Demetrius of Yuryev

Holy Right-⁠believing Demetrius of Yuryev, Demetrius Svyatoslavich, was prince of Yuryev and died in 1269, after receiving tonsure into monasticism. He is commemorated on 6 July, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Vladimir.

He was the son of Grand Prince Svyatoslav, named Gabriel in Baptism, Vsevolodovich, and Princess Eudoxia, daughter of Prince Peter Yurievich of Murom. In 1228, after a grave illness, his mother, with her husband's permission, became a nun at a monastery in Murom. Demetrius is first mentioned, alongside his father, in the Rostov chronicle of 1238, among the princes of North-⁠East Rus who remained alive after the devastation of the Suzdal land by the armies of Khan Batu. The Life of the princes of Yuryev explains this by their being at that time in Great Novgorod, with their brother, Prince Yaroslav Vsevolodovich. In the autumn of 1250, together with other Russian princes and his father, he went to the Horde, to Khan Sartak. Researchers think that such journeys of princes with their heir sons were usually made when it was a matter of confirming to the Rurikids their ancestral principalities.

After the death of Grand Prince Svyatoslav Vsevolodovich, on 2 February 1253, Demetrius began to rule at Yuryev. He supported the policy of Grand Prince Alexander Nevsky. In 1255 he took part in the grand prince's campaign against the Novgorodians, who had driven out Vasily, the son of Alexander Nevsky, and as a result of the campaign Vasily's power was restored. From a marriage to an unknown woman he had at least one son, Yaroslav, who became prince of Yuryev; the chronicles also mention a grandson of his, Prince John Yaroslavich of Yuryev, who took part in the campaign of the winter of 1339-1340 against Smolensk.

Under the year 1269 the chronicles and the donation book of the Saint Michael the Archangel monastery in Yuryev tell of the tonsure of Demetrius into monasticism and the schema, before his death, by Bishop Ignatius of Rostov, and of a wonder that happened after the tonsure: Demetrius, struck mute by illness, spoke. At his death there were present, besides Ignatius, Prince Gleb Vasilievich of Beloozero and his mother, Princess Maria Mikhailovna. He was buried in the monastery of Saint Michael in Yuryev. The local veneration of the princes of Yuryev, among them Demetrius, began not later than the seventeenth century. In the church of Saint George in Yuryev-⁠Polsky there were two venerated tombs, in the chapel of the Holy Trinity, one being regarded as that of Demetrius, and people came there, brought honey and had memorial services held. In 1809 the crypt was enlarged and turned into the cathedral of the Holy Trinity, and in 1817 the chapel of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross was added. The fate of the relics after 1917 is not known, and the tombs of the princes have not survived. His veneration was resumed at the end of the twentieth century, and his name was entered in the Synaxis of the Saints of Vladimir, in 1982. Not later than the seventeenth century his memory was also kept on 3 February, at Yuryev-⁠Polsky. His image, as a man of middle age, appears in miniatures of the Illustrated Chronicle Collection of the 1570s.