The review discusses "The Church and Empire in the Byzantine Ecclesiastic Poetry" by a St. Petersburg historian V.V. Vasilik. The book is dedicated to the ecclesiastic poetry of the late 1st - 10th centuries. The author raises the problem of historicism in the Byzantine hymnography and describes various aspects of the life of the Church and Empire. The book consists of two parts: the first analyses the church life as reflected in the Byzantine hymnography and the second dwells on the life of the Byzantine Empire and society as described in the Eastern Christian poetic monuments. The author draws a parallel with the ancient Rus and compares two church reformers St. Constantine and St. Vladimir, the Church of the Holly Apostles and the Church of the Tithes.