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A Chronicle That Presents a Conversion as a Comparison

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A Chronicle That Presents a Conversion as a Comparison

The Russian Primary Chronicle tells the conversion of Rus as a deliberate act of comparison. Vladimir, it says, received delegations from Islam, from Judaism, from the Latin west and from Byzantium, questioned each, sent his own envoys to observe their worship, and chose on the strength of what they reported, most famously that at the liturgy in Constantinople they did not know whether they were in heaven or on earth. The chronicle also has him reject Islam because of the prohibition on wine and dismiss Judaism because its people had lost their land. This is a literary construction written more than a century after the events, and the atlas records it as such: it is a story about why the choice was the right one, told by the winners, in a form that lets the writer set out the alternatives and dispose of them. That does not make the underlying facts doubtful.

Vladimir did accept Byzantine Christianity around 988, the political context of a Byzantine marriage alliance is well attested, and the consequences followed rapidly. The atlas therefore distinguishes the conversion, which is established, from the account of the deliberation, which is a later composition doing theological and political work.

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