Grand Princess Elisabeth... German by birth, raised Lutheran , Russian in spirit, canonized as one of the holy new martyrs and
confessors of Russia. This saint has a special place in Russian history. Her
image shines with incredible spiritual glory and moves the hearts of many
people nowadays: her icons can be found in many Orthodox churches and not only
in Russia, but Belarus and other countries worldwide.
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St Elisabeth |
The name Elisabeth means "she who venerates God". Indeed, pious veneration of God and love towards all things divine permeated the entire life of Saint Elisabeth. She possessed everything a person might dream of: noble birth, wealth, beauty, a loving family. Nonetheless, grief, sorrow, and suffering entered her life. From the human point of view, the fate of Elisabeth Fyodorovna is quite tragic; on the other hand, the Divine Providence sent her on an unparalleled journey, filled with selfless ministry to the needy and the destitute, that led her to become a saint. What was so special about her life?
A German
Princess
Elisabeth Alexandra Louise Alice (known as
"Ella" within her family) of Hesse and the Rhine was born on November
1, 1864 in Darmstadt, the capital of the Grand Duchy of Hesse and by Rhine. She
was the second of the seven children of Grand Duke Ludwig IV of Hesse and the
Rhine and Princess Alice of Great Britain and Ireland, the second daughter of
Queen Victoria.
The young princess was named after St Elisabeth of
Hungary, the 
Ella’s parents helped the poor a lot. They spent a
large portion of their wealth on charity. Grand Duke Ludwig IV was famous for
his kindness; his wife, Princess Alice, was often called 'an Angel of a
princess' because she helped everyone – the rich and the poor alike. The
grateful residents of Darmstadt even erected a monument to her with donations
coming from the city dwellers for whom Princess Alice had established several
charitable societies, such as the first lyceum for women, a birth centre, a
hospital, and many more.
For the young
Ella, her mother was the first example of a believer
who fully
devoted herself to serving people, a person who sticks to her chosen path and
is determined to see her plans come about. Princess Alice tried very hard to
pass her own convictions and ideals on to her children, teaching them to love
their neighbors in the spirit of Christian commandments and to care for the
unhappy and the impoverished. Her children would often accompany their mother
to hospitals, shelters, nursing homes, where they did not just try to comfort
the sufferers but also were effectively learning the basics of practical
healthcare.
The Grand Duke and his wife wanted their heirs to be
diligent and ready for difficult situations in life. That was why every day was
built around a very rigid routine, traditional for the old England. They wore
simple clothes and ate simple food. The older daughters did household chores
and learned to do handicrafts.
Princess Alice died of diphtheria when Ella was
twelve. After her mother’s death, the princess was raised and educated in
Britain under the guardianship of Queen Victoria.
With regard to
Ella’s personality, people would say that she had her head in the clouds even
when she was a child. The girl always sought to help those in need; she did not
blame anyone – on the contrary, she was eager to forgive their mistakes and
shortcomings. She was a multi-talented child, fond of theology, painting, and
music. Ella had a refined taste: she appreciated the beauty of nature,
especially flowers. Later, when she arrived in Russia, she painted icons and
embroidered church vestments, painted on porcelain, carved out pictures, collected
fine arts.
Archbishop Anastasius (Gribanovsky) who often met Ella
in Moscow, characterised her as “a rare combination of a noble Christian
attitude, moral dignity, an enlightened mind, a tender heart, and a refined
taste. She possessed an extremely delicate and versatile personality... Her
personal traits were very well balanced to the extent that no one could call
her biased in one way or another. Her rich talents were sharpened by a wide and
multifaceted education, which not only corresponded to her intellectual and
aesthetic requests but also enriched her with practical skills every woman had
to have in her daily life.”
The Grand
Princess
Princess Elisabeth was strikingly beautiful.
Moreover, her physical attractiveness reflected her truehearted spirituality.
She was special – unlike everybody else – and there was no photo that could
accurately render this refined and elusive beauty. According to Archbishop
Anastasius (Gribanovsky), “she carried the pure scent of a lily wherever she
went; it may be the reason why she loved white so much: it was the colour of
her heart.”
Soon enough Ella caught the eyes of the best suitors
of Europe but she chose to marry Grand Prince Sergei Alexandrovich – Emperor
Alexander II’s fifth son. Elisabeth got to know him very early, when the prince
visited Germany with his mother – Russian Empress Maria Alexandrovna, née
Princess of Darmstadt. Their wedding was held in June 1884. Ella was twenty at
that time. Their marriage became an example of love and fidelity.
Ella’s entire family accompanied her to Russia. Her
twelve-year-old sister Alice met her future husband and the would-be Emperor
Nicholas II of Russia on that trip to Russia with her.
Everything was new for the Grand Princess in Russia:
its language, the lifestyle of the Russians, and their Orthodox faith. She
began learning the language of her new land, at the same time admiring its
culture and faith.
Several years after the death of Empress Maria Alexandrovna,
her sons built a breathtakingly beautiful church in Jerusalem in her memory. It
was solemnly consecrated in honour of Saint Mary Magdalene in October 1888.
Grand Prince Sergei Alexandrovich and his wife attended the ceremony. The
splendour of the Holy Land, the remarkable architecture of the church
surrounded by the Garden of Gethsemane, the closeness of holy places and solemn
Orthodox worship made the soul of Elisabeth Fyodorovna tremble. “It’s like a
dream – to be able to see all these places where our Lord suffered for our
sake. At the same time, it is so comforting to visit Jerusalem,” she wrote to
her grandmother Queen Victoria. “I am glad that… I can quietly pray, bringing
to mind the things that I heard when I was a little child, when I embraced
everything with immense awe.” It was here, in the Gethsemane, at the bottom of
Mount of Olives, that the Grand Princess uttered, “How I want to be buried
here!” Her desire came into reality thirty-three years later.
Ella’s husband – a profoundly religious man – greatly
influenced her spiritual life. According to the laws of the Russian Empire, the
Grand Princess was entitled not to change her faith but she was growing more
and more inclined to become Orthodox, especially after her visit to the Holy Land.
She converted to Orthodoxy on the eve of Easter in 1891, guided (as Patriarch
Kirill of Moscow put it) “by her own will, not external pressure, the
circumstances of her life, or the outward grandeur of the Orthodox worship – as
her father would sometimes surmise – but by a clear understanding of the fact
that her religious feelings would be realised and bring fruit easier and with a
greater intensity in the Orthodox Church. That was why she became Orthodox
without consent of her father.” Her contemporaries attest that her conversion
was sincere, profound, and wholehearted.
The First Lady
of Moscow
Grand Prince Sergei Alexandrovich was appointed the Governor General of Moscow. His new status obliged him to organise public entertainment, dance at balls, go to concerts; however, this did not stop Elisabeth Fyodorovna from doing charitable work. She visits hospitals for the poor, alms-houses, and orphanages. Wherever she come, she tried to alleviate the suffering by giving alms, food, and her attention to the needy. In her opinion, “Happiness isn’t about living in a palace and being wealthy. You can lose everything at once… Try to make people around you happy, and you will be happy, too.”
A list of charities founded by the Grand Princess is
an exhaustive
one, even if
we name only the most spectacular ones, such as the Charitable Fellowship of
HIH Elisabeth. It supported nine thousand children in the twenty-five years of
its operation.
Elisabeth Fyodorovna paid much attention to culture:
she took care of museums, art, music, and theatrical institutions. It was
thanks to her polished taste and her gift for spotting the beauty around her,
which were also demonstrated by the way she dressed: she always wore elegant
and impeccable clothes. Who could guess that this brilliant beauty would become
a humble abbess of a convent of mercy?!
She spent a lot
of time going on pilgrimages. The Grand Princess visited the holy places of
Russia for over thirty years. She also took part in events related to
canonisations of new saints. Thus, she actively backed up and later
participated in the translation of the relics of St Euphrosinia of Polotsk, a
great Belarusian saint, from Kiev to Polotsk in 1910.
Her sister, Princess Alice, married the heir to the
Russian throne Nicholas Alexandrovich in 1894. Soon after that, her sister was
crowned together with her husband.
Elisabeth Fyodorovna endeavoured to help the army
during the Russian-Japanese war. Almost the entire Kremlin Palace was occupied
by workshops where thousands of female workers prepared parcels with food,
clothes, and medicines for soldiers. Apart from that, the Grand Princess
organised a hospital for the wounded in Moscow and special committees to
support the widows and orphans of the soldiers and officers.
This period in the life of the Russian Empire was
marked by growing social and political unrest, unprecedented spread of
terrorist attacks, mass rallies, and strikes - the tragic 1917 was near.
Husband's Death
Sergei Alexandrovich was murdered with a bomb thrown
by Ivan Kalyayev near the Kremlin walls on February 4, 1905. The shocked Grand
Princess saw the bloody mess out of her husband's body. She did not go mad, she
did not scream nor throw a fit of hysteria: instead, she knelt and started
gathering the scattered parts of her husband's body into stretchers.
The immense spiritual power of this woman was
demonstrated when she met Ivan Kalyayev in jail and urged him to repent. He
refused, although the Grand Princess forgave him and even asked the Emperor to
pardon him.
Elisabeth Fyodorovna did not stop her public ministry
when her husband died. On the contrary, she took over many of her late
husband's duties in organisations that he had supervised. In particular, she
was actively involved in the activities of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine
Society. It was thanks to her efforts, that a mission with a church for Russian
pilgrims were built in Bari, Italy, where the relics of St Nicholas lay, as
well as a big guest house in Jerusalem. The Grand Princess managed to channel budget
money into supporting 101 schools of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society in
Syria and Lebanon, where eleven thousand Arab children received education
annually. Russian hospitals and outpatient clinics provided free medical care
to tens of thousands of patients.
Since her husband's death, Elisabeth Fyodorovna wore
mourning; she did not attend public events; she fasted and prayed a lot. Her
bedroom in Nicholas Palace now resembled a nun's cell - she had all luxurious
items removed.
The day of her husband's assassination was a utterly
tragic day in the life of Elisabeth Fyodorovna; at the same time it was the day
when the majestic princess of high society died and a devoted champion of mercy
and a Russian Orthodox saint was born.
SS Martha and Mary Convent of Mercy
We do not know exactly when and how the Grand Princess
decided
to establish a
convent of mercy. She saw the ministry of the diligent Martha and the prayerful
Mary, the sisters of St Lazarus whom Jesus raised from the dead, as its
prototype. Archbishop Anastasius wrote that she was guided by the following
principle: "You must be not of this world but at the same time live and
act within this world in order to transform it."
Elisabeth Fyodorovna bought an estate on Bolshaya
Ordynka in Moscow for the future Martha and Mary Convent. It consisted of four
houses and a garden. It was here that service spaces, a church, a hospital, a
pharmacy, an outpatient clinic, a school for orphan girls, and a library were
situated. Later, another architectural masterpiece - a church in honor of the
Holy Protection of the Mother of God -
was built nearby.
The Very Reverend Triphon (Turkestanov), bp. of
Dmitrov, professed eighteen sisters of the convent, including Elisabeth
Fyodorovna, into the rank of sisters of love and mercy on April 9, 1910. The
Grand Princess told her sisters, "I abandon the splendid world where I had
a brilliant status. Together with all of you I ascend to a greater world - that
of the poor and the suffering."
The convent, its churches, worship and daily life
impressed its contemporaries. Apart from the spiritual father of the convent,
the Rev Metrophan Serebryansky, other distinguished priests from Moscow and
other Russian cities and towns served and preached here. Not only the churches
were wonderful; the park with flowerbeds and the orchards were magnificent,
too. "Everything that the Grand Princess did was marked by elegance and
exquisiteness - not because she stressed its importance but because it came as
natural for her creative mind." (The Most Rev Anastasius)
The efforts of a feeble woman who faced the turbulent
sea of political and social turmoil that gradually swallowed up Moscow and
Russia were enough to create SS Martha and Mary Convent - this amazing domain
of practical Christian love, mercy, and beauty.
The life of the abbess was extremely ascetic,
selfless, stretching the limits of the impossible. She slept for about three
hours every night on a wooden bed without a mattress. She would fast very
strictly. Every morning, she would get up and pray, and then distribute the
chores among the sisters, work in the clinic, receive guests, and deal with the
post.
She would do a hospital round in the evening. After
this, she would go to church and pray. If a seriously ill person needed help,
she would sit by his or her bed till dawn. She assisted doctors during
surgeries and bandaged wounds. Abbess Elisabeth found comforting words for
everyone, trying to alleviate the patients' suffering. Moreover, they said that
her very presence was a remedy. Elisabeth Fyodorovna would often repeat,
"Is it hard to pay some attention to a grief-stricken person: say a kind
word to a person who is hurt, smile to a distressed person, defend someone who
is offended, reconcile those who quarrel, give alms to a needy person? All
these easy actions bring us closer to the Heaven and to God himself, if only we
do them with prayer and love."
It wasn't surprising, then, that people began calling
the abbess of SS Martha and Mary Convent a saint when she was still alive. Many
people would make the sign of the cross and bow when they met her; they also
kissed her hands and her garments. Indeed, the kindness and patience of the
holy abbess worked miracles. Thus, a woman with severe burns was admitted to
Martha and Mary
hospital one day. Her entire body was one big wound, a gangrene
started; there was literally no chance of rescuing her. The Grand Princess
started to look after the dying woman, and an incredible miracle happened: the
woman survived and her wounds healed.
SS Martha and Mary Convent became famous all over
Russia in the nine years of its existence; its hospital was considered to be
the best one. The most experienced doctors worked here; all surgeries were
free. They did not hesitate even to deal with hopeless cases; the healed
patients would weep when they had to leave the convent of the Great Matushka -
that was how they called the abbess.
At first, there were six people close to the Grand
Princess' way of thinking who worked with her; by 1918, there were 105 such
people. All sisters of the convent studied the basic medical skills and knew
how to look after the patients. However, Elisabeth Fyodorovna paid attention
not only to the hospital, but also to helping the needy. She founded
residential homes for orphans, the less able, and the terminally ill. She paid
multiple visits to all these facilities with her sisters, rendering material
and spiritual assistance to the distressed. The convent would receive over ten
thousand petitions every year; none of them was left without a reply.
The Great Matushka paid special attention to Khitrov
Marketplace. She was not afraid of the fact that her life was in danger
whenever she went there; she was not repelled by the dirt and by having to talk
with people who had lost human image. She, her cell attendant Barbara
Yakovleva, and other sisters visited the most notorious places and gathered
children who lived in Khitrovka, eager to provide good education to them. All
residents of the marketplace respected Abbess Elisabeth, even though the police
warned her that they could not defend her if anything wrong happened. The Grand
Princess would always reply in a calm voice that her life belongs not to
herself but to God.
Her contemporaries mentioned her incredible spiritual
beauty. Georges Maurice Paléologue, the French ambassador to Russia in 1914-15,
wrote: "In spite of the fact that she is about 50, she has retained her
gracefulness and slenderness. She is as elegant and lovely under her flying
white woolen veil as she used to be before her widowhood… Her face… is
strikingly lively. Refined traits, pale skin, profound and distant life of her
eyes, the tenderness of her voice, a reflection of light on her forehead — all
that discloses her permanent connection with the unspeakable and divine."
The First World War made the Grand Princess work even
more: she had to care for the wounded in military hospitals. Some sisters of
the convent were sent to work in field hospitals.
Now, it was the fateful year 1917. In the spring of
that year, on behalf of Wilhelm II, the German Emperor, a Swedish minister
suggested the Grand Princess to leave the Russian Empire. She refused. A year
later, the German ambassador on behalf of his government made two attempts at
organizing her evacuation from Russia, but Elisabeth Fyodorovna was adamant in
her decision to share the fate of the country she considered to be her new
homeland. She could not be aware of the trials that awaited her in the future
but she was ready for everything in the Name of the Lord whom she loved with
all her heart and all her thoughts: "I accepted my fate not as a cross but
as a road full of light."
The Unfading
Crown of Glory
The authorities did not intervene in the life of
Martha and Mary Convent immediately after the October Revolution. Nevertheless,
this silence was delusive. Tikhon, the Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia,
visited the convent on the third day of Easter in 1918. He celebrated a service
and had a long talk with the abbess and the sisters. On his leaving the
convent, the abbess was arrested. Seeing her off, everyone cried: they knew she
was unlikely to return. In spite of Patriarch's intercession, his efforts were
futile: all members of the royal family were doomed.
Elisabeth Fyodorovna spent the last months of her life
in prison on the outskirts of Alapayevsk together with Grand Prince Sergei
Mikhailovich, his secretary Fyodor Remez, John, Constantine, and Igor (three
brothers, sons of Grand Prince Konstantin Konstantinovich), Prince Vladimir
Paley and her faithful cell attendant Barbara Yakovleva. Mother Superior knew
her end was near, so she prayed incessantly.
Late at night on July 18, 1918, Elisabeth Fyodorovna
and other members of the Romanov family were thrown into an old mine shaft
alive. During that wicked crime she constantly repeated the words, which the
Savior of the world had uttered on the Cross: "Lord forgive them for they
know not what they are doing." In an attempt to hide their cruel crime and
bury the bodies, the Cheka officers threw several grenades into the mine shaft…
However, moans and prayers could be heard from under the surface of the earth
for as long as two days. The prisoners were dying slowly, in terrible pain from
thirst, hunger, and wounds.
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St Elisabeth & St Barbara |
When the White Army regained control over Alapayevsk,
the martyrs' bodies were taken out of the mineshaft. Forensic experts confirmed
that some of them had remained alive for several days. The experts were
impressed by what Elisabeth Fyodorovna had done. Her body lay on a small ledge
50 feet deep, and the remains of Prince John Konstantinovich lay nearby. His
head was bandaged. The dying Great Matushka who suffered from pain and thirst
did not betray the cause she upheld for her entire life and continued to act
out of compassion, eager to comfort and mitigate her neighbour's suffering.
Veneration
The remains of the Abbess of Martha and Mary Convent
and her faithful cell attendant were brought to Beijing in 1920. A year
thereafter, thanks to the efforts of Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg
(Elisabeth's sister), her relics were brought to Jerusalem and buried in the
undercroft of St Mary Magdalene Church.
Just before the canonisation of the New Martyrs of
Russia by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in 1981, their coffins
were opened. When they opened the coffin of the Grand Princess, everyone at
that place could feel a strong, sweet and fragrant smell of honey and jasmine.
The relics of the New Martyrs Elisabeth and Barbara turned out to be partially
incorrupt. They were solemnly moved to the church of St Mary Magdalene.
Currently, their relics lie near the sanctuary, so everyone can see and
venerate them.
The Russian Orthodox Church canonised the Grand
Princess
Elisabeth and
Nun Barbara in 1992. They are commemorated by the Church on July 18.
The relics of Saint Elisabeth were brought from
Jerusalem to Russia for half a year in 2004 - the 140th anniversary
of the Grand Princess Elisabeth's birth and the 95th anniversary
since Martha and Mary Convent was founded. Thousands of believers from the CIS
and Baltic states had the opportunity to venerate the incorrupt relics of the
German princess turned a Russian saint, who had loved Russia with all her heart
and had done so much for her people.
The memory of this favourite Russian saint was
honoured in England, as well.
Statues of ten 20th century martyrs were unveiled in London on the western wall of Westminster Abbey in 1998. One of these martyrs was Elisabeth Fyodorovna — the granddaughter of the British Queen Victoria, the Grand Princess of the Russian Empire, and the Great Matushka.
Statues of ten 20th century martyrs were unveiled in London on the western wall of Westminster Abbey in 1998. One of these martyrs was Elisabeth Fyodorovna — the granddaughter of the British Queen Victoria, the Grand Princess of the Russian Empire, and the Great Matushka.
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