Ukraine received its Christian culture from Constantinople. In the first centuries of her existence, this was an advantage for the intellectual hegemony of Constantinople was unchallenged. It is hard today to understand that the great city on the Bosphorus with its unparalleled church of Hagia Sophia was the real centre of Christian culture and civilization. The Emperor of Byzantium was the Christian secular ruler _par excellence_. His wealth and his power were unrivalled save perhaps by the Mohammedan Caliph of Bagdad. Rome looked with envy at the riches and the splendor of the great city of Constantine. It remembered what it had itself lost at the hands of the Germanic barbarian tribes and was proudly jealous. The West envied the glory of the East and sought diligently to seize control of the border lands and to extend its control wherever possible. It was at this period that the Kievan state was organized and St. Volodimir formally accepted Christianity, largely it is said because of the splendor of the service in the Church of Hagia Sophia. Soon a second Hagia Sophia was erected at Kiev and if it did not equal the splendor and the amazing beauty of the elder church, it was still one of the richest and most impressive structures north of the imperial city. The state adopted the standards of Constantinople and the legends and folk tales tell us of the wealth and power of the princes of Kiev, of their gold and precious stones, of their glory and their pride, yes, and of their intelligence and learning. We must not think of education in early Kiev in terms of modern public schools and a high degree of literacy. There was none of that but where was it to be found? At a time when such kings of England as William I and Richard Coeur de Lion were barely able to sign their names, Volodimir Monomakh was able to carry on the business of state in seven languages. The princesses of Kiev were sought in marriage by the most powerful rulers of the day and the blood of the royal family passed into the veins of the sovereigns of England, France, Sweden, Hungary, Poland, and Byzantium itself. The new state had difficulties in the way of internal organization but no more than the neighboring countries. There were civil wars and heavy taxes and oppression of the people but those were universal failings. All the virtues and the vices of Byzantium were copied on a reduced scale in Kiev and its dependencies and the countries of Western Europe were in an even more deplorable condition.