Constantine, Michael and Theodore of Murom
The Holy Right-Believing Prince Constantine of Murom and his Children Michael and Theodore, Wonderworkers of Murom
Prince · Righteous · Passion Bearer · Wonderworker · b. Constantine — later 11th century, of the house of Chernigov — d. Constantine 1129 at Murom; Michael c. 1092, killed by the pagans of Murom; Theodore, date unrecorded
Commemorated 21 May — Joint commemoration of the three Murom wonderworkers
Constantine of Murom and his two sons Michael and Theodore are venerated as the baptisers of Murom, the last considerable pagan city of Rus'. The prince came to his inheritance about 1092 to find the townspeople determined to keep their old gods; they killed his elder son Michael, whom he had sent ahead as an envoy, and threw the boy's body outside the walls. Constantine took the city, buried his son, and built a church on the spot where he fell — but he refused to force the inhabitants, and when a mob came armed to his house he went out to meet it holding an icon of the Mother of God, at the sight of which the whole crowd asked for baptism. The people of Murom were baptised in the Oka. Constantine reposed in 1129, having given the city churches, monasteries and a bishop's see, and was buried in his own Church of the Annunciation beside his sons; their relics were found incorrupt in 1553, and the three are kept together on May 21 as the "wonderworkers of Murom."
The prince and his mission
The hagiographic tradition names him Constantine, son of Svyatoslav of Chernigov and great-great-grandson of Vladimir, the baptiser of Rus'; the chronicles know a prince of Murom and Chernigov, Yaroslav Svyatoslavich, who died in 1129 and whom scholarship identifies with him, and it is this double naming that the calendars record as "Constantine, in baptism Yaroslav" (see Disputed questions). By the Life, he asked his father for Murom as his portion — not the richest or the safest of the family's towns, but the one still unconverted — expressly in order to bring it to Christ, in imitation of his ancestor.
Murom lay far to the east on the Oka, on the edge of the Finnic Muroma country from which it took its name, and its people had held out against a century of Christian rule; some of the Kievan clergy sent among them had been driven out and, by one account, killed. Constantine came in about 1092 with his household, his two young sons Michael and Theodore, his clergy, and a small force.
The death of Michael
Approaching the city, he sent Michael ahead to persuade the citizens to receive their prince peaceably. They killed him. The Life says the boy was struck down and his body flung over the wall to lie outside the city — the act of a community that meant to make refusal irrevocable. Constantine took Murom by arms, recovered his son's body, and buried him where he had died; over the grave he raised the first Christian church of the city, the Annunciation, and afterwards a second, of Saints Boris and Gleb — the passion-bearing princes with whom his own son now belonged.
The Russian Church has always read Michael's death in that light. He was killed as an envoy of the Gospel, unarmed and unresisting, at the hands of pagans; his is the same kind of death as that of Boris and Gleb, and the term passion-bearer in this entry's classification belongs specifically to him.
The baptism of Murom
Constantine did not avenge his son and did not compel the city. He lived among the people, preached, sent his clergy among them, and endured their hostility. At last the resistance came to a head: a crowd gathered, armed, and came to the prince's house intending to kill him. He came out to meet them alone, carrying an icon of the Mother of God — in the Murom tradition the icon afterwards known as the Murom icon of the Theotokos. Something in the sight of it broke the mob. The Life says that the same men who had come to kill him asked to be baptised, and that the whole population of Murom went down to the Oka and was baptised there, as the Kievans had been baptised in the Dnieper a century before. Both the narrative and its shape are deliberately modelled on the baptism of Rus' under Vladimir; how much of the detail is memory and how much is the pattern imposed on it cannot now be separated, but the fact that Murom became a Christian city in this prince's lifetime is not in doubt.
Constantine spent the rest of his reign building. He founded churches and monasteries, established a bishop's see at Murom, and set his household to the support of the poor. He reposed in 1129 and was buried in the Church of the Annunciation beside Michael and Theodore. Of Theodore the sources say almost nothing beyond that he shared his father's work and was buried with him; his death is undated.
Relics, glorification and cultus
The three were numbered among the saints at the council of 1547 under Metropolitan Macarius, which glorified a whole company of Russian local saints. In 1553 Ivan IV, returning from the conquest of Kazan, came to Murom and ordered a stone church built in place of the old wooden Annunciation; in the works the relics of the three were found incorrupt, and the tsar had them enshrined in the new church, which became the Annunciation monastery. Healings at the tomb are recorded from that time, and the three princes became, with Peter and Fevronia and Juliana of Lazarevo, the patrons of the city; Murom's unusual density of local saints is one of the more striking features of the Russian calendar, and the household of Constantine stands at the head of it.
The relics survived the closure of the monastery in the Soviet period and are again in the Annunciation cathedral at Murom.
Feast and commemoration
May 21 (church date; New Calendar civil May 21, Old Calendar civil June 3), kept with the great feast of Constantine and Helen — an association that is not accidental, since the prince bore the emperor's name and the Life presents him as doing for Murom what Constantine had done for the Empire and Vladimir for Rus'. The commemoration is Russian and is kept in Russian and OCA usage; the Greek and Antiochian books do not carry it. At Murom itself the three are also honoured with the other Murom saints, and the city keeps their memory as its foundation-feast.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4
O all-praised Constantine, thou didst take upon thee the labour of the Apostles and, with thy holy children Michael and Theodore, didst bring an unbelieving people out of darkness into the light of Christ; wherefore, standing now before the throne of the Master with those whom thou didst beget both in the flesh and in the Spirit, pray without ceasing for the city thou didst enlighten and for us who honour your memory.
Original translation from the Slavonic
Kontakion — Tone 8
Rejoice, O city of Murom, in the princes who begat thee anew: for the father brought thee the font, and the son thy first altar, sealing thy faith with his blood; and standing together before Christ they ask peace for their people and great mercy for our souls.
Original translation from the Slavonic
Iconography
The three are painted together, as a family group and in the type of the right-believing princes: Constantine in the centre, an older man with a short grey beard, in the princely shuba or fur-lined mantle over a long embroidered tunic, wearing the fur-trimmed princely cap and holding either a scroll or a model of the church he built; his two sons flank him, beardless youths in similar dress, the elder (Michael) sometimes with the martyr's cross in his hand. Very often all three hold a church between them, or the icon of the Mother of God with which their father faced the mob. The more elaborate Murom compositions show the three above and the baptism of the citizens in the Oka below, or set them in a row with the other Murom saints — Peter and Fevronia and Juliana of Lazarevo — before the walls of the city. Michael alone appears occasionally as a young passion-bearer in the manner of Gleb.
No pre-1900 image of the three was located that could be verified as depicting them; the entry is listed in the the list of icons still being sought index.
Disputed questions
Constantine and Yaroslav Svyatoslavich. The prince of the Life is called Constantine; the chronicles name the prince of Murom and Chernigov who died in 1129 Yaroslav Svyatoslavich. The identification of the two, standard since the nineteenth century, rests on the coincidence of the see, the date of death and the descent from Svyatoslav of Chernigov, and is generally accepted; the calendars express it by the formula "Constantine, in baptism Yaroslav" (so the OCA day-list), though on the usual Rus' practice one would expect the reverse — the Slavonic dynastic name Yaroslav and the Christian baptismal name Constantine. The entry follows the calendars' form while noting that their gloss is probably inverted.
Michael and Theodore. The chronicles record three sons of Yaroslav Svyatoslavich — Rostislav, Svyatoslav and Yuri — and no Michael or Theodore. The two names come from the Life, which was compiled at Murom, probably in the sixteenth century in connection with the glorification and the finding of the relics, from local tradition; the Life is late, and it is possible that Michael and Theodore are the baptismal names of two of the chronicled sons, or that the Murom tradition preserved a memory of sons the Kievan chronicles did not record. The three sets of relics found in 1553 are the fixed point on the other side of the question.
The date of the baptism of Murom. The Life's date of 1092 for Constantine's arrival cannot be reconciled with the chronicle career of Yaroslav Svyatoslavich, who held Murom from about 1097 and Chernigov from 1123 to 1127; the Life's chronology throughout is approximate.