Barbara of Alapaevsk
The Holy New Venerable-Martyr Barbara (Yakovleva), Nun of the Convent of Saints Martha and Mary
Venerable Martyr · New Martyr · d. 18 July 1918 (5 July Old Style), at the Nizhnyaya Selimskaya mine near Alapaevsk
Commemorated 5 July — Martyrdom at Alapaevsk with the Grand Duchess Elizabeth, 1918
Barbara Yakovleva was a nun of the Convent of Saints Martha and Mary in Moscow and the cell-attendant of its foundress, the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna. Arrested with her mistress in May 1918 and carried to the Urals, she was offered her freedom by the Bolshevik authorities on condition that she separate herself from the Grand Duchess. She refused, said that she wished to share whatever came, and was allowed to remain. On the night of 18 July 1918 she was thrown alive with Elizabeth and six others down the shaft of the disused Nizhnyaya Selimskaya mine near Alapaevsk. Her relics lie beside Elizabeth's in the church of Saint Mary Magdalene at Gethsemane in Jerusalem. She was glorified with her by the Church Abroad in 1981 and by the Moscow Patriarchate in 1992.
The sister of the Ordynka
Almost nothing is recorded of Barbara's life before the convent; she was a Russian woman of no rank, and the sources give her name, her surname and her obedience. She entered the Convent of Saints Martha and Mary of Mercy on Bolshaya Ordynka in Moscow, founded in 1909, and became one of the Sisters of Love and Mercy — the community that combined the choir and the sick-ward, keeping the hospital, the free dispensary and the orphanage of the house. She was made the Grand Duchess's cell-attendant, which in that community meant not a servant's post but a share in the same nursing work.
She was, on the testimony of those who knew the house, entirely unremarkable in the way that made her fit for what followed: a quiet, obedient sister with no interest in the fame of the foundress she served.
Arrest and the refusal
When the Cheka came to the convent on Bright Tuesday, 7 May 1918 and gave the Grand Duchess half an hour to leave, Elizabeth was permitted to take two sisters with her. Barbara was one; the other, Catherine Yanysheva, was afterwards sent back.
At Perm — some accounts place it at Ekaterinburg — the authorities put it to Barbara plainly: she was a nobody, no one wished her any harm, and she might go free if she would sign a statement separating herself from the prisoner. She was warned in terms of what would happen if she stayed. She answered that she would not leave the Grand Duchess, and asked to be allowed to share her lot; and, the record notes, she had to insist before they let her. It is on this deliberate and unnecessary choice, made when escape was not merely possible but pressed on her, that her veneration rests.
Martyrdom
She was taken with the other prisoners to Alapaevsk and lodged in the Napolnaya school at the edge of the town. On the night of 17–18 July 1918 the party was driven to the abandoned iron-mine of Nizhnyaya Selimskaya, beaten and thrown down the shaft; grenades were flung after them and brushwood burned at the mouth. The peasants of the district testified that singing was heard for a long while out of the ground. When the mine was opened in October 1918 Barbara's body was recovered with the rest.
Relics
Her coffin travelled with Elizabeth's east through Chita to Peking, and in 1921 to Jerusalem, where both were laid in the church of Saint Mary Magdalene in Gethsemane. They were found incorrupt when the coffins were opened in 1981. Barbara's relics remain there, beside the Grand Duchess's, and portions accompanied Elizabeth's on the journey through the Russian dioceses in 2004–2005.
Feast and commemoration
July 5 (church date; Old Calendar civil July 18 — the anniversary of the murder). She is never commemorated alone: the calendars print "the Venerable Martyrs Grand Duchess Elizabeth and the nun Barbara," and in the usage of the Church Abroad she is numbered also among the Martyrs of Alapaevsk. She is named besides among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, whose synaxis is movable.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 1
Offered thy freedom, thou didst choose the pit; and refusing to be parted from her whom thou didst serve, thou didst go down with her into the darkness singing. O holy Martyr Barbara, entreat Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Original translation from the Slavonic
Iconography
Barbara is written in the dove-grey habit and white wimple of the Convent of Saints Martha and Mary, holding the martyr's cross, and is almost always shown beside and slightly behind the Grand Duchess Elizabeth, a little smaller in scale, in the manner in which iconography marks a companion rather than a subordinate. In the Church Abroad icons of the whole company she stands at Elizabeth's shoulder before the mouth of the mine-shaft; in composite icons of the New Martyrs of Russia she is among the monastics.
No pre-1900 or licence-clean image can exist of a saint who died in 1918: every icon of her is a modern work in copyright. No image is stored for this entry.
Disputed questions
- Not to be confused with the Great Martyr Barbara of Heliopolis (December 4), whose name she bore in religion.
- Her secular name and origins. The sources transmit only the surname Yakovleva and the fact that Barbara was her monastic name; her patronymic, birthplace and date of birth are variously given in later popular accounts and are not securely attested.
- Where the offer of release was made. Perm and Ekaterinburg are both named in the testimony; the substance — a formal offer of freedom, refused — is not in doubt.