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THEOLOGY IN KIEV AN RUS 275there were churches belonging to the two rites, e.g., Novgorod). Furthermore,a question discussed in the nineteenth century and even moreintensely in recent Soviet historiography, 19 is whether Christianity destroyeda religious and culturally intact pagan world by "baptizing theRus' " (in 988), or whether it simply replaced the vestiges of a pagan worldthat had already become an empty shell. The converse of this questionrevolves around the insoluble question of the depth of the nadir that theChristian religion reached in the first centuries of Rus' history and subsequently.20 In light of the lack of source materials (particularly for old Slavicpaganism, which is not the case for the Graeco-Roman world), we canhardly expect to find a universally acceptable answer to the questions raisedhere. Yet we can hope to contribute to the basis and quality of the discussion.Of the written evidence for dvoeverie, which contains many parallels tothe history of the conversion of the West European peoples, 21 only the mostimportant documents are discussed here. Of small concern to us is the portrayalof mythological figures, pagan divinities and rituals, magic and festivalcustoms, marriage laws, eating customs, and all those practices (prophecy,funeral feasts, etc.) typically belonging to the "double faith" as theyare addressed in the sermons and church laws; 22 what is important is whatthe church could offer to counter against this ever-latent subculture. In thecanonical questions and answers of the Novgorod deacon Kirik (b. 1110),Bishop Nifont threatened with a powerful "Woe [unto you]!" both theofferings of food to the nature gods Rod and Rozhanitsa and the violators oftheir prohibitions. 23 Regarding the blessing of the funeral feast (kut'ia, Gr.)—whose pagan origin led to its radical suppression in the19Thus, for example, in Academician B. A. Rybakov's Kievskaia Rus' i russkie kniazhestvaXII-XIU vv. (Moscow, 1982), pp. 389-402; the relevant passage is taken word for word fromthe volume that appeared sixteen years earlier: Istoriia SSSR s drevneishikh vremen do nashikhdnei v dvukh seriiakh v dvenadtsati tomakh, 1 (Moscow, 1966), pp. 500-511 (without footnotes!).20See B. P. Miliukov, Ocherkipo istorii russkoi kul'turny, vol. 2 (Paris, 1931), pp. 10- 18,which surveys the treatments of the question in the nineteenth century.21See Podskalsky, Christentum, p. 21, fn. 93 (quotations of Latin sources). On the mostimportant literature concerning the East Slavic area, see ibid., fn. 94; also see H. Lowmiariski,Religia Siowian i jej upadek (w. VI-X11) (Warsaw, 1979); M. T. Znayenko, The Gods of theAncient Slavs: Tatishchev and the Beginnings of Slavic Mythology (Columbus, Ohio, 1980).22A listing of all of these phenomena is given in E. V. Anichkov, lazychestvo i DrevnaiaRus' (St. Petersburg, 1914), pp. 247-55 (the corrected version appears in K.-H. Kasper, DiePredigtliteratur der Kiever Rus' als Spiegel der Zeit [East Berlin, 1958; in typescript], pp.15 If.).23L. K. Goetz, Kirchenrechtliche und kulturgeschichtliche Denkmaler Altrufilands (Stuttgart,1905), p. 244 (§33).