Rus was baptised in 988, a year after Hugh Capet became King of France.
His descendants would rule France for more than 800 years.
The events
- Hugh Capet becomes King of France987 · Noyon. After the last Carolingian king of France died, the nobles elected Hugh Capet king. The Capetian dynasty he founded, with its Valois, Bourbon and Orléans branches, ruled France, with interruptions, until 1848.
- Christianization of Kievan Rus'988 · Kiev. Grand Prince Vladimir of Kiev adopted Byzantine Christianity and had the people of Kiev baptised in the Dnieper. The conversion tied Rus' to the Orthodox world of Byzantium and shaped its culture, literacy and statehood for centuries.
More amazing facts
- 988 · 1021 Thirty-three years after the Christianization of Rus', Vikings were cutting wood in Newfoundland — tree rings date it precisely to 1021.
- 1014 · 1016 While Basil II was finishing off Bulgaria at Kleidion (1014), Rus' was getting its first law code, the Russkaya Pravda (1016).
- 1054 In July 1054, Chinese astronomers saw a new star; 12 days later came the schism in Constantinople.
- 1066 · 1910 The same Halley's Comet embroidered on the Bayeux Tapestry in 1066 returned in 1910 — when the Earth even passed through its tail.
- 1096 · 1325 Oxford University is older than the Aztec state: teaching at Oxford existed by about 1096, while Tenochtitlan was founded only in 1325.
- 1096 · 1147 Moscow is first mentioned in a chronicle in 1147.