Michael and Theodore of Chernigov

Origins and early principate

Michael was born in 1179 (so the older chronicle reckoning; see Disputed questions), son of Vsevolod Svyatoslavich Chermny ("the Red," † 1212), of the Olgovichi line of Chernigov, and through his mother connected to the princely house of Poland. The hagiographic tradition remembers the boy as pious and meek, and of frail health: in 1186 he was taken to the ascetic Nikita the Stylite at Pereyaslavl-Zalessky, whose prayer — and the wooden staff the stylite handed down from his pillar — restored him, a healing the Russian church remembered in the services of both saints.

His adult life was passed in the endless rotation of princely seats that marked pre-Mongol Rus'. He fought in 1223 at the disastrous battle of the Kalka, the Mongols' first blow against the Rus' princes, where his uncle Mstislav of Chernigov fell; Michael succeeded to Chernigov. In 1225, and again in 1229, Novgorod called him to its princely seat; the chroniclers credit him there with justice and mildness — he relieved the taxes of the poorer citizens — and his accession reconciled Novgorod with Grand Prince George of Vladimir, whose wife Agatha was Michael's sister. Declining to hold Novgorod, he returned to Chernigov, telling the Novgorodians that their cities should be as kindred, and he their bond. The 1220s and 1230s show him at the centre of the princes' quarrels and reconciliations — restrained from war with Oleg of Kursk in 1227 by Metropolitan Cyril, mediating between Kiev and Galich the same year — and from 1235/6 he held Kiev itself, taking the title of Grand Prince as the Mongol storm gathered.

The Mongol invasion

In 1237–1238 the armies of Batu annihilated Ryazan, Suzdal and Vladimir; in 1239 they ravaged the lands of Pereyaslavl and Chernigov. When the khan's envoys came before Kiev demanding surrender, Michael refused to treat (the chronicles say his men killed the envoys), and, knowing the city doomed, he rode west to seek help: to Hungary, where he sought (and eventually made) a marriage alliance for his son Rostislav with the daughter of King Béla IV, and toward Poland and the Empire. No coalition came; Kiev fell in December 1240, and Michael returned by stages to the ruins, living first on an island below the city, then again at Chernigov. He did not abandon the hope of a common Christian front: at the Council of Lyons in 1245, Metropolitan Peter (Akerovich), sent from Rus' — the hagiographic tradition counts him Michael's emissary — pleaded the plight of the devastated land before the West; nothing followed but the Latin powers' own designs on Rus'.

The summons to the Horde

The Mongols consolidated their rule by charter: each surviving prince was summoned to the Horde to bow before the khan and receive his yarlyk, the patent to rule his own land. The summons came to Michael. He understood — the Life is explicit — that submission to the khan's earthly authority was lawful and, for his ruined people, necessary; but he knew also that princes arriving at the Horde were required to pass through the ritual fires, held by the Mongols to purge evil intent, and to venerate their idols and the sun — and that this a Christian could not do. He sought the blessing of his spiritual father, Bishop John, who confirmed him in his resolve and gave him and his companion the reserved Holy Gifts against the death they foresaw. With him went his boyar Theodore, his counsellor of many years and companion of his embassies, of one mind with his prince.

Martyrdom

At the camp of Batu on the lower Volga, in 1245/6, the Mongol priests commanded Michael and Theodore to pass between the two fires and worship the sun, the fire, and the idols of the khan's ancestors. Michael answered: "A Christian worships the one God, the Creator of the world, and not the creation." Batu's officer Eldega put the choice plainly — perform the rite, or die. Michael replied that to the khan, to whom God had given the kingdoms of the earth, he would bow; but the rites he would not perform, for he was a Christian. His grandson Boris, prince of Rostov, was present and pleaded with him to yield, his boyars offering to take the penance of the act upon themselves; Michael answered with the word of the Gospel — whoever would save his life shall lose it — and would not, he said, be a Christian in name and do the deeds of the pagans. Prince and boyar received the Holy Gifts they carried, sang the psalms of the departing, and waited. The executioners fell on Michael, beat him long and savagely, and at the last a renegade Christian named Doman (of Putivl, in the Russian account) cut off his head. Theodore was then courted as well as threatened: the khan's men promised him honour and his late master's principality if he would pass through the fires. He refused, confessed Christ as his prince had done, was tortured and beheaded in his turn. The bodies, thrown to the dogs, were preserved unharmed — the tradition records a pillar of fire seen over them — until Christians buried them secretly. The martyrdom is dated 20 September; on the year (1245 in the church books, 1246 in the chronicles and in the report of the papal envoy John of Plano Carpini, who crossed the steppe months later and recorded the prince's death) see Disputed questions.

Relics, glorification, and later cultus

The martyrs' effect on their conquerors is soberly noted by the tradition: the Horde thereafter ceased to demand the pagan rites of arriving Russian princes, convinced that these would die rather than conform — so that the protomartyrs of the Horde, as the Russian church calls them, purchased with their blood the religious liberty of all who came after. Their bodies were brought back and laid at Chernigov, where a cathedral of the "wonderworkers of Chernigov" long guarded them and miracles were recorded at the shrine. Local veneration began almost at once — the earliest short accounts of the martyrdom were written within the generation, one redaction associated with the priest Andrew, a witness-tradition of the event — and the pair were among the saints confirmed for church-wide veneration by the Moscow councils of 1547 under Metropolitan Macarius; the full Life and the service were composed in the mid-sixteenth century by Zinovy of Otensk. In 1572 (the received church date, February 14, 1578), Tsar Ivan IV had the relics translated from Chernigov to Moscow, to a church built for them in the Kremlin; they were moved to the Sretensky cathedral in 1770 and in 1774 to the Archangel Cathedral of the Kremlin — the burial church of the Muscovite princes — where they rest today. Michael stands at the head of a remarkable line of sanctity: his daughter Euphrosyne of Suzdal (September 25) and his grandson Oleg of Briansk (September 20, the same day) are glorified saints, and the later princely martyrs of the Horde — Roman of Ryazan, Michael of Tver, and the rest — died with his example before them.