Euphraxia of Pskov

Saint Euphraxia of Pskov (in the world Euphrosyne), the right-⁠believing, was, by tradition, a daughter of Prince Rogvolod Borisovich of Polotsk, wife of Prince Yaroslav Vladimirovich of Pskov and then abbess of a monastery she founded. She was killed on 8 May 1243, at Otepää, in present-⁠day Estonia. The Russian Church venerates her among the right-⁠believing and remembers her on 16 October, on the old calendar.

Life

She seems to have been born in the 1170s, but not later than 1181. She was raised in the Transfiguration monastery in Polotsk. At about thirty she married Prince Yaroslav Vladimirovich of Pskov, being probably his second wife. Yaroslav fled from Pskov to Livonia and there married a German woman. With the German knights he attacked Russian lands several times, and in 1231 he captured Izborsk.

After her husband left, Euphrosyne began an especially devout life. In 1243 she built on the bank of the river Velikaya the convent of Saint John the Baptist and was its first abbess. In the same year she was invited to Livonia, to a meeting with her former husband and negotiations about her dowry. At Odenpe (now Otepää) she was killed, on 8 May, by her stepson, the one born to Yaroslav by the German woman. She was buried in the cathedral of the monastery she had founded.

Veneration

Local veneration began, by tradition, when the bishop of Novgorod recognized that the icon at her tomb worked miracles. "The holy and right-⁠believing princess Euphraxia of Pskov" appears in the "Description of Russian Saints" of 1734, while in earlier lists her name is missing. Her likeness survives on two icons, on one of which she is painted praying together with Saint John the Baptist and the Holy Apostle Andrew the First-⁠Called.

Our sources do not give a canonization by the whole Church, but speak of veneration that began locally, around her tomb, so she remains above all a saint venerated at Pskov.