Xenia Yuryevna

The right-⁠believing princess Xenia Yuryevna (in monastic life Maria) was the wife of the grand prince of Tver and Vladimir, Yaroslav Yaroslavich, the mother of Saint Michael of Tver, and died in 1312, as a nun and schemanun. She is counted among the saints of the Russian Church, venerated locally in the diocese of Tver, canonized locally soon after her death and once again in 1988. She is remembered on the first Sunday after 29 June (12 July), in the synaxis of the saints of Tver.

Family and marriage

According to the Russian source, she was the daughter of the Novgorod boyar Yury Mikhailovich, and some scholars wrongly count her the daughter of the prince of Tarusa of the same name. The English and Greek sources call her Xenia of Tarusa, the daughter of Yury Mikhailovich, prince of Tarusa. The sources do not agree on the year of the marriage: 1263, 1265 or 1267. She was the second wife of the grand prince of Tver and Vladimir, Yaroslav Yaroslavich, the younger brother of Alexander Nevsky, and they had two children, Michael and Sviatoslav. During the marriage and the reign of her husband she had unusual influence in the affairs of the state and kept it after Yaroslav's death, in 1271.

The building of the cathedral and a mother's mind

In 1285 she laid, in Tver, on the site of the wooden church of Cosmas and Damian, the foundation of the stone cathedral of the Transfiguration and was present at its consecration, on 8 November 1290. The chronicles note that she raised her son, Michael (the saint), "in the fear of the Lord and taught him the Holy Books and all wisdom". At about the same time, with her consent, the place of the first bishop of Tver, Simeon, was taken by Andrei, son of the Lithuanian prince Gerden, formerly abbot of the Common monastery, whom the Russian source calls proud and frivolous. In 1304 Metropolitan Maximus used Xenia's name to restrain the prince of Moscow, Yury Danilovich, from his intention of taking beforehand from Michael of Tver the right to the grand prince's throne, saying that he pledged himself with the grand princess Oksinia, the mother of Grand Prince Michael, that she would give him from their patrimony whatever he wished.

Monastic life and death

After her husband's death, in 1271, she withdrew, according to some sources, to a convent in Novgorod and continued to have a notable influence in the affairs of the principality. She died in 1312, as a nun and schemanun, and was buried in the cathedral of the Transfiguration which she had founded. She was numbered among the saints soon after her death (locally) and a second time in 1988 (locally).