Righteous Peter, Jonon of the Golden Horde

Saint Peter of the Horde

An interesting entry in Orthodox hagiography involves the righteous Jonon Peter, whose feast we celebrate today. Russia retains, as it has done for centuries and will do for awhile yet, a rather ambiguous attitude toward the Tatars and Mongols who ruled it for centuries. The Mongols indisputably visited monstrous brutalities against the Russian people, just as they did to the Iranians and to the Han Chinese. And yet, Russia, China and even Kazakhstan treat their conqueror Sh‎yńǵys Han and his descendants with a certain degree of awe and respect. The hagiography of this Mongol who converted to Orthodox Christianity bears witness to even the Church’s double attitude toward the Tatar yoke.

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.

During this time, Bishop Saint Kirill of Rostov was twice compelled to visit Berke Han’s camp in Sarai Batu. The first time, Saint Kirill met with Berke Han for several reasons. Firstly, he desired the khaghan to lower the tax rate on his Russian subjects; and secondly, he asked for financial aid to support the struggling Orthodox Church in Vladimir-Suzdal. To all appearances, Berke Han had asked Saint Kirill why he should care about the Russian Church. Saint Kirill then told the khaghan about the social benefits the Church conveyed upon the Russian people, including alms and medical services. He told Berke Han about the miraculous healing properties of the relics of Saint Leontii of Rostov. Berke Han was interested, but apparently somewhat sceptical; he dismissed Saint Kirill back to Rostov without giving him a definite answer. But after Kirill left, Berke Han’s young son fell ill, and none of the doctors he called could cure him. Berke Han then summoned the bishop of Rostov to him again, but before Kirill got underway, he prayed a moleben at the shrine of Saint Leontii, and took some holy water in a flask with him from the shrine. When he arrived again in Sarai Batu, he went in to Berke Han’s son and sprinkled him with the holy water. In this way the khaghan’s son was cured.

The khaghan’s nephew, the jonon, was a witness to all of this. He had heard Saint Kirill’s discourse in defence of his Church, he had listened to his description of Saint Leontii’s works and the power of his relics, and he had seen with his own eyes his cousin’s wondrous restoration to health. Berke Han was grateful enough to Saint Kirill for this miraculous healing, that he granted all of the tax monies collected from Rostov and Yaroslavl to the Assumption Cathedral of Rostov. However, the impression left on Berke Han’s nephew was a good deal more profound. He began to wonder at the healing power that Christ gave to his servant Kirill, and wonder why indeed the Mongols continued to worship the sun and the moon, the wind and the stars. This young Mongol jonon rode after Saint Kirill after he left Sarai Batu the second time, caught up to him on horseback, and knelt before him, asking if he might return with him to Rostov.

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’.

The jonon Peter was fond of hunting and hawking, and one of his favourite hunting spots was on Lake Nero in Yaroslavl. One day as he was out-of-doors, Peter fell asleep on the lakeshore. As he was sleeping, he was visited by two men – much taller than ordinary men, and shining with a bright light. They awoke him, saying: ‘Peter: your prayers have been heard; and your plea has gone up before God.’ Peter was frightened by these strange men, glowing with a light which he could not tell where it came from, but they told him: ‘Fear not, Peter. We have been sent to you by God. Take from us these two bags: one has silver; the other, gold. In the morning, go into town and buy three icons: of the Most Holy Theotokos, of the Præ-Æternal Infant Christ, and of the holy Saints.’

‘Who are you?’ asked the jonon.

‘Peter and Paul, Apostles of Christ,’ they answered him. And once they had told him this, they vanished.

The still-dazed Peter stared out after them where they had been, and then a voice reached his ears that he could not tell where it came from. It said: ‘Go to the bishop. When you see him, tell him this: “The Apostles Peter and Paul have sent me to you, to build a church in their honour at the place where I fell asleep.”’

That very same night, the Holy and All-Praised Leaders of the Apostles appeared also to Bishop Ignatii and related to him the same thing they had related to the Mongol Peter, asking that a church be built in Rostov in their honour, with the funds that Peter was to bring him. When the bishop awoke in alarm, he at once summoned the jonon of the Horde to him. But Peter was already in the courtyard of the cathedral, and he had in his hands the three icons that the Apostles had told him to buy, and these too were shining with an otherworldly light. Bishop Saint Ignatii went to Peter, exclaiming that it was not simply a dream. ‘It is true, Vladyka,’ Peter answered him.

Peter then took the bishop, and showed him the place on the shore of Lake Nevo where he’d slept the day before. Bishop Ignatii served a moleben to the Holy Apostles, and then he and the Mongol lord went and marked off an oval area of ground on the lakeshore large enough to house a church, and this was duly consecrated to the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul. This church would become Petrovskii Monastery in Rostov.

Saint Peter of the Horde would go on to marry a Tatar woman who lived in Rostov with her parents, and together they had many progeny. After his wife died, Saint Peter did not remarry, but instead entered the same monastery of Saints Peter and Paul which he had founded in Rostov, and there became a brother-monk and lived out the rest of his days in meek quietude and holy striving. He reposed in the Lord on the thirtieth of June in the year 1290.

It is worthy of note that Saint Peter of the Horde is commemorated together in the Synaxis of All Saints of Rostov on the twenty-third of May – alongside Bishop Leontii whose blessing healed his sickly cousin in Sarai Batu, Bishop Kirill who preached Christ to him and Bishop Ignatii who baptised him and co-founded the Petrovskii Monastery with him. Saint Peter of the Horde is also commemorated in the Synaxis of All New Russian Wonderworkers on the sixteenth of July – alongside his fellow North Asian nobleman who forsook the world, Saint Pafnutii of Borovsk, and the man responsible for the Russian rapprochement with the Golden Horde, Saint Aleksandr Nevskii. The North Asian saints like Saint Peter have been, and remain, important witnesses to the world and the truly universal nature of the Orthodox faith, through the Russian Orthodox Church. Holy and righteous jonon Peter, noble hunter of truth who was taken captive by Truth, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion to Saint Peter of the Horde, Tone 8:

Retiring from thy fatherland, O Holy Peter,
And renouncing the godless faith,
You emerged from the darkness into light
And dwelt in the glorious city of many nations, Rostov.
Having lived a chaste and honest life by Christ’s grace,
You founded a Church in the names of Apostles Peter and Paul
And adorned it like a bride with marvellous icons!
Saint and prince, by your life you astonished all the people,
And after your death the same Christ enriched you with the gift of wonders,
Remember us who honour your blessed memory, O Righteous Father Peter,
And pray Christ our God that He might save our souls!

Отечества своего, блаженне Петре, удалився,
и богомерзкую веру отнюд возненавидев,
от тьмы во свет пришел еси
и вселился еси во славный и многонародный град Ростов,
в немже житие честно пожив,
церковь во имя святых апостол Петра и Павла воздвигл еси Христовою благодатию,
и сию чудными иконами, яко невесту, украсив,
святителя же, и князя, и вся люди житием своим удивил еси,
темже и по смерти твоей Христос даром чудес обогати тя.
Поминай нас, чтущих пресветлую память твою, преподобне отче Петре,
и моли Христа Бога спастися душам нашим.

Petrovskii Monastery, Rostov, Russia