Problems of the Baptism of Alania

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of determining the time and conditions for the baptism of Alania. The study is based on the letters of the Patriarch of Constantinople Nicholas the Mystic, in which the process of Christianization itself is illuminated with varying degrees of completeness. The analysis of this information allows us to believe that active missionary activities, already partly successful, were carried out in Alania at the beginning of the 10th century, apparently during the period of the first patriarchate of Nicholas the Mystic. The baptism of Alania itself, which should be understood as the baptism of the ruler, took place in 914/915. An active mediator in this act was Abkhazia, which had close friendly ties with both Byzantium and Alania, in which the ruling circles were already interested in adopting a monotheistic religion in the conditions of increasing independence of Alania from the Khazar Khaganate. Attempts to present baptism as the result of Kartli’s activity, attributing to Kartli or Byzantium a certain state priority over Alania has no factual confirmation. The baptism of Alania appears as an act of creating an ethno-state Christian center that ensured the process of Christianization of a particular ethnic group outside the proper possessions of Byzantium. The further process of Christianization of the broader strata of the Alan population was not violent or forced. This situation could have made the forced temporary departure of Alania from Christianity not so painful for the main part of its population. Perhaps at that time the Christian clergy could have moved to the Anakopian Archdiocese of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in Abkhazia. Alania’s departure from Christianity after 931/932 was historically short-lived. Apparently, at the end of the 940s, it returns to the Alanian state, which since that time has finally entered the official circle of Christian states.