Russian Icons by Tamara Talbot Rice
 
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Spring Books | 1964 | English | 96 pages

The element of precision inherent in facts tends, by its very nature, to obliterate variations and complexities, and it is thus often inclined to distort our viewing of the past. A case in point is the prevailing tendency to think of western Europe as a wholly Christian entity from, at any rate, as far back as the sixth century A.D. In actual fact, even as late as the ninth century — at the very time when certain Varangian princes were penetrating into what is known today as western Russia, in order to gain control of the region's great waterways — much of Scandinavia was still pagan, as were large areas of such basically Christian countries as Ireland* and even many a backwater of rural England, though supposedly converted. Seen in this perspective, Russia's conversion at the very end of the tenth century does not appear nearly so tardy an event, when it is considered factually, as when seen against the background provided by such countries as Byzantium, Armenia and Georgia, which had been Christian since the third or fourth century.