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Vladimir (Capital of the province)

the capital of the province of Vladimir, is on the Kliasma, 110 miles E. N. E. of Moscow by rail, has 28 churches, two monasteries, handsome government buildings, etc., and manufactures of icons.

Pop. about 45,000. VLADIMIR I., a Czar of Russia, commonly called VLADIMIR THE GREAT, or SAINT VLADIMIR; son of the Grand-Duke Sviatoplav by a woman of low condition, VLADIMIR II. and great-grandson of Rurik. His father assigned to him the government of Novgorod, dividing the rest of the empire between his two legitimate sons, Jaropalk and Oleg. In 977 Jaropalk quarrelled with Oleg and killed him, and Vladimir would probably have met the same fate had he not fled to the Varangians. Two years later he returned with an army, overcame Jaropalk, and remained sole master of the empire, having his capital at Kiev. He then set himself both to extend and consolidate his dominions, which were little better than a collection of tributary states, scarcely subject to any real control. He enlarged his boundaries from the Black Sea to the Baltic, and appears to have had an intention of welding his empire into a homogeneous mass through the agency of a common religion, in which he tried to combine the Slavonian and ag the Finnish superstitions. In 988, however, an event occurred which altered his schemes entirely. He had already five wives and almost 1,000 concubines, but while besieging the Christian city of Cherson, in the Crimea, he conceived the idea of demanding the hand of Anna, the sister of the Byzantine Emperors Constantine and Basilios. Through the agency of this princess, known in history as Anna Romanovna, he was converted to Christianity. His subjects, who had already been prepared for Christianity by intercourse with the Greeks, followed his example. The Scriptures had already been translated into Slavonic by Cyrillus and Methodius, and Russia soon became a Christian country. Vladimir was then as enthusiastic in his Christian virtues as he had formerly been in his heathen vices. He died in Beresyx in 1015 at a great age, and divided his empire among his 12 sons. The Russian Church canonized him, and gave him a rank equal to that of the Apostles, and the famous "Vladimir order" was founded in his honor by the Empress Catherine II. in 1782. a

VLADIMIR II., called MONOMACHUS, after his maternal grandfather, the Emperor Constantine Monomachus, was born in 1052, and succeeded to the empire in 1113, in opposition to the ordinary Slavonic rules of inheritance. Though not free from some of the barbarisms of his age, he did much for Russia by the establishment and enforcement of just laws, and the consolidation of the internal affairs of the empire. He was married to Gida, daughter of King Harold of England, and his granddaughters married the kings of Norway and Denmark, so that the famous Valdemar of Denmark, probably so named in his VLADIVOSTOK VOGHERA honor, was his great-grandson. He died was established in New York, which in Kiev, May 19, 1126, leaving behind sought to make useful members of him a long "testament" full of instructions to his descendants, which presents a curious picture of contemporary manners and opinions.