Agaphia

Holy Agaphia was the wife of Grand Prince Yuri (George) II of Vladimir and died in 1238, together with her daughter Theodora, when the Mongol-⁠Tatars took Vladimir. The Church honours her as a right-⁠believing princess.

She was the daughter of Vsevolod Svyatoslavich Chermny, prince of Chernigov and Kyiv, and of Maria, daughter of King Casimir II of Poland; for this reason she is sometimes called Agaphia of Chernigov. The date and place of her birth are not known. On 10 April 1211, in the Dormition church in Vladimir, she married Yuri, then twenty-⁠three, in the presence of his father, Grand Prince Vsevolod the Big Nest. They had three or four sons and two daughters.

In February 1238 Yuri had gone to the river Sit to gather an army, and Agaphia stayed in the city with the children and daughters-⁠in-⁠law. On 7 February, after receiving monastic tonsure from Bishop Mitrophan, she died in the Dormition cathedral, where they had taken refuge, together with her daughter, her daughters-⁠in-⁠law Maria and Christina, and the bishop; according to the chronicle the Tatars set fire to the cathedral. Other accounts say they were tortured in Batu's camp. She was buried in the same cathedral, and her tomb was restored in the 1870s. It is said that no old icons or akathists of this family survive.

She is commemorated in the Synaxis of the Saints of Vladimir, on 23 June by the old calendar (6 July by the new), and on 4 February (17 February by the new).