08. Canonization
St. Elizabeth and her companion St. Barbara were glorified twice: by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia in 1981, among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, and by the Moscow Patriarchate in 1992, in one of the first New-Martyr canonizations of the post-Soviet Church. This section documents the two acts, the feast and iconography, and gives St. Barbara — the cell-attendant who chose to share her martyrdom — her own file.
Tradition: Russian Orthodox (New Martyr; glorified ROCOR 1981, Moscow 1992)
The glorifications of St. Elizabeth illustrate, in miniature, the pattern set out in the repository’s ROCOR materials: the Church Abroad, free of Soviet control, canonized the New Martyrs in 1981, nearly two decades before the Moscow Patriarchate was able to act (see Glorification of the New Martyrs). St. Elizabeth and St. Barbara were among the saints of the 1981 act; when the Moscow Patriarchate took up the New Martyrs after the fall of the USSR, the two were named in the Bishops’ Council act of 1992, alongside Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev and Metropolitan Benjamin of Petrograd, before the great conciliar glorification of 2000. The files keep the repository’s distinction between historical and hagiographical claims: the dates and conciliar acts are documented, while the relic accounts (the fragrance, the partial incorruption, the paraman cross taken as a sign of secret tonsure) are reported as what the ROCOR sources attest, with the source named, not asserted as established fact.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| 1981 and 1992 | The two glorifications — ROCOR (November 1, 1981, with the Gethsemane relic examination) and Moscow (Bishops’ Council, March 31 – April 5, 1992) — the feast (July 5/18; the Synaxis of New Martyrs), and the iconography |
| St. Barbara | St. Barbara (Varvara Yakovleva), the convent cell-attendant who chose to follow St. Elizabeth into exile and martyrdom; the Yekaterinburg ultimatum, the shared death and shrine, and her veneration with St. Elizabeth |
See Also
- The New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia — the company in which she is glorified
- Glorification of the New Martyrs — the 1981 ROCOR act and its significance
- The Royal Sanctity Question — the interpretive frame behind the Church’s judgment
- Letters and Counsels — her spiritual voice
References
- ROCOR Council of Bishops. Act of Glorification of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. New York, October 19 / November 1, 1981.
- Moscow Patriarchate. Act of the Bishops’ Council of March 31 – April 5, 1992 (glorification of Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev, Metropolitan Benjamin of Petrograd and those with him, and Grand Duchess Elizabeth and the nun Barbara).
- Eastern American Diocese (ROCOR). “The Canonization of the New Martyrs… in 1981 — How It Happened.” eadiocese.org.
- Millar, Lubov. Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia: New Martyr of the Communist Yoke. Nikodemos Orthodox Publication Society, 1991.