The book opens with two historical scenes, separated in time by nearly a thousand years. In the first, Vladimir Putin makes a speech in front of a new sixty-foot monument of Saint Vladimir the Great, the baptizer of Rus. Looking into the television camera, the president retells the myth of Christian origins of Russian civilization—a sacred story that was first written down in the early twelfth century by the clerical authors of the Rus Primary Chronicle (Повесть временных лет). In the second scene, readers are transported to eleventh-century Constantinople, where the Byzantine emperor and the patriarch are celebrating the Feast of Saints Constantine and Helena. They lead a liturgical procession of thousands across the city, and along the route the clergy ritually retell the story of the conversion of the Roman Empire. There follows a brief narrative history of how Byzantine church books were translated and transported into late tenth-century Kiev. The chapter concludes with the principal argument of the book: that the myth of Saint Vladimir and his kin recorded in the Rus Primary Chronicle has its source in the liturgical services of the Byzantine Empire.

The chronicle entry for the year 1015 recounts the murder of two of Vladimir’s sons, Princes Boris and Gleb. Once more, a series of close readings reveals a deep liturgical subtext underlying the chronicle text, only this time that subtext is Eucharistic: Prince Boris prepares for death in the exact way that an eastern Christian priest prepares for the Eucharistic sacrifice during the celebration of the divine liturgy. And just as the sacrifice offered in the Eucharist is Christ Himself, so the sacrifice that Boris offers in the chronicle is his own life, and the life of his brother Gleb. A second level of liturgical subtext is also discussed in the chapter, and it is connected to the Byzantine rite for consecrating a new church. The chroniclers in Rus were clearly familiar with this rite and it may have guided their large-scale conception of the founding of Christianity in Rus. Indeed, when we consider what a bishop says and does during the consecration rites—what he prays about and what he asks for—it reveals a crucial theological link between Vladimir’s role as bishop and the martyrdom of his sons Boris and Gleb.