mission · 988 · Kyiv
In 988 Volodymyr of Kyiv, sealing alliance and marriage with Byzantium, was baptized — and his people after him in the Dnieper. His envoys' report from Hagia Sophia ('we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth') became the conversion's emblem; the metropolitanate of Rus' under Constantinople begins here.
The Christianization of Kievan Rus' was a long and complicated process that took place in several stages. In 867, Patriarch Photius of Constantinople told other Christian patriarchs that the Rus' people were converting enthusiastically, but his efforts seem to have entailed no lasting consequences, since the Russian Primary Chronicle and other Slavonic sources describe the tenth-century Rus' as still firmly entrenched in Slavic paganism. The traditional view, as recorded in the Russian Primary Chronicle, is that the definitive Christianization of Kievan Rus' dates happened c. 988, when Vladimir the Great was baptized in Chersonesus (Korsun) and proceeded to baptize his family and people in Kiev. The latter events are traditionally referred to as baptism of Rus' in Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian literature.
Rus' enters Christendom; the metropolitanate of Kyiv begins the line this dataset follows north.