Biya is closer, - “the path to the Greeks” from time immemorial was inspired by Ma Rusn and the first international relations of our ancestors were with Greece. But, on the other hand, the circle of political and moral gains of the loan came closer and closer to Rus'. The energetic Latin-German propaganda also had to be directed toward Rus'; it, like Bulgaria and Moravia, was faced with the question of deep importance - where to accept the faith, whose influence to admire - eastern or western.
Bovrovoy about the Latin preachers in Rus' during the era of its conversion to Christianity has been quite developed in our church science, and mainly in polemical forms. We would just like to more carefully trace the Western evidence about these preachers and compare the testimony of Western sources with the testimony of our chronicles.
According to our chronicles, Latin-German propaganda in Rus' “is first discovered during the conversion to Christianity of St. Vladimir, in which “Germans from Rome” come. According to Western sources, the question of choosing a faith begins earlier, even under the reign of the Christian ruler and strongwoman of the Russian land, Princess Olga. The oldest source on this subject, a contemporary of the event, the successor of Reginon, in his chronicle, says: “In the year of the Incarnation of the Lord 969... the ambassadors of Helena, princess (ge^shae) Rugov (Kitsogshp), who under Roman, the emperor of Constantinople, was baptized in Constantinople, feignedly, as after the It turned out that they were asking the emperor to appoint a bishop and a governor for this people. 960, the emperor celebrated the Nativity of Christ in Frankfurt, where Libutius of the Cenobites of St. Albana was ordained bishop for the people of Rugov. 961 Libutius, who had been detained by certain circumstances in the previous year, died on March 15, and Adalbert of the Cenobites of St. Mavsikiva, was appointed through the intrigues and slander of Archbishop Wilhelm, although he did not sin against him and was loyal to him in the best possible way. The most pious emperor, having supplied Adalbert with his usual generosity with everything he needed, sent with honor. 962 Adalbert, ordained bishop for the Rugs, was unable to achieve anything on the day of which he was sent, and seeing his work in vain,
returns, but while some of his companions were killed, he himself barely escaped with great difficulty, and, arriving at the emperor, was received with love."
How to look at this evidence?
The silence of the Russian chronicles about this fact, the strangeness of the appeal of Olga, who was recently baptized in Constantinople, to the German emperor with a request to send Western preachers, when it would have been most natural to turn to Constantinople for them, the lack of indications of the intervening circumstances that could explain this fact, and finally the name of the Russians Kpdi, and not Vizsi, or Kizvi - all this prompted many scientists to attribute this evidence not to Kievan Rus, but either to the inhabitants of the island of Rügen or to