How Muscovy became converted into "Holy Russia."

Vladimir the Goth's rude greatness, and the rumors of his great warlike exploits awakened the attention of the neighboring religions. Four of them hastened to contend for his conversion; but Vladimir rejected Mahometanism, because it interdicted wine, which, he said, was indispensable to Russians, and was their delight; Catholicism offered to him, by the Germans, he disliked, because of its Pope an earthly deity, which appeared an unexampled thing; and Judaism, because it had no country, and because he thought it neither rational to take advice from wanderers punished by heaven, nor tempting to participate in their punishment. At the same time his attention was fixed by the Greek religion, which his ancestor Olga had followed, and which had recently been preached to him by a philosopher of Byzantium. He summoned his Council, took the opinion of his boyards, and of the elders of the people, and deputed ten of them to examine those religions in distant lands, even in their native temples.

The envoys of the Grand Prince meanwhile—plain, downright men—went forth and returned. Mahometanism and Catholicism they had seen only in poor and barbarous provinces, while they witnessed the Greek religion in its magnificent metropolis and adorned with all its pomp. They did not hesitate. Instantly convinced, Vladimir marched to conquer priests and relics at Cherson: having done this, he, by his threats, extorted from the Greek empire a princess, whom he married, and became a Christian.

Playing the tyrant to Heaven as he did to earth, his page 16 pagan divinities—those divinities which he had formed entirely of gold and fattened [?] with Christian blood, he now stripped for the sake of Christ, like disgraced favorites. He went still further—he ordered them to be dragged to execution at the tails of horses; they were loaded with blows by his guards, and were thrown into the Dneiper.

The Prince who thus treated the gods of Russia was not more forbearing towards the men. He commanded them to become Christians on a certain day and hour; he commanded, and whole tribes were pushed on like flocks, and collected on the banks of rivers, to receive the Greek baptism. One crowd succeeded to another, and to each of these, in mass, was given the name of a saint. He next carried to excess the virtues of Christianity as he had formerly carried the vices of paganism: he wasted the revenues of the state in alms, in pious foundations, and in public repasts, to imitate the lovefeasts of the primitive Christians. He no longer dared to shed the blood of criminals, nor even of the enemies of the country.

(General Count Philip de Segur.)