Venerable Rodion (Andrew) Oslyabya

HONEST NOTE ON NAME AMBIGUITY AND FATE: sources disagree on which name — "Rodion" or "Andrew" — was his secular name and which his monastic name (some give secular "Roman," monastic "Andrew"/"Rodion," others give secular "Rodion," monastic "Andrew"); this discrepancy could not be finally resolved. Also honestly noted is a genuine scholarly uncertainty about his later fate: the principal primary source, the 15th-century "Tale of the Battle of Mamai," does not directly report his death in battle, and later documents (1390s–1420s) mention a "monk Oslyabya" among the boyars of Metropolitan Cyprian and possibly a "Rodion Oslyabya" sent as envoy to Constantinople (c. 1389/1398), with a son serving under Metropolitan Photius in 1425 — historians dispute whether these references are to Rodion/Andrew himself (implying he survived the Battle of Kulikovo and had a later diplomatic career) or to relatives.

Rodion, a boyar of Lyubutsk, took monastic vows (tradition says at the Trinity-Sergius monastery), becoming a disciple of St. Sergius of Radonezh. In 1380, before the Battle of Kulikovo, Grand Prince Dmitri Donskoy asked St. Sergius for two warrior-monks; Sergius clothed Alexander Peresvet and Andrew (Rodion) Oslyabya in the great schema and sent them with the army, saying he gave them "instead of corruptible weapons, the incorruptible — the cross of Christ." Peresvet died in single combat with the Tatar champion Chelubey at the very start of the battle on September 8, 1380.

He was glorified in the Synaxis of Radonezh Saints in 1981; by decision of the Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church of February 2–3, 2016, his veneration was extended to church-wide status.

His feast is kept on August 25/September 7; also in the Synaxis of Radonezh Saints (July 6/19) and the Synaxis of All Saints Who Shone Forth in the Russian Land.