The life of Peter and Fevronia of Murom
He kept his word, and the two were wed, but the noble families of Murom, unwilling to accept a princess born a commoner, forced the couple from the city. Only when Murom fell into disorder without its rightful prince did the same nobles beg the pair to return.
In old age Peter and Fevronia entered monastic life, taking the names David and Euphrosyne, and asked God that they might die at the very same hour. Tradition holds that this was granted them: they died together on the same day, and although they were at first buried apart, as separate monastics, their bodies were found on two later occasions to have come to rest together in a single grave, after which they were left undisturbed as one. Their story was not written down as literature until the middle of the sixteenth century, becoming one of the most cherished works of old Russian writing, though devotion to them in Murom itself reached back a century earlier. They are remembered today above all as patrons of marriage and of steadfast love within a family.
