Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typ...os. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. The Russian Church from its Establishment to its Independence of Constantinople.?The Unia and the Orthodox Church in Poland; Separation of the Latter from the Church in Russia. After the death of "Vladimir, in 1015, bloody and fratricidal strife between the appanaged princes desolated Russia until Yaroslav, his son, succeeded in uniting the whole kingdom under his sway. Yaroslav, great among the greatest of Russian mon- archs, followed his father's example. He sedulously fostered the growth of the Church as an element of his own power. With its growth its national character was developed. It evinced its jealousy of foreign influence by the election, in 1051, of Hilarion, a native Russian, as metropolitan, without reference to Constantinople. Churches were multiplied in all the cities, and the first monastic establishments were founded. The most celebrated of these, from the great influence which it exerted upon the civil and religious destinies of Russia, and from the profound veneration in which it is and always has been held by the people, merits more than a passing notice. A pilgrim from Lubetsch became a monk in the Holy Land, under the name of Anthony, and was distinguished for exemplary humility and devotion. His superiors marked his vocation for coenobitic life, and, giving him their blessing, ordered him back to Russia, prophesying the success which would attend his labors in his native MONASTERY OF THE PETCHERSKI. 3 land. On his return, about 1013, he was divinely guided, in his search for a retreat, to the mountain near Kiev, where the metropolitan Hilarion had, when a simple priest, been wont to resort for solitary prayer and meditation; there, in the cave, two fathoms deep, dug out for himself by Hilarion, Anthony took up his abode and ...Detailed info »« Brief info