Vladimir gave vast sums of money to the religious establishments, and behaved generally like a very devout pagan. His piety and generosity made him so desirable a patron that efforts were made by the priests of other religions to convert him. Jews, Mohammedans, Catholics, and Greeks all sought to win him, and Vladimir began seriously to consider the question of changing his religion. He appointed a commission, consisting of ten Boyards, and ordered them to examine into the respective merits of the different religions, and to report to him. When their report was made, Vladimir weighed the matter carefully.
He began by rejecting Mohammedanism, because it forbids the use of wine, and Vladimir was not at all disposed to become a water-drinker. Judaism, he said, was a homeless religion, its followers being wanderers on the face of the earth, under a curse. The Catholic religion would not do at all, because it recognized in the Pope a superior to himself, and Vladimir had no mind to acknowledge a superior. The Greek religion was free from these objections, and, moreover, by adopting it he would bring himself into friendship with the great Greek or Byzantine Empire, whose capital was at Constantinople, and that was something which he greatly desired to accomplish.
Accordingly he determined to become a Christian and a member of the Greek Church; but how? There were serious difficulties in the way. To become a Christian he must be baptized, and he was puzzled about how to accomplish that. There were many Greek priests in his capital, any one of whom would have been glad to baptize the heathen monarch, but Vladimir would not let a mere priest convert him into a Christian. Nobody less than an archbishop would do for that, and there was no archbishop in Russia.
It is true that there were plenty of archbishops in the dominions of his Byzantine neighbors, and that the Greek Emperors, Basil and Constantine, would have been glad to send him a dozen of them if he had expressed a wish to that effect; but Vladimir was proud, and would not think of asking a favor of anybody, least of all of the Greek Emperors. No, he would die a heathen rather than ask for an archbishop to baptize him.
Nevertheless, Vladimir had fully made up his mind to have himself baptized by an archbishop. It was his life-long habit, when he wanted anything, to take it by force. He had taken two-thirds of his dominions in that way, and, as we have seen, it was in that way that he got his wife Rogneda. So now that he wanted an archbishop, he determined to take one. Calling his army together, he declared war on the Greek Emperors, and promising his soldiers all the pillage they wanted, he marched away toward Constantinople.
VLADIMIR BESIEGING THE CITY CONTAINING HIS ARCHBISHOP.
The first serious obstacle he met with was the fortified city of Kherson, situated near the spot where Sevastopol stands in our day. Here the resistance was so obstinate that month after month was consumed in siege operations. At the end of six months Vladimir became seriously alarmed lest the garrison should be succored from without, in which case his hope of baptism must be abandoned altogether.
While he was troubled on this score, however, one of his soldiers picked up an arrow that had been shot from the city, and found a letter attached to it. This letter informed the Grand Prince that the water-pipes of the city received their supplies at a point immediately in his rear, and with this news Vladimir's hope of becoming a Christian revived. He found the water-pipes and stopped them up, and the city surrendered.
There were plenty of bishops and archbishops there, of course, and they were perfectly willing—as they had been from the first, for that matter—to baptize the unruly royal convert, but Vladimir was not content now with this. He sent a messenger to Constantinople to tell the Emperors there that he wanted their sister, the Princess Anne, for a wife; and that if they refused, he would march against Constantinople itself. The Emperors Basil and Constantine consented, and although Vladimir had five wives already, he married Anne, and was baptized on the same day.