Euphrosyne of Suzdal

Venerable Euphrosyne of Suzdal (in the world Princess Feodulia Mikhailovna of Chernigov, 1212-1250) was the daughter of the Holy Martyr Michael of Chernigov, a nun and abbess of the Convent of the Deposition of the Robe of the Mother of God in Suzdal. She is venerated as one of the venerable women of medieval Rus and is commemorated on 25 September by the old calendar.

Childhood

Her parents were the Holy Martyr Prince Michael Vsevolodovich of Chernigov and Elena Romanovna, daughter of Roman Mstislavich of Galicia. According to her life, Euphrosyne was the first child, obtained through prayer, whom her parents had earnestly asked of God. The boyar Theodore, later tortured with the prince in the Horde, influenced her education. She learned to read at nine. As her bridegroom was chosen Theodore Yaroslavich, brother of Alexander Nevsky, but he died unexpectedly, aged thirteen, at Novgorod on 5 June 1233.

Monastic life

The princess stayed in the convent of Suzdal dedicated to the Deposition of the Robe of the Mother of God, where she was tonsured with the name Euphrosyne, in honour of Saint Euphrosyne of Alexandria. In time she became abbess of the convent. At her initiative the Holy Trinity Convent was founded in Suzdal for the tonsure of married women, that is, widows. Her life does not say in what year she died, and the date 1250, often met with, is a guess. According to her life, she was buried on 27 September in the convent of the Deposition of the Robe, mourned by the clergy and all the people.

Veneration

Her veneration throughout Rus began after the consecration in 1517 of Archimandrite Gennady, abbot of the Nativity of the Mother of God Monastery in Vladimir, as Bishop of Suzdal and Tarusa. Her life was written by the monk Gregory of the Saint Euthymius Monastery in Suzdal, around the 1550s-1560s, and contains her miracles during her lifetime and two accounts of posthumous miracles that the author witnessed, one dated 1 May 1558.

On 18 September 1698, with the blessing of Patriarch Adrian, Metropolitan Hilarion of Suzdal performed her glorification. At that time her relics were also found and placed in the monastery cathedral.

The relics in the twentieth and twenty-⁠first centuries

On 12 February 1919 the relics were opened by the Soviet authorities and passed to the Suzdal museum. In 1988 they were handed to the only active church in the town, that of Saints Constantine and Helen, which between 1993 and 2010 belonged to the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church. In 2009-2015 the state and that community went to court over her relics and those of Venerable Euthymius of Suzdal, and in March 2015 court bailiffs removed them from the Iviron church. In April 2015 the relics of Euphrosyne were placed in a new shrine in the Cathedral of the Deposition of the Robe at the Suzdal convent of the Russian Orthodox Church.