Blessed Prince Peter

Life

A Tatar by origin and the nephew of the Tatar Khan Berkai. He heard the words of salvation from Bishop Cyril of Rostov, and those words clung to his heart. And when he further witnessed the miraculous healing of Berkai's son through the prayer of Bishop Cyril, he secretly left the Golden Horde and fled to Rostov, where he was baptized and where he gave himself with all his soul and heart to the ascetical struggle and the study of the pious faith. Once he spent the night on the shore of a lake, and in a dream the Apostles Peter and Paul appeared to him and commanded him to build a church in their name on that very spot; they also gave him the necessary money for that purpose. Peter indeed built a beautiful church there, in which he himself in old age, after the death of his wife, was tonsured a monk. He peacefully departed this life in deep old age on June 29, 1290, and his church became and remained a monastery, called the Petrovsky.