Yaroslav (Theodore) Vsevolodovich

Holy Right-⁠Believing Prince Yaroslav (Theodore) Vsevolodovich of Vladimir was born on 8 February 1190 at Pereyaslavl (today Pereslavl-⁠Zalessky) and died on 30 September 1246, in the Mongol Empire, near Karakorum. He was prince of Pereyaslavl (1212 to 1238), of Novgorod, of Kyiv (1236 to 1238 and 1243 to 1246) and Grand Prince of Vladimir (1238 to 1246). He came of the Rurikid dynasty. He was the son of Vsevolod Yuryevich the Big Nest, brother of Konstantin, Yury and Svyatoslav Vsevolodovich, father of Saint Alexander Nevsky, of Theodore, Andrew, Michael the Brave, Yaroslav and Vasily Yaroslavich, and son-⁠in-⁠law of Mstislav Mstislavich the Daring.

From 1212 to 1216 he supported Yury Vsevolodovich, who had become prince of Vladimir, in his struggle with Konstantin Vsevolodovich of Rostov, and took part in the battle of Lipitsa in 1216, lost by the younger Vsevolodovichi. At the beginning of 1226 he defeated the Lithuanians at Usvyat, at the beginning of 1227 he made a successful campaign against the Yem, and in the same year he baptized the Karelians. At the end of the 1220s and the beginning of the 1230s he waged a stubborn struggle for the throne of Novgorod with Michael Vsevolodovich of Chernigov. In the autumn of 1231 he burned the town of Serensk in the principality of Chernigov. As prince of Novgorod he made efforts to resist the crusades in Eastern Europe and in 1234 won a victory over the knights of the Order of the Sword on the river Emajogi near Dorpat (today Tartu). In 1236 he took the throne of Kyiv.

In 1238, after the death of Prince Yury Vsevolodovich in the battle on the Sit, he took the throne of Grand Prince at Vladimir. He contributed to restoring life in north-⁠eastern Rus, disrupted by the Mongol-⁠Tatar invasion. After Prince Michael Vsevolodovich fled Kyiv to Hungary in 1239, he made a campaign against the town of Kamenets, where he seized Michael's wife, his boyars and his property (the wife, at the request of her brother, Prince Daniel Romanovich of Galicia and Volhynia, was released and sent to Galich). On the return he drove from Smolensk the Lithuanians who had seized the town, restoring the power of the local Rostislavich princes.

In 1243 he was summoned to the camp of Khan Batu on the Volga, where he recognized the supreme authority of the Mongol Empire and received the "seniority" among the Russian princes, which was shown by the transfer of Kyiv to his rule. In 1245 he went again to Batu and was sent by him to the capital of the Mongol Empire, Karakorum, where he was present at the enthronement of the Great Khan Guyuk. Soon after this, according to the Russian chronicles and John of Plano Carpini, he was poisoned by Guyuk's mother, the khatun Turakina. His body was brought to Vladimir and buried in the Dormition Cathedral.

He is commemorated on 6 July (new style), in the Synaxis of the Saints of Vladimir, and on 11 July, on a movable day, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Novgorod.