Marriage and Conversion
Elizabeth married Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, a son of Emperor Alexander II, on June 15, 1884, at the Chapel of the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg. After Sergei was appointed Governor-General of Moscow in 1892, the couple lived in palaces of the Kremlin and at the Ilyinskoye estate outside the city. They had no children of their own but became foster parents to Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich and Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna.
Although her marriage did not require it, Elizabeth voluntarily entered the Orthodox Church in 1891, taking the name Elizaveta Feodorovna. One account records that she was received by chrismation on Lazarus Saturday and first communed with her husband that Holy Week, and that her conversion deeply moved members of the imperial family even as it drew criticism from her German relations.
The Convent of Saints Martha and Mary
Grand Duke Sergei was assassinated on February 17, 1905, when Ivan Kalyayev of the Socialist Revolutionary Party's Combat Organization threw a nitroglycerin bomb into his carriage. Elizabeth afterward visited Kalyayev in prison, telling him that she had forgiven him and urging him to repent.
Withdrawing from court society, in 1909 she sold her jewelry, including her wedding ring, and opened the Convent of Saints Martha and Mary in Moscow, becoming its abbess. The community grew to include a hospital, a chapel, a pharmacy, and an orphanage. In April 1909 Elizabeth and seventeen women were dedicated as Sisters of Love and Mercy, and the work expanded into a range of philanthropic ventures. Elizabeth and her sisters labored among the poor and sick of Moscow, and she is recorded as visiting the city's worst slums to relieve suffering.
Arrest and Martyrdom
After the Russian Revolution, the Cheka arrested Elizabeth and exiled her first to Perm and then to Yekaterinburg, transferring her to Alapaevsk on May 20, 1918. On the night of July 17-18, 1918, she and her companions were taken to an abandoned iron mine near the village of Siniachikha, beaten, and thrown into a pit, Elizabeth first. Witnesses reported hearing Elizabeth and the others singing an Orthodox hymn from the bottom of the shaft after grenades were thrown in; brushwood was afterward set alight at the opening of the mine.
Sister Barbara (Varvara Yakovleva), a nun of her convent, died alongside her. By one account, as she lay dying Elizabeth bandaged the wounds of a fellow prisoner, Prince Ioann, with her handkerchief.
Relics & Shrines
White Army soldiers recovered the remains on October 8, 1918. The bodies were eventually carried through Peking and brought to Jerusalem in 1921, where Elizabeth's relics were laid to rest in the Church of Mary Magdalene at Gethsemane, alongside Sister Barbara. Her relics were brought to Russia and neighboring countries in 2004-2005 for veneration before being returned to Jerusalem.
Glorification and Legacy
Elizabeth was glorified by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in 1981 and by the Moscow Patriarchate in 1992 as a New Martyr. Her feast is kept on July 18 (July 5, Old Style). She is one of ten twentieth-century martyrs depicted in statues above the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey in London. In 2009 the Prosecutor General of Russia posthumously rehabilitated her among the Romanovs who had been killed under the Cheka.
