VLADIMIR I., a Czar of Russia, com monly called VLADIMIR THE GREAT, Or SAINT VLADIMIR; son of the Grand-Duke Sviatoplav by a woman of low condition, and great-grandson of Rurik. His father assigned to him the government of Nov gorod, dividing the rest of the empire between his two legitimate sons, Jaro palk and Oleg. In 977 Jaropalk quar relled with Oleg and killed him, and Vladimir would probably have met the same fate had he not fled to the Varan gians. Two years later he returned with an army, overcame Jaropalk, and re mained sole master of the empire, hav ing his capital at Kiev. He then set himself both to extend and consolidate his dominions, which were little better than a collection of tributary states, scarcely subject to any real control. He enlarged his boundaries from the Black Sea to the Baltic, and appears to have had an intention of welding his empire into a homogeneous mass through the agency of a common religion, in which he tried to combine the Slavonian and the Finnish superstitions. In 988, how ever, an event occurred which altered his schemes entirely. He had already five
wives and almost 1,000 concubines, but while besieging the Christian city of Cherson, in the Crimea, he conceived tle idea of demanding the hand of Anna, the sister of the Byzantine Emperors Constantine and Basilios. Through the agency of this princess, known in his tory as Anna Romanovna, he was con verted to Christianity. His subjects, who had already been prepared for Christianity by intercourse with the Greeks, followed his example. The Scriptures had already been translated into Slavonic by Cyrillus and Methodius, and Russia soon became a Christian country. Vladimir was then as enthu siastic in his Christian virtues as he had formerly been in his heathen vices. He died in Beresyx in 1015 at a great age, and divided his empire among his 12 sons. The Russian Church canonized him, and gave him a rank equal to that of the Apostles, and the famous "Vladi mir order" was founded in his honor by the Empress Catherine II. in 1782.