| The Monastery of St. John the Forerunner in Mesa Potamos, Cyprus has published a series of high-quality video interviews with top Romanov historians in honor of the 100th anniversary of the martyrdom of the last Royal Family of Russia. The tribute is entitled The Romanov Royal Martyrs: Centennial Tribute. The series consists of six episodes, which have been received very well, and which the monastery has now finished. The videos also include stunning unpublished Romanov colored pictures by acclaimed Russian colorist Olga Shirnina. The series is as follows: 1. Tsar-Martyr Nicholas Through His Last Diary, with Helen Azar An interview with Helen Azar about Tsar Nicholas’ II conduct during after his abdication, as seen in his last diary. 2. Tsarina Alexandra Through Her Letters, with Helen Azar An interview with Helen Azar about the real Tsarina Alexandra as she is seen through her diaries and letters. 3. The Imperial Children Through Their Writings, with Helen Azar An interview with Helen Azar about the personalities of all the Romanov children, according to their diaries’ entries and their letters. Helen also speaks about her involvement in the project “The Romanov Royal Martyrs: What Silence Could Not Conceal”. 4. Nicholas II: His Reign – His Faith – His Family, with Nicholas B.A. Nicholson An interview with Nick Nicholson. Nicholas speaks about Nicholas’ II reign, faith, and family. He also speaks about his involvement in the project “The Romanov Royal Martyrs”. 5. The Conspiracy Against Nicholas’ II, with Paul Gilbert An interview with Paul Gilbert. Paul speaks about the main plots which aimed to overthrow Nicholas II from his throne. He also refers to the myths regarding Nicholas’ II alleged weakness as a ruler. 6. Romanov Family – Faith in God to the End, with Helen Rappaport An interview with Helen Rappaport about the spirituality of the Romanov family and the last stage of their imprisonment in Ekaterinburg. Click HERE to visit the special Romanov Royal Martyrs web site, created by the Monastery of St. John the Forerunner Mesa Potamos |
| Michael Prokurat, Alexander Golitzin, Michael D. Peterson Скачать epub pdf DOUKHOBORS AND OLD BELIEVER SECTS DOUKHOBORS AND OLD BELIEVER SECTS. The priestless Old Believers (q.v.) gave rise to many sects in imperial Russia over the intervening centuries since their beginnings in the third quarter of the seventeenth century. In general these priestless sects (bezpopovtsy) were like the ancient Montanists and Messalians. They had a negative worldview and believed their rites brought them into direct contact with the Holy Spirit (q.v.), so that Christ could be reincarnated in various persons generation after generation. Beginning in chronological order, the Khlysts were a 17th c. dualistic Old Believer Russian sect, whose founder claimed to be God; and in succeeding generations one male disciple was Christ while a female disciple was the Mother of God. In 1740 more than 400 people were prosecuted in Moscow for this heresy, which later flourished underground so that there were 60,000 adherents by 1900. In doctrine they denied the Holy Trinity (q.v.): God inhabited the man Jesus who died, as he would inhabit other members of the Khlysts. When God is incarnate in the Khlyst, the spirit directs everything, making all books (including the Bible) and authority (q.v.) meaningless. Members were outwardly pious Orthodox parishioners (e.g., Rasputin) since liturgy (q.v.) was a symbol of their own mysteries, while privately their communities were each led by a “Christ” and “Mother of God”, and their ritual was frenzied dance after which ecstatic prophesies were made. Their belief was dualistic, since they believed that the body is the prison of the spirit, marriage is condemned, and children are “incarnations of sin.” In this way they are similar to previous gnostic (q.v.) groups. One branch of the Khlysts from the late 18th c., the Skopts, practiced castration in order to prevent all sexual relations, naming it a “baptism of fire.” Their leader was Conrad Selivanov, who was exiled under Tsarina Catherine II, but was personally known to both Tsars Paul and Alexander I and flourished under them. Tsar Nicholas I persecuted the group, and they were forced underground, and there continued in great numbers. |
| Exhibition dedicated to 200 years of relations between House of Romanov and Hohenzollern Dynasty opens in Germany The exhibition, “Kinship by Choice: the Romanovs and the Hohenzollerns – 200 Years Together” has opened at Hohenzollern Castle near Stuttgart. It includes over 130 exhibits. Among them are portraits and photographs of members of the House of Romanov and the House of Hohenzollern, personal items of imperial family members, pictures reflecting events which involved Russian and Prussian monarchs, early twentieth century photos depicting meetings of St. Nicholas II and Wilhelm II, and personal notes of the latter in which he tells about his attempts to rescue the Russian tsar and his family in the summer of 1918. The exhibition will run until January 29, 2017. It was opened as part of the evening of German-Russian friendship arranged by the St. Gregory the Theologian Charity Foundation. Additionally, a concert was performed at Hohenzollern Castle by both German and Russan singers, and a Litya was served at the castle’s Orthodox chapel near the grave of Grand Duchess Kira Kirillovna of Russia (1909-1967), grandmother of Prince Georg Friedrich of Prussia. The service was celebrated by Igumen Maxim (Schmidt), representative of the Southern Deanery of the Diocese of Berlin and Germany of the Moscow Patriarchate. Next year will mark the 200th wedding anniversary of Grand Duke Nicholas Pavlovich (the future Emperor Nicholas I) and the Prussian Princess Frederica Louise Charlotte Wilhelmina (1798-1860). The latter was received into Orthodoxy with the name Alexandra Feodorovna and became the Russian empress in 1825. It was the first “dynastic marriage” of a representative of the House of Romanov with a member of the Hohenzollern Dynasty which in many ways predetermined friendly and allied relations between Russia and Germany that were maintained for the most of the nineteenth century. Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna gave birth to four sons from whom all the following generations of the Romanov Dynasty were descended. All their descendants living today are also descendants of this Prussian princess. |
| Michael Prokurat, Alexander Golitzin, Michael D. Peterson Скачать epub pdf FREEMASONRY FREEMASONRY. 1) In eighteenth-century Russia: Origin of the Freemasons seems to go back to a twelfth-century English religious brotherhood formed to guard trade secrets. It has a varied history in different countries, sometimes professing an undoctrinal Christianity (England, Germany) and at other times being openly hostile to religion and the Church (France, Italy, Latin countries). In the 18th c. English Freemasonry embraced Deism, and from here (and other Western countries) it came to Russia during the reign of Tsarina Elizabeth, burgeoning under Catherine II. Members-the educated gentry in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and some provincial towns-numbered approximately twenty-five hundred. At this time in Europe Voltairianism was a spiritual and moral disease among those converted to Western values due to its complete lack of spiritual concentration and the moral bankruptcy that accompanied it. Two trends in Freemasonry addressed deficiencies in this Enlightenment culture. One was mystical, focusing on meditation and self-perfection. The other was ethical/social, reaching out to the world in education and publishing. The latter was centered on the University of Moscow and Nicholas Novikov, 1744–1818, Catherine’s most active publicist. The Moscow Rosicrucian group became the most influential of the Russian centers, adding mystical and ascetical elements to disciplines of the lower forms of Freemasonry. The “occult sources” of Romanticism were derived from the higher levels of Freemasonry, and it shared with Romanticism a feeling of world harmony and anthropocentric self-awareness. Both trends, the mystical and ethical/social, are aspects of human nature that the Age of Reason could not adequately express. As far as Russia was concerned, the newly educated converts to the Western European spirit became true Western bureaucrats, understanding their existence in terms of their utility to the state, where they were placed on Peter I’s “Table of Ranks” (a fourteen-step government table of civil servants). This psychologically prepared and confirmed for them the many stepped ascent of the Masonic Orders. With the revolutionary character of the Enlightenment showing itself on the continent, Catherine the Great-clearly to safeguard the government and the wealthy-put an abrupt end to ideas and people that represented its ideals, among them the Masons. Nonetheless, a few scholars have seen the inspiration for and continuation of the movement in the later Slavophiles (q.v.). |
| All the tears that you have shed will glitter like diamonds on the robes of the Mother of God; for all your sufferings and trials God will especially bless you and reward you. —Prophecy of the Holy Martyr Tsarina Alexandra There are a number of ancient Orthodox saints in Scandinavia: St Anschar (Oscar, + 865) in Demark; St Sunniva (c. 990), St Olaf (+ 1030) and St Hallvard of Oslo (+ 1043) in Norway: St Olaf (+ 1022), St Sigfrid (+ 1045) and St Anna of Novgorod (+ 1050) in Sweden. However, there is no ancient Orthodox saint in Finland as such, as it came to the Faith so late, already in Roman Catholic times, so it missed out on being in communion with the Church. However, in the renewal of Orthodoxy in modern times Finland does have a saint: Righteous Mother Maria of Helsinki. Born on 16 July 1884 in Oranienbaum in Russia as Anna Alexandrovna Taneyeva into a family with Imperial connections, she was to become a lady-in-waiting and the closest friend of the Tsarina Alexandra. Snobbish and profoundly jealous aristocrats, rich but without nobility and imbued with selfish vanity and vulgarity, detested her. Typically for them, they dismissed here and slandered her as stout, unattractive, talkative, naive and unintelligent. However, children loved her and the pious Tsarina saw her pure, kind-hearted and childlike face and beautiful, tender eyes and valued her immense piety and generosity. Thus, the Tsarina befriended Anna, preferring her to the superficial and unspiritual court snobs, and in 1905, at the age of twenty, Anna was given a position at court. The three following years she went on holiday with the Romanovs. In 1907 Anna Taneyeva married Alexander Vyrubov, an officer in the Imperial Chancellery. A few days before she had been warned by Gregory Rasputin that the marriage would be an unhappy one, but she had ignored him. The marriage remained unconsummated, for Anna’s husband did indeed turn out to be mentally deranged, having tried to kill her, and had to go for treatment in Switzerland. Within eighteen months the unconsummated marriage had been annulled. After the Revolution Anna’s mother told interrogators that her son-in-law had ‘proved to be completely impotent, with an extremely perverse sexual psychology that manifested itself in various sadistic episodes in which he inflicted moral suffering on her’. |
| The Russian Orthodox Diaspora: Copenhagen 1987-1988/Православие.Ru Tweet Нравится The Russian Orthodox Diaspora: Copenhagen 1987-1988 Archpriest Nicholas Artemov The Church of St. Alexander Nevsky in Copenhagen was established back in Tsarist times. In fact, Danish Royalty and the Russian Royal House have been closely connected—Tsar Nicholas II's mother, Tsarina Maria Feodorovna, was a Danish princess. Archpriest Nicholas Artemov, who served there from 1987-88, published on the website ROCOR Studies his memoirs of that historical parish. St. Alexander Nevsky church on Bredgade 53. Its interior and exterior demonstrate the same imperial splendor as St. Alexander Nevsky church in Jerusalem (1896) or Holy Trinity Cathedral’s in Buenos Aires (1901). Photo by Bishop Agapit Archpriest Sergei Plekhov, the rector of the Parish of St Alexander Nevsky in Copenhagen wanted to publish a book about the community, but found that he lacked certain information. When he asked me what I knew about the church life in Copenhagen, I realised that I could not remember all the details of my Copenhagen ministry. I did however remember about my pocket diaries from those years and ventured into the basement where I believed they might be stored. When I found them, I was amazed by the level of detail entered in day by day. I had forgotten that I once used to be organised like this (the electronic diary I am using at the moment doesn’t inspire one to make such detailed entries). The images of past events were coming back to mind once again. In 2012, during my summer holidays, I wrote up a historically-accurate account of those days, based on the notes in the diaries. The extent of this account exceeded even my own expectations. Although, it was far too lengthy to be used in the Copenhagen Parish book, it seemed a shame just to discard it and so the text was preserved. Deacon Andrei Psarev, my colleague since 1989, read this account and asked to have it published. For a long time, I couldn’t get round to editing the text, but now, here goes … |
| God’s Sunflower: On St. John (Maximovitch) of Tobolsk St. John (Maximovitch), Metropolitan of Tobolsk, whose memory we celebrate today, is today best known by many only as the ancestor and patron saint of St. John (Maximovitch) the Wonderworker , Archbishop of Shanghai and San Francisco. Yet the life of the first St. John (Maximovitch) is at least as remarkable as that of the second, as demonstrated by the following sermon, originally given in the Cathedral of St. Nicholas and Ioasaph in Belgorod. Our Holy Church celebrates the memory of St. John, Metropolitan of Tobolsk, on June 23. He was the last Russian saint to be glorified by the Church in pre-revolutionary, tsarist times. To a certain extent, the canonization of the God-pleaser John could only have taken place thanks to the personal insistence of the Tsar-Martyr Nicholas II and his most august spouse, the Tsarina-Martyr Alexandra Feodorovna, who shared a profound veneration for the Siberian wonderworker. In the resolution of Nicholas II regarding the canonization of the saint, we read: “I believe in the intercession of St. John (Maximovitch) in this time of travails for Orthodox Rus’.” Like St. Ioasaph of Belgorod, he was a native of the Ukraine and a descendent of an ancient noble family. He was born in the middle of the seventeenth century, in 1651, as the oldest son in a family with seven more sons. His pious parents strove to provide him with the best education then available. After giving him a wholly church-centered upbringing at home, they gave their first-born son to the Kiev Theological Academy, where he grew close to the ascetic strugglers in the Kiev-Caves Lavra; he himself became a monk around the age of twenty-four. With the general consent of the monastery brethren, the young monk was given the important obedience of preaching. There is evidence that the future saint’s preaching activity in the Lavra lasted for five years. Only three of the sermons he gave in those years have come down to us. Composed in accessible, conversational language, and free from rhetorical devices, these works of the young ascetic were full of life. |
| Holy Royal Martyrs Commemorated in Yekaterinburg on their Feast-Day Yekaterinburg, July 17, 2014 The night of July 16/17 is a tragic date in the history of Russia. On this day in Yekaterinburg, the Russian Tsar Nicolas II, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna, their children as well as their faithful servants were brutally murdered. The Church “on the Blood” in honour of All Saints who have Shone Forth in the Russian Land, has now been built on the site of the crime. And the tragic night annually gathers thousands of pilgrims to this site from all over Russia and other countries for prayer, reports the News Agency of the Yekaterinburg Diocese . The tradition of commemorating the martyred Royal Family began long before their canonization as Royal Martyrs. In 1992, Archbishop Melchisedek (Lebedev) of Sverdlovsk and Kurgan first gave a blessing to celebrate a service here and hold a procession of the Cross to the site of the destruction of their holy relics at Ganina Yama (“Ganya’s Pit”). On these days of the Royal Martyrs, in spite of the torrential rain (the first such in 22 years) tens of thousands of Yekaterinburg residents, pilgrims from all the corners of Russia and from abroad gathered to honor the Holy Passion-Bearers. Celebration of Small Vespers, Vigil service and Divine Liturgy on the night of the martyrdom of the Royal Family on the porch of the Church on the Blood was headed by permanent member of the Holy Synod Metropolitan Vikenty of Tashkent and Uzbekistan, Metropolitan Nikon of Ufa and Sterlitamak, Metropolitan Kirill of Yekaterinburg and Verkhoturye, Bishop Markell of Beltsy and Falesti, Bishop Nikodim of Edinet and Briceni, Bishop Innocent of Nizhny Tagil and Serov, Bishop Nicolas of Salavat and Kumertau, Bishop Ambrose of Neftekamsk and Birsk, Bishop Methodius of Kamensk-Uralsky and Alapayevsk with several hundred priests and deacons concelebrating. Before the Divine Liturgy Metropolitan Kirill addressed the sea of people gathered in front of the Church on the Blood with his archpastor’s speech on the Holy Royal Martyrs, especially stressing the deep connection between the podvig (feat/ascetic struggle) of St. Sergius of Radonezh (the Church celebrates the 700 th anniversary of his birth in 2014) and the feat of the Holy Royal Martyrs. |
| Tweet Нравится Patriarch Kirill to lead Ural celebrations for centenary of Romanov family martyrdom Moscow, February 20, 2017 Photo: Pravoslavie.Ru His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia is planning to head the commemorative events that will take place next year in the Sverdlovsk region in honor of the 100th anniversary of the assassination of the Royal Martyrs, Tsar Nicholas II and his family, reports Interfax-Religion . Sverdlosk governor Eugene Kuivashevim noted that the main event will be on the night of July 17, 2018, and invited the patriarch to attend and lead the services, saying, “We are preparing for this event with the Ekaterinburg Diocese and, of course, we want to invite you to participate in the celebrations which will be dedicated to this tragic date.” In return, His Holiness stated, “As next year will be the centenary, we must do everything to go on this pilgrimage, if we will be alive and healthy.” He stressed that the date is a momentous one for the Urals, for the whole Russian Church, for the people, and for history. “I have long wanted to visit Ekaterinburg during these days, to go on the cross procession and pray with the people,” Patriarch Kirill stated. The members of the Royal Family, along with Dr. Eugene Botkin and three servants accepted a martyr’s death in the night of July 17, 1918 in the basement of engineer Ipatiev’s house in Ekaterinburg. Since September 2012 there has been a Liturgy in the night of the seventeenth of each month in the Church-on-the-Blood built on the site where the Romanovs were martyred. Every year, following the Liturgy on the night of July 17 there is a cross procession from the church to the monastery at Ganina Yama (13 miles from Ekaterinburg), where their holy bodies were disposed of, in which tens of thousands participate. The Royal Martyrs—Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, and their five children Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei—and their servants were canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia on November 1, 1981, and the family on August 20, 2000 by the Moscow Patriarchate, with Dr. Eugene Botkin’s canonization following on February 3, 2016. |
| Tweet Нравится Russia, the Romanovs and the Red Cross: Vienna exhibition highlights charity of St. Elizabeth Moscow, February 3, 2017 Members of the Romanov family serving in a hospital during World War I. Photo: Wikipedia A new exhibition dedicated to the history of the Russian branch of the Red Cross and the role of the royal family, especially that of the Grand Duchess St. Elizabeth the New Martyr, opened Wednesday, February 1 in the Viennese offices of the United Nations. The exhibition, “Charity in History: Contribution of Grand Duchess Elizaveta Fedorovna to the Activities of the Russian Red Cross Society,” presents historical material about St. Elizabeth and the work of the Red Cross Society in Russia, including photos and other archive materials gathered by The Grand Duchess Elizabeth and Grand Duke Sergius Enlightenment Society and International Committee of the Red Cross highlighting the first years of the foundation, reports news.com.au . “The long history of charity and philanthropy in Russia is based on the Christian tradition and our national culture, which has always encouraged Russian Tsars, Emperors and nobility to generously contribute to extensive humanitarian activities of numerous medical, social and religious institutions. The Russian Red Cross Society is one of the oldest Red Cross organizations in the world, and its early history is closely linked to the royal family and the nobility of the Russian Empire,” said exhibition curator Anna Gromova, Chairwoman of the Supervisory Board of The Grand Duchess Elizabeth and Grand Duke Sergius Enlightening Society. The Russian Red Cross Society is one of the world’s oldest arms of the International Committee of the Red Cross which was founded in 1859, growing out of Tsar Alexander II’s “Community for Care for the Sick and Wounded Soldiers” founded in 1867 and given to the care of the tsarina Maria Alexandrovna. Many members of the royal family and nobility would participate in the organization’s work, although, as the exhibition highlights, the contribution of Grand Duchess Elizabeth is especially noteworthy. |
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