Page "Vladimir the Great" Paragraph 13

The Primary Chronicle reports that in the year 987, as the result of a consultation with his boyars, Vladimir sent envoys to study the religions of the various neighboring nations whose representatives had been urging him to embrace their respective faiths.

The result is amusingly described by the chronicler Nestor.

Of the Muslim Bulgarians of the Volga the envoys reported there is no gladness among them ; only sorrow and a great stench.

He also said that the Bulgars ' religion of Islam was undesirable due to its taboo against alcoholic beverages and pork ; Vladimir said on that occasion: " Drinking is the joy of all Rus '.

We cannot exist without that pleasure.

" Ukrainian and Russian sources also describe Vladimir consulting with Jewish envoys ( who may or may not have been Khazars ), and questioning them about their religion but ultimately rejecting it, saying that their loss of Jerusalem was evidence of their having been abandoned by God.

Roman Catholic missionaries came too and so did Orthodox.

Ultimately Vladimir settled on Orthodox Christianity.

In the churches of the Germans his emissaries saw no beauty ; but at Constantinople, where the full festival ritual of the Byzantine Church was set in motion to impress them, they found their ideal: " We no longer knew whether we were in heaven or on earth ," they reported, describing a majestic Divine Liturgy in Hagia Sophia, " nor such beauty, and we know not how to tell of it.

" If Vladimir was impressed by this account of his envoys, he was yet more so by political gains of the Byzantine alliance.