Theodore the Varangian of Kiev

Holy Martyr Theodore the Varangian of Kiev, a former soldier who had received Baptism in Byzantium, suffered with his son, the Holy Martyr John, in Kyiv in the year 983. They were the first Christian martyrs of Rus.

It is told, after the Venerable Nestor the Chronicler, that Theodore, a Varangian living among the people of Kyiv, had long served in the Byzantine army and received Holy Baptism there. His pagan name, preserved in the name "Tur's place of worship," was Tur (in Scandinavian Thor) or Utor (Ottar). His son John was a handsome and pious youth, who like his father confessed Christianity. The term "Varangian" may show a military occupation rather than origin. In 983 the Grand Prince Vladimir, still a zealous pagan, after a victory over the Yatvingians wished to offer sacrifice to idols. "The elders and boyars" advised him to choose a youth or a maiden, and the lot, cast by the pagan priests, fell, not without design, on the Christian John.

When the envoys told Theodore that the gods had chosen his son to be sacrificed to them, the old soldier answered firmly that they were no gods but wood, here today and rotten tomorrow, that they neither eat nor drink nor speak but are made by human hands, whereas God is One, whom the Greeks serve, who made heaven and earth, the stars, the moon, the sun and man. He would not give his son to demons. The armed crowd rushed at him, wrecked his courtyard and surrounded the house. Theodore, according to the chronicle, stood on the porch with his son and awaited them with weapon in hand, speaking calmly: if they were gods, let them send one of themselves and take his son. Seeing that they could not overcome him in fair fight, the pagans cut the porch posts and brought the house down, and the martyrs died beneath the ruins. The place of their burial is not known. The account says that this sacrifice, the last pagan human sacrifice in Kyiv, became the first holy Christian sacrifice, a crucifixion together with Christ.

Already in the time of the Venerable Nestor, less than a hundred years after their confession, the Russian Church honoured the Varangians among the saints. Bishop Simon of Suzdal (died 1226), compiler of the Kyiv Caves Paterikon, called them the first "Russian citizens of the heavenly city." On the place of their martyrdom Saint Vladimir later built the Church of the Tithes (of the Dormition of the Mother of God), consecrated on 12 May 996. In 1007 the relics of Saint Olga were moved into it, and eight years later Saint Vladimir himself found his last rest there. The lower frame of their wooden house, burned a thousand years ago, has survived to this day: it was found in 1908 during excavations in Kyiv, by the altar of the Church of the Tithes. Theodore is commemorated on 25 July (new style).