Vladimir the Great reportedly shopped for a religion before choosing Christianity
According to an early Slavic chronicle, the pagan ruler of Kiev sent envoys to inspect Islam, Judaism, Latin Christianity and Byzantine Christianity. Returning from Constantinople, they said they could not tell whether they had been in heaven or on earth. In 988 Vladimir was baptised and began converting his realm.
Born in 958, Vladimir was the youngest and illegitimate son of Sviatoslav I of Kiev and his housekeeper Malusha; her brother Dobrynya became the boy's tutor and closest adviser. In 970 Sviatoslav handed him Novgorod, while Kiev went to Yaropolk, a son born in wedlock. After Sviatoslav died fighting the Pechenegs in 972, Yaropolk killed their brother Oleg in 977, and Vladimir fled abroad, raised a Varangian army and returned. Taking Polotsk and Smolensk on the way, he captured Kiev in 978 and had Yaropolk killed by treachery.
He pushed his frontiers outward, seizing the Cherven towns from Poland in 981, subduing tribes such as the Radimichs and Yatvingians, and campaigning against the Volga Bulgars in 985. Early on he was a committed pagan, raising a hilltop shrine in Kiev to six gods, including the thunder god Perun, and keeping several wives and hundreds of concubines.
In 988, after capturing Chersonesus in Crimea, he reportedly demanded the hand of Anna, sister of Emperor Basil II; no Byzantine princess born in the purple had ever married a foreign ruler of this kind. Arab chroniclers tell a different version tied to rebellions against Basil. Back in Kiev, Vladimir tore down pagan idols and built churches, among them the Church of the Tithes in 989.
As a Christian ruler he gave food to the poor, adopted the Byzantine law code but abolished capital punishment and judicial torture, and ordered nobles' children to be educated. He placed his twelve sons over subject principalities. When Yaroslav the Wise, one of those sons, withheld tribute in 1014, Vladimir was gathering troops against him when he fell ill and died at Berestove on 15 July 1015. Catholic and Orthodox churches both honour him as Saint Vladimir, and he is also called Volodymyr.
Source: Vladimir the Great
