To properly understand the final stage of the ancient history of Greek settlements on the northern Black Sea littoral, it is important to clarify the issues associated with the penetration of Christianity into these lands. Of special importance in the spread of the new religion was Chersonesus, often regarded as the cradle of Christianity in Rus’. According to a Rus’ chronicle, it is here that the Great Prince Volodymyr and his retinue were baptized in 988. In 1852 a cloister was built on the territory of ancient Chersonesus (the extreme western point of today’s Sevastopol), and in 1861 the majestic St. Volodymyr’s Cathedral was erected at the baptismal site.
But Christianity did not come from nowhere. A prominent role in its making was played by religious syncretism (in philosophy: the combination of heterogeneous, contradictory and incompatible visions), which gradually shaped the new Christian view. Chersonesus still retained a Greek divine pantheon in the first centuries AD.
But, alongside the traditional Greek cults, the city saw new religious movements gain momentum. By force of traditions and the conservatism of the Greek segment of the population, the old Greco- Roman gods instead of receding to the background acquired many features of the new Christian deities. Chersonesus shows quite a pronounced inclination to monotheism, also the result of that epoch’s religious quest.
There is quite a number of sources about the penetration of Christianity to Chersonesus, but these have not always been correctly interpreted by researchers. These are above all burials in which Christian artifacts have been found. There were too few of them in the fourth and fifth centuries, and they did not differ significantly from local pagan burials. In the last century, eight Christian-painted crypts from this period were discovered and are regarded as one of the most reliable sign of early Christian conversion. But now it has been established that the crypts were painted over and became cult objects as late as the sixth and seventh centuries, when they began to be associated with legends about the first Christian martyrs.
The absence of a large number of Christian artifacts in the burials means that this polis had quite a long period of transition from paganism to Christianity. Characteristic of the area were mixed pagan-Christian symbols and the absence of typical Christian features in the burial rite. For the Christian burial rite had not yet been clearly defined, and the new religion was still in the process of formation. It adjusted to its needs not only many Ancient Greco-Roman ritual practices but also in part the idea of the other world and immortality of the soul.
Hagiographies offer additional testimony to the time when this region’s population was Christianized. It was thought, proceeding from the famous chronicle of the life of St. Andrew, that Chersonesus had been a Christian city as early as the first and second centuries. But the legend about the Apostle Andrew’s travel was borrowed from apocryphal writings of the second and third century about his missionary activities in Scythia.
St. Andrew’s arrival in Chersonesus was first mentioned at the turn of the ninth century. The legend about the exile and martyrdom of Roman Bishop Clement in this region also came about later. It became associated with Chersonesus only after Constantine the Philosopher, an outstanding Slavic philosopher, “discovered” his relics there in the ninth century. Some of the remains were taken by Prince Volodymyr to Kyiv, where they rested in the Church of the Tithe.
More difficult is studying the authenticity of The Biographies of the Holy Bishops of Chersonesus. They deal with the arrival and death of the first Christian missionaries in the city at the time of Diocletian’s rule. Sent by the Jerusalem bishop, they perished at the hands of pagans.
But this source also cannot be accepted uncritically. The Jerusalem church, which played no significant role in the Christian world until the Third Ecumenical Council (431), could not have sent its missionaries to Chersonesus.
The Biographies also contain a story about baptism. On the request of some of the faithful, Emperor Constantine the Great sent Bishop Capitonus with a military detachment to Chersonesus in 325. But local residents did not favor the new faith. Only when Capitonus went into a lime-baking oven and emerged unharmed did they decide to accept it. This was immediately reported to Emperor Constantine who was attending the Council of Nicea in Asia Minor.
Yet, the historical background of this story is questionable. The Biographies were written not earlier than in the seven century, well after the events described, and reflect an attempt of the church to create a heroic history of its own whose authors regarded the period 303 through 311 as one of martyrdom.
The struggle between Christianity’s advocates and opponents, the martyrdom of the first missionaries, and, finally, the alleged miracle of Capitonus were supposed to form an unshakable belief in a church organization hallowed by Emperor Constantine the Great himself, whose name is usually associated with the final triumph of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Is this not the reason why a memorial temple was erected over the lime-baking oven in the seventh century? The same purposes were also served by crypts painted over with Christian themes featuring wreaths, symbols of martyrdom, and the monograms of Christ. Chronologically, these events coincide with the revival of church construction in Chersonesus of the sixth and seventh centuries.
What was considered proof of the early penetration of Christianity is the signature of a Chesonesus bishop on documents of the First Ecumenical Council (325). But the scrolls containing this date back to an original from only the seventh or eighth century. Earlier scrolls do not mention the name of any Chersonesus bishop. A Chersonesus bishop could figure only in the context of the Second Ecumenical Council (381).
The bishop’s presence at the Second Ecumenical Council, archeological artifacts, and fourth-fifth century sculpture fragments testify that there was already a small Christian commune in Chersonesus by this time but there was no special necropolis. It is not before the turn of the sixth century that a chapel was built southeast of the city, around which the first Christian burials were made. Later on, the chapel gave way to the countryside temple of the Virgin of Blachern apparently built at the spot where exiled Pope Martin I was buried in the mid-seventh century.
All this indicates the long and difficult way the new religion took root in Chersonesus. Large scale conversion of the local population to Christianity, begun not earlier than in the sixth century, was associated with the more active Byzantine policy in Taurica pursued by the powerful Emperor Justinian I (527-565).
This period includes such things as building churches, eventual drawing up of new street plans, canonization of martyrs, repainting of crypts with Christian symbols, the emergence of Christian burials, and the first tombs with crosses.
But Christianity won the final victory in Chersonesus and in other regions of the Byzantine Empire only in early medieval times. And although Byzantine Chersonesus was the main bastion of the Christian church on northern Black Sea coast, its population retained the vestiges of paganism until the thirteenth century.
