A Martyr Princess of the East: Elizabeth Feodorovna Romanova

In the German noble House of Hesse and the Rhine Elisabeth Alexandra Luise Alice, daughter of Grand Duke Louis IV of Hesse and the Rhine and Princess Alice was born on November 1, 1864. Her maternal grandmother was Queen Victoria of England, so that Elizabeth’s childhood was marked by the English language and etiquette rather than by the German she spoke to her father. With a considerable fortune and a high social position, the family, however, avoided opulence. In addition to domestic work, Princess Alice was also one of those who took care directly of the wounded in the Austro-Prussian War. The Almost idyllic atmosphere in which Elizabeth grew up was disturbed for the first time in 1878 when, following an outbreak of diphtheria, her younger sister, Mary, and her mother, Alice, died.
As she grew older, Elizabeth took on the reputation of being one of the most beautiful women in Europe. Wilhelm II, future German Emperor, met her in Bonn, where he courted her intensely and wrote poetry for her. He was politely rejected, as was another contender, Frederick II, the future Grand Duke of Baden. Her Attire and attitude only attracted more and more admirers. Queen Mary of Romania wrote in memoirs about her cousin, Ella, that her beauty and sweetness were "dreamlike". Among the many noble relatives, guests from East also arrived at the court of the Princess . Her grandaunt, Empress Maria Alexandrovna of Russia brought two of her sons, Serghei and Paul. With the first, Elizabeth - or Ella, as she was called - quickly discovered affinities. Both were sober, religious and passionate about art. When the Russian Grand Duke’s parents had died, Elizabeth recognized him the the same pain she had gone through at her mother’s passing into eternity. At a second marriage proposal, she agrred. The marriage took place on June 15, 1884, the Winter Palace in St Petersburg and noble offspring of Anglo-German family became Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna Romanova, ten years before her sister, Alexandra, became Tsarina (Empress) of Russia . Both her new family and the Russian people grew into loving her for her beauty, kindness and distinguished attitude. Lovingly embracing her new people, Grand Duchess has penetrated the most intimate resorts, hidden places of its heart and, enlightened by a new understanding of life and people, in 1891 she converted from the Lutheran faith she was baptized in to Orthodoxy. The joy of her close relatives was immense joy and her husband gave her a copy of an icon of Christ “not made by hand”, but not all her relatives in Europe favored this change. Prussian Emperor Wilhelm II even claimed that Elizabeth was forced to do so. But the Grand Duchess answered all of them that remaining in her old denomination would have meant to lie to God. "Above all one's conscience must be pure and true... many will -- I know -- scream about (it), yet I feel it brings me nearer to God... You tell me that the outer brilliance of the church charmed me... in that you are mistaken -- nothing in the outer signs attracted me -- no -- the service, the service, the outer signs are only to remind us of the inner things." Of all the illustrious relatives of Elizabeth, Queen Victoria of England was the one who understood her and supported her the most.
In 1892, with the appointment of Serghei as Governor General of Moscow, the pair moved into one wing of the Kremlin, spending summers at a residence where Elizabeth organized parties for children. With no children of their own, Grand Duchess and her husband adopted the two orphaned grandchildren of the latter, Dmitri Pavlovich and Maria Pavlovna.
On February 18, 1905, Grand Duchess Elizabeth heard a powerful blast, while preparing to leave the house, a and reached the street just as a military gathered under a blanket the dismembered bodily remains of her husband, Serghei, who was assassinated with a bomb by revolutionary Socialist Ivan Kalyayev. The entourage later remembered Elizabeth’s noble suffering. Although deeply sorrowful, she kept the decency of a princely attitude and didn’t forget compassion, not for one moment. She hurried to go to visit the coachman, severely wounded in the explosion, on his hospital bed, and when asked about the health of the Grand Duke, his widow answered, "He sent me to you". And so the man could die in peace. Her power to forgive also proved to be great when she went to visit the killer in prison. Kalyayev said that he didn’t want to kill her and that he had delayed the attack several times just because she was near the Grand Duke. "Ddn’t you see that by killing him you were killing me?” Elizabeth replied, leaving him a Gospel and asking him to think of the sin he committed and to repent. Then she asked her brother-in-law, Nicholas II, to pardon him. But the killer refused to pardon and accused Elizabeth of having distorted the conversation. On May 23, 1905 he was hanged, and Grand Duchess said saddened that although she failed in her visit, she hoped that even at the last minute the killer would ask forgiveness from God. On the memorial cross erected in memory of late Grand Duke Serghei, the widow had the words uttered by Christ on those who crucified Him: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
Since the death of her husband, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna Romanova never ate meat at all, and in 1909 she renounced all her jewelry, giving a part to the Crown, another to some relatives and selling another, using the money for charity. Then she founded the Holy Monastery of Martha and Mary, named after the two women of Bethany, sisters of Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead. The place from the Gospel is known, when Martha is tiring herself to make a feast for the Lord, while Mary sits at His feet listening to His the words. This inspired Elizabeth, to combine the divine services with the ministry for Christ, seen in every poor fellow who needed help. Thus, gathering around her many sisters - some very poor, others from Russian noble houses - Elizabeth put on feet a hospital, a chapel, a pharmacy and an orphanage, often going through the poorest neighborhoods of Moscow, to help those in need. The seventeen women that the Grand Duchess gathered around her bore the name of sisters of love and mercy. Their work was carried out under the spiritual guidance of Archpriest Mitrofan Serebrianski, which also served the divine services, and strong support came also from the Russian Patriarch, Tikhon. Sisters gave material and spiritual aid to the poor, housed and cared for orphaned or abandoned children, ran a school for nurses of the Red Cross, hosted women with poor material situation for free or for a low rent, established the Female Labor Organization, and had a ward for incurable sick, they kept until their death. Desperate cases came here, because all Russian doctors trusted the professionalism of nurses led by Elizabeth, so that women with severe burns or gangrene were cured under their care, while others learned here to read Braille. The only moments of rest which Elizabeth allowed herself were pilgrimages to holy places in Russia. Otherwise she was living in 3 single rooms, with a wooden bed without mattress, sleeping 3-4 hours per night and waking up at midnight for the service. During the Russo-Japanese War, but also after the outbreak of World War I, she often went to war with her sister, Empress Alexandra, to care for those suffering. During these actions, the two have been accused for the attentive care they were providing for wounded Germans as well. Known for her tenacity and influence at the court of the Tsar, Elizabeth received many petitions and tried to answer them all, except those that were clearly political. One of the few times when her pleas to her sister failed was when Elizabeth tried to open her eyes about Rasputin's evil influence. Despite the advice and evidence brought by Grand Duchess, the Tsarina thought of him as a saint.
Living a life similar to that of nuns for a while already, Grand Duchess Elizabeth officially entered the monastic order on April 2, 1910. One of her desires was to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Places in Palestine, the land touched by the feet of Jesus.
The arrival of the Bolshevik revolution didn’t trouble Elizabeth, who just began to pray more, seeing in those rebels children deceived by the enemies of Russia. "Russia and her children do not know what they do now," she said. "They are like a sick child you love one hundred times more in this condition than when he is healthy and happy. You long to ease suffering, to help him and teach him patience. That I feel more and more every day.” At first, to the surprise all, Communists left the sisters alone and even helped them with food for their charitable activities. Soon, however, a group came that accused Elizabeth of spying for the Germans and wanted to arrest her. The Grand Duchess remained calm and told the accusers that she would follow, but before that she must pray. Those came with her and, won over by her simplicity and lack of any dangerous materials in the monastery, went away leaving the sisters free. What was source of joy and admiration for the others, brought a different conclusion for Elizabeth, which speaks of her spiritual perception: "We aren’t yet worthy of martyrdom," she told those who congratulated her tact and performance . Sensing what would follow, German Emperor - the same one that housed Lenin and sent him back to Russia - he suggested Elizabeth, through the Swedish cabinet minister, to flee to the West. The Grand Duchess answered she knew hard times would come, but wanted to share the fate of her country and its people.
In 1918 Lenin ordered the Cheka (future KGB) to arrest the Grand Duchess. She was initially taken into exile and told she would work for the Red Cross, then brought to Perm, and from there to Yekaterinburg, where she was supposed to meet the Tsar’s family, which was however denied. She left agroup of grieving nuns behind, going into exile with just one disciple, Barbara Yakovleva. From Yekaterinburg is known that she wrote twice to her confessor, Father Mitrofan, once to tell him about her guard, made up of Lithuanians who from very harsh at first became meek, which led to them being replaced with tougher Russians, and once to ask the Patriarch Tikhon to mediate so that she could get food without meat.
On May 20, 1918 she was transferred to the village Alopayevsk, where she was installed under surveillance in a former school, with her apprentice with Barbara and other representatives of the Russian nobility: Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, accompanied by his assistant, Remez, Grand Dukes Ivan Constantine and George and Count Vladimir Konstantinovich Paely. The exiles could go out sometimes, and Elizabeth went to church, worked in the vegetable and flower garden, painted and prayed. Except for common meals, she was eating alone in her room. Despite the Bolshevik propaganda in full swing, the locals loved her and, occasionally, got in contact with her. Once she received a traditional towel as a gift from them.
Apparently the execution of Tsar Nicholas II and his family was directly related to what would happen to Grand Duchess Elizabeth and her fellows. The Cheka people told the exiles, the night of July 17, that they had to take them to another safer place. All their money was taken from them and they were blindfolded. The only one who resisted was Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, which the Bolsheviks shot him in the arm. The group was taken to a nearby village, with an old, abandoned, half-flooded mine. After being beaten, the exiles were thrown into a pit of the mine, the first being even Elizabeth. Vasily Riabov, one of the assassins, says that he and his comrades threw two grenades into the pit, where the victims began to sing "save, Lord, Thy people.” Finally the killers threw wood in the mine and set it afire. Then they sounded the alarm in Alopayevsk, saying that the Grand Duchess and others had been abducted by an unidentified group. Later telegrams exchanged between the heads of the Cheka were discovered, whom had planned the assassination of the Tsar’s family and now were making up lies about so-called mysterious disappearance of the exiles.
A peasant who heard Russian religious hymns coming from the mine, announced the White Army. In October 1918 the whites took over the village, defeating the Bolsheviks, and found the remains in the mine. Elizabeth and her fellows had died from injuries caused by their fall, because none of the two grenades did explode. The Grand Duchess had an icon of Christ on her chest. Although in agony, she had managed to improvise a bandage for the head of dying Prince Ivan. Her body, untouched by corruption, and the others were buried in the cathedral of Alopayevsk. Then, as the Bolsheviks regained ground, they were moved to Irkutsk and finally, in 1920, to Beijing. The Communists have pursued those they had killed even after death, so that at the Russian-Chinese border they succeeded, attacking the train, to throw off the coffin of Grand Duke Ivan Konstantinovich on the rails, being ultimately stopped by Chinese troops. In Beijing the Russian nobles were buried in the Russian cemetery and, in December, the bodies of Elizabeth and Barbara were taken to Jerusalem, with the intervention of the Grand Duchess’ sister, Marchioness of Milford-Haven. They were met with fast and solemnity by British authorities, representatives of Russian and Greek clergy and by the Patriarch Damian of Jerusalem, and buried in the church of St. Mary Magdalene, on Mount Gethsemane. Here the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna Romanova had once dreamed can come once again, in the places of the Passion and Resurrection of Christ, where she finally found her rest. In 1981 she was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad and her holiness was recognized in 1992 by the Russian Orthodox Church, where she is honored ever since by the name of Saint New Martyr Elizabeth. Her memory remained alive in England as ell, where her statue is located at Westminster Abbey, among the other martyrs of all denominations in the twentieth century.
The Holy Monastery of Martha and Mary still exists today, hosting about ninety nuns. It is one of the signs left in the world by the granddaughter of Queen Victoria of England, sister-in-law of the last Russian Tsar, princess, noble, with a great culture, an acclaimed beauty and an extraordinary gentleness. Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna gave all she had to Christ and to her fellow-men and now her name becomes known once again, maybe as a foundation in the Lord of the rebirth of a world and of a way of living that perished, more than half a century ago, in the flames of rebellion.

Epilogue: In July 2004, Elizabeth Feodorovna’s relics were brought in procession to Russia. I was in Moscow and although I knew nothing about this martyr, I went to worship her in the cathedral of Christ the Savior. Then I began to find out a little about her life. Short time after, I went through hardships at the Russian-Ukrainian border. And I prayed to the saint, promising that if she would help me to get home safely, I would tell others about her life and passion. With much delay, here, today, I fulfill this duty.
Holy New Martyr Holy Elizabeth, pray to God for us! Amen