people paid tribute to the Russian Prince, but his sway over them could only have lasted a while, as they certainly enjoyed independence till a much later date. Two years later he made a successful raid into the country of the Volga-Bulgarians, which he wisely followed up by a well-marketed peace, and returned to Kiev not empty-handed. At this period the Christian religion was making its final conquest of the outlying princes and peoples of Europe. The double influence of the Holy Roman Empire and the Papal See--the latter now free from any dependence on the Byzantine Court--gave that religion a powerful advertisement among the outlandish folks, and as each nation was brought into subjection to, or enjoyed intercourse with the great central State, so the rites and ceremonies of the prevailing worship were displayed before their eyes with all the glamour and sanction of Imperial authority. The Saxon annalist, Lambert of Aschaffenburg, recounts, for instance, how Easter was kept at Quedlingburg in the year 973 by the Emperor Otho I. and his son (afterwards Otho II.), attended by envoys from Rome, Greece, Benevento, Italy, Hungary, Denmark, Slavonia, Bulgaria, and Russia, “with great presents.” The feasts and devotions observed in the little town, the services in the hill-top abbey, founded by Henry the Fowler, the processions of chanting monks with lighted tapers--all in honour of the Man-God who had died in a far country, but who rose triumphant to live above them in the sky and behind the high altar--would not fail to make deep impression on the heathen visitors. The western Prince was so much greater and richer and more powerful than their princes, might not the western gods be greater than their gods? Bohemia, which early in its history came into close contact with the Empire, had already adopted Christianity, and in Poland Vladimir’s contemporary and sometime antagonist, Mscislav, had in 966 entered the same faith. Hungary was still pagan, though its conversion was to come in the lifetime of the reigning Duke (Geyza), while in Norway, towards the close of the century, the worshippers of Wodin were to be confronted with the alternative of death or baptism.