Daniel Uspensky

Holy Venerable Martyr Daniel Uspensky, called the abbot of the Dormition, lived in the first third of the thirteenth century and served at Vladimir. Two versions of his service are preserved: he was abbot and confessor of the Dormition convent of the Princess in Vladimir, or he was the head of the Dormition cathedral. He died on 7 February 1238, in the storming of Vladimir by the Mongols.

The historian M. V. Tolstoy describes the tragedy of 1238 this way: on the Sunday of Meatfare, 7 February, a little after matins, the attack of the Tatars began. Bishop Mitrophan, together with the grand prince's family and the people, shut himself in the Dormition cathedral. Those gathered received from Bishop Mitrophan tonsure into monasticism, confessed, communed of the Holy Mysteries and prepared for death. The Tatars took the city, broke the doors of the church, laid fires around it and inside it and lit them. Then Bishop Mitrophan said a prayer, asking the Lord to receive in peace the souls of His servants, and blessed all for the unavoidable death. All those in the cathedral died of smoke and of the swords of the enemy.

Saint Daniel, as one of the most respected churchmen in Vladimir, is mentioned beside the bishop and hieromartyr Mitrophan in a variant of the chronicle entry of 1238 on the capture and destruction of Vladimir by the Mongol-⁠Tatar armies, set down in the Vladimir Chronicle Collection of 1281: there were killed Pachomius, archimandrite of the monastery of the Nativity of the Mother of God, Daniel, abbot of the Dormition, Theodosius of the Savior, and the other abbots, monks and nuns, priests and deacons. According to Archimandrite Leonid Kavelin, Saint Daniel is buried in the men's Monastery of the Transfiguration at the Golden Gate in Vladimir. He was canonised in the Synaxis of the Saints of Vladimir in 1982. His commemoration was set on 23 June, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Vladimir.