interpretation of texts nor the elaboration of a detached and selected portion of historic material, but a revivification of the materials by a reconstruction of the relations of the social situations by the aid of geography, physical anthropology, ethnology, archaeology, linguistics, social psychology, and the other social sciences. The general history of religions has long required the collaboration of specialists in the various religions. It may be that the history of a single religion will now require the collaboration of specialists in the allied sciences. It will be more difficult but it will be a living history. Out of it may come also, at last, an understanding of the meaning of religion.

III

What is religion? It is a universal phenomenon yet so elusive that among special students of religion there have been literally hundreds of discordant definitions. Some have concluded that it cannot be defined. Nevertheless the last twentyfive years have brought some clarification, partly because of a better knowledge of religions, partly because of the new scientific approach.

Nowhere is the insinuation of the a priori so subtle as in the study of religion. Scientists have written books on religion, assuming, and therefore discovering, that the differentia of religion is supernaturalism. All forms of subjective bias, preoccupation with a special field of materials, limitation to a special method, are revealed in the definitions. More important is the unconscious bias of a cultural milieu. Since almost all the early writers on history of religions belong to the Western world where for centuries religion has been focused by authority on "truth" or "belief" regarding a supernatural world, it was natural that their definitions should have that emphasis. Though definitions in terms of the specific Christian truths were soon abandoned the influence of the philosophic reconstructions of Kant, Hegel, and Schleiermacher remained.

While religion might no longer be "revelation," nor even "primitive revelation," it was often an intellectual apprehension of God," an "apprehension of the infinite," an "emotional attitude" toward the divine. In its most reduced form it was "belief in spiritual beings" or an appreciation of and reaction .to the extraordinary or the mysterious. Always the center of religion was the supernatural. When faced with religions whose emphasis is altogether in the human realm, and where gods figure little or not at all, the answer was that these were ethical systems, not religions. It was an easy answer, too easy. In any other realm science would have demanded a new analysis to account for the facts.

A shift in emphasis came when attention turned to the origin of group customs and the ceremonial, to what was done rather than what was thought, in early religious groups. The great complex of religio-magical ceremonies of the public cult were agreed to be religious and as the control of the group was recognized the center of religion tended to fall in these public ways of securing and guaranteeing the values of life. Religion certainly included a group technique of control of, and adjustment to, the known and unknown environment, the human and the superhuman, to secure the satisfactions of human needs. Definitions then were formed to combine beliefs and practices with the emphasis on the practices. At this point sociological studies of the origin and evolution of moral ideas, of ideas of the supernatural, of the development of practical science to replace the old magical method of control, confirmed the idea that the social mind was the mold in which were shaped all ideas of the divine and that when a new technique was found the old ways of dealing with the supernatural could be discarded. It was necessary, then, either to drop to a deeper level in the definition of religion or to look forward to the disappearance of religion altogether. Reinach, with his usual frankness, took the latter way. Other scholars turned again to the facts. They found that while the supernatural was not a

fixed thing and the ceremonial and rite also were in constant process of change or decay, there always remained the interest in certain central values common to the group. Religion was redefined as "faith in the conservation of values" or "consciousness of highest social values."

When the religions of the world and of the ages were reviewed in this light it appeared that the "values" varied with the periods and the peoples but nevertheless were always practical or ideal satisfactions of the socially approved needs and aspirations of human life. The differentia of religion then is in the shared quest for completely satisfying life. If religion is to be defined for science the search of a quarter-century settles for the present at least upon this central characteristic. All other elements of the religious complex have changed continuously owing to increasing knowledge of the nature of the universe, more effective practical control, and an ever higher ideal of social, spiritual values. The task of history of religions is the descriptive interpretation of the ever changing embodiment of the unchanging quest.

MATTHEW SPINKA

Central Theological Seminary, Dayton, Ohio

This article undertakes to study anew a subject about which little is accurately known. The recent researches of the Russian Professor Golubinskii have furnished much material of value, and a rewriting of this chapter in church history is now possible.

2

Among the lingering legends which still find an honored. place in history, the account of the conversion of Russia would easily secure a leading rank. The account of the event found in what has been regarded as "Nestor's" Chronicle, of which a good English version may be found, for example, in C. H. Robinson's Conversion of Europe,' has become classical for the simple reason that no other source has been known among the non-Russian historians; so it triumphantly makes its appearance even in such a recent work as Reyburn's Story of the Russian Church. But the modern Russian church historians discard the older version almost entirely; and although there is no uniformity in detail, yet in general they agree about the legendary and mythical character of the story of the conversion of Russia as found in the Chronicle. It is the purpose of this article to present a critical revision of that event as worked out by Russian historians of the last thirty-five years. This study is based substantially upon the monumental and exhaustive work of E. Golubinskii, formerly a professor in the Moscow Academy of Divinity, whose painstaking researches were published in three very large, bulky volumes (although the work was never completed). This critical and fully documented study is

3

1C. H. Robinson, The Conversion of Europe (London, 1917), chap. xix. 'H. Y. Reyburn, The Story of the Russian Church (New York, 1924).

'E. Golubinskii, Istorità Russkoi Tserkvi (A History of the Russian Church), Vol. I, Part I-II; Vol. II, Part I. Moscow, 1900-1904.

epoch-making as far as the early Russian church history is concerned, and its conclusions should become familiar to our English scholars.

The beginnings of the Christianization of Russia are intimately bound up with the Varangian settlers and rulers of the earliest Russian state. These Scandinavians, who began to settle along the Dnieper river from the beginning of the ninth century, because of their excellent fighting qualities came to be employed as military escorts of the Slav traders, because the lower Dnieper region was infested with the predatory Khazars. The fortified Slavic commercial centers gradually developed into city-states; and as time went on, the Varangian mercenaries, because of their increasing numbers, and the actual power which they wielded, seized the government of some of these town-states, thus laying foundations of the future Russian state. The most important of these centers was Kiev. According to the newer theory (cf. esp. Klíuchevskii), the Varangians did not found the Russian state alone; the beginnings of it were made by the Slavic princes. The Varangians, or the Rus, as they called themselves, helped very effectively in its consolidation.

Many of these Scandinavian Rus, who had been employed at the Byzantine court in large numbers, and knew the Eastern Empire because of their age-long commercial relationships, had accepted Christianity among the Byzantines. When they later established themselves in Russia, we find a distinct mention of the Christian element among them, and the reference permits us to infer that this element was strong and influential.

The first of these references occurs during the reign of grand-prince Igor (913-45), who ruled only fifty years after the traditional date of the beginning of Rurik's assumption of power (862). Igor's warlike expeditions against the Greeks, undertaken chiefly for commercial purposes, brought V. O. Kluchevskii, A History of Russia (New York, 1911), Vol. I, chap. i.