Vsevolod-Gabriel of Pskov
The Holy Right-believing Prince Vsevolod-Gabriel, Wonderworker of Pskov
Prince · Wonderworker · b. early 12th century, at Novgorod — d. 11 February 1138, at Pskov
Commemorated 11 February — Repose of the Prince at Pskov, 22 April — Translation of the relics (1834), 27 November — Uncovering and translation of the relics (1192)
Vsevolod-Gabriel (†1138) was a prince of the house of Kiev — son of Mstislav the Great and grandson of Vladimir Monomakh — who ruled Novgorod and became the first beloved prince of Pskov. Born at Novgorod and given in baptism the name Gabriel, he governed Novgorod for many years as a builder of churches and a protector of the poor, founding the stone Church of Saint John the Forerunner at Opoki and beginning the great works of the city. After a disputed campaign and a falling-out with the turbulent Novgorodians, who expelled him, he was received in Pskov, which took him gladly as its prince; there, in the brief months left to him, he laid the foundation of the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, the mother-church of Pskov, and reposed on 11 February 1138. His relics, uncovered incorrupt in 1192 and enshrined in the cathedral he had founded, made Pskov's Trinity Cathedral a place of wonders, and Vsevolod-Gabriel its heavenly patron; his sword, inscribed Honorem meum nemini dabo — "I will yield my honour to no one" — was long kept above his tomb.
Prince of Novgorod
Vsevolod was born in the early twelfth century at Novgorod, the eldest son of Mstislav the Great (Mstislav I), Grand Prince of Kiev, and grandson of Vladimir Monomakh, the most venerated of the Kievan sovereigns; in baptism he received the name Gabriel. While still young he was set by his father over Novgorod, the great commercial republic of the north, whose prince ruled always in uneasy partnership with its powerful assembly, the veche. For some two decades Vsevolod governed the city, and the tradition remembers him as a prince of piety and charity — a builder of churches, a feeder of the poor, a judge who did not oppress. He raised at Novgorod the stone Church of Saint John the Forerunner at Opoki and the Church of the Dormition on the marketplace, and he laboured for the ordering and adornment of the church of the north.
Expulsion and reception at Pskov
The prince's fortunes turned on the wars among the Russian lands. Vsevolod took part in a campaign against the principality of Suzdal; at the Battle of Zhdana Gora (1135) the Novgorod forces were defeated, and the prince — who, the sources say, left the field — lost the confidence of his fickle city. The Novgorodians reproached him further with having sought to leave them for another throne, and in 1136 the veche rose against him, held him and his family under guard, and drove him from the city. He went first to Kiev, and was given the small town of Vyshgorod; but in 1137 the men of Pskov, long restive under Novgorod's dominance and mindful of the prince's virtues, invited Vsevolod to rule over them, and received him with joy as their own prince — the first to make Pskov a seat of princely government in its own right, a step toward the city's later independence.
Repose and the foundation of the Trinity Cathedral
Vsevolod's reign at Pskov was brief. He set his hand at once to the building of a stone Cathedral of the Holy Trinity to replace the ancient wooden church on the promontory above the rivers — the sanctuary that has been the heart of Pskov ever since — but he did not live to see it finished, reposing on 11 February 1138, only months after his coming, worn (the tradition says) by grief and labour. He was buried in the Church of Saint Demetrius, which he had also begun, and the city mourned him as a father. Novgorod, repenting, is said to have asked for his body back; but Pskov would not yield its prince.
Relics, wonders, and cultus
In 1192, the relics of Vsevolod-Gabriel were uncovered incorrupt and, amid many healings, translated with honour into the Trinity Cathedral he had founded; from that time his tomb was a place of miracles, and the prince was venerated as the heavenly protector of Pskov, invoked especially in the city's many wars and sieges. His sword was preserved above his sepulchre, bearing in Latin the proud motto of a Western knight — Honorem meum nemini dabo, "I will yield my honour to no one" — a relic that bound the prince's memory to the defence of his city. His formal glorification for the whole Russian Church followed in the sixteenth century, and his name entered the calendars kept at Novgorod and Pskov. Besides the February feast of his repose, the Church keeps the uncovering and translation of his relics on November 27, and a further commemoration of a translation of his relics on April 22.
Feast and commemoration
Vsevolod-Gabriel is commemorated on February 11 (church date; Old Calendar civil February 24), the day of his repose at Pskov — the principal feast, kept in the Russian calendars and by the Orthodox Church in America, which style him "the right-believing prince Vsevolod, in holy baptism Gabriel, of Novgorod and Pskov." The uncovering and translation of his relics (1192) is kept on November 27 (Old Calendar civil December 10), and a translation is commemorated also on April 22. His veneration is a local Russian one, proper to the churches of Pskov and Novgorod and to the Russian Church at large, rather than pan-Orthodox.
Iconography
Vsevolod-Gabriel is depicted in the type of the holy Russian prince: a bearded man in the rich robes and fur-trimmed cloak of a medieval sovereign, a princely cap or diadem on his head, holding in one hand a model of a church — the Trinity Cathedral he founded — and in the other a sword or a cross, the signs of his rule and his sanctity. His relics and his inscribed sword at Pskov gave his image a strong local fixity, and he is often shown against the towers of the Pskov Krom (citadel) or beside the Trinity Cathedral.
The stored image is a sixteenth-century Russian icon of the prince: Vsevolod- Gabriel crowned and robed, bearing the model of his cathedral church (source, public domain, pd-old-work).