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The frightened Novgorodians were in like manner forced to hurl Perun into the Volkhof, and then, like herded cattle, were driven into the stream to be baptized. The work of Olga was completed Russia was Christianized ! It would be long before Christianity would penetrate into the heart of the people.
The Emperors Basil and Constantine agreed to give their sister in marriage to Vladimir, King of Kieff, if he would embrace the Christian faith. And King Vladimir embraced the Christian faith. These may be considered very petty motives! Yet this was not the price to tie the mighty idol Perun on a horse's tail and to carry him into the water of Dnieper.
From being a cruel voluptuary and assassin, he was changed to a merciful ruler who could not bear to inflict capital punishment. He was faithful to his Greek wife Anna. On the spot where he had once erected Perun, and where the two Scandinavians were martyred at his command, he built the church of St.
Western Russia grouped itself about the state of the Lithuanians on the Baltic, and Eastern Russia about that of Muscovy. The Lithuanians had never been Christianized; they still adored Perun and their pagan deities; and the only bond uniting them with Russia was the tribute they had for years reluctantly paid.
The curious fact is that the supreme divinity in every pagan theology was imagined to be acting equally strongly for good and for evil, as Zeus Jupiter, Wothan. You cannot call Zeus or Jupiter or Wothan or Perun a good god, but only a mighty god. With Christianity came into the world, including the Slav world, decisiveness, and every confusion disappeared.
"A Prince pitched his camp on a hill: his son lay dying with the slowly-sinking sunlight. They prayed to the gods to spare the princeling. They burned youths and maidens at the stake. They cast men into the river to appease the water-spirit. They invoked the ancient Slavic god Perun. They called on Jesus and the Mother of God. In vain!
Their religion, like that of all Aryan peoples, was a pantheism founded upon the phenomena of nature. In their Pantheon there was a Volos, a solar deity who, like the Greek Apollo, was inspirer of poets and protector of the flocks Perun, God of Thunder Stribog, the father of the Winds, like Aeolus a Proteus who could assume all shapes Centaurs, Vampires, and hosts of minor deities, good and evil.
Perun seems, like Zeus and Jupiter, to have been the chief god of his people; for Procopius tells us that the Slavs "believe that one god, the maker of lightning, is alone lord of all things, and they sacrifice to him oxen and every victim."
The paganism under the style of poor Jesus, against which fought Huss, was much more obstinate and aggressive than the paganism under the style of Perun, against which fought St. Methodius. Sins and virtues had been equalised by means of money. The Church buildings had been transformed into public places for the exchange of sins and virtues. "Repentance, not Money!" exclaimed Jan Huss.
They rushed to rescue Bulgaria from the very enemy they had invited to overthrow it. After a prolonged struggle, and in spite of the wild courage displayed by Sviatoslaf, he was driven back, and compelled to swear by Perun and Volos never again to invade Bulgaria. If they broke their vows, might they become "as yellow as gold, and perish by their own arms."
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