I'm going to a hmm. Yes, yes,

or us if yes,

so ros. We're your host Mark Shouse.

Episode number four. Andre Bogolubsky and the arrival of the Mongols.

Last episode we recounted the destruction of the once great city of Kiev by the armies of the son of Yuri Doge rookie Andre Boguljubsky.

Andre moved the capital from Kiev to the city of Vladimir, and soon thereafter, Kiev was sacked once more by the

Cummins. Oh, what remained of the city? Andre, whose name means Andre the God-loving, set up his personal residence and a city called Bogelubovo, which is why the name Spoglyupski, is commonly accepted and would be heard of often in Russian history.

Sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad.

Before we left Kiev, Andre removed the cherished Byzantine mother of God icon from the Kievian church it resided in and moved

it to his own church, the Church of Intercession and Bogilubo.

Many of the religious artifacts of the city were also pillaged and moved elsewhere.

All of this was considered a spear to the heart of Kiev. You cannot underestimate the importance of the icons to the Orthodox faithful.

To this day it is the focus of church services and their prayers.

Iconostasis, the veneration of icons exploded in the 14th and 15th century, which set Russian

apart, especially with their art from Western Renaissance Europe. Each icon was to remind the churchgoer about the involvement

of God in all human affairs. This was to crystallize in their political theory, which said that the Tsar is, as it were, the living

icon of God, just as the whole Orthodox Empire is the icon of the Heavenly World. Now this wouldn't happen for many hundreds of years, but its seeds

were planted here. Andre then went so far as to try to move the metropolitanate from Kiev to Vladimir. But the patriarch of

Constantinople, the ultimate spiritual leader of the Eastern Orthodox religion, said

no. Still Goy gone was the pride of Kiev. It would be many years before Kiev would rise again, but never to the glories reached under Yaroslav, the wise Wise and Vladimir Monomac.

Now getting back to Andre.

His ruling style was different than those who came before him.

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