Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/182

 162 THE DECLINE AND FALL Conversion of Photius of Constantinople, a patriarch whose ambition was 8C4 ■ ■ ' equal to his curiosity^ congratulates himself and the Greek church on the conversion of the Russians.^^ Those fierce and bloody barbarians had been persuaded by the voice of reason and re- ligion^ to acknowledge Jesus for their God, the Christian mission- aries for their teachers, and the Romans for their friends and brethren. His triumph was transient and premature. In the various fortune of their piratical adventures, some Russian chiefs might allow themselves to be sprinkled with the waters of bap- tism ; and a Greek bishop, Avith the name of metropolitan, might administer the sacraments in the church of Kiow to a congrega- tion of slaves and natives. But the seed of the Gospel was sown on a baiTen soil : manj^ were the apostates, the converts were few ; and the baptism of Olga may be fixed as the aera of Russian Christianity.''" A female, perhaps of the basest origin, who could revenge the death, and assume the sceptre, of her husband Igor, must have been endowed Avith those active virtues which com- mand the fear and obedience of barbarians. In a moment of foreign and domestic peace, she sailed from KiOAV to Constan- Baptism of tinople ; and the emperor Constantine Porphyro^enitus has de- 955 [957] ■ scribed with minute diligence the ceremonial of her reception in his capital and palace. The steps, the titles, the salutations, the banquet, the presents, were exquisitely adjusted, to gratify the vanity of the stranger, with due reverence to the superior majesty of the purple. ^s j^ ^-j^g sacrament of baptism, she received the venerable name of the empress Helena ; and her conversion might be preceded or folloAved by her uncle, tA'o interpre- ters, sixteen damsels, of an higher, and eighteen of a lower, rank, twenty -tAvo domestics or ministers, and forty-four Russian merchants, Avho composed the retinue of the great princess Olga. After her return to KioAv and Novogorod, she firn^ily persisted I ^Phot. Epistol. ii. No. 35, p. 58, edit. Montacut [Ep. 4,'ed. V^leUas, p. 178]. It was unworthy of the learning of the editor to mistake the Russia™ nation, to 'PJis, for a war-crj' of the Bulgarians ; nor did it become the enlighterted patriarch to accuse the Sclavonian idolaters t^s 'EXAiji'ik^s koI ieiov 5d|T)5. Tney were neither Greeks nor atheists. / ^ M. Levesque has extracted, from old chronicles and modernV researches, the most satisfactory account of the religion of the Slavi, and the conv/ersion of Russia (Hist, de Russie, torn. i. p. 35-54, 59, 92, 93, 113-121. 124-129,(148, 149, &c.). [Nestor, c. 31.] I ^•^Sec the Ceremoniale Aulae Byzant. torn. ii. c. 15, p. 343-34/5 : the style of Olga, or Elga [Old Norse, Helga is 'ApydrTttro-o 'Pwo-ias. For barians the Greeks whimsically borrowed the title of an Athenian a female termination which would have astonished the ear of De 1 the account of the Ceremony of Olga'r^^-i^iception her baptism is noft mentioned ; it. was indeed irrelevant.] ue chief of bar- •nagistrate, with mosthenes. [In