t was not till Vladimir married
the sister of the emperor Basil in 989, and restored the city of
Cherson,--in which Cyril more than a century before had been a
missionary,--where he was baptized, to the Empire, that the
evangelisation of Russia really began. Vladimir deliberately chose the
Greek in preference to the Roman form of Christianity, and acted, it
would seem, with some semblance of national consent. The baptism of
the people of {127} Kiev in the waters of the Dnyepr, as one flock,
"some standing in the water up to their necks, others up to their
breasts, holding their young children in their arms," was typical of
the national acceptance of Christ. Everywhere churches and schools
were built and the Slavonic Scriptures taught the people; at Kiev was
built the Church of S. Sophia by Greek masons, in commemoration of the
debt to the great Church of the New Rome. [Sidenote: S. Vladimir,
989.] Vladimir became the apostle of his people. The Church pressed
forward eagerly, forward over the vast expanse covered by the Russian
power, and, not without martyrdoms and tales of heroic adventure, won
its way triumphantly to Russian hearts.

[Sidenote: The conversion of the Czechs.]

The early days of Christianity in Moravia and Bohemia are wrapped in
obscurity. In 801 Charles the Great endeavoured a forcible conversion
of the former country, but with no more than transitory success. Yet
in 836 a church was consecrated at Neutra by the Archbishop of
Salzburg. A little later than this we hear of the beginnings of
Christian faith among the Czechs. Early Bohemian history, when it
emerges from an obscurity lighted by legend, is full of romantic
incident. There are passages again and again in its records which for
weirdness and ferocity remind us of a grim story of Meinhold's.
Paganism lingered there with some of its ancient power, when it had
perished, at least outwardly, in all neighbouring lands. In the
eleventh century Bohemian heathens still went on pilgrimages to the
temple at Arcona on the isle of Eugen, till the practice was stopped by
Bretislav II. Still a beginning had been made. In {128} 845 fourteen
Bohemian nobles, who had taken refuge at the court of Louis the German,
were baptized at Regensburg; but the conversion of the country was to
come from the East. Cyril and Methodius, sent by the emperor Michael
III. from Constantinople, converted the Moravians, and from them the
gospel was handed on to the C