Historical Tales Volume Viii Part 3

For this purpose there was selected a young Varangian who, with his father, had adopted the Christian faith. The father refused to give up his son, and the enraged people, who looked on the refusal as an insult to their prince and their G.o.ds, broke into the house and murdered both father and son. These two have since been canonized by the Russian Church as the only martyrs to its faith.

Vladimir by this time had become great in dominion, his warlike prowess extending the borders of Russia on all sides. The nations to the south saw that a great kingdom had arisen on their northern border, ruled by a warlike and conquering prince, and it was deemed wise to seek to win him from the wors.h.i.+p of idols to a more elevated faith. Askhold and Dir had been baptized as Christians. Olga, after her b.l.o.o.d.y revenge, had gone to Constantinople and been baptized by the patriarch. But the nation continued pagan, Vladimir was an idolater in grain, and a great field lay open for missionary zeal.

No less than four of the peoples of the south sought to make a convert of this powerful prince. The Bulgarians endeavored to win him to the religion of Mohammed, picturing to him in alluring language the charms of their paradise, with its lovely houris. But he must give up wine.

This was more than he was ready to do.

"Wine is the delight of the Russians," he said: "we cannot do without it."

The envoys of the Christian churches and the Jewish faith also sought to win him over. The appeal of the Jews, however, failed to impress him, and he dismissed them with the remark that they had no country, and that he had no inclination to join hands with wanderers under the ban of Heaven. There remained the Christians, comprising the Roman and Greek Churches, at that time in unison. Of these the Greek Church, the claims of which were presented to him by an advocate from Constantinople, appealed to him most strongly, since its doctrines had been accepted by Queen Olga.

As may be seen, religion with Vladimir was far more a matter of policy than of piety. The G.o.ds of his fathers, to whom he had done such honor, had no abiding place in his heart; and that belief which would be most to his advantage was for him the best.

To settle the question he sent ten of his chief boyars, or n.o.bles, to the south, that they might examine and report on the religions of the different countries. They were not long in coming to a decision.

Mohammedanism and Catholicism, they said, they had found only in poor and barbarous provinces. Judaism had no land to call its own. But the Greek faith dwelt in a magnificent metropolis, and its ceremonies were full of pomp and solemnity.

"If the Greek religion were not the best," they said, in conclusion, "Olga, your ancestress, and the wisest of mortals, would never have thought of embracing it."

Pomp and solemnity won the day, and Vladimir determined to follow Olga's example. As to what religion meant in itself he seems to have thought little and cared less. His method of becoming a Christian was so original that it is well worth the telling.

Since the days of Olga Kief had possessed Christian churches and priests, and Vladimir might easily have been baptized without leaving home. But this was far too simple a process for a prince of his dignity.

He must be baptized by a bishop of the parent Church, and the missionaries who were to convert his people must come from the central home of the faith.

Should he ask the emperor for the rite of baptism? Not he; it would be too much like rendering homage to a prince no greater than himself. The haughty barbarian found himself in a quandary; but soon he discovered a promising way out of it. He would make war on Greece, conquer priests and churches, and by force of arms obtain instruction and baptism in the new faith. Surely never before or since was a war waged with the object of winning a new religion.

Gathering a large army, Vladimir marched to the Crimea, where stood the rich and powerful Greek city of Kherson. The ruins of this city may still be seen near the modern Sevastopol. To it he laid siege, warning the inhabitants that it would be wise in them to yield, for he was prepared to remain three years before their walls.

The Khersonites proved obstinate, and for six months he besieged them closely. But no progress was made, and it began to look as if Vladimir would never become a Christian in his chosen mode. A traitor within the walls, however, solved the difficulty. He shot from the ramparts an arrow to which a letter was attached, in which the Russians were told that the city obtained all its fresh water from a spring near their camp, to which ran underground pipes. Vladimir cut the pipes, and the city, in peril of the horrors of thirst, was forced to yield.

Baptism was now to be had from the parent source, but Vladimir was still not content. He demanded to be united by ties of blood to the emperors of the southern realm, asking for the hand of Anna, the emperor's sister, and threatening to take Constantinople if his proposal were rejected.

Never before had a convert come with such conditions. The princess Anna had no desire for marriage with this haughty barbarian, but reasons of state were stronger than questions of taste, and the emperors (there were two of them at that time) yielded. Vladimir, having been baptized under the name of Basil, married the princess Anna, and the city he had taken as a token of his pious zeal was restored to his new kinsmen. All that he took back to Russia with him were a Christian wife, some bishops and priests, sacred vessels and books, images of saints, and a number of consecrated relics.

Vladimir displayed a zeal in his new faith in accordance with the trouble he had taken to win it. The old idols he had wors.h.i.+pped were now the most despised inmates of his realm. Perune, as the greatest of them all, was treated with the greatest indignity. The wooden image of the G.o.d was tied to the tail of a horse and dragged to the Borysthenes, twelve stout soldiers belaboring it with cudgels as it went. The banks reached, it was flung with disdain into the river.

At Novgorod the G.o.d was treated with like indignity, but did not bear it with equal patience. The story goes that, being flung from a bridge into the Volkhof, the image of Perune rose to the surface of the water, threw a staff upon the bridge, and cried out in a terrifying voice, "Citizens, that is what I leave you in remembrance of me."

In consequence of this legend it was long the custom in that city, on the day which was kept as the anniversary of the G.o.d, for the young people to run about with sticks in their hands, striking one another unawares.

As for the Russians in general, they discarded their old wors.h.i.+p as easily as the prince had thrown overboard their idols. One day a proclamation was issued at Kief, commanding all the people to repair to the river-bank the next day, there to be baptized. They a.s.sented without a murmur, saying, "If it were not good to be baptized, the prince and the boyars would never submit to it."

These were not the only signs of Vladimir's zeal. He built churches, he gave alms freely, he set out public repasts in imitation of the love-feasts of the early Christians. His piety went so far that he even forbore to shed the blood of criminals or of the enemies of his country.

But horror of bloodshed did not lie long on Vladimir's conscience. In his later life he had wars in plenty, and the blood of his enemies was shed as freely as water. These wars were largely against the Petchenegans, the most powerful of his foes. And in connection with them there is a story extant which has its parallel in the history of many another country.

It seems that in one of their campaigns the two armies came face to face on the opposite sides of a small stream. The prince of the Petchenegans now proposed to Vladimir to settle their quarrel by single combat and thus spare the lives of their people. The side whose champion was vanquished should bind itself to a peace lasting for three years.

Vladimir was loath to consent, as he felt sure that his opponents had ready a champion of mighty power. He felt forced in honor to accept the challenge, but asked for delay that he might select a worthy champion.

Whom to select he knew not. No soldier of superior strength and skill presented himself. Uneasiness and agitation filled his mind. But at this critical interval an old man, who served in the army with four of his sons, came to him, saying that he had at home a fifth son of extraordinary strength, whom he would offer as champion.

The young man was sent for in great haste. On his arrival, to test his powers, a bull was sent against him which had been goaded into fury with hot irons. The young giant stopped the raging brute, knocked him down, and tore off great handfuls of his skin and flesh. Hope came to Vladimir's soul on witnessing this wonderful feat.

The day arrived. The champions advanced between the camps. The Petchenegan warrior laughed in scorn on seeing his beardless antagonist.

But when they came to blows he found himself seized and crushed as in a vice in the arms of his boyish foe, and was flung, a lifeless body, to the earth. On seeing this the Petchenegans fled in dismay, while the Russians, forgetting their pledge, pursued and slaughtered them without mercy.

Vladimir at length (1015 A.D.) came to his end. His son Yaroslaf, whom he had made ruler of Novgorod, had refused to pay tribute, and the old prince, forced to march against his rebel son, died of grief on the way.

With all his faults, Vladimir deserved the t.i.tle of Great which his country has given him. He put down the turbulent tribes, planted colonies in the desert, built towns, and embellished his cities with churches, palaces, and other buildings, for which workmen were brought from Greece. Russia grew rapidly under his rule. He established schools which the sons of the n.o.bles were made to attend. And though he was but a poor pattern for a saint, he had the merit of finding Russia pagan and leaving it Christian.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CATHEDRAL AT OSTANKINO, NEAR MOSCOW.]

_THE LAWGIVER OF RUSSIA._

The Russia of the year 1000 lay deep in the age of barbarism. Vladimir had made it Christian in name, but it was far from Christian in thought or deed. It was a land without fixed laws, without settled government, without schools, without civilized customs, but with abundance of ignorance, cruelty, and superst.i.tion.

It was strangely made up. In the north lay the great commercial city of Novgorod, which, though governed by princes of the house of Rurik, was a republic in form and in fact. It possessed its popular a.s.sembly, of which every citizen was a member with full right to vote, and at whose meetings the prince was not permitted to appear. The sound of a famous bell, the Vetchevoy, called the people together, to decide on questions of peace and war, or to elect magistrates, and sometimes the bishop, or even the prince. The prince had to swear to carry out the ancient laws of the republic and not attempt to lay taxes on the citizens or to interfere with their trade. They made him gifts, but paid him no taxes.

They decided how many hours he should give to pleasure and how many to business; and they expelled some of their princes who thought themselves beyond the power of the laws.

It seems strange that the absolute Russia of to-day should then have possessed one of the freest of the cities of Europe. Novgorod was not only a city, it was a state. The provinces far and wide around were subject to it, and governed by its prince, who had in them an authority much greater than he possessed over the proud civic merchants and money lords.

In the south, on the contrary, lay the great imperial city of Kief, the capital of the realm, and the seat of a government as arbitrary as that of Novgorod was free. Here dwelt the grand prince as an irresponsible autocrat, making his will the law, and forcing all the provinces, even haughty Novgorod, to pay a tax which bore the slavish t.i.tle of tribute.

Here none could vote, no a.s.sembly of citizens ever met, and the only restraint on the prince was that of his warlike and turbulent n.o.bles, who often forced him to yield to their wishes. The government was a drifting rather than a settled one. It had no anchors out, but was moved about at the whim of the prince and his unruly lords.

Under these two forms of government lay still a third. Rural Russia was organized on a democratic principle which still prevails throughout that broad land. This is the principle of the Mir, or village community, which most of the people of the earth once possessed, but which has everywhere pa.s.sed away except in Russia and India. It is the principle of the commune, of public instead of private property. The land of a Russian village belongs to the people as a whole, not to individuals. It is divided up among them for tillage, but no man can claim the fields he tills as his own, and for thousands of years what is known as communism has prevailed on Russian soil.

The government of the village is purely democratic. All the people meet and vote for their village magistrate, who decides, with the aid of a council of the elders, all the questions which arise within its confines, one of them being the division of the land. Thus at bottom Russia is a field sown thick with little communistic republics, though at top it is a despotism. The government of Novgorod doubtless grew out of that of the village. The republican city has long since pa.s.sed away, but the seed of democracy remains planted deeply in the village community.

All this is preliminary to the story of the Russian lawgiver and his laws, which we have set out to tell. This famous person was no other than that Yaroslaf, prince of Novgorod, and son of Vladimir the Great, whose refusal to pay tribute had caused his father to die of grief.

Yaroslaf was the fifth able ruler of the dynasty of Rurik. The story of his young life resembles that of his father. He found his brother strong and threatening, and designed to fly from Novgorod and join the Varangians as a viking lord, as his father had done before him. But the Novgorodians proved his friends, destroyed the s.h.i.+ps that were to carry him away, and provided him with money to raise a new army. With this he defeated his base brother, who had already killed or driven into exile all their other brothers. The result was that Yaroslof, like his father, became sovereign of all Russia.

But though this new grand prince extended his dominions by the sword, it was not as a soldier, but as a legislator, that he won fame. His genius was not shown on the field of battle, but in the legislative council, and Russia reveres Yaroslaf the Wise as its first maker of laws.

The free inst.i.tutions of Novgorod, of which we have spoken, were by him sustained and strengthened. Many new cities were founded under his beneficent rule. Schools were widely established, in one of which three hundred of the youth of Novgorod were educated. A throng of Greek priests were invited into the land, since there were none of Russian birth to whom he could confide the duty of teaching the young. He gave toleration to the idolaters who still existed, and when the people of Suzdal were about to ma.s.sacre some hapless women whom they accused of having brought on a famine by sorcery, he stayed their hands and saved the poor victims from death. The Russian Church owed its first national foundation to him, for he declared that the bishops of the land should no longer depend for appointment on the Patriarch of Constantinople.

There are no startling or dramatic stories to be told about Yaroslaf.

The heroes of peace are not the men who make the world's dramas. But it is pleasant, after a season spent with princes who lived for war and revenge, and who even made war to obtain baptism, to rest awhile under the green boughs and beside the pleasant waters of a reign that became famous for the triumphs of peace.

Under Yaroslaf Russia united itself by ties of blood to Western Europe.

His sons married Greek, German, and English princesses; his sister became queen of Poland; his three daughters were queens of Norway, Hungary, and France. Scandinavian in origin, the dynasty of Rurik was reaching out hands of brotherhood towards its kinsmen in the West.

But it is as a law-maker that Yaroslaf is chiefly known. Before his time the empire had no fixed code of laws. To say that it was without law would not be correct. Every people, however ignorant, has its laws of custom, unwritten edicts, the birth of the ages, which have grown up stage by stage, and which are only slowly outgrown as the tribe develops into the nation.

Russia had, besides Novgorod, other commercial cities, with republican inst.i.tutions. Kief was certainly not without law. And the many tribes of hunters, shepherds, and farmers must have had their legal customs. But with all this there was no code for the empire, no body of written laws.