| Honorific Prefix: | Saint |
| Andrew Yuryevich Bogolubsky | |
| Birth Date: | unknown |
| Death Date: | 28 June 1174 |
| Feast Day: | 4 July (burial), 30 June, 23 June, 10 October, 25 May |
| Venerated In: | Eastern Orthodox Church |
| Birth Place: | Rostov, Kievan Rus' |
| Death Place: | Bogolyubovo, Vladimir-Suzdal |
| Titles: | Right-Believing, Passion Bearer |
| Canonized Date: | 15 October 1702 (Translation) |
| Canonized Place: | Dormition Cathedral, Vladimir |
| Canonized By: | Russian Orthodox Church |
| Attributes: | Clothed as a Russian Grand Prince, holding a three-bar cross in his right hand |
| Patronage: | Russian NBC Protection Troops |
| Major Shrine: | Dormition cathedral, Vladimir |
Andrey Bogolyubsky (died 28 June 1174; Russian: Андрей Ю́рьевич Боголюбский|Andrey Yuryevich Bogolyubsky, lit. Andrey Yuryevich of Bogolyubovo), was Prince of Vladimir-Suzdal from 1157 until his death. During repeated internecine wars between the princely clans, Andrey accompanied his father Yuri Dolgorukiy during a brief capture of Kiev in 1149. 20 years later, his son led the Sack of Kiev (1169). He was canonized as a saint in the Russian Orthodox Church in 1702.[1]
Andrey Bogolyubsky was born ca. 1111, to a daughter of Ayyub Khan, the Kipchak leader, and to Yuri I Vladimirovich (Russian: Юрий Владимирович), commonly known as Yuri Dolgoruki (Russian: Юрий Долгорукий). Yuri was a son of Volodimer II Monomakh, progenitor of the Monomakhovichi. Yuri proclaimed Andrey a prince in Vyshgorod (near Kiev).
Andrey left Vyshgorod in 1155 and moved to Vladimir, a little town on the river Klyazma founded in 1108. In doing so, he removed the Icon of the Blessed Mother of God from Vyshgorod to Vladimir (thereafter known as the "Virgin of Vladimir"), an action condemned as theft by the Kievan Chronicle, while the Suzdalian Chronicle made no judgement on it. After his father's death in 1157, Andrey ousted his younger brothers Mikhail "Mikhalko" Yurievich and Vsevolod "the Big Nest" from Rostov and Suzdal in 1162, thus uniting his father's patrimony in Vladimir-Suzdal under his sole rule (samovlastets). He expelled his four brothers to the Byzantine Empire together with their mother, Yuri's second wife.
Andrey established for himself the right to receive tribute from the populations of the Northern Dvina lands.
See also: White Monuments of Vladimir and Suzdal. He commenced the construction of fortifications around the town of Vladimir in 1158 (completed in 1164), as well as the Dormition Cathedral in Vladimir.[2] In 1162 or 1164, Andrey sent an embassy to Constantinople, lobbying for a separate metropolitan see in Vladimir,[3] but he was overruled by the patriarch of Constantinople. Fortifications around Vladimir were completed in 1164. The same year Andrey attacked the Volga Bolgars; he won a victory, but a son was killed in battle, to whose memory he ordered the construction of the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl in 1165.[4]
In March 1169 Andrey's troops sacked Kiev, devastating it as never before.[5] Andrey did not take part in the attack; he stayed in Vladimir-Suzdal while his troops sacked the capital. After plundering the city, stealing much religious artwork, many books and valuables and devastating houses and religious buildings alike, Andrey had his brother Gleb appointed as prince of Kiev, in an attempt to create a position of overlordship for himself. This overlordship lasted for less than two years, ending with Gleb's death on 20 January 1171.
Andrey's attempts to control other parts of Kievan Rus' were barely successful either; his Siege of Novgorod (1170) was a failure, and the Suzdalians were defeated. Although he managed to later blackmail the Novgorodians by imposing a blockade on the trade hub, securing the princehood for his son Yury Bogolyubsky in 1171, the Novgorodians immediately expelled him upon Andrey's death in June 1174.
See main article: Siege of Vyshgorod. Gleb's death in 1171 caused another Kievan succession crisis, and Andrey became embroiled in a two-year war to regain control over Kiev. When the Rostislavichi of Smolensk and Iziaslavichi of Volhynia jointly secured the throne of Kiev, Andrey assembled another coalition and marched on Vyshhorod in 1173, where the Yurievichi–Olgovichi forces of Suzdalia and Chernigov were utterly defeated.
The defeat of Andrey's second coalition at Vyshgorod, the expansion of his princely authority, and his conflicts with the upper nobility, the boyars, gave rise to a conspiracy that resulted in Bogolyubsky's death on the night of 28–29 June 1174, when twenty of them burst into his chambers and slew him in his bed.
According to the story of Andrey Bogolyubsky's death as recorded in the Kievan Chronicle of the Hypatian Codex (Ipatiev), and the Radziwiłł Chronicle,[6] his "right hand" was cut off[6] by an assailant called "Peter" (Петръ):
However, the Radziwiłł Chronicles adjoining miniature depicts his assailants cutting off his left arm.[6] Moreover, when examined the exhumed body of Andrey Bogolyubsky in 1965, he "found a lot of cut marks on the left humerus and forearm bones". A 2009 special historical study by Russian historian A.V. Artcikhovsky (2009) would later confirm Rokhlin's observations.
With his wife, Andrey Bogolyubsky had one son, Yury Bogolyubsky, who became the husband of Queen Tamar of Georgia.