Roman Mikhailovich the Old

Prince Roman Mikhailovich the Old (born about 1218, died after 1288) was prince of Bryansk and, by some sources, of Chernigov, of the Olgovichi clan. He ruled in the time of the Mongol yoke, repelled a Lithuanian invasion, fought alongside his relatives of Galicia and Volhynia and, by a later account, founded the Svensky monastery in thanks for healing from blindness through the icon of the Mother of God of the Caves. His origin is uncertain, and the sources at hand give no details of his veneration as a right-⁠believing prince.

Origin

By tradition he is regarded as the second son of Mikhail Vsevolodovich, prince of Chernigov and Kyiv, honoured as a martyr, and of Elena (or Maria) Romanovna, daughter of Roman Mstislavich of Galicia. His mother is said to have persuaded her husband to give the second son the name of her father. Around 1243 the elder brother, Rostislav Mikhailovich, was disinherited by their father because he decided to stay in Hungary. The chronicles know only Rostislav and mention Roman without patronymic. The only source giving him the patronymic Mikhailovich is the tale of the founding of the Svensky monastery in 1288, but that was composed after 1567, and the patronymic may be borrowed from the genealogies of the princes of Verkhovia of the sixteenth century.

Scholars have offered several views. If Roman were the son of Mikhail and Elena Romanovna, he could not have given his daughter Olga in marriage to Vladimir Vasilkovich of Volhynia, who would have been his cousin. Some historians nevertheless regard him as an Olgovich, but not the son of Mikhail of Chernigov, or his son by another marriage. R. A. Bespalov proposes the patronymic Dmitrievich, from a note of the Holy Spirit monastery of Ryazan about Dmitry of Chernigov and his son Roman. S. N. Kelembet takes him for the eldest son of Mikhail the Saint, born of an unknown first marriage. Another hypothesis rests on the entry in the synodikon of the Ryazan monastery, about Mikhail and his sons Roman and Konstantin. These disputes show how uncertain the data on his lineage are.

Reign

In 1246 his father, Mikhail, was killed by the Tatars. Roman's share was Bryansk, which controlled the waterways from Chernigov toward Smolensk and the Vyatichi mountains. The Lyubech chronicle calls him prince of Chernigov. When Khan Batu ordered that only princes who had submitted to him should receive a charter for collecting tribute (yarlyk), Roman received it after his father's death. The chronicles do not say so, but Giovanni da Pian del Carpine suggests it in the "History of the Mongols": after leaving the land of the Cumans, he met Roman, prince of the Rus', with his retinue, going to the Tatars. Carpine had met him in May 1247 and, according to Karamzin and Ekzemplarsky, this was Roman of Bryansk.

After the death of Andrei Vsevolodovich, Chernigov was seized by the Lithuanians, in 1263, and Roman recovered the throne of Chernigov. The chronicle calls him prince of Bryansk, and historians consider that after the Mongol invasion the political centre of the principality of Chernigov and Seversk moved from Chernigov to Bryansk. In his first year of rule he opposed the Lithuanian forces sent by Prince Mindaugas to the left bank of the Dnieper and won, being wounded in the battle. In 1264 he gave his daughter Olga in marriage to Prince Vladimir Vasilkovich of Volhynia and helped him repel the Lithuanian attack. In 1274 and 1275 he took part, with his son Oleg, in the campaign of the Russo-⁠Tatar forces organized by Khan Mengu-⁠Timur against Lithuania, at the request of Prince Lev Danilovich of Galicia. In 1285 he made an unsuccessful campaign against Smolensk, burned the suburb but could not take the city. According to the sources, his lands lay in the zone of influence of the ulus of Nogai, with whom he went against Lithuania, Hungary and Poland, in agreement with the Romanovichi of Galicia and Volhynia, and he quarrelled with the princes of Smolensk, supporters of Sarai.

The Svensky monastery

In the late tale of the beginning of the Svensky monastery it is said that in 1288 Prince Roman Mikhailovich the Old suddenly went blind but was healed through the wonder-⁠working icon of the Mother of God of the Caves and, in memory of this event, founded on the Desna, opposite the river Svena, a Dormition monastery. "Roman of Bryansk" also appears in the legend of Gediminas's conquest of Kyiv, in the 1320s, composed in the early sixteenth century by Belarusian and Lithuanian scribes.

Family

His wife was named Anna, of unknown origin. They had at least six children known from the chronicles. Mikhail Romanovich, mentioned in 1264, prince of Bryansk (?), from whom the princes Osovitsky considered themselves descended, and Oleg Romanovich (about 1245 to 1307 or after 1288), prince of Bryansk and Chernigov, who was tonsured a monk with the name Basil. By one version, Alexander was the father of Prince Mikhail Alexandrovich of Chernigov. There are three daughters, mentioned in the Hypatian Chronicle in 1264, among them Olga Romanovna, wife of Vladimir Vasilkovich of Volhynia. According to one account, in the plundering of Mikhail Vsevolodovich in Silesia by Germans, in 1241, a granddaughter of his perished, perhaps Roman's daughter. One of the daughters was married, probably, to Gleb Rostislavich of Smolensk or to his son Alexander, which gave the princes of Smolensk the right to claim the throne of Bryansk after Oleg Romanovich's monastic tonsure.