Basil II
Byzantine emperor who, facing the revolt of Bardas Phokas, made an alliance with Vladimir of Kyiv, gave him his sister Anna in marriage on condition of baptism, and sent bishops to the Rus’.
Yahya of Antioch says that Basil’s treasury was empty and the rebel’s army at the gates of the capital when he turned to the king of the Rus’, until then an enemy. The marriage alliance and the baptism were its terms, and the Rus’ troops helped to defeat the rebel at Chrysopolis and Abydos (Yahya of Antioch, History, pp. 423–426). Psellus, writing later, remembers the picked foreign troops who arrived in time (Psellus, Chronographia 1.13).
The Primary Chronicle names Basil and his brother and co-emperor Constantine as the emperors who would not give their sister to a pagan and who sent her to Vladimir the Great with priests once he agreed to be baptized (Primary Chronicle, year 988). See the Baptism of Rus’.
In the timeline
- AD 988/989, estimated dateThe Baptism of Rus’
Vladimir, prince of Kyiv, accepts baptism from Constantinople and marries the emperor’s sister. The chronicle of Kyiv tells of a choice among faiths and of his people baptized in the Dnieper; Greek and Arabic writers tell of an alliance.
Primary sources
Chronographia
- Psellus, Chronographia 1.13sourcebooks.fordham.edu
Primary Chronicle (Tale of Bygone Years)
- Primary Chronicle, year 988mgh-bibliothek.de