Hearing this, Vladímir said: “If it will be so in truth, then indeed your Christian God is great.” And he ordered to baptise him. The bishop of Korsún with the priests of the empress received Vladímir as a catechumen and baptised him, and the moment he laid his hands upon him, he regained his eyesight. When Vladímir saw this sudden cure, he praised God and said: “Now have I for the first time found the real God!” When his druzhína perceived this, many were baptised. He was baptised in the church of St. Basil, and that church is situated in Korsún, there where the Korsúnians have their market-place. Vladímir’s palace by the church is standing up to the present day. The palace of the empress is beyond the altar. After the baptism he led the empress to the betrothal. Those who do not know right say that he was baptised in Kíev; others say in Vasilév; others again say otherwise. After that, Vladímir took the empress and Nastás, and the Korsún priests with the holy relics of Clement and Phœbus, his disciple, and church vessels, and images, for his own use. He built a church in Korsún on the hill which they had thrown up in the middle of the city from the dirt they had carried away, and that church is still standing there. Going away, he took along with him two brass statues and four brass horses which stand to-day behind the church of the Holy Virgin, and which the ignorant think to be of marble. He gave as a marriage price Korsún back to the Greeks, for the sake of the empress, and went back to Kíev. Upon his return, he ordered the idols to be cast down, and some to be cut to pieces, and others to be consumed by fire; but Perún he had tied to the tail of a horse, and dragged down the hill over the Boríchev[18] to the brook, and placed twelve men to strike him with rods, not as if the wood had any feeling, but as a scorn to the devil who had in that way seduced people, that he might receive his due punishment from men. As he was dragged along the brook to the Dnieper, the unbelievers wept over him, for they had not yet received the holy baptism, and he was cast into the Dnieper. Vladímir stood by, and said: “Should he be carried anywhere to the banks, push him off, until he has passed the rapids, when you may leave him!” They did as they were told. When he passed the rapids, and was let loose, the wind carried him on a sandbank, which is named from this “Perún’s Bank,” and is called so to this day.