Prince Vladimir of Kiev and Constantinople both used their power in government to popularize their conversions to different religions. Prince Vladimir’s decided to concert to Orthodox Christianity around 989 and made it mandatory for his people to do as he did. Interestingly enough, he was not the best person to idolize due to his lack of appropriate behaviors. According to reports, Prince Vladimir definitely had an affinity for some Bud-Lights here and there and also kept a harem of hundred of girls, not exactly the type of person I’d want to look up to. Although he wasn’t the most morally strict human on the planet, his conversion cause Byzantine influences to spread hastily throughout most of Russia. Byzantine culture and religion were advocated in these distant lands because Byzantine teachers founded schools in the north and priests also went around promoting the religion. Prince Vladimir did not like Judaism or Islam and therefore sponsored Orthodox Christianity and, over time, the Russian Orthodox Church grew and so did the influence of the Byzantine culture.
In 312, Constantine sparked a different conversion earlier in history when he experienced a vision which impressed him upon the power of the Christian God who assisted him in defeating his rivals. Therefore, he established the Edict of Milan, allowing Christians from the Roman Empire the freedom to practice their faith openly. He converted to Christianity, and later around 380 C.E., Theodosius made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.
Both Prince Vladimir of Kiev and Constantine, the sole Roman emperor, definitely used their high positions in society and government as a way to cause their subjects to covert along with them. This, in the end, made these conversions monumental because it had a huge impact on society by spreading different cultures into more distant lands. Priests, teachers, and missionaries acted as an aid to both conversions because they advocated the religions in lands where the rulers had less control over there people.
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