They were an hundred to one;
How terrible our combat!
By my sword perished their haughty chief.
Vain success! A maid of Russia scorns my love.
"One day our vessel skimmed the waves.
Suddenly the sky grew black,
The wind roared, the waves submerged our deck,
But courage and ready hands defeated death.
My heart burned with hope.
O maid of Russia, wherefore scorn my love?
"I have a dozen claims for glory.
Bold in combat; I can tame the fiery steed;
Can swim the stormy sea, can skate the glassy ice;
Can pierce the bull's-eye with my spear;
And steer the fickle boat;
And yet the maid of Russia scorns my love!
"Wilt thou deny it, maiden young and proud?
Have I not come back from the walls
Of the Southern city, the hero of an hundred fights?
'Twas there I made my arms renowned,
And left the eternal memory of my name.
Why then, O maid of Russia, scorn my love?"
Fiery Fame founded schools and monasteries, he caused the Scriptures and many books written by the holy fathers—the lives of saints and romances—to be translated into Russian, and had coins struck for him by Greek founders with his Slav name on one side and his Christian name, George, on the other. He left a curious and somewhat barbarous code of laws: an assassin was left to the vengeance of his victim's family; a money-fine was to be paid for theft, assault, or other crimes; innocence or guilt was established by the ordeal of handling red-hot iron or plunging in boiling water. The judicial duel was also a part of the code; an Arabian writer thus describes it:—
"When one Russian hath a grievance against another he summons him to the tribunal of the prince and both present themselves before him. When the prince hath given his sentence his orders are executed. If his judgment is disputed, he bids them settle the matter with their swords. He whose sword cuts the sharpest gains the cause. When the duel takes place the friends of the two adversaries appear, armed to the teeth, and close the lists. The combatants then come to blows, and the victor can impose such conditions as he pleases."
Fiery Fame also confirmed the liberties and privileges of Novgorod and founded there another Cathedral of St. Sophia, one of the most precious remains of the Russian past.
CATHEDRAL OF ST. SOPHIA, NOVGOROD
When he felt the end of his days draw nigh he summoned his children to his bedside, and said:—
"Behold, I am going to leave this world. Love one another, for you are children of the same father and the same mother. Let friendship and union reign among you; then will our Saviour abide with you, your enemies will be crushed, and you will live in peace. But if you hate each other and are divided you will come to destruction, and this country which your ancestors conquered with so much pains will be utterly overthrown."
Fiery Fame distributed among them his cities, and bade them obey their eldest brother, the Grand Prince of Kief, as they would obey their father; and he died and was buried in St. Sophia in a sarcophagus of white and blue marble sculptured with birds and trees.
Family Quarrels Among the Princes
The number of churches and monasteries in Kief in the time of Fiery Fame shows how fast Russia was changing from a pagan to a Christian state. But the fact that its religion came from Constantinople and not from Rome had a great influence upon its history.
The Roman Church, intrenched behind its secular power, and furnished with the keys of heaven and earth, armed with the thunderbolt of excommunication, and counting kings and emperors its humble vassals, was able to help the Spaniards in their struggle with the Moors or to lead crusades against the impious Turks. Russia, on the other hand, was left to grapple single-handed with the barbarian hordes of Asia. The princes of the Roman faith were dependent upon the Pope for their crowns; the higher classes of European society were sharply marked from the lower by their knowledge of the church language, the Latin tongue. In Russia the Church was independent of the civil power, was purely national; its services were conducted in a language known as well to the peasant as to the grand prince.
The Greek religion gave the Russian princes an idea of royal power which finally reached its full development in the tsars of Moscow. The princes of Kief were by no means sovereigns in the modern sense of the word, but rather powerful chiefs of bands who at any time were free to leave them and take service elsewhere. But the priests from Constantinople brought a new ideaclass="underline" this was the emperor, "the heir of Augustus and Constantine the Great, the Vicar of God on earth, the typical monarch on whom the eyes of the barbarians of Gaul, as well as those of Scythia, were fixed."
POPE SYLVESTER II.
"He did not consider his states as an inheritance to be divided among his children, but handed over to his successor the empire in its entireness. His power came to him not only from the people but from God himself; his imperial ornaments like his person had a sacred character, and if ever the barbarian kings came to Constantinople and begged for one of his jewelled crowns, his purple robe, his sceptre, or his brodekins, their answer was that when God gave the empire to Constantine he sent these vestments by the angels, that they were not the work of man, that they were laid upon the altar and worn by the emperor himself only on solemn occasions, and that Leo the Kozar was visited with a mortal ulcer because he put on the crown without the Patriarch's permission."
Whatever advantages of morals or civilization Christianity brought in its train, it did not secure the blessings of peace. The hundred and seventy years from the death of Fiery Fame till the Tartar invasion were filled with a varying succession of domestic and foreign wars. During this time sixty-four states rose and fell, two hundred and ninety-three princes disputed the throne of Kief, eighty-three civil wars wasted the country, and innumerable campaigns were fought with the barbarians. As the ruin of the civilized empire of the Kozars broke the barriers against the Petchenegs, so Fiery Fame's defeat of the Petchenegs opened the way for the Kumans, who alone invaded Russia forty-six times during these troublous years. The end of the world seemed to be at hand: there were terrible disasters on every side; fires, earthquakes, eclipses, comets, famines, and locusts. The chronicle says:—
"Cities were deserted; you might see on all sides villages on fire, churches, houses, barns, reduced to ash-heaps, and the wretched citizens either dying beneath the lashes of their enemies, or waiting death with horror. Prisoners, barefoot and naked, were dragged in chains to the far-off lands of the savages, and they said to one another, weeping, 'I am from such a Russian village, and I am from such a city.' On our plains no more cattle or horses were to be seen; the fields were full of weeds, and wild beasts ranged the places where Christians had lately dwelt."
If Greece and Switzerland by their mountains and valleys are countries meant by nature to be cut up into petty kingdoms or principalities, Russia, composed of one vast plain with hills nowhere more than three hundred and sixty meters above the level of the sea, and crossed by great rivers, those "roads that run," was equally fitted to be one united empire. That this empire was not sooner formed was due to the custom of the princes to divide their domain among all their sons. During the two centuries of family quarrels which followed Fiery Fame's death, Kief, "the mother of Russian cities," continued to be a goal for the ambition of all the descendants of Rurik. The Prince of Kief was the grand prince, and according to the Eastern or patriarchal idea the eldest of the family, whether uncle, brother, or son, always claimed the fair city as his seat; it was there that Olga and Oleg had gloriously reigned, that St. Vladimir had held his epic court, that Fiery Fame had built his numberless churches with their golden domes.