cordingly he
compelled the Emperors of Byzantium, by force, to send the Patriarch of
Constantinople to baptize him, and their sister to become his wife. He
then ordered his subjects to present themselves forthwith for baptism.
Finding that their idols did not punish Vladimir for destroying them,
and that even great Perun the Thunderer did not resent being flung into
the Dniepr, the people quietly and promptly obeyed. As their old
religion had no temples for them to cling to, and nothing approaching a
priestly class (except the _volkhvye_, or wizards) to encourage them in
opposition, the nation became Christian in a day, to all appearances. We
shall see, however, that in many cases, as in other lands converted from
heathendom, the old gods were merely baptized with new names, in company
with their worshipers.

Together with the religion which he imported from Byzantium,
"Prince-Saint" Vladimir naturally imported, also, priests, architects,
artists for the holy pictures (_ikoni_), as well as the traditional
style of painting them, ecclesiastical vestments and vessels, and--most
precious of all--the Slavonic translation of the holy Scriptures and of
the Church Service books. These books, however, were not written in
Greek, but in the tongue of a cognate Slavonic race, which was
comprehensible to the Russians. Thus were the first firm foundations of
Christianity, education, and literature simultaneously laid in the
cradle of the present vast Russian empire, appropriately called "Little
Russia," of which Kieff was the capital; although even then they were
not confined to that section of the country, but were promptly extended,
by identical methods, to old Novgorod--"Lord Novgorod the Great," the
cradle of the dynasty of Rurik, founder of the line of sovereign Russian
princes.

Whence came these Slavonic translations of the Scriptures, the Church
Services, and other books, and the preachers in the vernacular for the
infant Russian nation? The books had been translated about one hundred
and twenty-five years previously, for the benefit of a small Slavonic
tribe, the Moravians. This tribe had been baptized by German
ecclesiastics, whose books and speech, in the Latin tongue, were wholly
incomprehensible to their converts. For fifty years Latin had been used,
and naturally Christianity had made but little progress. Then the
Moravian Prince Rostislaff appealed to Michael, emperor of Byzantium, to
send him preachers capable of m