Charitina of Lithuania

Charitina of Lithuania

Charitina of Lithuania (died 1281) is a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Her feast is on 5 October. Because her hagiography did not survive, very little is known about her life.[1]

Charitina was a noblewoman from the pagan Grand Duchy of Lithuania who became a nun in Novgorod.[2] Possibly she was arranged to marry a Prince of Novgorod,[3] but that could be a conflation of Charitina with Euphrosyne of Suzdal [ru] who was betrothed to Fyodor, eldest son of Yaroslav II of Vladimir. In Novgorod, unmarried Charitina entered the Monastery of Saints Peter and Paul.[3] There she earned the reputation of piousness and became an abbess.[3] In 2009, Lithuanian historian Algimantas Bučys raised a hypothesis that she might be a daughter of Tautvilas, who escaped to Novgorod after her father's murder by Treniota.[2]

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