of Norway and Sweden launched a crusade against the Novgorodian land, preaching crusade and mustering armies in Livonia and Germany as well as in Sweden and Norway. In 1387, the Lithuanians, who had long threatened the western frontier, became Catholic and united dynastically with the Poles. The Catholic Grand Princes, such as Vytautas the Great, attempted to establish separate metropolitanates in the Russian lands they controlled. The Russian church always fought against this, in large part out of fear that the new metropolitanates would be converted to Catholic provinces. The popes attempted more peaceful means of conversion as well. Pope Innocent IV sent two cardinals to Prince Aleksandr Nevsky in 1248, who famously rejected their appeal that he become Catholic. In 1255 Innocent met with success, dispatching a crown to Prince Daniil of Galich (Halych), in what is today Western Ukraine, the acceptance of which is taken to mean that Daniil accepted Catholicism. There were reports of Irish monks fleeing the Mongol onslaught on Kyiv in 1240, and the Dominican Order was also dispatched by Pope Alexander IV to central Russia in an effort to convert the region to Catholicism in the 14th century. The princes of Rus also married into Catholic dynasties: Prince Yaroslav Vladimirovich (Yaroslav the Wise) and other princes married their daughters to Western princes; one of these dynastic marriages was, in fact, to a Holy Roman Emperor (although the marriage was an unhappy and ultimately failed one). Prince Iziaslav Yaroslavich (1054–68; 1069–73; 1076–78) sent his son to Pope Gregory VII, asking for papal assistance and promising to make Russia a vassal of the Holy See. Gregory's reply letter is dated April 17, 1075. Grand Prince Vsevolod Yaroslavich (1078–93) established the feast of the translation of the relics of St. Nicholas to Bari in Southern Italy, a feast approved by Pope Urban II (1088–99), who in 1091 sent Bishop Teodoro to Vsevolod with relics. One line of descent from the Russian royal family in a Catholic dynasty produced several saints from the House of Arpad in Hungary, most notably St. Elizabeth of Hungary, who was a direct descendant of Vladimir the Great (through her father's side). Council of Florence to 19th century The first Catholic diocese established in Russia was the Roman Catholic Diocese of Smolensk in 1636. Smolensk covered all of Russia until the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Mohilev was established by Catherine the Great in