surface I ibjects on an unchanging and unfriendly sea.
Any steppe people who felt that time really mattered-and that they as « pcopleTiarTa mission to perform in time-was automatically distinct. Conversion to the profoundly historical creed of Judaism had prolonged the' life nl 1 he exposed Khazar empire to the south; and to the east, the Volga llulgars had attained an importance out of all proportion to their numbers by accepting Islam. Christianity had appeared in history midway in time I ui ween these two monotheisms, and the Christianity which took root amone ilie l.astern Slavs provided many of the same psychological satisfactions as tlic prophetic creeds adopted by their neighboring civilizations.
There is a historical cast to the most widely reproduced sermon of the Kievan period, Metropolitan Ilarion's 'On Law and Grace.' It was apparently first delivered on Easter in 1049, just two days after the feast of the Annunciation of the Virgin in the church of the Annunciation, near the ‹ loldcn Gate of the city, to celebrate the completion of the walls around Kiev.2' After contrasting the law of the Old Testament with the grace made possible through the New, Ilarion rushes on to depict something rather like I he coming age of glory on Russian soil. He bids Vladimir rise from the dead and look upon Kiev transformed into a kind of New Jerusalem. Vladimir's son, Yaroslav the Wise, has built the Santa Sophia, 'the great and holy lemple of Divine Wisdom;,' within the walls of 'the city of glory, Kiev,' just as David's son Solomon had raised up a temple within Jerusalem in the time of the law.27 Like the people of Israel, the Kievans were called upon not just to profess the faith but to testify in deeds their devotion to the living (loci. Thus, churches were built and a city transformed under Yaroslav, not lor decorative effect, but for Christian witness. In response to God's gracious gilt of His Son, God's people were returning their offering of praise and thanksgiving. The forms of art and worship were those hallowed by the one 'right-praising' Church in which His Holy Spirit dwelt.
Conservative adherence to past practices was to serve, ironically, to heighten radical expectations of an approaching end to history. Believing that the forms of art and worship should be preserved intact until the second
coming of Christ, Russians tended to explain unavoidable innovations as signs that the promised end was drawing near. Though this 'eschatological psychosis' was to be more characteristic of the later Muscovite period, there are already traces of it in the dark prophetic preaching of Abraham of Smolensk.28
Kievan Russia received such unity as it attained essentially through waves of conversion-moving north from Kiev and out from the princely .court in each city to ever wider sections of the surrounding populace. Conversion was apparently more important than colonization in unifying the region,29 and each new wave of converts tended to adopt not merely the Byzantine but the Kievan heritage as well. The Slavonic language became the uniform vehicle for writing and worship, slowly driving the Finno-Ugrian tongues which originally dominated much of northern Russia to peripheral regions: Finland and Esthonia to the west and the Mordvin and Chefemis regions to the east along the Volga. The sense, of historic destiny grew; and the idea of Christianity as a religion of victorious combat increased as the obstacles-both pagan and natural-grew more formidable.
Everywhere that the new faith went it was dramatically translated into monuments of church architecture: j the magnificent Santa Sophia in Novgorod, the second city of early Russia and a point of commercial contact with the Germanic peoples of the Baltic; the lavish Cathedral of the Assumption in Vladimir, the favored northern headquarters for the Kievan princes and a key center on the upper Volga. Both of these twelfth-century masterpieces were modeled on (and named after) counterparts in Kiev; but the building of churches extended beyond the cities, even beyond the records of monastic chroniclers, out to such forbidding spots as the shores of Lake Ladoga. There, in the late 1160's, the church of St. George was built and adorned with beautiful frescoes which illustrate the fidelity to tradition and sense of destiny that were present in the chronicles. The fact that this memorable church is not even mentioned in the chronicles points to the probability that there were many other vanished monuments of this kind. Named after the saintly dragon slayer who became a special hero of the Russian north, St. George's was probably built as a votive offering for victory in battle over the Swedes.30 Byzantine in its iconography, the surviving frescoes reveal nonetheless a preoccupation with the details of the Last Judgment, which-characteristically in Russian churches-dominated, and even extended beyond, the confines of the inner west wall.
Some of the most memorable figures depicted in the frescoes are the prophets and warrior krng amp;of the Old Testament. The very severity of their stylized, Byzantine presentation makes the compassionate figure of Mary
‹ccm a unique and welcome source of relief and deliverance. She was the protectress of Kiev and Novgorod as she had been of Constantinople. Russians were singing hymns to her presanctified state and dedicating • lunches to her assumption into heaven well before Western Christendom. She alone brought respite from damnation in the famous apocryphal tale of 'Trie Virgin's Visit to Hell,' which was brought from Byzantium in the twelfth century to new and enduring popularity in Russia.31 For the love of departed sinners, she had descended into the Inferno to win them annual i ? lease from their suffering during the period from Holy Thursday to
I'rntecost.
Much of the mythology that had gathered about the holy cities of curlier civilizations was transferred to Kiev and Novgorod; and the lore of ancient shrines and monasteries, to the new ones of the Orthodox Eastern Slavs. The legend that the apostle Andrew had brought Christianity directly to Kiev just as Peter had to Rortie was taken over from Constantinople. I egends resembling those about the catacombs at Rome were developed w amiujdjthe caves of Kiev, and the idea subtly grew that Kiev might be a 'second Jerusalem.'32
TEe unity of Kievan Russia was above all that of a common religious fuilh. The forms of faith and worship were almost the only uniformities in this loosely structured civilization. Such economic strength and political cohesion as had existed began to break down with the internecine strife of the late twelfth century, the Latin occupation of Contantinople in 1204, and ihc subsequent assaults almost simultaneously launched against the Eastern Shivs by the Mongols from the east and the Teutonic Knights from the.west. The Mongols, who sacked Kiev in 1240, proved the more formidable Inc. They prowled at will across the exposed steppe, interdicted the lucrative river routes to the south, and left the 'mother of Russian cities' in a state of continuing insecurity. Cultural independence and local self-government were maintained only by regular payment of tribute to the Mongol khan, Unlike the Islamic Arabs, who had brought Greek science and philosophy with (hem when they extended their power into the Christian world, the nomadic pagans of Genghis and Batu Khan brought almost nothing of intellectual or artistic worth. The clearest cultural legacy of the Mongols lay in the military and administrative sphere. Mongol terms for money and weapons filtered into the Russian language; and new habits of petitioning rulers through a form of prostration attd kowtow known as chelobitnaia (literally, 'beating the forehead') were also taken over.83
The period of Mongol domination-roughly from 1240 until the termination of tribute m 1480-was not so mucn one of 'Oriental des-
»i Viii -1I-.
potism^34 as of decentralized localism among the Orthodox Eastern Slavs. This 'appanage period' of Russian history was one of those when, in Spengler's words,
. . . high history lays itself down weary to sleep. Man becomes a plant again, clinging to the soil, dumb and enduring. The timefess village,' the 'eternal' peasant reappear, begetting children and burying seed in mother
