St. Elizabeth the New Martyr

Elizabeth was a German princess, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, who married Grand Duke Sergei of Russia and freely became Orthodox. In 1905 a revolutionary assassinated her husband. She visited the killer in prison and forgave him. She then gave away her jewels and founded the Martha and Mary Convent in Moscow to nurse the sick and poor. In 1918 the Bolsheviks threw her and her companions alive into a mine shaft at Alapayevsk, and witnesses heard them singing hymns below. Her relics rest in Jerusalem.

• Feast: July 18 (New Calendar)
• Lived: 1864–1918
• Place: Alapayevsk
• Relics today: Church of St. Mary Magdalene, Gethsemane