The Baptism of Rus (988)

Prince Vladimir of Kiev, a pagan with a reputation the chronicles do not soften, sent men to examine the faiths. The account they brought back from the Great Church at Constantinople is the one everyone remembers: they did not know whether they were in heaven or on earth, for on earth there is no such beauty, and they could not describe it, they only knew that God dwells there among men. He was baptised at Cherson, married the emperor’s sister, threw the idols into the Dnieper and had Kiev baptised in it. What followed was not a Greek colony: Slavonic letters were already made, so the Church there read and sang in its own tongue from the beginning, which is why Orthodoxy took root in Rus as something native.