Rus' external political relations were thus as unitary or as diffuse as were Rus' domestic politics. During the rare periods of comparatively unitary domestic authority - under Vladimir Sviatoslavich, for example, or under Iaroslav once he became 'sole ruler' after 1036 - it may be possible to identify a comparatively coherent foreign policy. Otherwise the separate princes' dealings with their non-Rus' neighbours were largely - and increasingly - autonomous.
4. Religion, culture, ideology
In the three generations after Vladimir the main implications of the official conversion to Christianity were made manifest. The official baptism was a single, datable event. Christianisation was a long process with profound consequences for social institutions, economic life, structures of authority and power, the urban environment, patterns ofemployment, manufacturing technology and production, public and private behaviours, diet, visual and written culture, aesthetic and intellectual standards and concepts, ideas and ideology, the understanding of the world.
The Church, including monasteries, provided Christianity's institutional foundations. In the larger administrative structure of Christianity, Rus' was a province of the patriarchate of Constantinople. The Church in Rus' was headed by a metropolitan - properly 'of Rhosia', or 'of Rus'', but in modern historiography usually labelled 'of Kiev' since that was his residence. Only one metropolitan during this period - Ilarion (c. 1051-4) - is known to have been a native of Rus'. The rest were appointees from Byzantium whose first language of religion was Greek.[72] Immediately below the metropolitan were the bishops, in charge of Church organisation in the sub-districts. The spread of bishoprics can serve as one rough indicator of the spread of organised Christianity itself. By the time of Vladimir Monomakh bishoprics were well established in the middle Dnieper region: at Chernigov and Pereiaslavl'; at Belgorod and Iur'ev close to Kiev (possibly to help look after Kiev itself). Moving northwards, there were bishoprics at Turov, Polotsk and Novgorod. Estimates vary as to the date of the foundation ofthe bishopric of Rostov, in the north-east, but no continuous episcopal presence can be traced there until well into the twelfth century.[73] Over a hundred years after the official conversion, therefore, organised Christianity was still quite compact: solidly embedded along the north-south, Novgorod-Kiev axis and in a cluster of bishoprics on the middle Dnieper, but not yet institutionally prominent further to the east or west.48 In other words, organised Christianity followed - with a certain time-lag - the political fortunes of the dynasty.
The first bishops must have come from Byzantium, or from Bulgaria (whence they could bring their experience of Christianity in Slavonic), but by the second half of the eleventh century we know of several who were trained locally, via Rus' monasteries.49 Monks and bishops had to be celibate, while the parish clergy had to be married, hence bishops were recruited from among monks, not from among the parish clergy (who were also likely to have been educated to a much lower level). The early history of Rus' monasti- cism is predictably obscure, but again by the late eleventh century some quite substantial foundations were well established in Kiev and the other principal towns.
The Church's most public act was not prayer but building, and the institutions of Christianity transformed the urban landscape. Most churches were small and made of wood. Vladimir's 'Tithe church' of the Mother of God, in his palace compound in Kiev, was the first of the monumental masonry churches,50 and a more or less continuous tradition of such buildings began from the second quarter of the eleventh century. Mstislav Vladimirovich initiated a building programme in Chernigov but he died when its centrepiece, the church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour, was still only 'as high as a man standing on horseback could stretch with his hands'.51 From the moment he assumed 'sole rule', Iaroslav Vladimirovich set about turning Kiev into a focus of visible splendour such as no other Rus' city could hope to rival. Taking Constantinople as the model, and importing Byzantine specialists to oversee the job, he commissioned the huge (by the standards of normal East Christian churches) cathedral of St Sophia, as well as churches of St George and St Irene
des dioceses russes au milieu du XII siecle', in Mille ans de christianisme russe, 988-1988. Actes du colloque international de l'Universite Paris-Nanterre 20-23 janvier 1988 (Paris: YMCA,
1989), pp. 27-49.
48 See also the archaeological evidence: A. P. Motsia, 'Nekotorye svedeniiao rasprostranenii khristianstva na Rusi po dannym pogrebal'nogo obriada', in Obriady i verovaniia drevnego naseleniia Ukrainy. Sbornik nauchnykh trudov (Kiev: Naukova Dumka, 1990), pp. 114-32; V V Sedov, 'Rasprostranenie khristianstva vDrevnei Rusi', Kratkiesoobshcheniialnstituta arkheologii, 208 (1993): 3-11.
49 See Franklin and Shepard, The Emergence of Rus, pp. 311-12.
50 See F. Kampfer, 'Eine Residenz fur AnnaPorphyrogenneta',JGO 41 (1993): 101-10; Tserkva Bohoroytsi desiatynnavKyevi (Kiev: ArtEk, 1996).
51 PVL, vol. I, p. 101.
(patron saints of himself and his wife, but also echoing distinguished imperial foundations in Constantinople). Lesser cathedrals of St Sophia were also built in mid-century in Novgorod and Polotsk. The list of the most prestigious church buildings of the later eleventh century and early twelfth century would include: the church of the Dormition of the Mother of God at the Caves monastery and the church of St Michael at the Vydubichi monastery (both 1070s, both just outside the city), the 'golden-domed' church of St Michael (c.1108) and the church of the Saviour at the princely residence at Berestovo (1115-19). There was a flurry of building at Pereiaslavl' in the 1090s and 1100s, and the main churches of the Novgorodian monasteries of St George and St Anthony date from the 1110s, while the first two decades of the twelfth century also see the start of work on the earliest masonry churches in Suzdal', Smolensk and Peremyshl'.[74] The pattern of church-building, too, mirrors the fortunes of the dynasty.
Churches and large monasteries cost money to build and run. Donations could of course come from all kinds of people, but the main support for the central institutions of the Church was by means of a tithe from specified princely income. Several narrative and documentary sources confirm that payment of a tithe was established practice, though the details vary.[75] By contrast, major donations to monasteries were more likely to be directly in the form of land, including dues from those who lived on the land. Monks could also engage in productive labour, whether on the land or through small-scale crafts and trading. Thus while the metropolitans and bishops were to an appreciable extent dependent on continuing allocations from the surplus wealth of others, a successful monastery enjoyed the benefits of its own endowment and also the opportunity to generate income from its own activities. Nothing substantial is known about support for the lower clergy. One may speculate that they lived mainly off local donations.
73
See AndrzejPoppe, 'Werdegang der Diozesanstruktur der Kiever Metropolitankirche in den ersten Jahrhunderten der Christianisierung der Ostslaven', in K. C. Felmy et al. (eds.),
74
For chronological tables of masonry churches see P. A. Rappoport,
75
See Ia. N. Shchapov,