Catholic Russia

What if the Kievan Rus converted to the Roman Catholic faith instead of the Orthodox faith? How would this affect the Byzantine Empire and the West's picture of Russia?
 

Philip

Donor
Two problems:


  1. When the Rus converted, there were not two churches.
  2. The Rus were too dependent on trade with Constantinople to go another way.
 
Sorry, stupid mistake. I've been watching too much History Channel. Fine, when the Schism occurs, Russia goes to the Pope.
 
Two problems:


  1. When the Rus converted, there were not two churches.
  2. The Rus were too dependent on trade with Constantinople to go another way.

Given that the trade was established while they were still sacrificing people to thunder gods....
Bruce
 
Last edited:
Given that the trade was established while they were still sacrificing people to thunder gods....
Bruce

Well, it's very possible that only the Varangians (and not the slavs) were sacrificing people to thunder gods, and even that may have been imported directly from Sweden by maybe Vladimir and not before. And then he decided to opt for sainthood instead.
 
Well, it's very possible that only the Varangians (and not the slavs) were sacrificing people to thunder gods, and even that may have been imported directly from Sweden by maybe Vladimir and not before. And then he decided to opt for sainthood instead.

The Slavs had their own thunder god, you know...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_mythology#Slavic_mythology

(Ah, the good old days. When you could become a saint by adopting an alien religion and killing any of your subjects who objected to the new dispensation. Nowadays it usually involves a lot of taking care of disgustingly sick people and such :D ).

My more general point is that if the Byzantines were happy to trade with pagans, I'm not sure why they wouldn't be happy trading with Catholics. (But then, you know what they say about the narcissim of small differences...

Bruce
 
Well, it's very unclear since so little of Slavic mythology survives, but their own Thunder god wasn't the Head God, really. At least he wasn't among the Western Slavs (whose beliefs are better-attested) and there's a theory that only the arrival of the princes and their private armies allowed the warrior-thunder-god to climb to the top of the pantheon. Vladimir definitely forcibly reorganized the pantheon to smooth away the regional differences.

There's a curious episode where Vladimir tries to sacrifice a warrior as thanks after a successful campaign, and some of his druzhina object (on the grounds that they are Christians by then).
 
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