I. East vs. West

A. Emerging differences in belief and religious practice: theology, ritual.
B. Politics, religious and secular.

1. Claims over the locus of Empire.
2. Hierarchy within the Church: the issue of Papal Primacy.
3. Relations between "Church" and "State," East and West: "Caesaropapism"?
4. Church and "state" in Rus and the relations with Byzantium.

C. The cultural divide; its long-term consequences.

II. Iconoclasm and its legacy in religious art.

III. The place of the written word.

A. The legacy of SS. Cyril and Methodius.
B. "Literary culture" in Kievan Rus before Christianity really begins to spread.

1. Oral culture.

a. The tales in the Chronicle.
b. Do byliny and fairy tales count?

2. Written evidence: is there anything of substance before the 11th century?

C. The spread and limits of writing.

1. What we have.
2. What we might imagine: the dangers of arguments from silence.
3. Likelihood oral culture remains dominant.

D. The problem of "intellectual silence."

1. What does it take to stimulate "intellectual inquiry?"
2. Is the " problem" primarily in the minds of modern scholars?