Volodymyr the Great
St Volodymyr's Hill, Kyiv
Nine stops with the prince who came to the water late, and then went looking for the sick
He was a prince of Kyiv who had killed his brother under a promise of safe conduct, taken a woman whose father he had put to the sword, and set up the idols on the hill above his hall. He was somewhere near forty when he went down into the font. Nine years after that he was sending carts of bread and fish and mead through the streets of Kyiv, with the drivers calling out at the doors: where is the sick, where is the one who cannot walk? Walk this road with Volodymyr — from the grandmother who prayed for that household and died twenty years before anything happened, to the night in 1015 when they lowered his body through the floorboards. It is for anyone who came to God late, and for anyone still waiting on someone who has not come at all.
The nine days
Day 1 · The Grandmother — What She Did Not Live to See
Kyiv, 969
Day 2 · The Prince — The Man He Was First
Kyiv, 980
Day 3 · The Martyrs — The Lot Fell on a Boy
Kyiv, 983
Day 4 · The Search — He Sent Men to Look
Kyiv and Constantinople, 987
Day 5 · The Font — Blind at Chersonesus
Chersonesus in the Crimea, 988
Day 6 · The River — The Day the City Went Into the Water
Kyiv, 988
Day 7 · The Carts — Where Is the Sick Who Cannot Walk?
Kyiv, 996
Day 8 · The Fear — He Would Not Execute Them
Kyiv, after 996
Day 9 · The Carpet — They Took Him Down Through the Floor
Berestove, near Kyiv, 15 July 1015