, be they rich or
poor, beggar or slave, that one shall be my enemy." The sacred wish of
the holy Prince was fulfilled without a murmur: "all our land glorified
Christ with the Father and the Holy Spirit at the same time."
It is difficult to overestimate the deep spiritual transformation of the
Russian people effected by the prayers of St Vladimir, in every aspect
of its life and world-view. In the pure Kievan waters, as in a "bath of
regeneration", there was realized a sacramental transfiguration of the
Russian spiritual element, the spiritual birth of the nation, called by
God to unforeseen deeds of Christian service to mankind.
"Then did the darkness of the idols begin to lift from us, and the dawn
of Orthodoxy appear, and the Sun of the Gospel illumined our land." In
memory of this sacred event, the regeneration of Rus by water and the
Spirit, the Russian Church established the custom of an annual church
procession "to the water" on August 1. Later, the Feast of the
Procession of the Honorable Wood of the Life-Creating Cross of the Lord,
which Russia celebrated with the Greek Church, was combined with the
Feast of the All-Merciful Savior and the Most Holy Theotokos
(established by St Andrew Bogoliubsky in the year 1164). In this
combination of feasts there is found a precise expression of the Russian
theological consciousness, for which both Baptism and the Cross are
inseparable.
Everywhere throughout Holy Rus, from the ancient cities to the far
outposts, St Vladimir gave orders to destroy the pagan sanctuaries, to
flog the idols, and in their place to clear land in the hilly woods for
churches, in which altars would be consecrated for the Bloodless
Sacrifice. Churches of God grew up along the face of the earth, at high
elevated places, and at the bends of the rivers, along the ancient trail
"from the Variangians to the Greeks" figuratively as road signs and
lamps of national holiness. Concerning the famed church-building
activity of St Vladimir, the Metropolitan of Kiev St Hilarion (author of
the "Word on Law and Grace") exclaimed: "They demolished the pagan
temples, and built up churches, they destroyed the idols and produced
holy icons, the demons have fled, and the Cross has sanctified the
cities."
From the early centuries of Christianity it was the custom to raise up
churches upon the ruins of pagan sanctuaries or upon the blood of the
holy martyrs. Following this practice, St Vladimir built the church of
St Basil the Great upon a hill, where a sanctuary of Perun had been
located, and he built the stone church of the Dormition of the Most Holy
Theotokos (Desyatinnaya) on the place of the martyrdom of the holy
Varangian Martyrs (July 12). The magnificent temple was intended to
become the cathedral for the Metropolitan of Kiev and All Rus, and thus
the primal altar of the Russian Church. It was built in five years, and
was richly adorned with frescoes, crosses, icons and sacred vessels,
brought from Korsun. The day of the consecration of the church of the
Most Holy Theotokos, May 12 (in some manuscripts May 11), was ordered by
St Vladimir to be inserted into the Church calendar as an annual
celebration. This event was linked with other events celebrated on May
11, and it provided the new Church a twofold sense of continuity. Under
this day in the calendar is noted the churchly Founding of
Constantinople "dedicated by the holy emperor St Constantine as the new
capital of the Roman Empire, the city of Constantine is dedicated to the
Most Holy Theotokos (330). On this same day of May 11, the church of
Sophia, the Wisdom of God was consecrated at Kiev (in the year 960 under
St Olga). St Vladimir, having had the cathedral church consecrated to
the Most Holy Theotokos, followed the example of St Constantine in
dedicating the capital city of the Russian Land (Kiev) to the Queen of
Heaven.
Then a tithe or tenth was bestown on the Church; and since this church
had become the center of the All-Russian collection of churchly tithes,
they called it the Tithe church. The most ancient text of the grant, or
church rule by holy Prince Vladimir spoke thus: "For I do bestow on this
church of the Holy Mother of God a tenth of all my principality, and
also throughout all the Russian Land from all the princely jurisdiction
a tithe of squirrel-pelts, and from the merchant, a tithe of the week,
and from households each year, a tenth of every herd and every
livelihood, to the wondrous Mother of God and the wondrous Savior." The
grant also specified "church people" as being free from the
jurisdictional power of the prince and his "tiuni" (officials) and
placed them under the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan.
The chronicle has preserved a prayer of St Vladimir, with which he
turned to the Almighty at the consecration of the Dormition Tithe
church: "O Lord God, look down from Heaven and behold, and visit Your
vineyard, which Your right hand has planted. And make this new people,
whom You have converted in heart and mind to know You, the True God. And
look down upon this Your church, which Your unworthy servant has built
in the name of the Mother Who gave birth to Thee, the Ever-Virgin
Theotokos. And whoever prays in this church, let his prayer be heard,
through the prayers of the All-Pure Mother of God."
With the Tithe church and Bishop Anastasius, certain historians have
made a connection with the beginnings of Russian chronicle writing. At
it were compiled the Life of St Olga and the account of the Varangian
Martyrs in their original form, and likewise the "Account, How in the
Taking of Korsun, Vladimir came to be Baptized." Here also originated
the early Greek redaction of the Lives of the Holy Martyrs Boris and
Gleb.
During the time of St Vladimir, the Kiev Metropolitan See was occupied
successively by the Metropolitan St Michael (September 30), Metropolitan
Theophylactus, who transferred to Kiev from the See of Armenian Sebaste
(991-997), Metropolitan Leontius (997-1008), and Metropolitan John I
(1008-1037). Through their efforts the first dioceses of the Russian
Church were opened: at Novgorod (its first representative was St Joachim
of Korsun (+ 1030), compiler of the Joachimov Chronicle), Vladimir-Volyn
(opened May 11, 992), Chernigov, Pereslavl, Belgorod, and Rostov. "And
thus throughout all the cities and villages there were set up churches
and monasteries, and the clergy increased, and the Orthodox Faith
blossomed forth and shone like the sun."
To advance the Faith among the newly enlightened people, learned people
and schools were needed to help prepare them. Therefore, St Vladimir and
the holy Metropolitan Michael "commanded fathers and mothers to take
their young children and send them to schools to learn reading and
writing." St Joachim of Korsun set up such a school at Novgorod, and
they did the same in other cities. "And there were a multitude of
schools of scholars, and of these were there a multitude of
philosophers."
With a firm hand St Vladimir held in check enemies at the frontiers, and
he built fortified cities. He was the first in Russian history to set up
a "notched boundary," a line of defensive points against nomadic
peoples. "Volodimir began to set up cities along the Desna, along the
Vystra, along the Trubezha, along the Sula and along the Stugna. And he
settled them with the Novgorodians, the Smolyani, the Chuds and the
Vyatichi. He made war against the Pechenegs and defeated them." But the
real reason for his success was the peaceful Christian preaching among
the pagans of the steppes.
In the Nikol'sk Chronicles under the year 990 was written: "And in that
same year there came to Volodimir at Kiev four princes from the Bulgars
and they were illumined with Divine Baptism." In the following year "the
Pecheneg prince Kuchug came and accepted the Greek faith, and he was
baptized in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit, and served Vladimir with a pure heart." Under the influence of
the holy prince several apparent foreigners were also baptized. For
example, the Norwegian "koenig" (king) Olaf Trueggvason (+ 1000) who
lived several years at Kiev, and also the renowned Torvald the Wanderer,
founder of a monastery of St John the Forerunner along the Dneipr near
Polotsk, among others. In faraway Iceland the poet-skalds called God the
"Protector of the Greeks and Russians."
In addition to the Christian preaching, there were the renowned feasts
of St Vladimir. After Liturgy on Sundays and Church Feasts there were
put out abundant feasting tables for the Kievans, they rang the bells,
choirs sang praise, the "transported infirm" sang bylini-ballads and
spiritual verses. On May 12, 996, for example, on the occasion of the
consecration of the Tithe church, the prince "made a bright feast." He
distributed goods "to many of the poor, and destitute and wanderers, and
through the churches and the monasteries. To the sick and the needy he
delivered through the streets casks and barrels of mead, and bread, and
meat, and fish, and cheese, desiring that all might come and eat,
glorifying God". Feasts were likewise celebrated in honor of the
victories of Kievan warriors, and the regiments of Vladimir's retinue:
of Dobrynya, Alexander Popovich, Rogda the Bold.
In the year 1007 St Vladimir transferred the relics of St Olga to the
Tithe church. Four years later, in 1011, his spouse and companion in
many of his undertakings, the Blessed Empress Anna, was also buried
there. After her death the prince entered into a new marriage with the
young daughter of the German Graf Kuno von Enningen, granddaughter of
the emperor Otto the Great.
The era of St Vladimir was a crucial period for the formation of
Orthodox Rus. The unification of the Slavic lands and the formation of
state boundaries under the domain of the Rurikovichi resulted from a
strenuous spiritual and political struggle with neighboring tribes and
states. The Baptism of Rus by Orthodox Byzantium was a most important
step in its self-definition as a state. The chief enemy of Vladimir
became Boleslav the Brave, whose plans included the extensive
unification of the West Slavic and East Slavic tribes under the aegis of
Catholic Poland. This rivalry arose back when Vladimir was still a
pagan: "In the year 6489 (981). Volodimir went against the Lakhs and
took their cities, Peremyshl, Cherven, and other cities, which be under
Rus." The final years of the tenth century are likewise filled with the
wars of Vladimir and Boleslav.
After a brief lull (the first decade of the eleventh century), the
"great stand-off" entered into a new phase: in the year 1013 a
conspiracy against St Vladimir was discovered at Kiev. Svyatopolk the
Accursed, who was married to a daughter of Boleslav, yearned for power.
The instigator of the conspiracy was Boleslav's cleric, the Kolobzheg
Catholic bishop Reibern.
The conspiracy of Svyatopolk and Reibern was an all-out threat to the
historical existence of the Russian state and the Russian Church. St
Vladimir took decisive measures. All the three involved were arrested,
and Reibern soon died in prison.
St Vladimir did not take revenge on those that "opposed and hated" him.
Under the pretense of feigned repentance, Svyatopolk was set free.
A new misfortune erupted in the North, at Novgorod. Yaroslav, not yet
"the Wise," as he was later to be known, in the year 1010 having become
ruler of Novgorod, decided to defect from his father the Great Prince of
Kiev. He formed his own separate army, moving on Kiev to demand the
customary tribute and tithe. The unity of the Russian land, for which St
Vladimir had struggled all his life, was threatened with ruin. In both
anger and in sorrow St Vladimir gave orders to "secure the dams and set
the bridges," and to prepare for a campaign against Novgorod. His powers
were on the decline. In the preparations for his final campaign, happily
not undertaken, the Baptizer of Rus fell grievously ill and surrendered
his soul to the Lord in the village of Spas-Berestov on July 15, 1015.
He had ruled the Russian realm for thirty-seven years (978-1015),
twenty-eight of these years after his Baptism.
Preparing for a new struggle for power and hoping for Polish assistance,
and to play for time, Svyatopolk attempted to conceal the death of his
father. But patriotically inclined Kievan nobles, by night, secretly
removed the body of the deceased sovereign from the Berestov court,
where Svyatopolk's people were guarding it, and they conveyed the body
to Kiev. At theTithe church the coffin with the relics of St Vladimir
was met by Kievan clergy with Metropolitan John at the head of the
procession. The holy relics were placed in a marble crypt, set within
the St Clement chapel of the Dormition church beside the marble crypt of
Empress Anna.
The name and deeds of the holy Equal of the Apostles St Vladimir, whom
the people called the Splendid Sun, is interwoven with all the
successive history of the Russian Church. "Through him we too have come
to worship and to know Christ, the True Life," testified St Hilarion.
His deeds were continued by his sons, and grandsons and descendants,
rulers of the Russian land for almost six centuries, from Yaroslav the
Wise, who took the first steps towards the independent existence of the
Russian Church, down to the last of the Rurikovichi, Tsar Theodore
Ioannovich, under whom (in 1589) the Russian Orthodox Church became the
fifth independent Patriarchate in the dyptichs of Orthodox Autocephalous
Churches.
The festal celebration of the holy Equal of the Apostles Vladimir was
established under St Alexander Nevsky, in memory of the intercession of
St Vladimir on May 15, 1240, for his help in gaining the renowned
victory by Nevsky over Swedish crusaders.
But the first veneration of the holy prince began in Rus rather earlier.
The Metropolitan of Kiev St Hilarion (+ 1053), in his "Word on Law and
Grace," spoken on the day of memory of St Vladimir at the saint's crypt
in the Tithe church, calls him "an apostolic sovereign", like St
Constantine, and he compares his apostolic evangelization of the Russian
Land to the evangelization by the holy Apostles
