«Everyone believed that he had been poisoned»: formation of the memory of the death of Grand Duke Yaroslav Vsevolodovich (mid-13th – 16th century)

Based on sources from the middle of the 13th – 16th centuries, the article examines the evolution of ideas about the causes and circumstances of the death of Grand Duke Yaroslav Vsevolodovich, who died on September 30, 1246 at the headquarters of the Great Khan Guyuk. The author concludes that the historiographical interpretation of the prince's death as a result of poisoning is based on very unreliable information provided by the Pope's ambassador de Plano Carpini, which was reproduced in the Russian Galician-Volyn chronicle, but was not reflected in sources written around the same time in Yaroslav's homeland, in the Suzdal land. Later, Yaroslav's death was overgrown with details, usually of literary origin, indicating the desire of the scribes to give the prince the aura of a martyr who suffered for Christians. As a result, in a later Book of Royal Degrees, the Grand Duke was presented as a saint who, through his suffering and death, freed the Russian land from the «evil Tatar violence».