From Oleg's seizure of the city until 1169, Kyiv functioned as the capital of Kievan Rus', which was ruled by the Varangian Rurikid dynasty which gradually became Slavicized. The Grand Princes had traditional primacy over the other rulers of the land and the Kyivan princehood was a valuable prize in an intra-dynastic system. In 968 the city withstood a siege by the nomadic Pechenegs. In 988, by order of Grand Prince Vladimir I (St. Vladimir or Volodymyr), the city residents accepted baptism en-masse in the Dnieper river, an event which symbolized the Baptism of Kievan Rus to Orthodox Christianity. The city reached the height of its position – its political and cultural Golden Age – in the middle of the 11th century under Vladimir's son Yaroslav the Wise (Grand Prince from 1019 to 1054). In 1051, prince Yaroslav assembled the bishops at St. Sophia Cathedral and appointed Hilarion as the first native-born metropolitan bishop of the Kievan Rus' – a decision reflecting an anti-Byzantine bias. In 1054, the Kievan Church did not take note of the definitive East–West Schism in Christianity, maintaining very good relations with Rome (note for example prince Iziaslav I's request to Pope Gregory VII to extend to the Kievan Rus "the patronage of St. Peter", which the Pope fulfilled by sending Iziaslav a crown from Rome in 1075).