Constantine of Yaroslavl

Holy Right-⁠believing Prince Constantine of Yaroslavl was the youngest son of the holy prince Theodore of Smolensk, born in the Horde of his marriage to the khan's daughter. No exact data on his life and reign have been preserved; it is known only that he died before his father.

His father, Saint Theodore, nicknamed the Black, was born in the hard time of the Mongol invasion, around 1237-1239, and received at Baptism the name of the great martyr Theodore Stratelates. In 1260 he married Maria Vasilievna, daughter of the holy prince Basil of Yaroslavl, and became prince of Yaroslavl; Maria died soon after. Later he was in the Horde, where Khan Mengu-⁠Temir, who treated the Orthodox Church with respect, held him in high regard. The page tells that the khan hesitated to give him a daughter, then, for the weight of a kinship with Rus, ordered her to be baptized first, so that the Orthodox faith might not be defiled, and gave her in marriage to Theodore. At Baptism she received the name Anna. There, in the Horde, were born the sons of Saint Theodore, Saint David († 1321) and Saint Constantine. Theodore used his great influence in the Horde for the glory of the Russian land and the Russian Church. On 18 September 1299 he received monastic tonsure in the Saviour-⁠Transfiguration monastery in Yaroslavl and departed to the Lord. After him Saint David reigned in Yaroslavl, while Constantine, the second of the younger sons, seems to have reposed earlier.

On 5 March 1463 the relics of the holy prince Theodore and of his children, David and Constantine, were found at Yaroslavl. A chronicler who witnessed the event wrote that in the monastery of the Holy Saviour in Yaroslavl three princes lay in one coffin, Theodore Rostislavich and his sons David and Constantine; Theodore, a tall man, had his sons under his arms, since they were shorter. The relics remained incorrupt.

Saint Constantine is commemorated on 18 March, at the finding of the relics, on 5 June, with the Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl, on 11 July (the date moves), with the Synaxis of the Saints of Volgograd, and on 2 and 17 October, with the Synaxis of the Saints of Kazan, in the new style. The life of the holy prince Theodore and his sons is also found in the Lives of the Saints by Saint Dimitry of Rostov.