The traditional date in the Christianization of Russia is 988, the year of the

baptism of Prince Vladimir of Kiev. Vladimir received Christianity from the

Byzantine Empire (traditionally, after investigating the religious beliefs and

practices of neighbouring countries). By the tenth century, Byzantine

Christianity was an elaborate construction of beliefs, practices both liturgical

and ascetic, philosophy, art and culture, and everything that had come to be

associated with the monastic life, which played an especial role in the Eastern

Church. With the example of Bulgaria (and probably Serbia)—as well as

more anciently Georgia—behind them, the Byzantines brought to Kiev

Byzantine Christianity in a Slav dress (unlike the West, where

Christianization entailed Latinization). This meant that there was what might

be called a ‘linguistic filter’: the Slavs absorbed more readily aspects of

Byzantine Christianity that did not need translation—the ceremony of the

liturgy, the art of icons, music (though we know little about this), and the

practice of monasticism—rather than the complexities of Byzantine theology

and philosophy, with the result that Slav Orthodoxy had a different

complexion from its parent Byzantine Orthodoxy. Within Slav Orthodoxy,

icons and ceremonial, in particular, assumed greater significance than within

Byzantine Orthodoxy, as the intellectual culture fell into the background. The

sense that Slav Orthodoxy was dependent on Byzantine Orthodoxy remained

significant, and led to the Nikonian reforms of the seventeenth century, when

the Slavonic liturgical and iconographic traditions were adjusted to

correspond with current Greek practice. Many refused to accept these

changes, and became known as ‘Old Ritualists’ or ‘Old Believers’, a

persecuted minority, whose preservation of ancient iconographic traditions is

now greatly valued.