The Two Glorifications: 1981 and 1992

St. Elizabeth and St. Barbara were glorified by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia on November 1, 1981, among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, the relics in Jerusalem having first been examined; and by the Moscow Patriarchate at the Bishops’ Council of March 31 – April 5, 1992, in one combined act with Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev and Metropolitan Benjamin of Petrograd — among the earliest New-Martyr canonizations of the post-Soviet Church. This file documents both acts, the feast of July 5/18, and her iconography.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (New Martyr; glorified ROCOR 1981, Moscow 1992)

The Two Acts and Why There Were Two

St. Elizabeth was glorified twice because the Russian Church itself was, in her lifetime’s aftermath, divided by the Soviet catastrophe into a free part abroad and a captive part at home. The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR), beyond the reach of the atheist state, could honor the regime’s victims; the Moscow Patriarchate, bound to that state until 1991, could not. The result was that ROCOR canonized the New Martyrs — St. Elizabeth and St. Barbara among them — in 1981, and the Moscow Patriarchate did so only after the Soviet collapse, in 1992 (see Glorification of the New Martyrs). The two acts are not rival but complementary; in St. Elizabeth’s case, unusually, both jurisdictions reached the same verdict and the same category — new martyr — without the divergence that attends the Royal Family.

The ROCOR Glorification (November 1, 1981)

At its Council of Bishops, held October 18 – November 1, 1981, at the Synodal Cathedral of Our Lady “of the Sign” in New York City, ROCOR glorified the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia; the rite itself was celebrated at the vigil and Liturgy of October 31 / November 1, 1981, under Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky), ROCOR’s Third First Hierarch (Eastern American Diocese, “The Canonization of the New Martyrs… in 1981 — How It Happened,” eadiocese.org). St. Elizabeth and her cell-attendant St. Barbara (Yakovleva) were glorified within this act, which covered the whole synaxis of the New Martyrs — including the Royal Martyrs and all of the Alapaevsk martyrs, not the two nun-martyrs alone. A full liturgical service (troparion, kontakion, canon, and stichera) for the New Martyrs was composed and added to the ROCOR calendar, and icons of the new saints were written; St. Elizabeth and St. Barbara took their place within that company of witnesses.

The Gethsemane Examination of the Relics

The 1981 glorification was connected to an examination of St. Elizabeth’s and St. Barbara’s relics, which had rested since 1921 in the Church of St. Mary Magdalene of the Russian Convent in Gethsemane, Jerusalem — having been recovered by White forces after the martyrdom and carried out of Russia by way of China (the relics were opened for veneration as part of the glorification; see The New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia). According to the ROCOR account, when the relics were opened before the glorification the examiners noticed an aroma described as the exuding of myrrh, found the bodies partly incorrupt, and found a paraman (monastic) cross on St. Elizabeth’s breast — taken as evidence that she had been secretly tonsured a nun. The right hand of St. Elizabeth and a portion of St. Barbara’s relics were brought to New York for the glorification and venerated by the First Hierarch; the relics were afterward solemnly returned and a translation festival kept at Gethsemane in 1982 (ROCOR sources; rocorstudies.org; orthochristian.com). These relic accounts are reported here as what the ROCOR sources attest, with the source named, and not as independently established historical fact (cf. METHODOLOGY §5); the more elaborate devotional versions (“the fragrance of jasmine and honey”) are a hagiographic amplification of the basic ROCOR report of an aroma and partial incorruption.

The Moscow Patriarchate Glorification (1992)

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Moscow Patriarchate was at last free to glorify the victims of the regime to which it had been bound. At the Bishops’ Council held March 31 – April 5, 1992 in Moscow, it canonized — in a single act (deyanie) — Metropolitan Vladimir (Bogoyavlensky) of Kiev (1848–1918), Metropolitan Benjamin (Kazansky) of Petrograd (1873–1922) together with those martyred with him (Archimandrite Sergius [Shein], Yuri Novitsky, and Ivan Kovsharov), and Grand Duchess Elizabeth (1864–1918) and the nun Barbara (1918) (Orthodox Encyclopedia, pravenc.ru/text/76514; patriarchia.ru). The act named St. Elizabeth and St. Barbara as new martyrs who suffered in the revolutionary terror; the same council also separately canonized Sts. Cyril and Maria, the parents of St. Sergius of Radonezh.

Two points of precision belong to the record. First, the council’s dates are March 31 – April 5, 1992 (not, as sometimes given, ending April 4). Second, from the Alapaevsk group the Moscow act of 1992 named only St. Elizabeth and St. Barbara — not the Romanov grand dukes martyred with them — whereas the ROCOR act of 1981 had glorified the whole Alapaevsk synaxis.

The 1992 glorification was among the earliest New-Martyr canonizations of the post-Soviet Moscow Patriarchate. It followed the glorification of Patriarch Tikhon — the confessor-patriarch — at the Bishops’ Council of 1989, and it preceded the great conciliar glorification of the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, “known and unknown,” at the Jubilee Council of August 2000, which named more than a thousand saints (see The New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia). That St. Elizabeth was among the very first the freed Russian Church chose to honor — before the vast collective glorification of 2000 — is itself a measure of her standing: she was not lost in the multitude of the New Martyrs but named at the head of the post-Soviet canonizations, alongside the first hierarch-martyr (Vladimir of Kiev) and the most beloved of the martyred metropolitans (Benjamin of Petrograd).

In St. Elizabeth’s case the two jurisdictions arrived at the same judgment without the divergence of category that attends the Royal Family (martyrs in ROCOR’s 1981 act, passion-bearers in Moscow’s 2000 act): she and St. Barbara are venerated as new martyrs in both. The convergence reflects the relative clarity of her case. Where the Royal Family’s death could be read as the political execution of a deposed sovereign, St. Elizabeth’s killing — a nun thrown alive down a mineshaft, having refused every offer of escape, for no crime but who she was and what she represented of the old Christian Russia — admitted more readily of the category of martyrdom in both jurisdictions (on the interpretive question, see The Royal Sanctity Question).

The Feast

St. Elizabeth and St. Barbara are commemorated on July 5/18 — the day of their martyrdom at the Alapaevsk mineshaft in 1918, the day after the execution of the Royal Family at Yekaterinburg. The proximity of the two dates is itself part of how the Church reads her: she fell with the dynasty and the Christian order she had served, one day behind her sister the Empress and her nieces and nephews. They are also commemorated within the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, kept on the Sunday closest to January 25 / February 7 — the date that goes back to the All-Russian Church Council of 1917–1918 and the martyrdom of Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev (orthodox.cn; OCA; GOARCH; see Glorification of the New Martyrs). In the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent in Moscow, restored as a working community in the post-Soviet period, and at the Gethsemane shrine that holds her relics, she is venerated as foundress and patron, so that the liturgical commemoration and the living institution she created reinforce one another.

Iconography

St. Elizabeth’s iconography is distinctive among the Russian saints in two respects. First, she is most often depicted not in the black habit of a standard Orthodox nun but in the off-white and pearl-grey habit and wimple of the Marfo-Mariinsky sisters of mercy that she herself designed — a visual signature of her particular vocation, the union of contemplation and active service. She is commonly shown holding a cross or a model of the convent (British Association of Iconographers: she “is shown as a nun and holds a Russian Cross in her hand”). Second, the narrative (“vita”) icons surround the central figure with scenes from her life, among them the documented prison visit in which she forgave her husband’s assassin Ivan Kalyaev, leaving him a Gospel and an icon (the historical event behind the scene is well attested — see Letters and Counsels), and the martyrdom at the Alapaevsk mineshaft. Her Western reception is registered in stone as well as in icon: her statue stands above the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey, unveiled in 1998 as one of ten twentieth-century Christian martyrs (bai.org.uk).

See Also

References

  • ROCOR Council of Bishops. Act of Glorification of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. New York, October 19 / November 1, 1981.
  • Eastern American Diocese (ROCOR). “The Canonization of the New Martyrs by the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia in 1981 — How It Happened.” eadiocese.org, 2019.
  • Moscow Patriarchate. Act of the Bishops’ Council, March 31 – April 5, 1992. Text and summary at Orthodox Encyclopedia (pravenc.ru/text/76514) and patriarchia.ru.
  • “The Centenary of the Transfer of the Relics of the Holy New Martyrs Elizabeth and Barbara.” OrthoChristian.com (No. 137071).
  • British Association of Iconographers (bai.org.uk), on the iconography and the Westminster Abbey statue.
  • Millar, Lubov. Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia: New Martyr of the Communist Yoke. Redding, CA: Nikodemos Orthodox Publication Society, 1991.