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278 GERHARD PODSKALSKYthrough the opposing testimony of Holy Scripture, but only rarely did theycounter it with rational argument. It is difficult to gauge how far this tolerance,documented in the written sources, was observed in everyday practice;where there are reports of the killing of sorcerers, 36 the deaths wereordered by princes, not by the threatened bishops (or priests). But it ishighly improbable that a systematic persecution or extermination, such assometimes occurred centuries later with the Old Believers (razkol'niki),took place. On the other hand, the church was apparently without any positiveideas as to how to "Christianize" pagan customs. The opposite has notbeen proved by Soviet historiography (or anthropology), which has oftenoffered as evidence of a merely superficial Christianization the replacementof pagan gods and religious sites by Christian saints and churches (forinstance, the substitution of the animal god Volos/Veles by the peasants'patron saint Vlassii, or of the Perun sanctuary in Kiev by the Elijahchurch). 37 Unquestionably, dvoeverie was more a matter of everydaydomestic practices than of religious offices.II. PRINCIPAL ASPECTS OF THE THEOLOGICAL LITERATUREThese findings concerning Christianity in Kievan Rus'—however encouragingor discouraging they may be—lead to my second set of questions:What were the principal aspects of Kievan theology? Were the centralthemes of the Christian gospel recognized as such, and was their receptionencouraged? Or did things get bogged down in more or less randomlychosen peripheral themes? The organizers of a scholarly colloquium inGermany marking the millennium recently asked me to speak on the "systematics"of Kievan theology; but there is no such thing, as I have arguedat the outset here. That is why answering this set of questions is difficult:they allow each observer to judge for himself to what extent the recognizablekey concepts determined not only orthodox ideas but also everydayorthodox practice. It seems to me, however, that the following two pointsare indisputable: first, there is no need to further subdivide the Kievanepoch according to the categories of the history of theology (e.g., familiar-36Povesf vremennykh let, pp. 147f. (on 1024), pp. 174-81 (on 1071).37See Podskalsky, Christentum, p. 16, fn. 69; p. 17, fn. 74; also St. Georgoudi, "Sant' Eliain Grecia," Studi e material! di storia delle religioni 39 (1968): 293-319.