And we, you and I, let’s think about the millennia and beyond to the lands of our ancestors, already shrouded in the haze of antiquity, and trace the process of the birth and formation of Christianity on the basis of the latest research In Kyivan Rus in general and in our Prybuzhzhia in particular.
Let’s move back a millennium and further to the lands of our ancestors, already shrouded in the haze of antiquity, and trace the process of the birth and formation of Christianity on the basis of the latest research in Kievan Rus in general and in our Pribuzhzhia in particular.
According to Arab chronicles, at the beginning of the IX century, the Old Russian prince Bravalnn (wasn’t he the grandfather of Askold and Dir?) was baptized there after a successful campaign in the Crimea. At that time, there were already two dioceses in Crimea – Kherson and Bosphorus. In 860, the Kiev princes-brothers Askold and Deer went on a campaign to Constantinople (Tsargrad). The campaign was successful. According to Byzantine chronicles, a treaty beneficial to Kievan Rus was concluded, and Askold (there is no data for Dir) was baptized. At the same time, Patriarch Photius of Constantinople sent Rusians and his bishop to Russia for baptism. However, this first mass baptism did not produce significant results. because soon in 866 Kyiv was captured by the Varangian prince from the Rurik family Oleg, who ruled Novgorod before him. Askold and Dir were killed, and Christians were persecuted.
Oleg’s successor, Prince Igor, was quite tolerant of Christianity, as evidenced by the fact that during his reign there was already a cathedral (!) church of St. Ilya in Kyiv, in which a treaty was concluded with the Byzantine Empire in 945, his wife Olga, as is known, was a Christian She was unable to finally convince her heathen son, Prince Svyatoslav, to accept Christianity, especially since he was on campaigns all the time, but the loving and educated grandmother at that time managed to raise his sons – Yaropolk, Volodymyr and Oleg, in the Christian spirit. There is no doubt that at that time – before the accession to the reign of Volodymyr the Great, there were already churches of the Eastern, that is, Greek, rite in Kyiv and other cities.
Volodymyr the Great
Believers were mainly the ruling nobility (boyars, senior military men, etc.) and representatives of other classes, in particular merchants. It is not difficult to imagine the situation that our distant ancestor, a brave and shrewd merchant, found himself in after a thousand years, having finally reached Tsargorod or Munich. His fellow Christians looked at him as a second-class person: “barbarian”, “pagan”, “pagan”. So, no matter what, I had to be baptized…
In 979, not without the help of numerous Varangian consorts and militiamen from northeastern Russia (almost all of them were pagans at that time), the Kiev princely throne was seized by Volodymyr Svyatoslavovych, who ruled before him in Novgorod. And after some 5 years, thanks to successful campaigns, he became the sovereign of the largest state in Europe at that time – Kievan Rus, which stretched from the Western Bug to the Volga and from the Baltic to the Black Sea steppes. So, he was faced with the primary question of how to cement and consolidate this extensive early feudal state, which, in fact, had only just begun to take shape, being at the stage of formation. Such a powerful factor, along with a strong military force, an extensive administration, and a common state religion in the Old Slavic language common to the overwhelming majority of the population at that time could become such a powerful factor.
At the beginning of his reign in 980, Volodymyr founded a majestic pantheon of pagan “gods” in Kyiv, along with his princely palace (recently, archaeological excavations confirmed this! In 1991), where wooden gilded statues of the then gods Perun, Hors, Dazhbog, Veles were installed (Hair), Yaryla and others. And for consolidation, solidarity with the “province” the most revered tribal gods were also placed there. However, if we take into account that the then Kyivan Rus consisted of something like 15 clans and tribes and more than a hundred smaller clan alliances with their gods, then there could not be a single effective state religion. Pagan faith with its closeness of man to nature, poetics and nationalism, a peculiar ritual was suitable for a separate tribe, for example, the Poles or Buzans. However, it did not bring to the newly created early feudal state either writing or stone architecture, did not involve in the achievements of universal culture, did not profess, after all, the dogma of Christianity that any power “comes from God” and must be unconditionally obeyed. Prince Volodymyr, who was brought up by a Christian grandmother and himself converted to Christianity in 986 in Kyiv (or near it?), was certainly aware of all this. So, having captured the important city of Chersonese (Korsun) in the Crimea in the spring of 988, he forced the then-ruling Byzantine emperors-brothers Basil and Constantine to fulfill the contractual conditions concluded with him in 987, including marrying their sister Lina, then to him time was not practiced in the mighty Byzantium, and to provide at their disposal the appropriate number of church hierarchs for the mass baptism of Russia.
It should be noted that at that time there was still a single Ecumenical Church, although, taking into account the local conditions, with minor theological and ritual differences – Western and Eastern rites. The final division between them (into Orthodox and Catholics) took place formally in 1054, and actually in the 12th century.
As for the origin and location of most of the then cities-principalities of June, there are still disputes among historians and archaeologists. In our oldest chronicle source “Tales of Bygone Years” for the year 981, only the cities of Cherven and Przemysl are indicated. Undoubtedly, even then, the existence of our principalities in the circles of historians and archaeologists still does not subside disputes. Undoubtedly, our Belz already existed then. which is first mentioned in the same chronicle by Nestor the chronicler in 1030.
There is no doubt that our Prybuza fortress was built and fortified only during this year 1030: Belz existed and flourished long before the above date.
From the southwest, in the times described, our lands bordered at that time with the rather extensive and influential Principality of Great Moravia (territories of present-day Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia), in vassal dependence of which until the middle of the 10th century, the southern Polish lands (Krakow), our Transcarpathia and our June cities also have a certain autonomy. In the middle of the 9th century (865 or 866), the Great Moravian prince Rostislav invited our First Slavic educators, creators Cyril and Methodius, to his possessions. Before that, the “Thessalonica brothers” translated the Bible into the ancient Slavic language, which was understandable for all Slavic tribes at that time. Gospel and other liturgical books, their missionary activity turned out to be quite SUCCESSFUL, because already in 870, Methodius founded a metropolitanate in Great Moravia, which included, in particular, the Przemyśl eparchy.
By the way, the churches of Sokalshina were under the jurisprudence of the Przemyśl Diocese until 1945…
There is no doubt that Rome did not sleep at that time, sending its preachers-missionaries to us through the German lands, who, like the students and followers of Cyril and Methodius, preached the word of God in Slavic (that’s why they are also missionaries), only the liturgical books they had in our lands were more successful in preaching Christianity of the Eastern rite. This lasted until the middle of the 10th century, until Great Moravia was destroyed by the pagan nomadic tribes of the Ugrians who came from the east. At the same time, the Polish prince Meshko from the Piast family begins the unification of Polish lands. At first, in southern Poland, which was part of the Great Moravian principality, there were dioceses of the Eastern rite. However, under the successor of Mieszko Boleslaw the Brave, Poland was occupied by the troops of the Holy Roman Empire, its emperor Otto III forced Prince Boleslaw to introduce dioceses subordinate to Rome in Poland. As a protest against this, part of the Polish Christians of the Eastern Rite returned to the pagan faith for a while.
And then Volodymyr and his wife arrived just in time and annexed our lands to Kievan Rus in 981. According to the “Tales of the Temporal Years”, in 992 Volodymyr visited our lands for the third time (?) (the second time he visited our lands with his wife, apparently, in the fall of 987, when he founded the city of Volodymyr-Volynskyi in his honor).
This is how Nestor the chronicler describes this event:
“In the year 992 (6500), Volodymyr went to the Dniester with two bishops, teaching many people to be baptized, and built a city in the land of Chervenska in his name, Volodymyr, and the church of the Holy Mother of God, leaving Bishop Stefan, and returning with joy…”
So, Prince Volodymyr in our lands in 992 actually legalized the Christian religion, which already existed here and was quite widespread, as the state religion. This is evidenced by such an eloquent fact, that mass baptism in Red Rus was, in comparison with other regions of the then extensive Kyivan Rus, the least painless, because “the word of Christ fell” on fertile, long-prepared soil.
Some scientists-historians. including A. S. Petrushevich and M. V. Malyshevskyi claim that at the time of the annexation of Red Rus to the Kyiv state by Prince Volodymyr, there were already four dioceses operating here. As we mentioned above, in 992, Prince Volodymyr ordained Bishop Stefan 1 in Volodymyr. However, his successor and later metropolitan of Galicia Leo Kishka calculated that Stefan 1 was the sixth bishop in Volodymyr, more precisely in Cherven. City of Cherven. which gave the name to our lands (Red Rus) was located, as it is believed, 4 kilometers south of the villages of the present city of Hrubeszów (Poland), 50 kilometers west of Volodymyr-Volynskyi. In the 11th century, it burned down and was never rebuilt, because nearby the ambassador was developing a young, moreover, the princely capital-competitor Vololymir-Volnyskyi.
So, summarizing all of the above, we come to the conclusion that the Christian faith (and it was considered essentially unified at the time, with minor differences) was quite widespread in Prybuzhzhia, mainly in the cities 50-100 years before the official baptism of Kyivan Rus, which became a defining milestone, the beginning of an entire era in our national history and culture.
O. NAZARUK. member of the “Kolos” literary association.
Golos z-nad Bug newspaper – 1991