ABSTRACT
As the chronicles indicate, the start of the process of building a church usually fell in the spring or summer months. The ground for the Golden-Domed Katholikon at the Monastery of the Archangel Michael in Kiev, for example, was broken on 11 July, 1108, and for the Church of St George at Kanev on 9 June, 1158. In Vladimir, the Cathedral of the Dormition was started on 8 April or 8 May, 1158 (according to different lists in the chronicle), the gate to the citadel on 4 June, 1194, and the Katholikon of the Dormition of the Virgin at the Princess's Convent on 15 July, 1200. The Cathedral of the Dormition in Smolensk was started on 7 March or, according to other sources, 2 May, 1101. In Novgorod, the Church of St Theodore Tyro was started on 28 April, 1115; the Church of Sts Peter and Paul on 6 May, 1185; the Church of the Annunciation on Lake Miachino on 21 May, 1179; the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour on the Nereditsa on 8 June, 1198; the Church of St Cyril in April, 1196; the gate church in the citadel on 4 May, 1195; and the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at Staraia Russa on 21 May, 1198. The date of breaking ground for the Church of Sts Boris and Gleb in Norgorod is given less precisely as "spring time".1
