The life of St Daniel of Moscow
He governed there for roughly thirty years with a marked preference for peace over war, taking up arms only once in the whole span of his rule, and instead built up Moscow's standing among the Russian principalities through patient, careful diplomacy rather than conquest. By 1296 the other princes had come to recognize him as Grand Prince over the wider Russian lands.
He founded the first monastery within the city of Moscow itself, dedicated to Daniel the Stylite, which grew into what is known today as the Danilov Monastery. Daniel died on the fourth of March, 1303, remembered afterward less for any single dramatic achievement than for the steady, unhurried way he had built something lasting where his inheritance had given him little to start with; the princes who followed him would go on to make the modest city he once ruled the center of a unified Russia.
