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Saint Peter, Prince of Ordinsk, Rostov

Commemorated on June 30

Saint Peter, Prince of the Horde, was the nephew of Bergai Khan of the Golden Horde. In the year 1253 Saint Cyril, Bishop of Rostov (May 21), went to the Horde to petition for church needs in his diocese and he told the khan about the Christian Faith, and of the miracles and healings worked by the relics of Saint Leontius of Rostov (May 23). Among the retinue was the young nephew of the khan, upon whom the holy bishop made a very strong impression. After some length of time the son of Bergai fell ill. Remembering the account of the Russian bishop about the healings, he summoned Saint Cyril, and through his prayers the sick one was healed. The khan richly rewarded Saint Cyril and sent him off to his diocese.

Along the way the lad, the nephew of Bergai Khan, overtook the holy hierarch, and entreated him to take him along to Rostov. At Rostov the boy was baptized with the name Peter, and he married. Saint Peter distinguished himself with a love for silence, contemplation, and prayer. After a miraculous appearance to him of the Apostles Peter and Paul he built a monastery near Lake Nera in their honor. After the death of his wife, shortly before his own death in 1290, the saint embraced monasticism at the monastery he had founded.

Local veneration of the holy Prince Peter began in the fourteenth century. A general celebration was established at the Council of 1547

Known for …

Peter, we are told, was a jonon [jinong 濟農], a Mongol title derived either from the Chinese Jin Wang 晉王 ‘King of Jin’ or qinwang 親王 ‘prince’, that translates into Russian as tsarevich. We do not know his birth name, only his baptismal one. He was the nephew of Berke Han [Mongol. Бэрх хаан, Tatar Бәркә Хан, Ch. Bie’erge Han 別兒歌汗] – the first truly independent ruler of the Golden Horde – and therefore the grandson of Joshy Han. Berke Han attacked Poland-Lithuania, the Volga Bulghar polity and even the Byzantine Empire during his expansions of the Horde, and by the time he became ruler the principality of Vladimir-Suzdal – the ancestral polity at the core of what would become the Russian Empire – had already submitted as a vassal state to the Horde.

He would not baptise the jonon, but neither could he disallow the young Mongol nobleman from riding with him back to Rostov. Once there, the nephew of Berke Han at once went into the Cathedral to hear the Divine Liturgy. From the times of the knyaz Konstantin Vsevolodovich ‘the Wise’, the Divine Liturgies in Rostov had featured antiphonal choral singing in both Greek and Church Slavonic. The beauty of the singing made a further profound impression upon the young Mongol, who desired with all his heart to approach Christ in His Church. Bishop Saint Kirill, unfortunately, understood what it would mean if the kinsman of Berke Han, now a Muslim, were to convert to Orthodox Christianity at his hands. The collective reprisals for apostasy, even among the Turks and the Mongols who adopted Islâm, could be harsh. Thus, he would have to wait until the death of his uncle and the rise of his kinsman Meńgu Temir Han, to receive Holy Baptism – by which time Saint Kirill too had also reposed in the Lord. He would be given the name Peter in baptism by Saint Kirill’s successor Saint Ignatii; the Russians called him ‘Peter Ordynskii’.

Since the Mongols left the Orthodox Church alone, it allowed the Church to fill the power vacuum left empty by the princes. It then forced the princes to take the power of the Church considerably more seriously after the Mongols were expelled. The Church was able to take a much larger and more personal role in the lives of the Rus people. Moving forward, this gave the Church leverage against the grand princes because they were the moral authority behind his rule. The fact that the Church was able to stand strong while the princes failed also might have spread the belief that no matter the opposition, the power of god would always support the Orthodox Church.