Dimitry of Uglich

Right-⁠believing Prince Dimitry of Uglich (born in 1477 or about 1483, died about 1544) was the younger of the two sons of the appanage prince of Uglich, Andrei Vasilyevich Goryay, and Princess Elena Romanovna of Mezetsk. He is honoured in the Russian Church as a right-⁠believing prince, on the third Sunday after Pentecost, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Vologda, and on 23 May, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl. His relics lie in the lower church dedicated to Venerable Dimitry of Prilutsk, in the Cathedral of the Saviour of the Spaso-⁠Prilutsky Monastery.

He was born at Uglich about 1481. After his father, by order of his uncle, Grand Prince Ivan III of Moscow, he was seized in 1491 at Uglich together with his brother John and sent to prison, where he was kept in chains. According to the Uglich chronicler, they were first held in the prison at Pereslavl, then sent to Beloozero. Later they were moved to Vologda, to the Spaso-⁠Prilutsky Monastery, where the brother died soon after, between 1522 and 1525.

According to the chronicler Postnikov of the sixteenth century, Dimitry Andreyevich was held in the prison at Pereslavl, and on 20 December 1540 Grand Prince Ivan IV ordered him to be let out of prison. According to this chronicle, he spent forty-⁠nine years in prison, beginning at the age of seven. After his release he lived at Pereslavl. Sons of boyars were assigned for his upkeep, as well as stewards, keyholders, cupbearers, cooks and grooms of the grand prince. The grand prince sent him clothes from Moscow, he had all dry and cellar provisions as much as he wished, and he was allowed to go freely, where he wished, to the churches of the town to pray. He died at Pereslavl and was never at the grand prince's court in Moscow.

According to the Brockhaus and Efron encyclopedia, however, after almost half a century of imprisonment in chains, in 1540 he received relief: it was ordered that the chains be removed from him, but he died as a prisoner at Vologda. He died in 1543 or 1544 and was buried beside his brother, Venerable Ignatius, in the Cathedral of the Saviour of the Spaso-⁠Prilutsky Monastery. Over the place of his burial stood a wooden tomb, which later disappeared, and the place of the prince's burial was not marked until 1896, when a new wooden tomb was made. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a local veneration of Dimitry Andreyevich was kept at Vologda and Uglich. His name is in the Synaxis of the Saints of Vologda (the celebration was established in 1841) and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl (the celebration was established in 1964).