Mikhail II of Tver

Mikhail II of Tver (Mikhail Alexandrovich) was born in 1333 at Pskov and died on 26 August 1399 at Tver. He was prince of Mikulin and Tver (1368-1382) and grand prince of Tver (1382-1399), one of the younger sons of Alexander Mikhailovich of Tver. The calendar of the Russian Church counts him, as a devout prince, in the synaxis of the saints of Tver, kept on the first Sunday after the feast of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul (a movable day).

His father, Alexander, took refuge in Pskov after the uprising in Tver, and Mikhail was baptized there by Archbishop Basil Kalika of Novgorod, who remained his teacher. After the death of his father and brother in the Horde (1339), he received Mikulin. By 1362 the chronicles call him a good and beloved prince. He fought the princes of Kashin and, with the help of Algirdas of Lithuania, resisted the influence of Dmitry Ivanovich of Moscow in the affairs of Tver, annexing Kashin and proclaiming himself in 1382 grand prince of Tver. His claims to the grand principality of Vladimir failed because of the Golden Horde, which supported him only briefly, in the time of Mamai, and after its union under Tokhtamysh left Vladimir as the hereditary possession of the Moscow princes.