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Cherson and the conversion of Rus’: an anti-revisionist view

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Dimitri Obolensky
Dimitri Obolensky*
Affiliation:
Oxford
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Extract

The story of the conversion to Byzantine Christianity of Prince Vladimir of Kiev and of many of his subjects has, in the accounts of most modern historians, conformed more or less to the following pattern. In the summer of 987 the rebellious general Bardas Phocas, master of most of Asia Minor, proclaimed himself emperor, and marched on Constantinople. The legitimate emperor, Basil II, was in a desperate position. Some time during that same summer he sent an embassy to Kiev with an urgent request for help. By the terms of a treaty they had concluded with the Empire in 971, the Russians were bound to give the Byzantines military assistance in case of need. Vladimir sent him a contingent of six thousand Varangian soldiers. This expeditionary force, which arrived on Byzantine territory in the spring of 988, saved Basil II, who defeated his rival in the battles of Chrysopolis and Abydos. The second of these battles was fought on 13 April, 989.

Type
Articles
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 13 , 1989 , pp. 244 - 257
Copyright
Copyright ©The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1989

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References

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3. Povest’, i, 75–7; Engl, transl., 111–17.

4. ‘The Political Background to the Baptism of Rus’. Byzantine-Russian Relations between 986–89’, DOP 30 (1976) 195–244. Reprinted in the same author’s The Rise of Christian Russia (London, Variorum Reprints, 1982).

5. Poppe, art. cit., 211.

6. See below, notes 18, 19, 21, 23.

7. Poppe, art. cit., 212.

8. Porphyrogenitus, Constantine, De administrando imperio, ed. Moravcsik, Gy., Engl. transl. Jenkins, R.J.H., eh. 53 (Washington, D.C. 1967) 286.Google Scholar

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13. Poppe, art. cit., 243.

14. Ibid., 229.

15. Ibid., 239, note 143; cf. A. Bert’e-Delagard (Berthier Delagarde), ‘Kak Vladimir osazhdal Korsun’, Izvestiya Otdeleniya russkogo Yazyka i Slovesnosti Imp. Akademii Nauk 14, 1 (1909) 244–6.

16. De administrando imperio, 56–8; Commentary, ed. R.J.H. Jenkins (London 1962) 23–5.

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20. Leo Diaconus, op. cit., 10, 8 (p. 172).

21. Ibid., 10, 10 (pp.175–6).

22. Halley’s Comet was next seen in March 1066, an appearance that was taken to foretell the Battle of Hastings (October 1066) and was depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry. See Ronan, C.A., Edmond Halley. Genius in Eclipse (London 1970) 150, 240.Google Scholar

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24. Ibid., 175.

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26. Yahya, op. cit., 432–3; cf. Poppe, art. cit., 211–12. Aurora borealis has occasionally been seen as far south as Egypt, Southern Arabia, and India: see Rapov, O.M., ‘O date prinyatiya khristianstva knyazem Vladimirom i Kievlyanami’, Voprosy Istorii (1984), no. 6, 37 Google Scholar. Vasil’evsky, Cf. V.G., ‘K istorii 976–986 godov’, Trudy 2, 1 (St Petersburg 1909) 83 Google Scholar; Rozen, V.R., Imperator Vasiliy Bolgaroboitsa (St Petersburg 1883) 214–15.Google Scholar

27. Rapov, ibid. Cf. T. Simkin and others, Volcanoes of the World, Smithsonian Institution (Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania 1981) 40.

28. Diaconus, Leo, Historiae, 10, 10 (pp. 175–6)Google Scholar. Cf. Yahya, op. cit., 428–9; Asoghik, op. cit., Macler transi, (see above, note 19) 132–3.

29. This was the night of the feast of the megalomartys St Demetrios of Thessaloniki: Leo Diaconus, ibid.; Synaxarion of the Church of Constantinople, ed. H. Delehaye (Brussels 1902) 166; Mango, cf. C., ‘The Collapse of St Sophia, Psellus and the Etymologicum Genuinum’, in Gonimos: Neoplatonic and Byzantine Studies presented to L.G. Westerink (Buffalo, N.Y. 1988) 168 Google Scholar. Cf. Poppe, art. cit., 211–12.

30. In the recent Russian translation of Leo the Deacon’s History the words are wrongly rendered as ‘padenie zvezdy’: transl. M. Kopylenko, ed. G. Litavrin (Moscow 1988) 91.

31. Bert’e-Delagard (see above, note 15) 243–4, 276–7.

32. Rapov (art. cit., 43) concludes that the siege of Cherson began in the late summer or early autumn of 989, and ended in April or May 990. This would tally with the dating by the eleventh-century Russian monk James: see N.M. Bogdanova, ‘O vremeni vzyatiya Khersona knyazem Vladimirom’, KK47 (1986) 40; Shmurlo, cf. E., ‘Kogda i gde krestilsya Vladimir Svyatoy’, Zapiski Russkogo Istoricheskogo Obshchestva v Prage 1 (Prague 1927) 143–4.Google Scholar

33. Vladimir’s journey to the Dnieper rapids is dated to 988 by Levchenko, M.V. (Ocherki po istorii russko-vizantiiskikh otnosheniy [Moscow 1956] 359–60 Google Scholar) and by Poppe (art. cit., 241). Rapov (art. cit., 44–5) provides fairly strong reasons for preferring 989.

34. Diaconus, Leo, Historiae, 10, 9 (p.173)Google Scholar. However, as Dr J.D. Howard-Johnston has pointed out to me, the context of the passage suggests that Leo had the coast of the Sea of Marmara particularly in mind. The Black Sea and its coast, the control of which would have deflected Bardas from his main target, Constantinople, must have been in his eyes of very minor importance.

35. Povest’, 33–4; Engl, transl., 72–3.

36. Povest’, 52; Engl, transl., 89–90.

37. Poppe attempts to support his theory of a Russo-Byzantine alliance against Cherson in 987–9 by pointing to a passage in the chronicle of Skylitzes which could be taken to mean that such an alliance was concluded in 1016. In that year Basil II, assisted by (the otherwise unknown) Sfengos, Vladimir’s brother, sent a naval force to subject the land of Khazaria:. Scylitzae, loannis Synopsis historiarum, ed. Thurn, I. (Berlin 1973) 354 Google Scholar. Cf. Levchenko, op. cit., 383–4; Poppe, art. cit., 223, 239, note 145. But even if ‘Khazaria’ does in this passage mean the Crimea (which Poppe, and some other scholars, believe), the most that can be conceded to Poppe is that a combined Russo-Byzantine operation against a rebellious Cherson was launched in 1016. This, however, is no argument in favour of his thesis that a generation earlier and in quite different circumstances the Byzantine government encouraged the ruler of Rus’ to attach Cherson single-handed.

38. Poppe, art. cit., 219.

39. See Obolensky, D., ‘The Empire and its Northern Neighbours, 565–1018’ in The Cambridge Medieval History IV, 1 (Cambridge 1966) 510–11.Google Scholar