Between the early tenth and early twelfth century the northern and eastern periphery of Europe was composed of polities which had recently adopted Christianity as the official religion. Here a special type of sainthood emerged, characterized by a martyr’s death caused out of political self-interest by Christians themselves, not by members of other religions as a result of hatred against the Christian faith as such. This article is dedicated to the historical and theological analysis of two murdered princes: Jovan (John) Vladimir (died in 1016/1018) from Dioclea, present-day Montenegro, and Magnus Erlendsson (died in 1115/1117) from the Orkney Isles, then part of Norway. In the face of mortal danger, all these saints did not resort to revenge or fratricide as a means of struggle for power, but rather voluntarily persevered in high Christian (moral) ideals, stemming from the imperative of love towards God and one’s neighbor, by accepting their death for the benefit of peace in their homelands and thus accentuating the relative value of political power. This phenomenon is additionally connected with the self-esteem of the ecclesiastical and secular elite of the peripheral polities – they wanted to present their newly-Christianized homelands as religiously ,mature‘, which was to a large extent possible due to the emergence of the local ruler saints.
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