Russian History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Russian History’
Two frantic parents implore St Nicholas’s help in rescuing their baby boy.
St Nicholas (d. 330), Bishop of Myra in Asia Minor, is known as the patron of those at sea. He is not normally given the soubriquet ‘the wet’: that belongs strictly to an icon of St Nicholas, sadly lost during the Second World War, associated with a remarkable miracle from the late 11th century.
Scandinavian tradition says that the daughter of King Harold was consort to one the great rulers of Kievan Rus’.
After Vladimir I adopted Christianity in the 10th century, the rulers of what would become Russia became prime candidates for dynastic marriage into the great royal houses of Europe. An example of particular interest to the English is the Princess Gytha, daughter of King Harold Godwinson, who married Vladimir’s great-grandson, Vladimir II Monomakh.
Shortly after Askold and Dir founded Kiev in 862, they launched a brazen but ill-fated assault on the capital of the Roman Empire.
In the 860s, just as the Great Army led by Vikings Ingwaer and Halfdan was swarming over England, Viking warlords Askold and Dir were establishing the great cities of Novgorod and Kiev as the foundations of Rus’. Almost at once the pagan settlers set their sights on the greatest prize of all, Constantinople, capital of the Roman Empire.
In 1553, Richard Chancellor set out on a perilous voyage to Russia in order to bypass the Hanseatic League’s customs union.
Richard Chancellor (?1521-1556) was the first Englishman to establish diplomatic relations with Russia, following an arduous, four-month voyage through uncharted Arctic waters. Tsar Ivan IV was delighted with his new trade partners, despite complaining that English merchants make money for themselves, and not for their princes.
Hapless extremists try to wipe out a miraculous icon of the Virgin Mary.
This is far from the only tale of its kind concerning the ‘Kursk Root’ icon, named after its discovery in the 13th century among the shrubs of a forest near the ruins of Kursk in Russia. The icon, which escaped both the USSR and the Nazis, is kept today in New York, and last visited England in 2012.
Britain’s ties to the rulers of Russia go back to the time of the Norman Invasion.
The story of Russia began when Vikings established a Princedom in Great Novgorod just across the Baltic Sea. At the same moment, the Vikings’ Great Army was also swarming over England, and King Alfred the Great was preparing to do battle; but a Viking past is not all that the two nations have in common.