Section 05: The Transformed Prince

The section treating Vladimir’s life after his baptism — the Chronicle’s portrait of the changed man, and the visible works of his Christian reign. Where Section 01 drew the pagan warlord, this section draws his Christian opposite: the prince who fed the poor and the sick from wagons sent through the city, who shrank from shedding even a criminal’s blood until his bishops urged the sword upon him, and who covered the land of Rus’ with its first churches — above all the great Church of the Tithes, Kyiv’s first stone church and Vladimir’s cathedral.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (Equal-to-the-Apostles)

Contents

File Topic
The Change of Life The Chronicle’s account (entry 996) of the transformed Vladimir: the charity to the poor and sick, the wagons of food sent through the city (“Where is there a poor man or a beggar who cannot walk?”); the reluctance to execute brigands out of fear of sin and the bishops’ counsel that he was “appointed of God for the chastisement of malefaction”; the question of the wergild; the Sunday feasts and the silver spoons
Building the Church The church-building program: the wooden Church of St. Basil raised on the hill of the idols; the Church of the Tithes (Desyatinnaya) — Kyiv’s first stone church, dedicated to the Dormition of the Theotokos, endowed with a tithe of Vladimir’s revenue, entrusted to Anastasius of Cherson; the relics of St. Clement of Rome brought from Cherson; the first clergy

How to Use

  • Read The Change of Life for the Chronicle’s portrait of the converted prince — the counterpart to the pagan portrait of Section 01.
  • Read Building the Church for the material works of the Christian reign, the foundation of the institutional Church treated in Section 06.

A Note on Sources

The portrait of the transformed Vladimir comes, like the rest, from the Primary Chronicle, and is reported as what that source attests per methodology §3.5 — its quotations given in the exact Cross and Sherbowitz-Wetzor wording. The church-building is the most archaeologically grounded part of Vladimir’s reign: the foundations of the Church of the Tithes were excavated in Kyiv, and the building is independently attested.

Cross-References