St. Vladimir, Fratricide, Rapist, and Practitioner of Human Sacrifice

[c. 956–1015] FEAST DAY: July 15

St. Olga died without ever seeing her countrymen adopt Christianity. Even her own family remained aggressively pagan. Her son, Svyatoslav, rejected Christianity as a feeble religion that would cost him the respect of his men. As Svyatoslav brought up his children in Rus’s pagan religion, it seemed likely that Olga’s death would mark the end of Christianity in Rus (the territory that covered most of Ukraine and part of Russia).

Svyatoslav may not have approved of his mother’s religion, but he did appreciate her political alliances. Like Olga, he tried to keep on good terms with the emperor in Constantinople. A Byzantine chronicler named Leo the Deacon has left us a description of Svyatoslav at the time that he traveled to Constantinople to sign a treaty with Emperor John Tzimiskes. “He was of medium height,” Leo writes, “broad-shouldered, with a long and luxurious moustache. His nose was stubby, eyes blue and eyebrows bushy, and his head was shaven apart from a lock on one side, which was a sign of nobility. In one ear was a gold ring with two pearls and a ruby between them. His white gown differed from his men’s only by being cleaner. He appeared brooding and wild.”

Like his father, Igor, Svyatoslav tried to expand Rus’s power over the neighboring tribes. To gain leverage against the might of Byzantium, he allied himself with the Magyars and the Bulgars. When the Khazars, a tribe on the Volga River, resisted him, Svyatoslav destroyed them. Yet Syvatoslav’s reign was brief: at age thirty-five he was killed while battling the Pechenegs. His enemies chopped off his head to make a drinking cup from Syvatoslav’s skull.

As an illegitimate son, Vladimir did not succeed his father as prince of Kiev. The crown passed to Svyatoslav’s eldest legitimate son, Yaropolk. But Vladimir refused to submit to this arrangement. He traveled to Scandinavia, recruited a Viking army, then returned to Rus and deposed his brother. With Vladimir’s connivance, an assassin murdered Yaropolk. Then Vladimir went to a convent where his widowed sister-in-law had taken refuge, dragged her out, and made her part of his harem.

Vladimir’s harem was one of the most impressive things about him: all the chroniclers mention it. In addition to his seven wives, Vladimir kept eight hundred concubines, divided into groups of a few hundred each and housed in the major towns of his realm. No matter where his travels took him, there would always be a good cross-section of women on hand to keep the prince amused.

Vladimir was a man with few scruples, if any. Yet on some level he felt that by raping his sister-in-law he might have gone too far. To soothe his conscience and placate the gods, he built an impressive temple in which he installed images of all the gods of Rus, along with the gods of the Turkic tribes—just to be on the safe side. To prove his seriousness to the gods he made the ultimate offering: human sacrifice. Vladimir chose the victims himself: Theodore, a proven warrior from his own band, and Theodore’s young son, John, both of whom were Christians. Perhaps Vladimir believed the sacrifice of men who had turned their back on the old religion would appeal to the gods’ sense of justice.

Like his grandfather and his father, Vladimir kept up his dynasty’s program of conquest. With each new victory he replaced tribal chiefs with one of his own chosen men, sometimes even with one of his many sons. Vladimir’s power increased until he achieved the highest sign of respect any barbarian king could hope for: recognition from Christian monarchs. King Boleslav of Poland sealed a treaty with Vladimir. When Emperor Basil II faced the double threat of a revolt in Asia Minor and an invasion from the Bulgars, he turned to Vladimir for help. Out of respect for the treaty his father had made with Emperor John Tzimiskes, Vladimir led an army of six thousand men to assist Basil. In return, he wanted Basil’s sister Anna as his wife.

It would be difficult to overestimate the outrage this request provoked among the nobility of Constantinople. No Byzantine princess had ever married a foreigner, let alone a heathen polygamist who indulged in human sacrifice and kept a small army of concubines. The dilemma put Basil in a difficult spot, but in the end he decided to dispense with precedents and promised his sister to Vladimir on the condition that Vladimir convert to Christianity and abandon his evil habits. To everyone’s surprise, Vladimir agreed. True to his word he brought his army to Constantinople and helped Basil put down the rebels and drive back the Bulgars. Then, so the emperor would not forget their deal, Vladimir seized the wealthy Byzantine town of Kherson in the Crimea.

Basil took the hint and informed Anna that she would have to marry the prince of Kiev. Weeping bitterly, the twenty-five-year-old princess accused her brother of selling her like a slave. Considering how Vladimir regarded most of his women, Anna’s analogy was no exaggeration.

Nonetheless, Anna was shipped off to Kherson, where the bishop of the town first baptized Vladimir, then married him to the princess. Vladimir showed his good faith by returning control of Kherson to Basil. With all parts of the bargain fulfilled, Vladimir escorted his new bride home to Kiev, where he surprised his in-laws and shocked his own people. Vladimir gave up his stable of wives and dissolved his harem. He laid out the advantages of Christianity to his entourage, urging them to set a good example for the people of Rus by converting. To keep in their prince’s good graces, many of Vladimir’s inner circle took the hint and asked to be baptized.

Everyone—Anna, Vladimir’s retainers, his warriors, the ordinary people of Rus, the clergy who had come with the newlyweds to Kiev—believed Vladimir’s conversion had been motivated by political considerations. They were wrong: Vladimir’s conversion was genuine. He destroyed the images of the gods and the great temple he had built to house them. He invited architects from Constantinople to come build churches throughout Rus. He gave vast sums of money to assist the poor, tend to the sick, and relieve the homeless. He even abolished the death penalty. Impressed by the depth of their prince’s change of heart, many people of Rus embraced the Christian faith. Grandmother Olga’s prayers had been heard at last.

Vladimir died in 1015 and was buried in the Church of the Assumption of Our Lady, one of the first churches he had built in Kiev. Sadly, no trace of Vladimir’s tomb or relics survived: his church and everything in it were destroyed in the wars that tore Russia apart during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.