St. Barbara (Varvara Yakovleva)

St. Barbara (Varvara Yakovleva), a sister and cell-attendant of the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent, chose to follow St. Elizabeth into exile and, when offered her freedom at Yekaterinburg, refused it and insisted on sharing her abbess’s fate. The two were martyred together at the Alapaevsk mineshaft on July 5/18, 1918, their relics rest together at Gethsemane, and they were glorified together by ROCOR in 1981 and by the Moscow Patriarchate in 1992. This file documents what is known of her, the type she represents — the companion-martyr — and her veneration with St. Elizabeth.

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

What Is Documented of Her

Varvara (Barbara) Alekseyevna Yakovleva (born in the Tver region, c. 1880) was one of the first sisters of the Convent of Sts. Martha and Mary that St. Elizabeth founded in Moscow in 1909, and served as the Grand Duchess’s cell-attendant (kelейnitsa). Several sources record that she had been in St. Elizabeth’s personal service — as a chamber-maid — before taking the veil, so that her following of her mistress into the convent and then into martyrdom forms a single, continuous fidelity (en.wikipedia.org; johnsanidopoulos.com, “St. Barbara the New Martyr”). The biographical particulars vary by source; her role as a founding sister and cell-attendant is the firm point.

When St. Elizabeth was arrested in the spring of 1918 (on the third day of Pascha) and taken east, two sisters of the convent accompanied her: St. Barbara and a second sister, Ekaterina (Catherine) Yanysheva. This resolves a confusion in the popular sources. The party was taken by way of Perm to Yekaterinburg, and there the Bolshevik authorities ordered the convent companions released and sent away. Ekaterina Yanysheva was the sister who was sent back; St. Barbara alone managed to remain with St. Elizabeth and followed her on to Alapaevsk (tsarnicholas.org; sofia42.ru — both record that the companions were “released” at Yekaterinburg “but sister Varvara managed to be left with the Grand Duchess”). The devotional summaries that speak loosely of “both sisters” following into exile are not strictly wrong — both began the journey — but only St. Barbara continued past Yekaterinburg to the martyrdom.

The Yekaterinburg Ultimatum

The most-told scene of St. Barbara’s life is the ultimatum at Yekaterinburg. In its fullest hagiographic form, when St. Barbara begged to be allowed to return to St. Elizabeth, the authorities agreed on one condition — that she sign a document accepting that she too would be tortured and killed — and she answered:

“I agree to give you the requested signature, not only in ink, but, if necessary, in my own blood.” (Joy of All Who Sorrow ROCOR parish, “St Barbara the New Martyr,” joyofallwhosorrow.org.uk; the same account is echoed across the Orthodox lives, ultimately resting on the ROCOR vitae and Millar 1991)

The astonished officials, the account adds, reluctantly let her return. The verbatim “signature in blood” dialogue belongs to the hagiographic tradition (it derives from the Orthodox lives, not from any preserved Bolshevik document); but the historical kernel — that St. Barbara was given the chance to leave or be freed and deliberately chose to stay and die with her abbess — is documented and consistent across all the sources. It is this free, unforced choice to share the fate of another that gives her veneration its particular character: she was not seized and killed for who she was, as St. Elizabeth was, but chose her death when an exit lay open. In that respect her martyrdom is the more purely voluntary of the two, and the lives dwell on it for exactly that reason.

The Type She Represents: The Companion-Martyr

St. Barbara is the companion-martyr — the disciple whose sanctity is realized precisely in fidelity to another, in choosing not to be spared. Her witness seals the sisterhood that St. Elizabeth founded: where the abbess’s vocation was to “share the fate of [her] country and its people” (see The Royal Sanctity Question), the cell-attendant’s was to share the fate of her abbess, and the two refusals — St. Elizabeth’s of the Kaiser’s offer of escape, St. Barbara’s of the Bolsheviks’ offer of release — mirror each other. The obitel that united Martha’s service to Mary’s contemplation (see Letters and Counsels) is sealed, at its end, by a sister who would not leave; St. Barbara is, in this sense, the sisterhood’s own martyr-witness. She stands within the wider company of Orthodox women martyrs and ascetics whose recognized holiness the tradition honors (see Women in Orthodoxy).

The Shared Martyrdom and Shrine

On the night of July 5/18, 1918 — the day after the execution of the Royal Family at Yekaterinburg — St. Elizabeth, St. Barbara, and the Romanov princes imprisoned with them (Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, Princes Ioann, Konstantin, and Igor Konstantinovich, Prince Vladimir Paley, and the secretary Fyodor Remez) were taken to an abandoned mineshaft near Alapaevsk, beaten, and cast in alive; grenades were thrown in after them. Witnesses reported hearing hymn-singing rising from the shaft for some time afterward (orthodox.cn, “The Alapaevsk Martyrs”; see The New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia). When White forces recovered the bodies after the region fell to them later in 1918, St. Elizabeth was found to have bound the wounds of a fellow sufferer with her wimple — a detail widely reported in the recovery accounts, and read by the hagiographic tradition as her last act of mercy. St. Barbara died beside her.

The recovered bodies were given temporary burial and then, as the civil war turned against the Whites, carried eastward to keep them from desecration — an extraordinary journey across Siberia and out through China before the relics of St. Elizabeth and St. Barbara reached the Holy Land. In 1921 they were laid to rest in the Church of St. Mary Magdalene of the Russian Convent in Gethsemane, Jerusalem — the church St. Elizabeth had herself attended and loved — where they remain together, a shared shrine for the abbess and her cell-attendant (orthochristian.com, No. 137071, on the centenary of the transfer).

That the two rest together, were examined together before the ROCOR glorification of 1981, and were named together in the Moscow act of 1992 expresses in the cult itself the bond St. Barbara chose at Yekaterinburg. They share the feast of July 5/18, are commemorated within the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, and appear together in the hagiographic icons — the foundress in the grey habit of her sisterhood and, at her side or among the martyrs of Alapaevsk, the sister who would not be parted from her (see 1981 and 1992).

See Also

• The Two Glorifications: 1981 and 1992 — the acts in which she was glorified with St. Elizabeth
• Letters and Counsels — the convent and sisterhood she belonged to
• The Royal Sanctity Question — the parallel free refusal of escape
• The New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia
• Women in Orthodoxy

References

• Millar, Lubov. Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia: New Martyr of the Communist Yoke. Redding, CA: Nikodemos Orthodox Publication Society, 1991.
• “St Barbara the New Martyr.” Joy of All Who Sorrow ROCOR parish (joyofallwhosorrow.org.uk).
• Sanidopoulos, John. “Saint Barbara the New Martyr, Companion of Grand Duchess Elizabeth.” johnsanidopoulos.com.
• “The Alapaevsk Martyrs.” orthodox.cn.
• “The Centenary of the Transfer of the Relics of the Holy New Martyrs Elizabeth and Barbara.” OrthoChristian.com (No. 137071).
• Moscow Patriarchate. Act of the Bishops’ Council, March 31 – April 5, 1992; ROCOR Council of Bishops, Act of Glorification, November 1, 1981.