Agafia Sviatoslavna of Rus
Overview
Biography
(See also Genealogical Table(s): 2.1)
Agafia was a daughter of Svyatoslav Igorevich and Yaroslava Rurikovna of Belgorod, born in the 1190’s. She married Konrad (died 1247), duke of Poland and prince of Masovia between 1207 and 1210, a marriage said to be the longest in the Piast dynasty, about forty years. [1] They had ten children, five sons and five daughters: Boleslaw, Kazimierz, Semovit, Siemomysl, Mieszko, Evdokia, Ludmila, Salomea, Judit, Dubrawka. Agafia was a patron of ecclesiastical institutions, embracing the latin christianity of her husband, though she was brought up in eastern orthodoxy. [2] Zajac presents two gifts commissioned by Agafia and her family, “a golden chalice with matching paten given to Płock Cathedral depicting her as a donor together with her husband and children, and an embroidered chasuble … showing her as donor with her son Siemowit.” In 1242, Konrad ratified the boundaries of an estate held by the house of the Holy Sepulchre in Mechow, in return for which the brothers of the house took him and his sons and “his beloved wife their mother” (dilectam coniugem nostram matrem eorum) into their fraternity, promising that they and their successors would pray for them in perpetuity.[3]
Polish dukes were endangered by northern pagans, Prussians and Yatvingians, so they invited Teutonic knights to protect the northern frontier. [4] There is an account of the role Agafia played when Konrad summoned their help in a German chronicle, the Chronicon terrae Prussiae of Peter of Dusburg, ed. Max Töppen in Scriptores Rerum Prussiacrum, 1, 36-37: “…the army of the Prussians came and laid waste the land of Poland by looting and fire. Which army, said brothers at the order of lady Agafia wife of the duke, with a multitude of Poles she had brought (assumpta), fought virilely in war, but the Prussians opposing them and the Poles fleeing in the first meeting, wounded said brothers lethally and having captured the captain of the Polish army, they killed many of the people they had led away [or killed the captain of the Polish army whom they had captured and led many of the people away]. But said lady after the battle ordered the brothers left on the field half alive to be brought back and healed by the care of doctors. Which brothers when they were healed, wisely carried out the mission that had been committed to them. When he heard that, said lord Conrad, duke of Poland, having had mature deliberation, as was said, with the advice, unanimous will and expressed consent of his wife Agafia and his sons Boleslaw, Casimir and Semovit, gave said brothers of the Teutonic house present and future the land Chelmno and Lubovia, and land which they could, God willing, win in the future from the hands of the infidels, with all right and usage with which he and his progenitors had possessed it, to be possessed in perpetuity, reserving nothing to himself of right or property in it, but renouncing all claim by right/law or action which might be due to himself or his wife or sons or their successors in them….” [5]
Letters from Agafia Sviatoslavna of Rus
A letter to Bishopric of Masovia (1241)A letter to Public (1239, July 9)