Page:A Dictionary of Saintly Women Volume 1.djvu/84

 Grand-prince of all the Russias, and reigned from the Baltic to Asia, and to Hungary and Dacia. He was far more enlightened than his predecessors, and than many of his successors for some generations. He caused the Bible to be translated into the Slavonian tongue, and transcribed some copies with his own hand; he founded many schools, but his great glory was the code of laws he enacted. He built the church of St. Sophia, at Kief, one of the oldest in Russia. That of St. Sophia, at Novgorod, was built by the second St. Vladimir; it is the oldest building in Novgorod, and one of the three oldest churches in Russia. In it the founder and his mother, St Anna, lie buried. The date of Anna's death, 1050, is still to be seen on her tomb. She was the first of the Russian princesses to take the religious veil on the approach of death, a custom which afterwards became general. Yaroslav and Anna had six sons, one of whom was St. Vladimir II., and one is said to have married a daughter of Harold Godwinsson of England. Anna had three daughters: Elizabeth, queen of Norway; Anna or Annte, queen of France; and Anastasia, or Agmunda, who married Andrew I., king of Hungary; perhaps also a fourth daughter, Agatha, who married the English Prince Eadward Aethling, and was mother of Edgar Atheling and, queen of Scotland. Yaroslav died in 1054, and was buried at Kief.

These accounts of these Russian princesses are chiefly taken from Karamsin, Histoire de Russie. S. Anna Ingigerda is also mentioned by Mailath, Stammtafel der Arpaden; Martinov, ''Slav. Calendar; Snorri Sturlusson, Kings of Norway; Neale, Holy Eastern Church''.

St. Anna (15), daughter of the Emperor Romanus. Wife of the Russian Prince St. Vladimir II. (Yaroslavitch;, son of . Mother of the Grand-prince St. Mistislav the Brave, who feared no person or thing, but God only. He defended Novgorod against Andrew of Sousdalia, and was beloved all over Russia. Mistislav, his father St. Vladimir, his mother, and grandmother are buried in the church of St. Sophia at Novgorod, which Vladimir Yaroslavich built on the site of the wooden church of the year 1000: the stone church was built by Greek architects, and is preserved, with its gilt domes, in all its grandeur, unspoilt by wars or storms. St. Misiislav's dead hand, quite black, protrudes from under the cloth which covers his body, and is exposed for the kisses of the faithful. Chester's Russia, and the authorities for the other Russian saints.

B. Anna (16) Michieli Giustiniani, Nov. 21. O.S.B. Daughter of Vitale Michieli, doge of Venice (1156-1172), the last doge who was elected by the people, the seventeenth who was violently dethroned, and the sixth who was murdered in a riot. In 1170 there was war between the state of Venice and the empire of Constantinople. At the same time, the Emperor had a personal dislike to and quarrel with the Giustiniani, one of the most ancient and wealthiest of the Venetian noble families, and much beloved by all classes in the city. They therefore took up the national quarrel with family pride as well as political and patriotic ardour, contributing a large contingent of ships and men, and desiring to make good all loss that might accrue to the Republic from the war. The doge led the expedition, and every man of the Giustiniani family went with him. At first tho Venetians had some successes, but after suffering greatly from the treachery of the Greeks, they were attacked by the plague. Some of the Giustiniani had been killed in skirmishes, and all the rest were among the victims of the pestilence. About two years from the time he had set forth so gallantly, Vitale returned home, bringing back only seventeen of the hundred ships he had taken out. The people were furious with the doge, and threw upon him the whole blame of the ill success of the expedition, and the destruction of a family so popular among them. The Emperor triumphed in the extermination of the hated race, but Vitale knew there was one scion of the family, a certain brother Niccolo, who, although accounted dead to the world, was still living in the monastery of S. Nicoolo