Right-Believing Yaropolk Izyaslavich

Right-believing Prince Yaropolk, baptized Peter, was the son of the Grand Prince of Kiev Izyaslav Yaroslavich and Gertrude of Poland, and grandson of Yaroslav the Wise. He repeatedly carried out his father's diplomatic missions: traveling to the King of Poland, the German Emperor, and Pope Gregory VII of Rome (1073–1085). After his father's death he received the town of Vladimir-Volhynia as his appanage, and later Turov. On the way from Vladimir to Zvenigorod Galitsky on November 22, 1086, he was treacherously murdered by his own retainer Neryadets, a member of his own retinue. The prince's body was translated to Kiev and buried on December 5 in the Church of the Holy Apostle Peter, whose construction Yaropolk himself had begun shortly before his death. Many church records, beginning with the chronicle of the Venerable Nestor the Chronicler, attest to the veneration of the slain right-believing Prince Yaropolk among the saints of God; his name first appears among the saints in the late 16th or early 17th century. His memory is kept on November 22/December 5.