Kievan Rus' Christianity, 1054-1240

In the two centuries after Yaroslav the Wise died in 1054, the Christianity that had arrived in Rus' only two generations earlier put down roots of its own. Its centre was the Caves Monastery at Kyiv, begun by a hermit named Anthony in a hillside cave above the Dnieper and turned into a community by Theodosius, its third abbot, who gave it a Byzantine rule and a distinctive emphasis on humility, manual work and care for the poor. Out of that monastery came bishops, chronicles, and a book of stories about its own monks. The church was formally a metropolitanate of Constantinople, usually headed by a Greek, but native metropolitans appeared and a native literature and a native calendar of saints grew up around the princely dynasty. It ended abruptly: the Mongols sacked Kyiv in 1240.