As their old religion had no temples for them to cling to, and nothing approaching a priestly class (except the _volkhvye_, or wizards) to encourage them in opposition, the nation became Christian in a day, to all appearances.

We shall see, however, that in many cases, as in other lands converted from heathendom, the old gods were merely baptized with new names, in company with their worshipers.
Together with the religion which he imported from Byzantium, "Prince-Saint" Vladimir naturally imported, also, priests, architects, artists for the holy pictures (_ikoni_), as well as the traditional style of painting them, ecclesiastical vestments and vessels, and--most precious of all--the Slavonic translation of the holy Scriptures and of the Church Service books.

These books, however, were not written in Greek, but in the tongue of a cognate Slavonic race, which was comprehensible to the Russians.

Thus were the first firm foundations of Christianity, education, and literature simultaneously laid in the cradle of the present vast Russian empire, appropriately called "Little Russia," of which Kieff was the capital; although even then they were not confined to that section of the country, but were promptly extended, by identical methods, to old Novgorod--"Lord Novgorod the Great," the cradle of the dynasty of Rurik, founder of the line of sovereign Russian princes.
Whence came these Slavonic translations of the Scriptures, the Church Services, and other books, and the preachers in the vernacular for the infant Russian nation?
The books had been translated about one hundred and twenty-five years previously, for the benefit of a small Slavonic tribe, the Moravians.

This tribe had been baptized by German ecclesiastics, whose books and speech, in the Latin tongue, were wholly incomprehensible to their converts.