Peter of Murom

Blessed Prince Peter of Murom (the monk David, died at Pascha of 1227 or 1228) is venerated as the husband of Saint Fevronia (Euphrosyne) and, with her, as a protector of marriage. Our record commemorates him as prince of Murom from 1203 to 1228, son of Yuri Vladimirovich. The Russian source points out that identifying the historical prince David Yuryevich with Saint Peter is only a hypothesis. According to our calendar his commemoration is on 25 June and 8 July (Old Style).

The historical prince

David Yuryevich (died 1227 or 1228) was prince of Murom, from 1203 or 1205 to 1228, son of Prince Yuri Vladimirovich and grandson of Vladimir Svyatoslavich, first grand prince of Ryazan. He came to the throne after the death of his elder brother, Vladimir Yuryevich (according to the Life, after the death of his brother Paul). He took part in all the great campaigns of the time on the side of the grand prince of Vladimir, Vsevolod the Big Nest, then of his son Yuri: in 1207 at Pronsk, where Vsevolod then gave him the town, but in 1208 he was driven out by Oleg and his brothers; in 1213 in the campaign against Rostov; in 1216 the Murom troops took part in the battle of Lipitsa on the side of Grand Prince Yuri; in 1220 he sent his son Svyatoslav on a campaign against the Bulgars of the Volga.

The Laurentian Chronicle says that at Pascha, in 1227 or 1228, Prince David, tonsured into the great schema, with a name not mentioned, and his younger son Svyatoslav died at the same time. The chronicle says nothing about the tonsure and death of the prince's wife, but church tradition links them with the end of the prince's life. According to the Kormchaya, only the simultaneous tonsure of both spouses could be viewed with indulgence as a reason for dissolving the marriage. Their death fell in the time of the ministry at Murom of Bishop Euphrosynus the Holy Mountaineer (1225 to 1239), who apparently performed their tonsure and Christian burial.

Veneration

In 1547, at the initiative of Metropolitan Macarius, the Council of Moscow canonized the prince and his wife as locally venerated saints, and the monk Yermolai-⁠Erasmus composed their Life from the folk tales of Murom. The campaigns of Kazan and the stay of Tsar Ivan the Terrible at Murom in the summer of 1552, who venerated "his kin", led to the beginning of veneration in the whole Church. The tsar's building, from 1555, of a stone cathedral led to the finding of their relics and their transfer to a new church. After the closing of the Mother of God cathedral at Murom, in 1934, the remains were taken to the museum at Murom, from where they were returned to the Church in 1989, to the Annunciation cathedral; on 19 September 1992 Bishop Eulogius (Smirnov) moved them to the Trinity cathedral of the convent, to the place of their original burial, where in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries stood the first cathedral of Saints Boris and Gleb.

Family

His brothers were Vladimir (died 1205) and Yuri (died 1220 or 1228). His wife, by the hypothesis, Fevronia, in monasticism Euphrosyne (according to the legendary tale, born in the village of Laskovo). Children: a daughter Eudokia, wife of Grand Prince of Vladimir Svyatoslav Vsevolodovich; sons Yuri (killed in 1237) and Svyatoslav (died 1227 or 1228).