The life of St Theognostus of Kiev
His twenty-six years in office fell during the hardest years of Mongol overlordship, and when he refused to gather tribute from the churches under him to hand over to the khan, rivals within his own flock denounced him to the Mongol authorities. He was tortured for his refusal but would not yield, giving up what personal property he had to protect the Church's own treasures, until the khan relented and confirmed the Church's existing privileges. He worked as well to reconcile Novgorod and Moscow during a period of open hostility between them, and after fire swept through Moscow he set about rebuilding its churches, though he had by then given away nearly everything he owned. In his last years, sensing his death approaching in 1353, he put forward Alexius, then bishop of Vladimir, as his successor. He was buried in Moscow's Cathedral of the Dormition, and the Russian Church numbered him among the saints in the nineteenth century.
