St. Elizabeth the New Martyr

Princess Elisabeth of Hesse, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria and the sister of the last Empress of Russia, married the Grand Duke Sergei and was received into the Orthodox Church of her own choice. When her husband was killed by a revolutionary’s bomb in 1905 she went to the prison and asked his killer to repent. She sold her jewels, founded the Convent of Sts Martha and Mary in Moscow for nursing and the poor, and was its abbess. Arrested in 1918, she was thrown alive down a mine shaft at Alapaevsk with her companions, where they were heard singing. Her body lies in Jerusalem, at the church of St Mary Magdalene on the Mount of Olives. Glorified by the Church Abroad in 1981 and by Moscow in 1992. Feast: July 5 (on the Old Calendar, 18 July).