I have been asked to convey a brief word of greeting to this august international assembly of scholars, gathered together in Kiev to consider the various scientific aspects of the Baptism of Russia a thousand years ago.
On behalf of Baselius Mar Thoma Mathews I, the Catholicos of the East, and the twenty brother bishops of the Malankara Orthodox Church in India, as well as of the priests and nearly 2 million people of our Church, I am privileged to convey to the Russian Orthodox Church, to His Holiness Patriarch Pimen of Moscow and all Russia, to His Eminence Metropolitan Philaret of Kiev and Galicia, Exarch of the Ukraine, to all bishops, priests and peoples of the Russian Orthodox Church, and to the eminent body of international scholars assembled hero in Kiev, our friendly, fraternal and warm greetings and good wishes in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The Baptism of Russia a thousand years ago was an event of great ecumenical importance, not merely a national event of enormous importance to the Russian nation and the Russian Orthodox Church. I shall give a few reasons for my ascribing unusual ecumenical importance to the event of a millennium age, but also to the projected millenary celebrations which begin with this seminar and will continue for the next few years.
1. Today the membership of the Russian Orthodox Church constitutes more than half of the total membership of all autocephalous Orthodox Churches, which I estimate today at I50 million, including the five autocephalous Oriental Orthodox Churches. The Russian Orthodox Church has today a membership of 80 million according to my estimate. If the Baptism of Russia had not taken place a thousand years ago, Orthodoxy would have been both numerically and spiritually a much weaker force than it is today.
2. Secondly it is a factor of considerable importance for the universal character of Orthodoxy that the Orthodox Church should exist with spiritual autonomy and independent identity outside the countries of the Byzantine Empire and the Greek-speaking churches. There were significant communities of Orthodox organized in autocephalous churches outside the Roman or Byzantine empires, for example the churches of Nubia, Ethiopia, Armenia, Georgia, Persia, and India already before the post-Chalcedon schism in the Church. The emergence of a significant national Church outside the Byzantine Empire in the tenth century, even though it achieved-autocephaly only several centuries later, has a major role in expressing the identity of the Church as in no way identified with the Byzantine or Roman empires. The persistence of the Russian Orthodox Church for several centuries free from Graeco-Roman authority and control serves as a monumental witness to the true ecumenicity and universality of the Orthodox Church.
3. Thirdly, the Eastern or Oriental Orthodox churches in Asia and Africa, as spokesmen of the lands and cultures where millions of people are the victims of injustice and exploitation, have a special reason for rejoicing in the millenary celebrations of the Baptism of Russia. For us, Christians of Asia and Africa, the Russian Orthodox Church and Christian churches in socialist countries in general, are a symbol of hope. The patterns of Christianity established in western non-socialist countries are not suitable for expressing the Christian identity of our Asian-African churches. We are almost all minority communities within our nations, but our people aspire for the liberation of all people, Christians as well as non-Christians, from oppression, exploitation, injustice and
War.
We see in the churches in socialist countries a possibility for a new and more relevant expression of the identity of the Christian Church in a society committed to justice, freedom, peace and human dignity for all. We know that the churches in the socialist countries are still in the process of breaking away from their pre-socialist feudal~capitalist forms and patterns, and expressing themselves in terms of a universal humanism and commitment to justice and peace.
We see the forthcoming millenary celebrations as a stage in evolving a pattern of Christian obedience and spirituality in a socialist context, without sacrificing anything of the immensely precious heritage of the Eastern Orthodox tradition. We sincerely hope that the celebrations of I988 will be more than a mere triumphalistic manifestation of worldly splendor. We hope that it will be primarily an appeal to the conscience of humanity to stand on the side of the victims of oppression and exploitation, of war and injustice. We hope that the celebrations will highlight the closely interrelated issues of peace and justice, in the context of a humanity-loving spirituality.
It is in this context I wish to make a few personal affirmations for your comment and critique, in relation to the Baptism of Russia, as a non-Russian friend of the Soviet people and of the Russian Orthodox Church.
In the interest of a cosmopolitan and non-parochial perspective, it seems important for me to recognize the general principle that no nation, tribe or people can exist authentically without accepting valuable contributions from other nations and tribes.
The Russian Primary Chronicle (Tale of Bygone Years) says that when Oleg, Prince of Kiev, attacked Constantinople in 904-907, his army contained Varangians, Slavs, Chuds, Krivichians, Merians, Polyanians, Severians, Derevlians, Radimichians, Croats, Dulebians and Tivercians.
In other words, Kievans included many other tribes and nations which were not strictly Slavs, but included all kinds of people of West Asian, Southeast European and North European origin. Greek writings sometimes club all these elements together as Great Scythia.
After Oleg had vanquished the Byzantine army and extracted tribute from Constantinople, the princes he sent in AD 9I2 to actually receive payment and sign a treaty were specified as "We of the Rusnation, Karl, Ingjald, Farulf, Vermund, Hrollaf, Gunnar, Harold, Karni, Frithleif, Hroarr, Angantyr, Thvand, Leithulf, Fast and Steinvith, sent by Olef, Grand Prince of Rus."
To my untrained ear, they do not all sound like Slavonic names. Many of them seem to me Germanic and Scandinavian. It is my understanding that while the Russian nation came to adopt the Slavonic language as their common language, the people who constituted the Rus nation were not all Slavs. And I hope the Russian Orthodox Church will give deeper consideration to this question of ethnic origin, and incorporate the findings into its own ethnic consciousness. I am glad that in the Soviet Union which recognizes one hundred different nationalities as constituting it, its people are developing a new ethnic consciousness which is not narrowly parochial but gives full value to the Union's Asian and European components.
This development in the Russian Orthodox Church's self-understanding as more than Slavic is very important.for us Asians and Africans.
It is in this context that I must presume to speak without expert knowledge about the contributing elements to the Baptism of Russia. Rival claims have been made in this seminar itself by Western Catholics, Byzantine Orthodox, by Bulgarians, Magyars and Armenians.
In principle I would say again first that no nation that is vital, exist authentically without receiving from and giving to others.
I would also say secondly that without a vital core of its own, no nation can authentically give or receive.
I would say thirdly that each mature nation should have the self-assurance to acknowledge with generous gratitude what it has received from others, and at the same time be quite restrained in making claims about what it has given to others.
At the time of the Baptism of Russia, the Hus nation lived at the confluence of many cultures. Among these we must mention five at least: First comes the great civilization of Byzantium, with Constantinople its capital, and in a sense capital of an orientalized Graeko-Roman international culture, but by no means a universal culture then or now.
Byzantine Influence
Byzantium was ruled by the Macedonian-Commenian dynasties at the time of the Baptism of Russia, and had survived the Persian and Arabian conquests of the seventh and eight centuries. Byzantium itself was a composite culture, conserving the rich Hellenistic heritage, but heavily "Orientalized" by elements from Egypt, Nubia, Syria, Arab lands, and even Persian, Akkadian, Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian and Phoenician elements among others. We should not make the mistake of thinking of the Byzantine civilization as identical with the Greek civilization. The Byzantine Commonwealth from which Kievan Russia accepted Christianity was by no means a monolithic Greek culture. Time does not permit an adequate treatment of this cosmopolitan aspect of the Byzantine culture from which Russia received much both before and after the Baptism of Russia. Even the Christianity of Byzantium was a glorious integration of the transcendent God of Judaism with the close-to-earth Gods of Hellenism through feelable, touchable, tasteable sacraments and icons and
Symbols.
About the extent of Byzantine influence on the origin and development of the Russian Church we can say the following:
The Baptism of Vladimir and of Kievan Russia whether it occurred in Kiev or Kherson, was a wholesale adoption of Byzantine Christianity. There may have been other preparatory influences from Magyars, Bulgars, Armenians, Georgians etc., but the main agent was Byzantine Christianity.Until the Mongolian conquest of I240, for two and a half centuries of the Russian Church's early formative period, the Russian Church remained an ecclesiastical province of the Byzantine Church except for a few exceptions. The metropolitan of Kiev was always a Greek appointed by the Patriarch of Constantinople. The Metropolitan of Kiev and all Russia, however powerful he may have been, was only a single person. The spirituality of the Church was shaped by the Cave monastery and by monks like St.Anthony and St.Feodosy who were Russians. The literature and liturgy that shaped the basic structure of the Kievan Church was strictly Byzantine in origin, though these came to Kiev in Slavonic translations made by the Moravian~Bulgarian Slavs.
Western Influence
Second, we must refer briefly to the contribution of Western Christianity and culture. In the first half of the 9th century, Charlemagne had brought a new vitality to the Western Church and society led by Franks and Latins. There is no doubt that Kievan princes had close relations with the Western princes. Only one generation after the Baptism of Russia, at the high point of Kievan development, Kievan Prince Yaroslav the Wise (1019—1054) had a Swedish princess as his wife, and three of their sons married European princesses, and three of their daughters married Kings of France, Hungary and Norway. Yaroslav‘s sister married a Polish King. Another sister married a Byzantine Prince.
The tragedy of the rather unreasonably exorbitant claims made by the Latin Church in relation to the conversion of Russia, to me is that the ethnic, the commercial and political relation of Kievan Russia with Western Europe are not sufficiently highlighted. Instead extrapolations are made backwards from later developments to claim an unwarranted universal jurisdiction of the Pope of Rome over all Christians. Quite obviously Vladimir Cil receive a delegation of German Catholic bishops and listened to their arguments a good while before his decision to embrace Byzantine Christianity. But also obviously the Catholic theologians do not seem to have made much of an impression on the Kievans.
We must not forget that the Kievan Prince was a merchant prince. Trade and land were twin bases of the Kievan economy. There was both peaceful trade and robber-trade or tribute-trade when bands of invaders extracted forest products and other commodities from rural people and sent them for sale in Baghdad or Constantinople. This was the largest source of Western influence on Kievan Russia -- not the influence of the Latin Church. Very few of the Western fathers were translated into Old Slavonic, while Pseudo-Dionysius, John of Damascus, Ephraem the Syrian, Nicetas of Heracleia, Theodoret, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa, Basil of Caesaria and others had been translated into Old Slavonic, many of them by Bulgarian-Serbian Slavs, and widely used by Kievan monks. The foundations of Russian spirituality were laid by the two monastic saints of early Russia, St.Anthony (982-1073) and St.Fecdcsy who died in 1074. They were formed and shared by the Byzantine and Syrian monastic traditions -- not by Western monasticism.
This is not to say that there were no ecclesiastical contacts. We should remember that at the time of the Baptism cf Russia, the Western schism of I054 had not taken place. The Greek and Latin churches were in communion with each other. In 959 Princess Olga sent to King Otto I and asked for a Western bishop. Bishop Adalbert from Trier came and spent a year in Kiev, but was unsuccessful in converting the Rus. So were the bishops who were sent by Pope Benedict VII in 977, just 11 years before the Baptism of Russia.
It was not the case that the Rus had no contacts with Latin Christianity in the tenth century. The fact remains, however, that these contacts had no influence in the sharing of Kievan Christianity. In reality whatever contacts there were with the West began to decline after the Baptism of Russia. No lasting or significant influence of Latin Christianity on the Kievans can be documented for the period between the Baptism of Russia and the schism of 1054. After that the relations naturally deteriorated until I240 when the Mongolian invasions cut off the Western contacts altogether.
The influence of Latin Christianity on the Russian Orthodox Church in its formative period was thus quite minimal.
Southern Slav Influence
Third we must consider the influence of the Southern Slavs (Bulgars, Serbs and Croats) who had been converted more than a century earlier. This is an influence which is difficult to underestimate, but also hard to measure. The Southern Slavs had already translated the Byzantine liturgy into Old Slavonic, and also translated magnificent Patristic and monastic texts, which were received by the Kievans with gratitude. The Rus did not have to learn Greek in order to gain access to the basic texts of Byzantine Christianity. If they had to learn Greek, as the Franks and others had to learn Latin, the Byzantine cultural influence no doubt would have been much greater. The availability of the texts in Slavonic thus helped the development of a distinctive Slavic identity for the Russian Church.
The Moravian Slavic school established by Cyril and Methodius with thousands of students must have had its own influence in the spreading of Eastern Christian:literature to the Slavic people of Kievan Russia also, through the medium of graduates of the Moravian school and their disciples.
The Khazar Influence
The fourth influence, often left unrecorded, was the state and culture of the Khazars. The Khazar empire in the 9th century included the territory north of the Black Sea and the Caucasus, between the Carpathians in the West and the Caspian coast to the East. The great city of Itil on the Caspian West coast was a great bulwark in stopping the Arab incursions into Europe. The Khazars had the Volga Bulgars and many South Slavic tribes under their overlordship. Byzantine emperors Justinian II and Constantine V in the first half of the 8th century hid each o Khazar wife. As the Pecheneg empire rose and Kievan Russia began to develop in the early tenth century, the Khazar empire declined. Prince Svyatoslav of Kiev launched a campaign agsinst the Khazars and destroyed the city of Itil in 965 A.D., just 23 years before the Baptism of Russia.
The Khazar Kagan and his boyars had embraced Judaism, but they had in their empire many Slavic tribes, and the mission of Cyril and Methodius had been directed to them before turning to Moravia. Some of these Khazar Slavic tribes may have become Christian, but.we cannot document any direct influence of these on Kievan Christianity, though these may have been channels for the spreading of Slavonic Christian literature in Kievan Russia.
The Asia Influence
The fifth influence on Kievan Russia was more cultural than ecclesiastical. The people of Crimea had been profoundly influenced by the rising Arab culture of West Asia. The very paganism of pre-Christian Kiev had received many cultural influences from this West Asian civilization which inherited the culture of the Fertile Crescent, and with which the Kievan Rus maintained intense trade relations.
In speaking about these five cultural and religious influences with their varying degrees of impact on Kievan Russia, one must not forget that the Varangian or Kievan Rus were a people with an identity of their own, which received transformed and integrated these influences. Kievan Russia was not a passive recipient of influences from outside. The case of Kievan identity expressed itself in the distinctiveness of the Russian Orthodox Church from its very inception: when any of these influences became dominant or oppressive, Kievan Russia resisted that influence, as for example Yaroslav, the Wise (1019-1054) resisted Byzantium by appointing the first Kievan Metropolitan (Hilarion of Kiev), and his twelfth century successor in appointing Clement (from Smolensk) to that post in I147.
Kievan Christianity was not simply a copy of Byzantine Christianity. It developed its own vitality and spirituality which transformed the musicological, artistic and other elements which it absorbed from Byzantium.
I wish to conclude by expressing my gratitude to God for the life and mission of the Russian Orthodox Church. May it continue to spread life and light to the world until the coming of our Lord.