Sudislav

The right-⁠believing prince Sudislav Vladimirovich (about 984-1063, in monastic life Savva) was Prince of Pskov from 1014 to 1036, the youngest son of Vladimir the Great. He spent many years in prison on the order of his brother Yaroslav the Wise and died a monk at Kiev. The sources say he is venerated locally as a saint, as a recluse in the synaxis of all the venerable and of the saints of Pskov, but give no date or act of his canonization.

Life

He bore a name unique in the Rurikid family. In the lists of Vladimir's sons he is named last and may have been the youngest. According to the Ukrainian sources, born between 983 and 988, around 984, his mother was Adela, Vladimir's fifth wife. According to the Nikon Chronicle, in 1014, when Yaroslav's struggle with his father began, Vladimir detached Pskov from the principality of Novgorod and gave it to Sudislav, which seems probable, since Yaroslav imprisoned him in that very town. Nothing is known of his participation in the war among Vladimir's sons in 1015-1019. In the struggle for power between Yaroslav, Mstislav of Tmutarakan and Bryachislav of Polotsk he appeared dangerous to Yaroslav, who preferred to isolate him. In 1036, at the death of Mstislav, Yaroslav suddenly seized him and abolished the principality of Pskov.

He sat in prison twenty-⁠three years according to some sources and twenty-⁠five according to others, outlived Yaroslav the Wise and remained the last living son of Saint Vladimir. His nephews, the triumvirate Izyaslav, Sviatoslav and Vsevolod, took him out of prison in 1058 or 1059, made him swear, demanding that he renounce the right to the throne of Kiev (being a generation older, he could claim the throne) and take the monastic habit. He became a monk at the Saint George Monastery in Kiev, where he died in 1063, at almost eighty. He was buried in the church of Saint George, where there was a slab with an epitaph. He is the first Rurikid known from the sources to have entered monastic life.