The inspiration for this accomplishment came from neither Europe nor Asia, but from a Byzantine Empire that lay between the two, Greek in speech but Oriental in magnificence. The Byzantine capital of Constantinople lay on the strait of water separating Europe from Asia and connecting the Mediterranean with the Black Sea and the rivers leading into the heartland of Central and Eastern Europe: the Danube, the Dnieper, and the Don. Known as the "new" or "second" Rome, this city of Constantine continued to rule the Eastern half of the old Roman Empire for almost a thousand years after the Western Roman Empire had crumbled.
Of all the cultural accomplishments of Byzantium, none was more important than the bringing of Christianity to the Slavs. When the Holy Land, North Africa, and Asia Minor fell to Islam in the seventh and eighth centuries, Byzantium was forced to turn north and east to recoup its fortunes. By the ninth century, Constantinople had regained the self-confidence needed for fresh expansion. The long-debated questions of Christian doctrine had been resolved by the seven councils of the Church; Islamic invaders
had been repelled from without and puritanical iconoclasts rejected within the capital. Emperors and Patriarchs had both begun to challenge the authority of a West not yet clearly emerging from the Dark Ages.
Thej-apidjixtostor^ of: Byzantine political and cultural influence into the Balkans during the ninth century dramatized the exuberance of this "second golden age" of Byzantine history. The key moment in this penetration was the mission to the Slavs of two Greek brothers from the borderlands of the Slavic world in Macedonia: Cyril, a widely traveled and rcndwnedsctfolaf, and Methodius', ah administrator with experience in Slavic-speaking areas of the Byzantine Empire. In distant Moravia and later in Bulgaria, they helped turn vernacular Slavic into a written language suitable for translating the basic'books of Orthodox Christendom. They apparently did their first work with the exotic and specially invented Glagolitic alphabet; but their followers soon concentrated on the Cyrillic alphabet, which had many relatively familiar Greek letters. A rich store of Christian literature was transcribed in both alphabets within a half century of thejnissionaries' death.* Slavonic became the language of worship of all Orthodox Slavs; and Cyrillic,"which ???? the name of the more scholarly brother, became the alphabet of the Bulgarians and South Slavs.
When the followers of Cyril and Methodius extended these liturgical and literary activities to Kievan Russia in the tenth and the early eleventh century, the Eastern Slavs acquired a language that had become (together with Latin and Greek) one of the three languages of writing and worship in medieval Christendom. Though subjected to many changes and variations, Church Slavonic remained the basic literary language of Russia until late in the seventeenth century.
Among the many Slavic principalities to accept the forms and faith of Byzantium, Kievan Russia--or Rus', as it was then called-occupied a unique place even from the beginning. Unlike the Balkan Slavic kingdoms, the Kievan domain lay entirely beyond the confines of the old Roman em-pireTlt was one of the last distinct national civilizations to accept Byzantine Christianity; the only one never clearly to accept political subordination to Constantinople; and by far the largest-stretching north to the Baltic and almost to the Arctic Ocean.
Culturally, however, Kiev was in many ways even more deeply dependent on Constantinople than many regions within the empire. For the Russian leaders of the late tenth and the early eleventh century accepted Orthodoxy with the uncritical enthusiasm of the new convert, and sought to transfer the splendors of Constantinople to Kiev in the wholesale manner of the nouveau riche. Prince Vladimir brought the majestic rituals and services of Byzantium to Kiev shortly after his conversion in 988; and, particularly under his
illustrious son Yaroslav the Wise, learned churchmen streamed in from Byzantium bringing with them models for early Russian laws, chronicles, and sermons. Great churches like Santa Sophia and St. George were named for their counterparts in Constantinople, as were the "golden gates" of the city.7
Suffused with a "Christian optimism, a joy that Rus' had become worthy of joining Christianity at the 'eleventh hour' just before the end of the world,"8 Kiev accepted more unreservedly than Byzantium itself the claim that Orthodox Christianity had solved all the basic problems of belief and worship. All that was needed was "right praising" (the literal translation of pravoslavie, the Russian version of the Greek orthodoxos) through the forms of worship handed down by the Apostolic Church and defined for all time by its seven ecumenical councils. Changes in dogma or even sacred phraseology could not be tolerated, for there was but one answer to any controversy. The Eastern Church first broke with Rome in the late ninth century, when the latter added the phrase "and from the Son" to the assertion in the Nicene Creed "that the Holy Spirit proceeds "from God the Father."
Nowhere was the traditional Eastern formula defended with greater zeal than in Russia. As if compensating for the relative lateness of their conversion, Russian Orthodoxy tended to accept unquestioningly Orthodox definitions of truth and Byzantine forms of art; but the complex philosophic traditions and literary conventions of Byzantium (let alone the classical and Hellenic foundations of Byzantine culture) were'ne'vSrpropeMy assimilated. Thus,farefuiiy,'Russia took over "the Byzantine achievement . . . without the Byzantine inquisitiveness."9
Working within this ornate and stylized Byzantine heritage, Kievan Russia developed two distinctive attitudes which gave an all-important initial sense of direction to Russian culture. First was a direct sense of beauty, a passion for seeing spiritual truth in concrete forms. The beauty of Constantinople and of its places and forms of worship was responsible for the conversion of Vladimir according to the earliest historical record of the Kievm~p€ii amp;^. This "Primary Chronicle"-itself a vivid, often beautiful work of literature-tells how Vladimir's emissaries found Moslem worship frenzied and foul-smelling, and "beheld no glory" in the ceremonies of Western Christians. But in Constantinople
the Greeks led,jjs_to_the.h.uUdJngs where they worship their God, and we knew"not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no_ such splendor or such beauty, and,,we are at a loss to describe it. We know only that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations. For we cannot forget that beauty. Every man,
after tasting something sweet, is afterward unwilling to accept that which is bitter. . . .10
The Kievan princes sought to re-create this experience of beauty in the Byzantine-style cathedrals that sprang up in every important city of Eastern Slavdom. The panoply of heaven was represented by the composed central dome; its interior was embellished with the awesome image of the Panto-krator, the Divine Creator of both heaven and earth. Prominent among the other mosaic and frescoed figures that beautified the interior walls and domes was the Theotokos, the "God-bearing" Virgin. The cathedrals provided a center of beauty and a source of sanctification for the surrounding region. The word sobor, used to describe the gatherings in which the authority of God was invoked on all communal activities, also became the word for cathedral;11 and the life of each "gathering" was built around the liturgy: the rilual, communal re-enactment of Christ's saving sacrifice. ' -^ Concrete beauty rather than abstract ideas conveyed the essence of the Christian message to the early Russians, and inspired a fresh flowering of Byzantine art and letters on Russian soil. Man's function was not to analyze that which Has been resolved or to explain that which is mysterious, but lovingly and humbly to embellish the inherited forms of praise and worship -and thus, perhaps, gain some imperfect sense of the luminous world to come. Within a few decades of Vladimir's conversion Kiev was transformed into a majestic city. A visiting Western bishop referred to it as "the rival of Constantinople";12 and its first native metropolitan, Ilarion of Kiev, spoke of it as