Remezov's cartography also shows the spread of Christianity across Siberia. In his maps, newly founded cities are represented by elaborate churches, and, as Remezov boasts in his writing: the Russians brought the “light of inexpressible joy” to Siberia.Valerie A. Kivelson, “Exalted and Glorified to the Ends of the Earth: Imperial Maps and Christian Spaces in Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Century Russian Siberia”, in The Imperial Map: Cartography and the Mastery of Empire, ed. James R. Akerman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 68. To Remezov, the Tsar's imperial conquest had a religious and missionary component as well, where land gained for Russia was likewise gained for God and his Church.
