Fyodor Ivanovich

Fyodor Ivanovich, prince of Starodub (also called the Blessed or Right-⁠believing), was the appanage prince of Starodub from 1315, the son of Prince Ivan Mikhailovich, and was killed in the Horde in 1330, the only fact of his life mentioned in the chronicles. His church status is uncertain: the Russian source says that he was canonized and is commemorated on 4 July (21 June by the old calendar), but the Ukrainian source says that he was decanonized in the Russian Orthodox Church and that some genealogies call him the Unblessed, which puts in doubt the supposition that he died for the faith. For these reasons we regard him as locally venerated and uncertain.

Fyodor Ivanovich, surnamed the Blessed, was killed in the Horde in 1330; this is the only fact of his life mentioned in the chronicles, namely in the Nikon Chronicle, which confines itself to stating the event and passes in complete silence the reason for the murder and the circumstances that accompanied it. Andrei Ekzemplyarsky supposes that the death in the Horde of Fyodor Ivanovich, as of several other princes of his time, took place at the instigation of Ivan Kalita, who around that time had begun to squeeze the appanage princes hard and to bring denunciations against many of them to the Tatar khan. On the other hand, the canonization of Fyodor Ivanovich gives grounds to think that he died for the faith. He was buried in his patrimony, in the Nativity of the Mother of God church in the village of Aleksino.

His life says that the holy prince's body was hacked to pieces by the Tatars. To the astonishment of all, the birds did not alight on the honourable remains of the blessed Prince Theodore. The holy relics of the sufferer were taken to the village of Aleksino, in the prince's appanage principality, where he was buried in the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God. Healings of the sick took place at the prince's grave, chiefly of those who suffered from eye diseases. His memory was venerated locally on the day of memory of the martyr Julian of Tarsus. Over his grave a tomb with a canopy was set up, which suffered in a fire in the eighteenth century. He had three sons: Dmitry (died 1354), prince of Starodub from 1330, Ivan (died 1363), prince of Starodub from 1354, and Andrey (died after 1380), prince of Starodub from 1363.