[1054 A.D.]
Could the character of Iaroslav, the legislator, have been transmitted through his successors, the good of which he laid the seeds, might have been finally cultivated to maturity. But his wisdom and his virtues died with him. Nor, elevated as he was in moral dignity above the spirit of his countrymen, can it be said that he was free from weaknesses that marred much of the utility of his best measures. One of his earliest errors was the resignation of Novgorod to his son Vladimir, who had no sooner ascended the throne of the republican city, than, under the pretext of seeking satisfaction for the death of a Russian who had been killed in Greece, he carried arms into the Byzantine empire. The folly of this wild attempt was abundantly punished in the sequel; fifteen thousand men were sacrificed on the Grecian plains, and their chief hunted back disgracefully to his own territories. Yet this issue of one family grant did not awaken Iaroslav to the danger of partitioning the empire. Before his death he divided the whole of Russia amongst his sons, making, however, the younger sons subordinate to the eldest, as grand prince of Kiev, and empowering the latter to reduce the others to obedience by force of arms whenever they exhibited a disposition to dispute his authority.
This settlement, enforced with parting admonitions on his death-bed, was considered by Iaroslav to present a sufficient security against civil commotion and disputes about the succession. But he did not calculate upon the ungovernable lust for power, the jealousy of younger brothers, and the passion for aggrandisement. His injunctions were uttered in the amiable confidence of Christianity; they were violated with the indecent impetuosity of the barbarian nature.
With the death of Iaroslav, and the division of the empire, a new period of darkness and misrule began. The character of the legislator, which influenced his own time, was speedily absorbed in the general confusion. Iaroslav’s name was held in reverence, but the memory of his excellence did not awe the multitudes that, upon his decease, sprang from their retirement to revive the disastrous glories of domestic warfare. Much as he had done for the extension of Christianity, he had failed in establishing it in the hearts of the people. He was an able theologian, and well acquainted with the church ordinances, agenda, and other books of the Greek religion, many of which he caused to be translated into the Russian language, and distributed in copies over the country. So strong an interest did he take in the cultivation of the doctrines of the church, that he established a metropolitan at Kiev, in order to relieve the Russian people and their priests from the inconveniences of attending the residence of the ecclesiastical head at Constantinople, and also with a desire to provide for the more prompt and certain dissemination of the principles of faith. But the value of all these exertions expired with their author. He did much to raise the fame and consolidate the resources of the empire; but the last act of his political career, by which he cut away the cord that bound the rods, had the effect of neutralising all the benefits he meditated to accomplish, as well as those that he actually effected, for his country. His reign was followed by a period of savage anarchy that might be said to have resolved the half-civilised world into its original elements.[k]
FOOTNOTES
[2] According to recent computations the Russian Empire covers an area of 8,660,000 square miles—about one sixth of the land surface of the globe.
[3] [This treaty was not so favourable to the Russians as the one concluded with Oleg—a result, evidently, of the former defeat. Another point of importance is that it makes mention of Russian Christians, to whom there is no allusion in the treaty of 911. From this we may conclude that Christianity had spread largely during this interval.[g]]
[4] [According to another Ms., Constantine, son of Lev.]
[5] Ex. XXI, 17.
[6] [In the original Nestor always calls thus the sister of the emperors.]