Serbs, Croats, Dalmatians, and the Slavs in Greece.

Though hampered by various internal and external obstacles, with which the following
pages will deal, Christianity continued throughout the Middle Ages to conquer new territories.
Most important of these for the Eastern Church were the Slavonic peoples. The first to receive
the Gospel, as early as the seventh century, were the Serbs, Croats and Dalmatians, established in
the Balkan Peninsula, of whom the Serbs, by the grace of God, have remained Orthodox, while
the Croats and Dalmatians, uniting with the Hungarian kingdom, have passed into the
jurisdiction of Rome, and embraced the tenets of the Western Church. Later, in the ninth century,
Christianity spread to all the Slavonic tribes, who, driven back from the north by the Avars, had
poured into Macedonia, Thessaly, the mainland of Greece and the Peloponnesus from the sixth
century onwards, imperiling not only the national, but also the Christian character of the
countries that they overran; for they were polytheists, and polytheism had long since died out in
Greece, except in the region of Taygetos, where until the ninth century the Maniates still
continued to worship idols in their mountain homes. But the Byzantine Emperors Michael III
(842-867) and Basil the Macedonian (867-886) sent their generals to subdue the Slav invaders,
who were, moreover, ravaged and weakened by continual epidemics, and gradually assimilated
them both in nationality and religion to their Greek environment. Under the pressure of the
Byzantine steam-roller, even the Maniates of Taygetos, the descendants of ancient Spartans, at
last surrendered to Christianity; and idolatry ceased henceforth to exist in Hellenic soil.
The Moravians.
Among other Slavonic tribes were the Moravians, who settled on German soil and came
under German domination. But in 855 their king, Rostislav, freed them from the German yoke,
and then appealed to the Byzantine Emperor Michael III, to send him Christian preachers;
whereupon Michael, with the co-operation of the Great Patriarch Photius, sent out into Moravia
the two famous missionaries and heralds of civilization to the Slavs, Cyril and Methodius,
Greeks from Salonica who had practiced the monastic life in the Monastery of Polychronius at
Constantinople. Not only did these two men preach God's Word among the Moravians; they also
translated the Bible and the Byzantine Liturgy into the Slav tongue for the benefit of the newlyfounded Moravian Church, which they placed under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the
Patriarchate of Constantinople, whose envoys they were. Unfortunately, in 867, Rostislav
changed his mind, for political reasons, and turned to the Church of Rome, which in those days
began to aspire to be the supreme ecclesiastical center of Christendom. The two fellowmissionaries were then summoned before the Pope, and Cyril stayed in Rome until his death,
while Methodius was sent to continue his work as Archbishop of Moravia. As long as Methodius
lived, he fought for the preservation of the Slavonic Bible and the Byzantine Liturgy in church
use. After his death, however, the Roman See abolished them and replaced them by Latin,
scornfully rejecting the Slavonic language as barbarous and profane.
The Bulgarians.
During the ninth century, too, the Bulgarians received Christianity from the same Byzantine
source. The Bulgarians, a Tartar tribe, who had once lived on the shores of the Caspian Sea,
migrated thence in the fifth century and, traveling up the Danube, established themselves permanently in the northern part of the Balkan Peninsula. They were at first a heathen people of
savage customs, and even practiced human sacrifice; but from 800 onwards they began to
progress along the ways of enlightenment, and under the influence of the native Slavs, adopted

the Slavonic language and race consciousness. Their proximity to the Byzantine Empire was not
at all pleasant to the Byzantines, whom they constantly harried; it had, however, an undoubtedly
beneficial influence on the Bulgarians themselves by accustoming them to the atmosphere of
Christianity. The first herald of Christianity to the Bulgarians was the sister of their king Boris,
who had been initiated into Christian beliefs while she was a prisoner in Constantinople. After
861, however, Boris himself was the hardest and most systematic worker for the Christianisation
of his people, having been persuaded on the one hand by a fearful plague from which he had
been saved through prayer to Jesus Christ, and on the other by the terrible impression made on
his mind by a picture of the Last Judgment, which had been shown to him by the missionary
Methodius.
The Conversion of the Bulgarians.
Boris announced to the Byzantine Emperor, Michael III., his intention of being baptized,
and informed him that he, too, wished to adopt the name of Michael at his Baptism. He also
begged the Emperor and the Patriarch Photius to send him Greek priests; and, having embraced
Christianity with the help of the Byzantine Court in 863, he fought in the teeth of all opposition
to make his subjects Christians, too. Three years later, the fear of losing his political
independence caused him to turn away from his Byzantine neighbors and place his newlyfounded Church under the jurisdiction of distant Rome. But when the Papal emissaries reached
him, and fell upon the newly-planted vineyard like wild boars (according to the description of the
holy Photius), Boris realized whence came the real danger to liberty, and in 869 he returned to
the Mother Church. His work was continued by his successors, of whom the most famous was
the Tsar of the Bulgarians, Simeon, who flourished in the tenth century. During his reign, the
Bulgarians cultivated learning, and the Bulgarian Church enjoyed full independence, with
Ochrida as her ecclesiastical center. But in 1018, the Byzantine Emperor Basil the Bulgaroctonus
followed up his military victories over the Bulgarians by again subjecting the Bulgarian Church
to the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
The Russians.
A much greater conquest for the Orthodox Church of the East was the introduction and
dissemination of the Gospel in the vast territories of Russia, which took place a century later than
the conversion of the Bulgarians. This important event was preceded by the various attempts
made at different times, first of which may be reckoned the traditional visit of Andrew the
Apostle to Scythia, and his preaching of the Gospel to the Scythians, who were the ancestors of
the Russians. But these original seeds were quickly choked, and for centuries the Russians clung
to their worship of Peroun, the god of thunder. Towards the middle of the ninth century, we hear
of a second attempt to introduce Christianity into Russia, when the Russian princes, Oskold and
Dir, setting out against Constantinople in their canoes, were overtaken and decimated in the
Golden Horn by a fierce storm, and, returning terrified to Kiev, begged the Emperor and the
Patriarch Photius to send priests to baptize them. Still another attempt was made later on by the
Queen Mother Olga, who, when staying at Constantinople in 955, was baptized by the Patriarch
Polyeuct and decided to return to her country and to evangelize it herself. But she, too, was
laughed at for her pains; and it was left to Olga's grandson, Vladimir, to receive divine
inspiration and to prove himself at last the Isapostle of Russia.

The Conversion of the Russians.

There is an ingenuous story that Vladimir, tired of his wooden god Peroun and wishing to
introduce among his people a more edifying form of religion, invited the representatives of the
chief religions of his time to appear before him, so that he might choose from among them the
most desirable. He was not attracted by the representative of Mohammedanism, who forbade the
drinking of vodka; neither was he satisfied with the persuasions of the representative of Judaism,
whose followers were accursed and outcast wanderers, persecuted by all. He dismissed, too, the
representative of Rome, with whom, he said, his ancestors had always refused to cultivate
relations. But when the Greek philosopher Constantine explained to him the Orthodox Christian
faith strengthening his eloquent arguments by a picture representing the Second Advent of our
Lord, as Methodius had once done to the King of the Bulgarians, Vladimir could no longer
contain himself, and, deeply moved, cried out: Blessed are the righteous, and miserable indeed
are sinners! In order to strengthen his decision, he sent an official embassy of Boyars to
Constantinople to study the matter on the spot and with their own eyes. They went, and attended
a patriarchal Mass celebrated in the church of Saint Sophia; and so delighted were they with all
that they saw and heard that, on their return to Russia, they told their king that while they were
following the Byzantine Service they knew not whether they trod the earth or winged their way
in Heaven.
The Baptism of Vladimir and his People.
Vladimir then addressed himself to the Byzantine Emperor, Basil, and begged him to grant
him his sister Anna in marriage, to help him to carry out his godly plan, and to send him a
number of priests to instruct and baptize the Russian people. Basil willingly agreed to these
proposals, and to further God's kingdom on earth Anna sacrificed the palaces of Byzantium for
the throne of a semi-barbarous people. The Russians tied their wooden god Peroun to the tail of a
horse, and after dragging it thus insultingly through the streets threw in into the river in order to
show that they had no further use for it. The banks of the Dnieper swarmed with thousands of
people, Boyars and moujiks, who were baptized with their king while the priests from
Constantinople, standing in mid-stream on rafts, recited the baptismal prayers. And in the year of
grace 988 Russia officially, if not yet wholeheartedly, abjured idolatry and entered the
community of Christian peoples. Vladimir died in 1015, leaving the continuation of his work to
his successors. The most prominent of these was Yaroslav (1010-1054), who by encouraging
learning, building churches and drawing up a code of laws, sought to raise his country to a
condition more befitting to a Christian nation.
Vicissitudes of the Russian Church.
It must not, however, be supposed that the vast Russian territories were suddenly
transformed as if by magic, nor yet that Christianity was able to establish its supremacy without
a struggle. In the north-eastern regions of Russia, idolatry, backed by a divination of the black
arts, presented an impenetrable front to the new ideas. Mongol supremacy, which from 1224 to
1480 dominated both Church and State, was a severe stumbling-block to the progress of the
Gospel. For centuries, too, the Popes never ceased to covet the land, and pursued their goal of
romanisation by sending out at times Dominican and Franciscan friars, at others whole crusades,
as did Pope Innocent IV, who in the middle of the thirteenth century incited the king of Sweden
to attack Russia. But in spite of everything, the Orthodox faith both survived and prospered. This
was due on the one hand to the perseverance in the Orthodox faith of the Russian Kings and

Emperors, who followed in the footsteps of the saintly Vladimir, and on the other to the zeal of
the prelates of the Russian Church, most of whom were for centuries sent straight from
Constantinople.

9. Iconoclastic and other Disputes.

Leo the Isaurian and His Programme of Reform.
The first in date and importance of the religious differences that disturbed our Church in the
Middle Ages are the iconoclastic disputes, which spread over nearly a century and a half. Leo,
the Isaurian (717-741), though a brave Emperor and a patriotic man, was, unfortunately, ignorant
of popular psychology and apt to be carried away to extremes. At that time, enthusiasm for the
monastic life was draining the community of its worthiest citizens, the people devoted a great
deal of their time to celebrating the festivals of saints, and the multiplication of images and other
sacred objects was distorting the spiritual character of Christianity and drawing upon it the
criticism both of Mohammedans and Jews. Seeing all this, Leo decided to carry out radical
religious reforms, beginning with the images, which seemed to be the most urgent need. In acting
thus, he was not entirely without justification, even from a Christian point of view; for the
ignorant brought into the use of icons abuses which degraded the spiritual nature of the Christian
religion and savored once more of idolatry. He forgot, however, that images are the books of the
illiterate; that the art of painting has always served to inspire and perpetuate virtue; that man will
always have need of material symbols, and that abuse of them does not preclude their prudent
use.
The War Against Images.
When, therefore, Leo issued his two proclamations against images in 726 and 730, the first
ordering that all images should be raised higher up, and the second commanding their total
removal, he found ranged against him not only the people, but men of proved distinction in
learning and piety; such as Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople, who preferred to retire rather
than proceed to such extremes, John of Damascus, who published three fiery apologies for the
right use of images, and the Pope of Rome, Gregory II, who protested to the Emperor by letter.
But the Isaurian yielded neither to the advice of those wiser than himself nor to the insurrection
of his people, and stubbornly carried on his plan of campaign against the images. More unfortunately still, those who carried out the royal commands were uneducated men who
committed acts of sheer vandalism. Thus it came about that precious works of art, which would
have been the pride of any art gallery, were ruthlessly consigned to the flames; valuable
manuscripts were destroyed because of the miniatures that adorned them; the Ecumenical School
at Constantinople was burnt down with its splendid library of rare books; and Christian blood
was shed when the image of Christ was being hacked down from the Bronze Gateway of the
Imperial Palace. For the sake of one abuse, which might have been corrected by the better
education of the people, all these abuses were committed, and the state was divided into two
fiercely opposed camps: that of the image-lovers and that of the image-breakers.