Who made Nicholas 2 a saint. Do you approve of the canonization of Nicholas II? Refuting the arguments of opponents of canonization

In Russia, many people at the end of the 19th century. They believed that for a long time in the history of the country a simple principle (or, as they would say now, an algorithm) operated: a good ruler was replaced by a bad one, but the next one was good. Let's remember: Peter III was bad and very unpopular, Catherine II went down in history as the Great, Paul I was killed, Alexander I defeated Napoleon and was very popular, Nicholas I was feared, Alexander II carried out great reforms, and Alexander III carried out counter-reforms. Nicholas II ascended the throne in 1894, at the age of 26, and received a good education. They expected him to continue the reforms, especially the completion of political reforms.

Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna in costumes from the era of Mikhail Romanov

Nicholas II was born in 1868 and as a teenager was present at the death of his grandfather, Alexander the Liberator. In 1894, after the death of his father, he found himself on the throne. In 1917 he was overthrown from the throne, and in 1918 he and his family were shot without trial in Yekaterinburg.

He received a good education and made a good impression on others with his manners. Nicholas himself and many of those around him believed that at 26 years old he was “not ready to rule.” He was strongly influenced by his relatives, uncles, the Dowager Empress, the most influential Minister of Finance S. Yu. Witte, who “inherited” the Tsar from his father, prominent state dignitaries and the top of the Russian aristocracy. “The tsar was a rag, without a single thought in his head, frail, despised by everyone,” Ernest Featherlein, admiral, head of the decryption service until 1917 in Russia, and after 1917 in England, characterized Nicholas.

During his lifetime, Nicholas was called “bloody.” In 1896 in Moscow, during the coronation celebrations, during the distribution of royal gifts on the Khodynskoye field, a stampede broke out in which more than a thousand people died. On January 9, 1905, a peaceful procession was shot in St. Petersburg. On the day of Bloody Sunday, more than 1,500 people were killed and over 5,000 people were injured. During the mediocre Russian-Japanese war of 1904-1905, to which the tsar was pushed by his closest personal circle, more than 200 thousand Russian soldiers died. More than 30 thousand people became victims of repression by the gendarmerie, police, cartel expeditions, and pogroms inspired by the tsarist police. During the First World War of 1914-1918, in which Russia was drawn in due to the short-sighted, inconsistent and indecisive foreign policy of Nicholas II, Russia had already lost 2 million people killed and 4 million people maimed by the time the tsar was overthrown.

“The people forgave him Khodynka; he was surprised, but did not grumble against the Japanese war, and at the beginning of the war with Germany treated him with touching confidence. But all this was imputed to nothing, and the interests of the Motherland were sacrificed to the shameful bacchanalia of debauchery and the avoidance of family scenes by a power-hungry hysteric. The absence of a heart that would tell him how cruelly and dishonestly he brought Russia to the brink of destruction is also reflected in the lack of self-esteem, thanks to which he, amid the humiliation, abuse and misfortune of all those close to him, continues to drag out his miserable life, unable to die with honor in defending one’s historical rights or yielding to the legitimate demands of the country,” wrote in his declining years lawyer, writer, senator, member of the State Council, honorary academician of the Pushkin Department of Fine Literature of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences Anatoly Fedorovich Koni (1844-1927).

There was such a joke in Soviet times. When the title of Hero of Socialist Labor was introduced in 1938, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Romanov was one of the first to receive this title (posthumously). With the wording “For creating a revolutionary situation in Russia.”

This anecdote reflects a sad historical reality. Nicholas II inherited from his father a fairly powerful country and an excellent assistant - the outstanding Russian reformer S. Yu. Witte. Witte was dismissed because he opposed Russia's involvement in the war with Japan. The defeat in the Russo-Japanese War accelerated the revolutionary processes - the first Russian revolution took place. Witte was replaced by the strong-willed and decisive P. A. Stolypin. He began reforms that were supposed to turn Russia into a decent bourgeois-monarchist state. Stolypin categorically objected to any actions that could drag Russia into a new war. Stolypin died. A new big war led Russia to a new, big revolution in 1917. It turns out that Nicholas II, with his own hands, contributed to the emergence of two revolutionary situations in Russia.

Nevertheless, in 2000, he and his family were canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church. The attitude towards the personality of Nicholas II in Russian society is polar, although the official media did everything to portray the last Russian Tsar as “white and fluffy.” During the reign of B.N. Yeltsin, the found remains of the royal family were buried in the chapel of the Peter and Paul Cathedral.

Curious what about activities the last Russian Tsar, even biased media can write little about his personal contribution to solving the country’s diverse problems. Everything more or less reasonable, promising and important that appeared during the reign of Nicholas II (parliament, legalization of political parties and trade unions, reduction of the working day, introduction of social insurance, development of cooperation, preparation for the introduction of universal primary education, etc.) did not was the result of it own position, and often occurred despite his active resistance. “Remember one thing: never trust him, he is the most false person in the world,” said I. L. Goremykin, who twice served as chairman of the Council of Ministers under Nicholas II, with knowledge of the matter.

After the revolution of 1917, the elderly Ivan Logginovich Goremykin was killed by peasants from the villages neighboring his estate.

From a purely human perspective, Nikolai Romanov can be understood and pitied. After four daughters, his beloved wife gave birth to a son, who turned out to be sick with hemophilia (incoagulability of the blood). The child suffered terribly. At that time, hemophiliacs rarely lived to adulthood. “The illness of the heir was a terrible blow for the sovereign and empress. I will not exaggerate if I say that grief undermined the empress’s health; she was never able to get rid of the feeling of responsibility for her son’s illness. The sovereign himself grew many years older in a year, and those closely observing could not help but notice that anxious thoughts never left him,” wrote A. A. Vyrubova, a lady-in-waiting very close to the royal family, about the situation.

It seems that the family tragedy pushed all other problems into the background for the royal couple. Can the supreme ruler of a huge state afford this? The answer is clear. “There is cowardice, treason and deceit all around,” Nicholas II wrote in his diary on the day of his abdication. What was he counting on, I wonder, if he didn’t care about anyone or anything? The Tsar realized that the front commanders did not support him. The doctor told him that the prince was unlikely to live another couple of years. And the king signed the Manifesto abdicating the throne. “He did it as easily as if he had surrendered the squadron,” recalled one of the eyewitnesses.

“The fate of Alexei strikes with some kind of gloomy paradox - many years of struggle by parents and doctors to save the life of a seriously ill child ended in an instant, brutal reprisal,” writes the author of the special work, Barbara Berne.

From that moment on, the tsar became a private person, citizen Romanov. His canonization will remain a very controversial decision of the Russian Orthodox Church, since at least the life of Nicholas II was by no means the life of a holy man, and his death was the result of the struggle of many forces. For some, the deceased emperor was more desirable than a prosperous pensioner somewhere in England, where the English royal family did not want to accept the royal family. By the way, not one of the more than 100 clergymen went into exile in Siberia with the imperial family. And the Russian Orthodox Church successfully took advantage of the situation in order to restore the patriarchate in general in the absence of the tsar and strong authorities.

The burial of the Tsar in the Peter and Paul Cathedral also seems to be a clear overkill. According to pre-revolutionary legislation, a private person could not be buried with rulers who died “in the line of duty.”

The only consolation is that the bustle of the members of the Romanov dynasty around the empty throne has almost stopped. They know that according to the Law on Succession to the Throne, one of the most important laws of the Russian Empire, none of the remaining Romanovs have legal rights to the throne. Does Russia need a new dynasty? That's another question.

By the definition of the Council of Bishops from March 31 - April 4, 1992, the Synodal Commission for the Canonization of Saints was instructed "in studying the exploits of the new Russian martyrs to begin researching materials related to the martyrdom of the Royal Family."

The Commission saw the main task in this matter as an objective consideration of all the circumstances of the lives of members of the Imperial Family in the context of historical events and their ecclesiastical understanding outside the ideological stereotypes that have dominated our country over the past decades. The commission was guided by pastoral concern so that the canonization of the Royal Family in the host of Russian new martyrs would not provide a reason or argument for political struggle or worldly confrontations, but would contribute to the unification of the people of God in faith and piety. We also sought to take into account the fact of the canonization of the Royal Family by the Russian Church Abroad in 1981, which caused a far from unambiguous reaction both among the Russian emigration, some representatives of which did not then see enough convincing grounds in it, and in Russia itself, not to mention such which has no historical analogies in the Orthodox Church, the decision of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, such as the inclusion of the Roman Catholic Roman Catholic servant Aloysius Yegorovich Trupp and the Lutheran goflektress Ekaterina Adolfovna Schneider among the canonized who accepted the martyrdom of the royal servant with the Royal Family.

Already at the first meeting of the Commission after the Council, we began to study the religious, moral and state aspects of the reign of the last Emperor of the Romanov dynasty. The following topics were carefully studied: “The Orthodox view of the state activities of Emperor Nicholas II”; "Emperor Nicholas II and the events of 1905 in St. Petersburg"; "On the church policy of Emperor Nicholas II"; "The reasons for the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II from the throne and the Orthodox attitude to this act"; "The Royal Family and G.E. Rasputin"; "The Last Days of the Royal Family" and "The Church's Attitude to Passion-Bearing."

In 1994 and 1997, I introduced the members of the Councils of Bishops to the results of the study of the above topics. Since that time, no new problems have appeared in the issue under study.

Let me remind you of the Commission’s approaches to these key and complex topics, the understanding of which is necessary for the members of the Council of Bishops when deciding the issue of canonization of the Royal Family.

The arguments of opponents of the canonization of the Royal Family, which are very different in religious and moral content and level of scientific competence, can be reduced to a list of specific theses that have already been analyzed in historical references compiled by the Commission and at your disposal.

One of the main arguments of opponents of the canonization of the Royal Family is the assertion that the death of Emperor Nicholas II and members of his Family cannot be recognized as a martyr’s death for Christ. The commission, based on a careful consideration of the circumstances of the death of the Royal Family, proposes to carry out its canonization as holy passion-bearers. In the liturgical and hagiographic literature of the Russian Orthodox Church, the word “passion-bearer” began to be used in relation to those Russian saints who, imitating Christ, patiently endured physical, moral suffering and death at the hands of political opponents.

In the history of the Russian Church, such passion-bearers were the holy noble princes Boris and Gleb (+1015), Igor Chernigovsky (+1147), Andrei Bogolyubsky (+1174), Mikhail Tverskoy (+1319), Tsarevich Dimitri (+1591). All of them, with their feat of passion-bearers, showed a high example of Christian morality and patience.

Opponents of this canonization are trying to find obstacles to the glorification of Nicholas II in facts related to his state and church policies.

The Emperor's church policy did not go beyond the traditional synodal system of governing the Church. However, it was during the reign of Emperor Nicholas II that the church hierarchy, which had until then been officially silent for two centuries on the issue of convening a Council, had the opportunity not only to widely discuss, but also to practically prepare for the convening of a Local Council.

The Emperor paid great attention to the needs of the Orthodox Church and generously donated for the construction of new churches, including outside Russia. During the years of his reign, the number of parish churches in Russia increased by more than 10 thousand, and more than 250 new monasteries were opened. The emperor personally participated in the laying of new temples and other church celebrations.

Their deep religiosity distinguished the Imperial couple from the representatives of the then aristocracy. The education of the children of the Imperial Family was imbued with a religious spirit. All its members lived in accordance with the traditions of Orthodox piety. Mandatory attendance at services on Sundays and holidays, and fasting during fasting were an integral part of their life. The personal religiosity of the Tsar and his wife was not a simple adherence to traditions. The royal couple visits churches and monasteries during their numerous trips, venerates miraculous icons and relics of saints, and makes pilgrimages, as was the case in 1903 during the glorification of St. Seraphim of Sarov. Brief services in court churches did not satisfy the Emperor and Empress. Services are held especially for them in the Tsarskoye Selo Feodorovsky Cathedral, built in the Old Russian style. Empress Alexandra prayed here in front of a lectern with open liturgical books, carefully watching the service.

The personal piety of the Sovereign was manifested in the fact that during the years of his reign more saints were canonized than in the two previous centuries, when only 5 saints were glorified. During the last reign, St. Theodosius of Chernigov (1896), St. Seraphim of Sarov (1903), Holy Princess Anna Kashinskaya (restoration of veneration in 1909), St. Joasaph of Belgorod (1911), St. Hermogenes of Moscow (1913), Saint Pitirim of Tambov (1914), Saint John of Tobolsk (1916). At the same time, the Emperor was forced to show special persistence, seeking the canonization of St. Seraphim of Sarov, Saints Joasaph of Belgorod and John of Tobolsk. Nicholas II highly revered the holy righteous father John of Kronstadt. After his blessed death, the king ordered a nationwide prayerful commemoration of the deceased on the day of his repose.

As a politician and statesman, the Emperor acted based on his religious and moral principles. One of the most common arguments against the canonization of Emperor Nicholas II is the events of January 9, 1905 in St. Petersburg. In the historical information of the Commission on this issue, we indicate: having become acquainted on the evening of January 8 with the contents of Gapon’s petition, which had the nature of a revolutionary ultimatum, which did not allow entering into constructive negotiations with representatives of the workers, the Sovereign ignored this document, illegal in form and undermining the prestige of the already wavering in the conditions wars of state power. Throughout January 9, 1905, the Sovereign did not make a single decision that determined the actions of the authorities in St. Petersburg to suppress mass protests by workers. The order for the troops to open fire was given not by the Emperor, but by the Commander of the St. Petersburg Military District. Historical data does not allow us to detect in the actions of the Sovereign in the January days of 1905 a conscious evil will directed against the people and embodied in specific sinful decisions and actions.

Since the beginning of the First World War, the Tsar regularly travels to Headquarters, visiting military units of the active army, dressing stations, military hospitals, rear factories, in a word, everything that played a role in the conduct of this war.

From the very beginning of the war, the Empress devoted herself to the wounded. Having completed nursing courses together with her eldest daughters, Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana, she spent several hours a day caring for the wounded in the Tsarskoye Selo infirmary.

The Emperor viewed his tenure as Supreme Commander-in-Chief as the fulfillment of a moral and national duty to God and the people, however, always presenting leading military specialists with a broad initiative in resolving the entire range of military-strategic and operational-tactical issues.

Assessments of Nicholas II as a statesman are extremely contradictory. Speaking about this, we should never forget that, when comprehending state activity from a Christian point of view, we must evaluate not this or that form of state structure, but the place that a specific person occupies in the state mechanism. The extent to which a person was able to embody Christian ideals in his activities is subject to assessment. It should be noted that Nicholas II treated the duties of the monarch as his sacred duty.

The desire, characteristic of some opponents of the canonization of Emperor Nicholas II, to present his abdication of the Throne as a church-canonical crime, similar to the refusal of a representative of the church hierarchy from the priesthood, cannot be recognized as having any serious grounds. The canonical status of the Orthodox sovereign anointed to the Kingdom was not defined in the church canons. Therefore, attempts to discover the elements of a certain church-canonical crime in the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II from power seem untenable.

As external factors that brought to life the Act of Abdication, which took place in the political life of Russia, we should highlight, first of all, the sharp aggravation of the socio-political situation in Petrograd in February 1917, the inability of the government to control the situation in the capital, which spread throughout wide sections of society conviction in the need for strict constitutional restrictions on monarchical power, the urgent demand of the Chairman of the State Duma M.V. Rodzianko, the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II from power in the name of preventing internal political chaos in the conditions of Russia's large-scale war, the almost unanimous support provided by the highest representatives of the Russian generals to the demand of the Chairman of the State Duma. It should also be noted that the Act of Abdication was adopted by Emperor Nicholas II under the pressure of dramatically changing political circumstances in an extremely short time.

The Commission expresses the opinion that the very fact of the abdication of the Throne of Emperor Nicholas II, which is directly related to his personal qualities, is generally an expression of the then historical situation in Russia.

He made this decision only in the hope that those who wanted to remove him would still be able to continue the war with honor and would not ruin the cause of saving Russia. He was afraid then that his refusal to sign the renunciation would lead to civil war in the sight of the enemy. The Tsar did not want even a drop of Russian blood to be shed because of him.

The spiritual motives for which the last Russian Sovereign, who did not want to shed the blood of his subjects, decided to abdicate the Throne in the name of internal peace in Russia, give his action a truly moral character. It is no coincidence that during the discussion in July 1918 at the Council of the Local Council of the question of the funeral commemoration of the murdered Sovereign, His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon made a decision on the widespread service of memorial services with the commemoration of Nicholas II as Emperor.

A very small circle of people could directly communicate with the Sovereign in an informal setting. Everyone who knew his family life first-hand noted the amazing simplicity, mutual love and harmony of all members of this closely knit Family. Its center was Alexey Nikolaevich, all attachments, all hopes were focused on him.

A circumstance that darkened the life of the Imperial Family was the incurable illness of the Heir. Attacks of hemophilia, during which the child experienced severe suffering, were repeated several times. In September 1912, as a result of a careless movement, internal bleeding occurred and the situation was so serious that they feared for the life of the Tsarevich. Prayers for his recovery were served in all churches in Russia. The nature of the illness was a state secret, and parents often had to hide their feelings while participating in the usual routine of palace life. The Empress understood well that medicine was powerless here. But nothing is impossible for God. Being deeply religious, she devoted herself wholeheartedly to fervent prayer in the hope of a miraculous healing. Sometimes, when the child was healthy, it seemed to her that her prayer had been answered, but the attacks were repeated again, and this filled the mother’s soul with endless sorrow. She was ready to believe anyone who was able to help her grief, to somehow alleviate her son’s suffering.

The illness of the Tsarevich opened the doors to the palace to the peasant Grigory Rasputin, who was destined to play his role in the life of the Royal Family, and in the fate of the entire country. The most significant argument among opponents of the canonization of the Royal Family is the very fact of their communication with G.E. Rasputin.

The relationship between the Emperor and Rasputin was complex; disposition towards him was combined with caution and doubts. “The Emperor tried several times to get rid of the “old man,” but each time he retreated under pressure from the Empress because of the need for Rasputin’s help to heal the Heir.”

In the relationship with Rasputin, there was an element of human frailty, associated in the Empress with a deep feeling of the incurability of her son’s deadly illness, and in the Emperor it was due to the desire to maintain peace in the Family through compassionate compliance with the maternal torment of the Empress. However, there is no reason to see in the relations of the Royal Family with Rasputin signs of spiritual delusion, and even more so of insufficient church involvement.

Summing up the study of the state and church activities of the last Russian Emperor, the Commission did not find in this activity alone sufficient grounds for his canonization.

In the life of Emperor Nicholas II there were two periods of unequal duration and spiritual significance - the time of his reign and the time of his imprisonment. The commission carefully studied the last days of the Royal Family, associated with the suffering and martyrdom of its members.

Emperor Nikolai Alexandrovich often compared his life to the trials of the sufferer Job, on whose church memorial day he was born. Having accepted his cross in the same way as the biblical righteous man, he endured all the trials sent down to him firmly, meekly and without a shadow of a murmur. It is this long-suffering that is revealed with particular clarity in the last days of the Emperor’s life. From the moment of abdication, it is not so much external events as the internal spiritual state of the Sovereign that attracts our attention.

The sovereign, having made, as it seemed to him, the only correct decision, nevertheless experienced severe mental anguish. “If I am an obstacle to the happiness of Russia and all the social forces now at the head of it ask me to leave the throne and pass it on to my son and brother, then I am ready to do this, I am even ready to give not only the Kingdom, but also my life for the Motherland. I think “No one who knows me doubts this,” the Emperor said to General D.N. Dubensky.

“The Sovereign Emperor Nikolai Alexandrovich, who saw so much betrayal around him... retained an unshakable faith in God, fatherly love for the Russian people, and a willingness to lay down his life for the honor and glory of the Motherland.” On March 8, 1917, the commissioners of the Provisional Government, having arrived in Mogilev, announced through General M.V. Alekseev about the arrest of the Sovereign and the need to proceed to Tsarskoe Selo. For the last time he addresses his troops, calling on them to be loyal to the Provisional Government, the very one that arrested him, to fulfill their duty to the Motherland until complete victory.

Consistently and methodically killing all members of the Imperial Family who fell into their hands, the Bolsheviks were primarily guided by ideology, and then by political calculations - after all, in the popular consciousness, the Emperor continued to remain the Anointed of God, and the entire Royal Family symbolized the Russia that was leaving and the Russia that was being destroyed. On July 21, 1918, His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon, in his speech during the Divine Liturgy at the Moscow Kazan Cathedral, seemed to answer those questions and doubts that eight decades later the Russian Church would try to comprehend: “We know that he (Emperor Nicholas II - M.Yu. .), abdicating the Throne, did so with the good of Russia in mind and out of love for her."

Most witnesses to the last period of the life of the Royal Martyrs speak of the prisoners of the Tobolsk Governor's House and the Yekaterinburg Ipatiev House as people who suffered and, despite all the mockery and insults, led a pious life. In the Royal Family, which found itself in captivity, we see people who sincerely sought to embody the commandments of the Gospel in their lives.

The Imperial Family spent a lot of time in soul-searching reading, especially the Holy Scriptures, and in regular - almost indiscriminate - attendance at divine services.

Kindness and peace of mind did not leave the Empress during this difficult time. The emperor, naturally reserved, felt calm and complacent primarily in his narrow family circle. The Empress did not like social interaction or balls. Her strict upbringing was alien to the moral laxity that reigned in the court environment; the Empress's religiosity was called oddity, even hypocrisy. Alexandra Fedorovna’s letters reveal the full depth of her religious feelings - how much strength of spirit they contain, grief over the fate of Russia, faith and hope for God’s help. And no matter who she wrote to, she found words of support and consolation. These letters are real testimonies of the Christian faith.

Consolation and strength in enduring sorrows were given to the prisoners by spiritual reading, prayer, worship, and communion of the Holy Mysteries of Christ. Many times the Empress’s letters speak about the spiritual life of her and other members of the Family: “There is consolation in prayer: I feel sorry for those who find it unfashionable and unnecessary to pray...” In another letter she writes: “Lord, help those who do not contains the love of God in hardened hearts that see only all the bad and do not try to understand that all this will pass; it cannot be otherwise, the Savior came and showed us an example. Whoever follows His path in the wake of love and suffering understands all the greatness of the Kingdom of Heaven" .

Together with their parents, the Tsar's children endured all humiliation and suffering with meekness and humility. Archpriest Afanasy Belyaev, who confessed the Tsar’s children, wrote: “The impression [from the confession] was this: God grant that all children would be as morally high as the children of the former Tsar. Such kindness, humility, obedience to the parental will, unconditional devotion to the will of God , purity of thoughts and complete ignorance of earthly dirt - passionate and sinful, - he writes, - led me to amazement and I was absolutely perplexed: is it necessary to remind me as a confessor of sins, perhaps unknown to them, and how to incite me to repentance of known ones? sins for them."

In almost complete isolation from the outside world, surrounded by rude and cruel guards, the prisoners of the Ipatiev House display amazing nobility and clarity of spirit.

Their true greatness stemmed not from their royal dignity, but from the amazing moral height to which they gradually rose.

Along with the Imperial Family, their servants who followed their masters into exile were also shot. Due to the fact that they voluntarily remained with the Royal Family and accepted martyrdom, it would be legitimate to raise the question of their canonization; to them, in addition to those shot along with the Imperial Family by Dr. E.S. Botkin, the room girl of the Empress A.S. Demidova, court cook I.M. Kharitonov and lackey A.E. The troupe included those killed in various places and in different months of 1918, Adjutant General I.L. Tatishchev, Marshal Prince V.A. Dolgorukov, “uncle” of Heir K.G. Nagorny, children's footman I.D. Sednev, maid of honor to Empress A.V. Gendrikova and goflectress E.A. Schneider. It does not seem possible for the Commission to make a final decision on the existence of grounds for the canonization of this group of laymen, who, as part of their court service, accompanied the Royal Family during the period of its imprisonment and suffered a violent death. The Commission does not have information about the widespread prayerful commemoration of these laymen by name. In addition, there is little information about religious life and their personal piety. The commission came to the conclusion that the most appropriate form of honoring the Christian feat of the faithful servants of the Royal Family, who shared its tragic fate, today could be the perpetuation of this feat in the lives of the Royal Martyrs.

The topic of canonization of Emperor Nicholas II and members of the Royal Family was widely discussed in the 90s in a number of publications in the church and secular press. The overwhelming majority of books and articles by religious authors support the idea of ​​glorifying the Royal Martyrs. A number of publications contain convincing criticism of the arguments of opponents of canonization.

Many appeals were addressed to His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II, the Holy Synod and the Synodal Commission for the Canonization of Saints, approving the conclusions made in October 1996 by the Commission for the Canonization of Saints regarding the glorification of the Royal Martyrs.

The Synodal Commission for the Canonization of Saints also received appeals from the ruling bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church, in which, on behalf of clergy and laity, they expressed approval of the Commission’s conclusions.

In some dioceses the issue of canonization was discussed at diocesan, deanery and parish meetings. They expressed unanimous support for the idea of ​​glorifying the Royal Martyrs. The Commission also received appeals from individual clergy and laity, as well as groups of believers from different dioceses, supporting the canonization of the Royal Family. Some of them bear the signatures of several thousand people. Among the authors of such appeals are Russian emigrants, as well as clergy and laity of the fraternal Orthodox Churches. Many of those who contacted the Commission spoke out in favor of the speedy, urgent canonization of the Royal Martyrs. The idea of ​​the need for the speedy glorification of the Tsar and the Royal Martyrs was expressed by a number of church and public organizations.

Of particular value are publications and appeals to the Commission and other church authorities, containing testimonies of miracles and grace-filled help through prayers to the Royal Martyrs. They are talking about healings, uniting separated families, protecting church property from schismatics. There is especially abundant evidence of the streaming of myrrh from icons with images of Emperor Nicholas II and the Royal Martyrs, of the fragrance and the miraculous appearance of blood-colored stains on the icon faces of the Royal Martyrs.

I would like to touch upon the issue of the remains of the Royal Family. The State Commission "for the study of issues related to the research and reburial of the remains of the Russian Emperor Nicholas II and members of his Family" completed its work on January 30, 1998, as is known. The State Commission recognized as correct the scientific and historical conclusions made during the investigation by the Republican Center for Forensic Research and the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation about the belonging of the Royal Family and its servants to the remains found near Yekaterinburg. However, doubts arose in connection with the well-known conclusions of investigator Sokolov, who back in 1918 testified that all the bodies of the Imperial Family and their servants were dismembered and destroyed. The Holy Synod, at its meeting on February 26, 1998, had a judgment on this issue and came to the following conclusion:

"2. Assessing the reliability of scientific and investigative conclusions, as well as evidence of their inviolability or irrefutability, does not fall within the competence of the Church. Scientific and historical responsibility for the conclusions regarding the “Ekaterinburg remains” adopted during the investigation and study falls entirely on the Republican Center for Forensic Sciences medical research and the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation.

3. The decision of the State Commission to identify the remains found near Yekaterinburg as belonging to the Family of Emperor Nicholas II raised serious doubts and even confrontations in the Church and society."

Since since then, as far as we know, there have been no new results of scientific research in this area, the “Ekaterinburg remains” buried on July 17, 1998 in St. Petersburg cannot today be recognized by us as belonging to the Royal Family.

The veneration of the Royal Family, already begun by His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon in the funeral prayer and word at the memorial service in the Kazan Cathedral in Moscow for the murdered Emperor three days after the Yekaterinburg murder, continued - despite the prevailing ideology - throughout several decades of the Soviet period of our history. Clergy and laity offered prayers to God for the repose of the murdered sufferers, members of the Royal Family. In the houses in the red corner one could see photographs of the Royal Family, and recently icons depicting the Royal Martyrs have become widespread. Now such icons are found in some monasteries and churches of a number of dioceses of the Russian Orthodox Church. Prayers addressed to them and various musical, cinematic, and literary works are compiled, reflecting the suffering and martyrdom of the Royal Family. Funeral services are being held for her everywhere and more and more often. All this testifies to the growing veneration of the murdered Royal Family throughout Russia.

The Commission, in its approach to this topic, sought to ensure that the glorification of the Royal Martyrs was free from any political or other conjuncture. In this regard, it seems necessary to emphasize that the canonization of the Monarch is in no way connected with monarchical ideology and, moreover, does not mean the “canonization” of the monarchical form of government, which can, of course, be treated differently. The activities of the head of state cannot be removed from the political context, but this does not mean that the Church, when canonizing a Tsar or a prince, as it did in the past, is guided by political or ideological considerations. Just as the acts of canonization of monarchs that took place in the past were not of a political nature, no matter how the biased enemies of the Church interpreted these events in their tendentious assessments, so the upcoming glorification of the Royal Martyrs will not and should not have a political nature, for while glorifying the saint, the Church does not persecute political goals, which she actually does not have by the nature of things, but she testifies before the people of God who already honor the righteous man that the ascetic she canonizes really pleased God and stands before the Throne of God for us, regardless of what position he occupied in his earthly life: whether he was one of these little ones, like the holy righteous John of Russia, or one of the mighty of this world, like the holy Emperor Justinian.

Behind the many sufferings endured by the Royal Family over the last 17 months of their lives, which ended with execution in the basement of the Ekaterinburg Ipatiev House on the night of July 17, 1918, we see people who sincerely sought to embody the commandments of the Gospel in their lives. In the suffering endured by the Royal Family in captivity with meekness, patience and humility, in their martyrdom, the evil-conquering light of Christ's faith was revealed, just as it shone in the life and death of millions of Orthodox Christians who suffered persecution for Christ in the twentieth century.

It is in understanding this feat of the Royal Family that the Commission, in complete unanimity and with the approval of the Holy Synod, finds it possible to glorify in the Council the new martyrs and confessors of Russia in the guise of the passion-bearers Emperor Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra, Tsarevich Alexy, Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia.

By rewriting it in an encyclopedic style. Thank you.

Canonization of the royal family - canonization by the Russian Orthodox Church of the last Emperor Nicholas II and members of his family, one of the most controversial acts of the Russian Orthodox Church in its entire history, which caused an extremely negative reaction from a significant part of Orthodox believers, including such prominent figures of the Russian Orthodox Church as Metropolitan John of St. Petersburg and Ladoga, A.I. Osipov and others. Nicholas II and members of his family were glorified as passion-bearers. At the same time, the servants who were shot along with the royal family were not canonized.

History of glorification

In 1928, Nicholas II and his family were canonized as saints of the Catacomb Church.

In 1981, the emperor and his family were glorified by a group of bishops “who call themselves the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, which does not have the recognition of the entire Orthodox Plenitude due to its anti-canonical nature” (From the appeal of the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church, 1990), in other words the so-called. Russian Church Abroad.

In the last decade of the 20th century in Russia, a number of clergy who sympathized with the so-called. The “Russian Church Abroad” launched a campaign for the canonization of the now Russian Orthodox Church of the emperor and his family, as well as servants. Many prominent representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church spoke out against canonization, including Metropolitan John (Snychev) of St. Petersburg and Ladoga. As a result, the Council of Bishops in 1997 refused to canonize the former sovereign. According to one of the prominent opponents of the canonization of Nicholas II, professor of the Moscow Theological Academy A.I. Osipov, the moral character and scale of the personality of Nicholas II in no way corresponded to those of the general church holy ascetics.

However, pressure on the Russian Orthodox Church from supporters of canonization increased. In radical monarchist and pseudo-Orthodox circles, even the epithet “redeemer” is used in relation to Nicholas II. This is manifested both in written appeals sent to the Moscow Patriarchate when considering the issue of canonization of the royal family, and in non-canonical akathists and prayers: “O most wonderful and glorious Tsar-Redeemer Nicholas.” However, at a meeting of the Moscow clergy, Patriarch Alexy II unequivocally spoke out about the inadmissibility of this, saying that “if he sees in some church books in which Nicholas II is called the Redeemer, he will consider the rector of this temple as a preacher of heresy. We have one Redeemer - Christ."

In accordance with the next decision of the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church dated August 20, 2000, Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna, Tsarevich Alexei, princesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia were canonized as holy new martyrs and confessors of Russia, revealed and unmanifested.

Arguments against canonization

• The death of Emperor Nicholas II and members of his family was not a martyrdom for Christ, but only political repression.
• The emperor's unsuccessful state and church policies, including such events as Khodynka, Bloody Sunday and the Lena shooting.
• The extremely controversial activities of Grigory Rasputin.
• The abdication of the anointed king from the throne should be considered as a church-canonical crime, similar to the refusal of a representative of the church hierarchy from the priesthood.
• “The religiosity of the royal couple, for all its outwardly traditional Orthodoxy, bore a clearly expressed character of interconfessional mysticism.”
• The active movement for the canonization of the royal family in the 1990s was not spiritual, but political.
• MDA Professor A.I. Osipov: “Neither the holy Patriarch Tikhon, nor the holy Metropolitan of Petrograd Benjamin, nor the holy Metropolitan Peter of Krutitsky, nor the holy Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov), nor the holy Archbishop Thaddeus, nor the holy Archbishop Hilarion (Troitsky), who, without doubts, he will soon be canonized, neither the other hierarchs now glorified by our Church, the new martyrs, who knew much more and better than we now, the personality of the former Tsar - none of them ever expressed thoughts about him as a holy passion-bearer (and in At that time it was still possible to declare this loudly).”
• The responsibility for “the gravest sin of regicide, which weighs on all the peoples of Russia,” is also deeply bewildering, promoted by some supporters of canonization.

Pressure on the Russian Orthodox Church from supporters of canonization in the period between the first and second bishops' councils

Question about the canonization of servants

A visual comparison of the personality of Nicholas II with the personalities of some other famous Russian Orthodox Church

Arguments for canonization in a different guise

The Jews are satisfied that the Royal Romanov family has been elevated to the ranks of passion-bearers, not martyrs, please note, but passion-bearers. What is the difference? The rite of martyrdom is the feat of death for Christ at the hands of non-believers. Passion-bearers are those who have suffered torment at the hands of their fellow Christians. According to the passion-bearing rite of canonization, it turns out that the Tsar and his Family were martyred by their own fellow Christians. Now, if the Council of Bishops had recognized the obvious, that the Tsar was tortured to death by the Gentiles, the Jews, then he would not have been a passion-bearer, but a great martyr. This is what the Jews are satisfied with, this is what they mean when they present an ultimatum to the Moscow Patriarchate: “It is very important that the decision on canonization in the form in which it was adopted by the Council becomes known to the widest circle of laity and clergy.”

R.E. Mingazov, A.I. Mavlyavieva

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7 open youth

research conference

named after S.S. Molodtsova

History section

Research

Why was Nicholas II canonized?

R.E. Mingazov, A.I. Mavlyavieva

10th grade, secondary school No. 33, Nizhnekamsk

Scientific adviser:

Elena Evgenieva Petrova

history and social studies teacher

First qualification category

Nizhnekamsk 2009

Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………. 3

1. Nicholas II. Character despite the era…………………………………………. 4

2. Canonization…………………………………………………. 11

2.1 The last days of the life of Nicholas II……………………………………… 11

2.2 Death of Boris and Gleb………………………………………………….. 15

2.3. Comparative analysis of the life and work of Boris, Gleb and

Nicholas II ………………………………………………………………... 17

3. Public interest in the canonization of Emperor Nicholas II……………... 22

Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………... 25

………………………………………….. 26

Introduction.

“Having gone through a long and glorious life, peoples, no matter what they do, are unable to break with their past; they feel its influence even at the moment when they are working to destroy it.”

F. Guizot

In 2008, the Rossiya TV channel launched a very interesting project - a survey called “The Name of Russia”, modeled after the same ones implemented in other countries of the world. According to the interim results in July 2008, Nicholas II took second place in the list of 50 candidates. This led to a revival of controversy around seemingly long-forgotten, but nevertheless still painful historical issues. There was talk in the press and on television that the history of Russia would really be symbolized by a man who plunged the country into disaster, lost two wars and allowed two revolutions, the last of which killed - morally and physically - millions of compatriots, including Nicholas himself? We are talking about established and still preserved stereotypes of historical knowledge, without paying attention to the efforts and motives that guided the king. And we, having chosen this topic, wanted to consider Nikolai’s personality not from the political side, but from the side of universal human values. So what are these universal human values? Nicholas II was an intelligent, responsible, hard-working man, modest and shy, often showed compassion and sacrifice, and was a wonderful family man. Of course, it is not easy to find answers to all questions related to Nicholas II, but we will try to figure out why he was canonized.

1. Nicholas II. Character despite the era.

Already in childhood, the amazing subtlety and tenderness of his soul appeared, which turned out to be so receptive to the truth of the Gospel. As a small child, he loved images of the Mother of God and St. George the Victorious. Contemplation of the image of a saint defeating an evil force caused excitement in the last depths of his being. Listening to the singing of birds in the Tsarskoye Selo garden, the boy withdrew deeply into himself; at the same time, his face acquired an unearthly, angelic expression - Admiration of nature then turned into prayer; prayerful communication with God was the basis of the Emperor’s life. The Tsar was extremely fond of Orthodox worship; in general, the church was for him the main support of life and service to his homeland.

It is important to note that the king lived, thought and felt like a deeply churchly person; and this was his unity with his people, with the multimillion-dollar peasantry. But it was precisely Orthodox churchliness that created a wall of misunderstanding and alienation between Nicholas II and his subjects from the upper classes. The fact is that a part of Russian educated society during the 18th - 19th centuries gradually moved further and further away from the church, being carried away either by science, then by Western culture, or by unhealthy mysticism. The liberal intelligentsia and the nobility did not understand the tsar; Without internally sharing his ideals, they could not support his state plans. In this environment, Nicholas found himself alone, which became one of the immediate causes of the revolutions...

He wanted to be alone. Alone before your conscience. Not all those close to the king understood this: people of superficial spirituality, worldly in their structure and secular in their way of life, do not have access to the depths of the idea of ​​anointing. The conclusion suggests itself that this is where ideological conflicts arose between the tsar and his ministers. Nicholas relied on conscience and intuition (while knowing perfectly well all the external details of a specific problem, which, according to his contemporaries, he always grasped on the fly), while the ministers were guided only by reason and statistics. The king did not like to argue; but when, following his duty, he still acted in his own way, resentment and discontent arose. Therefore, Nikolai Alexandrovich had many enemies in his circle.

Getting acquainted with the memoirs “Memoirs of S. Yu. Witte”, the author notes the kindness and “extraordinary manners” of Nicholas II. He speaks “of his unpreparedness for ascending the throne,” hence all sorts of influences on the king. S.Yu. Witte talks about the political activities and relationships of Nicholas II with his environment, which confirms our conclusion.

The characterization given to Nikolai by Field Marshal V.I. does not contradict our opinion either. Gurko¹, who was part of the tsar’s entourage, was familiar with V.K. Plehve, P.A. Stolypin, and took an active part in the preparation of the agrarian reform. His memories reveal different aspects of the appearance and activities of the king and queen. Gurko shows that Nicholas II was a wonderful family man, a handsome, simple-minded and pleasant person to talk to; According to his convictions, he was an absolutely medieval man who inherited the idea of ​​​​the correct organization of society, bypassing the 19th century, directly from the era of Ivan the Terrible.

Describing the personality of Nicholas II, the German diplomat Count Rex considered the emperor a spiritually gifted person, a noble person of thought, prudent and tactful. “His manners,” the diplomat wrote, “are so modest, and he shows so little external determination that it is easy to come to the conclusion that he lacks a strong will, but the people around him assure that he has a very definite will, which he knows how to do.” implement in the most calm way. The majority note the persistent and tireless will in implementing their plans

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¹ Gurko Joseph Vladimirovich (16 IL 1828-15 JAN 1901) – Field Marshal General. Born in Mogilev province. He graduated from the Corps of Pages (1846), served in the Life Hussars. He established himself as an outstanding cavalry officer. Being an aide-de-camp and a member of the Tsar's retinue (1862-1866), he carried out administrative assignments related to the implementation of the peasant reform. Before the start of the war with Turkey in 1877-1878, he commanded the 2nd Guards Cavalry Division. During the war he showed himself to be a talented and decisive military leader.

people who knew the emperor. Until the plan was implemented, the king constantly turned to him, achieving his goal.

In addition to his strong will and brilliant education, Nikolai had a tremendous ability to work. If necessary, he could work from morning until late at night, studying numerous documents and materials received in his name. He was a lover of physical labor - he sawed wood, cleared snow and the like, and he was also attracted to sports in all forms. Nicholas II had a lively mind and a broad outlook; he quickly grasped the essence of the issues under consideration. The emperor had an exceptional memory for faces and events. He remembered most of the people he had encountered, and there were many of them, by sight.

Summarizing information from a whole complex of Russian historical sources, we see that Nicholas II worked without assistants, alone, which distinguished him from most monarchs and heads of state. He did not have a personal secretary; he preferred to do everything himself. On his desk lay a large calendar, in which he carefully wrote down in his own hand his tasks assigned for each day. When official papers arrived, Nikolai printed them out, read them, signed them, and sealed them himself to send them. The king usually received his ministers and other invited persons in a relaxed atmosphere. I listened carefully without interrupting. During the conversation he was helpfully polite and never raised his voice.

V.I. Gurko in his book “The Tsar and the Queen” notes that thanks to his memory, the tsar’s awareness of various issues was amazing. “But he did not benefit from his awareness. The varied information accumulated from year to year remained just that, information and was not at all transformed into knowledge, because Nicholas II was not able to coordinate it and draw any specific conclusions from it. Everything he gleaned of the oral and written reports presented to him remained dead weight, which he did not try to use,” the author wrote.

Historical memory has preserved many individual cases of the Emperor’s most touching attitude, especially towards ordinary people. The Tsar’s remarkable right was the highest right to pardon those sentenced to death: the triumph of Christian love over the universal legal norm in this state privilege given to God’s chosen one was especially clearly demonstrated. The king often used this right. At the same time, he always checked how accurately his orders were carried out; and once he even sent a pardoned state criminal to Crimea for treatment - and this at his own expense. The Tsar used every suitable opportunity to provide an opportunity for the Holy Spirit to work in Russian life.

Nicholas II struggled with the invasion of foreign words into everyday language. “The Russian language is so rich,” he said, “that it allows in all cases to replace foreign expressions with Russian ones. Not a single word of non-Slavic origin should disfigure our language.” Nicholas II treated Russia not sentimentally, but religiously; For him, service to the Motherland of God’s Anointed was not separated from service to God. The Tsar was a representative of national Russian culture and such a supermundane reality as Holy Rus'.

Knowing all these facts, we can, not without reason, assume that endowed with remarkable personal qualities, Nicholas II was the embodiment of everything that is noble and chivalrous in Russian nature, but he was weak. Nicholas II was modest and shy. He doubted himself too much: hence all his failures. But the king was not a limited nonentity, someone’s puppet. At a critical moment, it was he who showed the greatest fortitude of all those around him. And so, when Russia was experiencing an acute crisis, the tsar decided to take over the Supreme Command of the army. On February 22, 1916, Nicholas II spoke in the Duma. His speech that in the tragic moments the country was going through, they would unite their efforts and work in full harmony for the good of the Motherland, was received with a stormy ovation from the deputies. It seemed that the king, ministers and people's representatives had one goal - to win at all costs. However, the discord did not stop, but, on the contrary, intensified. Nicholas II did not dare to make the liberal concessions that were demanded of him. He assumed that no reforms could be carried out at this time. The emperor was a man of conscience and soul; the moral principles that guided him in his work made him defenseless against intrigue. The circle of betrayal and betrayal tightened around the tsar more and more, which turned into a kind of trap by the beginning of March 1917. In G. Z. Ioffe’s monograph “The Great October Revolution and the Epilogue of Tsarism,” he saw in Nicholas a convinced Slavophile who considered the pre-Petrine 17th century to be the “golden age” of Russia.

The king had a choice: abdicate the throne or go to the capital with an army loyal to him. This would lead to a war with one’s own people, to a civil war, and during a war that was waged with the enemy. Nicholas II showed nobility here too; he could not fight with his own people. His renunciation is proof of this. Deceived and betrayed by his entourage, the tsar decided to abdicate in the hope that those who wished to remove him would be able to bring the war to a happy end and save Russia. “In these decisive days in the life of Russia, We considered it a duty of conscience to facilitate close unity and rallying of all the people’s forces for our people to achieve victory as quickly as possible and, in agreement with the State Duma, We recognized it as good to abdicate the throne of the Russian State and relinquish the Supreme Power.” .

He was afraid that his resistance would not serve as a reason for civil war in the presence of the enemy, and did not want the blood of at least one Russian to be shed for him. He believed in his people, in their wisdom and unity, but the wrong people were rushing to power. They not only surrendered their positions to the Germans without a fight and signed a peace shameful for Russia, but they also destroyed and plundered their own country. The royal family, their relatives, nobility, merchants, clergy, officers, intelligentsia and thousands of other people were killed.

There is a version that Nicholas II easily, almost thoughtlessly renounced his reign, surrendered power, as if he were surrendering a cavalry squadron. Is this true? There is another, purely monarchical version, where the abdication is portrayed as a “sacrificial” act of the tsar “for the good” of Russia. We are more inclined to the second version; in Petrograd the masses were already decisively demanding the abolition of the monarchy, which forced the bourgeois oppositionists to make a maneuver. They raised the question of Nicholas’s abdication in favor of the “legal heir” Alexei during the regency of the Tsar’s brother, Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich. The hope is that this concession will finally stop and derail the revolutionary wave. Nicholas II accepts the ultimatum. It would seem that everything: history could be put to rest. But no. Now we have reached the most interesting moment for us. When the Duma envoys, A. Guchkov and V. Shulgin, arrived in Pskov late in the evening of March 2 “for renunciation,” Nikolai unexpectedly announced that he had “changed his mind” and proposed a new version of renunciation: for himself and for his son Alexei in favor of Mikhail. This was an obvious violation of the law on succession to the throne: the king could not abdicate for the direct heir, but the abdication was accepted. On March 3, leaving Pskov, Nikolai wrote in his diary: “At one o’clock in the morning I left Pskov with a heavy feeling of what I had experienced. There is treason, cowardice, and deceit all around.” This is perhaps the only, but quite definite, recognition that refutes the allegations about the alleged “voluntary renunciation” of the tsar. Nicholas “did not surrender” power, did not withdraw from it, but was eliminated by the revolution after it put the Duma leaders and senior generals in an almost hopeless situation.

With the signing of the abdication, an end is put to the tragedy of the life of Emperor Nicholas II and the countdown to the tragedy of his death begins. He sacrificed himself for the sake of Russia, but this sacrifice was in vain. From this moment on, it is not so much external events as the internal spiritual state of the Sovereign that attracts our attention. The sovereign, having made, as it seemed to him, the only correct decision, nevertheless experienced severe mental anguish.

In the spring of 1918, the daughter of the last Russian emperor, Grand Duchess Olga, handed over her father's spiritual will from Tobolsk. Think about its deep meaning, because this is an appeal not only to compatriots who lived in those violent years, but also to us living. “Father asks to tell all those who remained devoted to him, and those on whom they may have influence, that they do not take revenge for him, since he has forgiven everyone and is praying for everyone, and that they remember that the evil that is now in world, will be even stronger, but that it is not evil that will defeat evil, but only love.” In these words the whole king, his presence is the Lord's, as the Anointed of God.

Nicholas II in July 1918 was killed not just as a helpless, defenseless person. The amazing courage of his behavior, when he, with his sick son in his arms, went down to the basement of the Ipatiev House, and even earlier, when both he and the Empress refused to emigrate and escape - all this suggests that in their souls there was a holy readiness for sacrificial, Christ-imitating suffering. It was expressed in the prophetic words he said more than ten years ago, during the first Russian revolution: “Perhaps an atoning sacrifice is needed to save Russia. I will be that victim. God's will be done."

Conclusion: The true greatness of Emperor Nicholas II is not in his royal dignity, but in the amazing moral height to which he gradually rose.

2. Canonization.

2.1 The last days of the life of Nicholas II.

In April 1918, the royal family was taken under protection by Soviet commissars. They transported the Romanovs to the “capital of the red Urals” - Yekaterinburg. Here the royal family was placed in the mansion of engineer Ipatiev, evicting the owner. Five servants remained with the family. In July, the guard was headed by the old Bolshevik Yakov Yurovsky.

The royal family received almost no news about political events, and meanwhile a civil war was flaring up in the country. The Czechoslovak Corps and Cossacks, who rebelled against the Bolsheviks, were moving towards Yekaterinburg. Any day now the Bolsheviks expected the city to fall.

At the beginning of July 1918, the Ural military commissar Isai Goloshchekin (“Philip”) went to Moscow to resolve the issue of the future fate of the royal family. The execution of the entire family was sanctioned by the Council of People's Commissars and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. In accordance with this decision, the Urals Council, at its meeting on July 12, adopted a resolution on the execution, as well as on the methods of destroying the corpses, and on July 16, transmitted a message about this via direct wire to Petrograd to Zinoviev. At the end of the conversation with Yekaterinburg, Zinoviev sent a telegram to Moscow: “Moscow, the Kremlin, to Sverdlov. Copy - Lenin. From Yekaterinburg the following is transmitted via direct wire: “Inform Moscow that we cannot wait for the trial agreed upon with Philip due to military circumstances. If your opinion is the opposite, immediately, out of turn, inform Yekaterinburg. Zinoviev"

The telegram was received in Moscow on July 16 at 21:22. The phrase “trial agreed upon with Philip” is an encrypted decision to execute the Romanovs.

The decision was carefully hidden from the family. That evening, July 17, at 10:30 p.m., they went to bed as usual. At 11:30 p.m., two special representatives from the Urals Council appeared at the mansion. They presented the decision of the executive committee to the commander of the security detachment, Ermakov, and the commandant of the house, Yurovsky, and proposed to immediately begin to carry out the sentence.

At midnight, Yurovsky woke up Nicholas II, his family and associates, ordering them to quickly get dressed and go downstairs. He explained that the Czechs and Whites were approaching Yekaterinburg, and the local Council decided that they should leave. Still not suspecting anything, everyone got dressed, and Nikolai and Alexei put military caps on their heads. Nikolai went down the stairs first, carrying Alexei in his arms. The sleepy boy hugged his father's neck tightly with his arms. They were followed by others, Anastasia holding a spaniel in her arms. Along the ground floor, Yurovsky led them to a semi-basement room with a heavy grill on the window. Here he asked them to wait until the cars arrived.

Nikolai asked for chairs for his son and wife. Yurovsky ordered three chairs to be brought, Alexandra took one, Nikolai took another and, supporting Alexei, laid him with his back on the third chair. Behind the mother were four children, Doctor Botkin, footman Trupp, cook Kharitonov and the Empress's room girl Demidova. The latter brought two pillows, one of which she placed under the empress's back, and the other she held in her hands. Inside it, hidden deep in the feathers, was a box with royal jewels. When everyone had gathered, Yurovsky entered the room again, accompanied by the entire Cheka detachment with revolvers in their hands. He stepped forward and quickly said: “Due to the fact that your relatives continue to attack Soviet Russia, the Ural Executive Committee decided to shoot you.” Nikolai, continuing to support Alexei with his hand, began to rise from the chair to protect his wife and son. He only managed to whisper: “What?” and then Yurovsky pointed the revolver at the Tsar’s head and fired. Nikolai was killed outright. At this signal, the executioners began shooting. Alexandra and Olga only managed to raise their hands in the sign of the cross when they were killed by precise shots. Anastasia, Tatyana and Maria, who stood behind their mother, did not die immediately. They wore corsets with jewels sewn inside them. The bullets bounced off them. The girls huddled in a corner and silently looked into the faces of their killers; the latter, throwing away their rifles, took up their bayonets. Botkin, Kharitonov and Trupp fell under a hail of bullets. Demidov's room girl survived the first volley, and in order not to reload their revolvers, the executioners brought rifles from the next room and began to pursue her in order to finish her off with bayonets. Screaming and rushing from wall to wall like a hunted animal, she tried to fight back with a pillow. Finally she fell, pierced by bayonets more than thirty times.

Silence suddenly reigned in the room, full of smoke and the smell of gunpowder.

Blood flowed like a stream across the floor. Then there was movement and a heavy sigh was heard. Alexey, lying on the floor still in his father’s arms, weakly moved his hand, clutching his father’s jacket. One of the executioners viciously kicked the crown prince in the head with a heavy boot. Yurovsky approached and shot the boy twice in the ear. Just at that moment, Anastasia, who was only unconscious, woke up and screamed. The whole gang attacked her with bayonets and rifle butts. After a moment, she also became silent.

This tragic end to the life of Nicholas II and his family left a unique imprint on the soul of each of us. It is unlikely that anyone will ever be able to indifferently turn over this black page of our history. How did those barbarians turn their hand to shoot at innocent children, women, their king? And finish them off with bayonets after an unsuccessful execution attempt? I don't have words to express my feelings about this.

The eighteenth emperor in the Romanov dynasty died on the night of July 18, 1918... This number - 18 - how symbolic and sad it now sounds. The emperor died, and with him the centuries-old monarchy, which had become obsolete...

However, for such a martyrdom, Nicholas and members of his family were not canonized for the first time in Russia. This, oddly enough, happened in Serbia. Residents of the city turned to the Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church with a request to canonize the Russian Emperor Nicholas II, whom they venerate on an equal basis with the Serbian national saints. In two new churches built in Serbia already in 1936, Nicholas was depicted as a saint. But soon the Second World War broke out and the temples were destroyed. In Russia, the canonization of the royal family (as “new martyrs and confessors”) was done only at the Bishops’ Jubilee Council on August 13-16, 2000. Temple-monuments in his honor were erected in all parts of the world. One of the most beautiful is the Temple of the Holy Righteous Job the Long-Suffering, built in Brussels in memory of Emperor Nicholas II of the August Family. No less magnificent is the Monument Temple in the name of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in Shanghai. The first now known iconographic image of Emperor Nicholas II dates back to 1927. Since then, many icon painters began to depict the Royal Martyrs on icons.

Conclusion: The Emperor made a sacrifice for all of Russia, so the bullying that he and his family experienced is beyond any martyrdom. In the church this is not called martyrdom, but passion-bearing. That is, not for faith as such, but for the state.

2.2 The death of Boris and Gleb.

If we delve into our recent past, we can trace a similar incident in the 11th century, when two brothers, Boris and Gleb, were barbarically killed by their own brother Svyatopolk and, subsequently, became the first Russian Christian saints.

The heir to the Kyiv throne, Svyatopolk, in order to achieve his selfish goals, decides to remove his rival brothers from his path. His first victim was his younger brother Boris. Boris learns about the assassination attempt and begins to pray. When the murderers approached Boris’s tent, they heard him singing Matins:

"God! Why have I multiplied the cold that afflicts me? Many people are standing up to me.”

Having finished Matins, he prayed and said, looking at the icon:

“Lord Jesus Christ! Having thus appeared on earth for the sake of our salvation, deigning to nail your hands on the cross with your own will and accept the passion of sin for the sake of ours, so grant me the privilege of accepting the passion. But I do not accept from those who are against me, but from my brother, and Lord, do not commit seven sins to him.”

(Having read this description of his dying hours, it is easy to believe that Boris was a saint already during his lifetime.) Having prayed, he went to bed. The killers, of course, were not at a loss and began to pierce the sleeping Boris with spears. At the same time, Boris’s personal bodyguard, a certain George, was also injured, about whom the chronicle reports that he was a Hungarian. This was Boris's favorite, who wore around his neck a large golden hryvnia, a gift from the young prince. George tried to protect Boris with his body, but fell under the blows of the attackers. All the other companions of Boris were also killed. All this is reminiscent of an attack on a poorly guarded camp - after all, no one raised the alarm. The seemingly murdered prince was wrapped in a tent, placed on a cart and taken to Vyshgorod. Boris's body was placed in the Church of St. Basil. Meanwhile, the accursed Svyatopolk began to think about how he could get rid of his brother Gleb. But Gleb was far away, and Svyatopolk decided to lure him into a trap. He sent Gleb a letter:

“Go ahead, your father is calling you, don’t mess with me.”

Gleb was an obedient son. He quickly got ready, mounted his horse and with a small detachment went to his father. When Gleb went out to the Volga, his horse stumbled in some hole, and Gleb slightly injured his leg. When Gleb had already passed through Smolensk and stopped in a barge on Smyadyn, he received a message from Yaroslav from Novgorod: “Don’t go, your father died and your brother was killed by Svyatopolk.”

Having received such a message, Gleb began to pray with tears for his father and brother:

“Alas for me, Lord! It would be better for us to die with our brother than to live in the world for seven years. If only my brother had seen your angelic face, he would have died with you. Now why am I alone? Where is the essence of your words, even the verb to me, my beloved brother? Now your quiet punishment will no longer be heard. Yes, if you had received the boldness from God to pray for me, and if you had received the same passion. It would be better if we died with you than in the world of seven charming lives.”

While he was praying like this, the killers sent by Svyatopolk arrived. With their weapons drawn, they captured the barge on which Gleb and his squad were located. The attack was probably so swift that Gleb’s detachment was completely demoralized and did not offer any resistance. As the chronicle reports: “The youth of Glebovnia are sad.”

One of the sent killers named Goryaser ordered to kill Gleb. And Gleb was killed, but for some reason not by the people who arrived, but by his own cook named Torchin. The chronicle does not say what happened to the small squad, but Gleb’s body was thrown on the river bank between two logs. Somewhat later, his body was nevertheless taken away, and during the reign of Yaroslav it was placed in the church next to his brother.

Conclusion: It is significant that the first Russian saints were princes Boris and Gleb. Their glory consisted in voluntarily renouncing power and sacrificing themselves. All Russian princes were henceforth called upon to follow this mode of behavior of a Christian prince, whose religious duty was to sacrifice himself for the salvation of his people.

2.3 Comparative analysis of the life and work of Boris, Gleb and Nicholas II.

Canonization is the honoring by the church of a deceased ascetic of faith and piety as a saint. In the early church, the Old Testament patriarchs and forefathers, the Old Testament prophets, the New Testament apostles and martyrs were already initially recognized as saints, so there was no need for separate orders to canonize them. Soon the canonization of such people began who left a significant imprint on our history, but the main reason on which the church began the process of canonizing this or that ascetic was the gift of miracles manifested during life or death. But Boris, Gleb and Nikolai did not have such a gift. So why were they canonized?! Many historians have addressed this issue.

To find out this reason, we will conduct a comparative analysis of the life and activities of our rulers.

Relationship with father
(with Vladimir) Of his children, Prince Vladimir loved Boris and Gleb most of all. They, according to the chronicler Nestor, “shone like two bright stars” in the darkness with wonderful qualities, served as a true consolation and delight of his old age, and therefore Vladimir loved them preferentially over others. Some sources say that the prince considered them to be his legitimate sons by birth. After all, it was with their mother, the Greek princess Anna, that Vladimir was united in Christian marriage.	(with Alexander III) Nicholas II, he, being the heir, was in awe of his father. He admired his policies, how, with the help of police terror, he was able to calm the country and strengthen autocratic power. His father managed to instill in him selfless love for Rossi, a feeling responsible for her fate. Since childhood, the idea became close to him that his main purpose was to follow Russian principles, traditions and ideals. In addition, before his death, the monarch blesses the marriage of Nicholas II and the German princess Alice of Hesse.
Education
“Boris had a mind enlightened by the grace of God. He took up books and read the lives of the Saints and other spiritual books, and prayed earnestly.” . Gleb, despite the fact that he could not read yet, sat next to him and listened.	The upbringing and education of Nicholas II took place under the personal guidance of his father on a traditional religious basis. The educators of the future emperor and his younger brother George received the following instructions: “Neither I nor Maria Feodorovna want to make greenhouse flowers out of them. They should pray well to God, study, play, and be naughty in moderation. Teach well, don’t let them down, ask to the fullest extent of the law, and don’t encourage laziness in particular. If there is anything, then contact me directly, and I know what needs to be done. I repeat that I don’t need porcelain. I need normal Russian children."
The situation in the state during the reign
In 1015, the Rostov prince Boris, at the time of the death of his father, fought with the Pechenegs. Gleb, who received the Murom land from his father, unsuccessfully tried to draw the people into the fold of Christianity. In ancient Rus', the economy was originally cattle breeding or even horse breeding, since horses were required for military purposes. The country's trade developed poorly, agricultural products were not produced for sale - all this was a consequence of the poor development of agriculture. But the adoption of Christianity gave impetus to its further development, as agricultural products became necessary for the life of a Christian person.	Nikolai Alexandrovich accepts the imperial manifesto, which transformed Russia from an absolute monarchy into a semi-constitutional one, as a result of which the State Duma appears. The reign of Nicholas II was a period of the highest rates of economic growth in Russian history. For 1880-1910 The growth rate of Russian industrial output exceeded 9% per year. According to this indicator, Russia has taken first place in the world, ahead of even the rapidly developing United States of America. Russia has taken first place in the world in the production of the main agricultural crops, growing more than half of the world's rye, more than a quarter of wheat, oats and barley, and more than a third of potatoes. Russia has become the main exporter of agricultural products, the first “breadbasket of Europe”. Its share accounted for 2/5 of all world exports of peasant products. During the reign of Nicholas II, the best labor legislation for those times was created in Russia, providing for the regulation of working hours, the choice of worker elders, remuneration for industrial accidents, compulsory insurance of workers against illness, disability and old age. The Emperor actively promoted the development of Russian culture, art, science, and reforms of the army and navy. In addition, caring for the peaceful development of Russia, in The Hague he puts forward his proposal for disarmament and troop reduction.
The meaning of behavior in a given situation
Boris and Gleb chose the Christian path of non-resistance to evil, refusal to fight in the name of the highest state and religious ideals.	Nicholas II, he accepted the abdication without resistance, since he could not bear for long the double burden of the tsar and the commander-in-chief. The defeat of the army in the war, the impoverishment of the country, fatigue - all this led him to a state of depression. He could correct the situation in the country by giving power to the State Duma, which he did, but he was never able to abandon the idea of ​​autocracy, which provoked a brutal outcome of events.
When is the Day of the Great Martyrs celebrated?
The meaning of canonization
After Russia adopted Christianity, the state needed its Russian saints. Search for new spiritual values.	Canonization was supposed to contribute to the unification of the people of God in faith and piety. Return to previous spiritual values.

Conclusion: Having analyzed these rulers, one can notice that both the brothers and Nicholas II live in different, but similar eras in circumstances, that their activities are aimed at serving the Fatherland, at establishing prosperity in the state. Consequently, like Boris and Gleb, so also Nicholas II can also be canonized as holy passion-bearers.

3. Public interest in the canonization of Emperor Nicholas II.

The topic of canonization of Emperor Nicholas II and members of the royal family was widely discussed in the 90s in a number of publications in the church and secular press. This is the time when in our state, after the collapse of the USSR, there is an active search for a spiritual niche, a search for new social values. Considering that several generations of citizens grew up on atheism, we considered it necessary to present in this chapter the conditions for canonization, as well as the classification of the righteous in the Russian Orthodox Church.

The main conditions for the glorification of saints at all times could be:

1. The Church’s faith in the holiness of the glorified ascetics as people who pleased God and served the coming of the Son of God to earth.

2. Martyrdom for Christ or torture for the faith of Christ.

3. Miracles performed by a saint through his prayers, or from his honest remains - relics.

4. High church primate and hierarchal service.

5. Great services to the Church.

6. A virtuous, righteous life, not always evidenced by miracles.

7 . Great veneration by the people, sometimes even during his lifetime.

The highlighted conditions under No. 5 and No. 6 can be attributed to the activities of the emperor, therefore the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church unanimously decided to canonize Nicholas II.

Considering that the Church divides the entire host of righteous people into the so-called ranks of holiness: princes, saints, saints, holy fools, holy laymen and wives, we, of course, will be interested in the host of holy princes. It is divided into several groups: a) equal-to-the-apostles, the essence of whose feat is the spread of Christianity; b) prince-monks who took monastic vows; and c) passion-bearing princes who became victims of political murders, died on the battlefield or suffered martyrdom defending the Christian faith. The last Russian Emperor Nicholas II was glorified as a passion-bearer by the Council of Bishops on August 13-16, 2000.

The reaction of Russian society to the decision of the Council turned out to be very ambiguous.

A public opinion poll (in 56 settlements of 29 regions, territories and republics of Russia, interviews at the place of residence on September 2-3, 2000 of 1,500 respondents) showed the following results:

To the question: DO YOU KNOW THAT THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH CANONIZED (CANONIZED) THE LAST RUSSIAN EMPEROR NICHOLAS II? The following diagram was compiled from the respondents' answers.

HOW DID YOU PERSONALLY TAKE THE DECISION TO CANONIZE NICHOLAS II?

We asked the same questions to students of 9th, 10th, 11th grades and teachers of secondary school No. 33, with in-depth study of the English language (144 students and 27 teachers)

As can be seen from the graphs, interest in the personality of Nicholas II among schoolchildren in 2008 was significantly higher than among survey participants in 2000. This can be explained by the fact that in the modern school curriculum on history the personality of a historical figure is given more attention.

Conclusion: The canonization of Nicholas II contributed to raising his prestige in the eyes of society and a deeper understanding of the activities of the emperor during his reign. The initiative of the Church has shown that islands of spirituality are being revived, which will give our Fatherland great glory. The practical task of our work was to prove that our state has a heavenly protector. This is especially important in the current tense internal and external situation in Russia.

Conclusion.

Having carried out a serious historical analysis of the personality of Nicholas II, we found out that he, like any person, had both positive and negative traits. Despite all this, he put the cause of the Russian state above individuals, and if an activist could not cope with the matter, he removed him, regardless of previous merits. Forgetting about politics, about all the shortcomings and mistakes of the emperor, all the accidents and tragedies, you can see in him an ordinary person, a citizen, a caring father and a family man. However, such a tragic ending to the Romanov dynasty remained a red spot in the history of our fatherland. Moreover, this event also affected representatives of foreign countries, who proved their concern in every possible way. The remains (44 fragments of bones, 7 fragments of teeth, 3 bullets from a short-barreled weapon and 1 fragment of clothing fabric), found near Yekaterinburg on the old Koptyakovskaya road in the summer of 2007, really belong to the Romanov family, whose life was cut short tragically. Irrefutable proof was provided by the main US genetic laboratory. The criminal case for the murder of the Romanov family will be closed in January 2009.

Understanding that the work should not be of purely theoretical interest, we consider the conclusion formulated at the end of the work to be quite reasonable.

List of used literature

1. V.V. Alekseev “Historical calendar” 1996

2. Witte S.Yu. Memoirs, vol. 1. M., 1960, pp. 464-510.

3. Gurko V.I. Publishing house, VECHE. Series. Royal house. 2008 Pages 352

4. Ioffe, G.Z. The Great October Revolution and the epilogue of tsarism. Publisher: M.: Nauka 1987. Binding: hard; 365 pages.

5. A. Kulyugin “Encyclopedia of Russian Tsars” 2002

6. O.M. Rapov “History of Russia in Persons” V-XX centuries. 1999

Passion-Bearers is the name given to martyrs in the Orthodox Church. As a rule, passion-bearers are Christians who suffered for Christ's sake because of the slander and hatred of their neighbors and at the same time met death by forgiving their own persecutors and murderers.

List of victims:

Seven family members Nikolai Alexandrovich, 50 years Alexandra Fedorovna, 46 years old Olga , 22 Tatiana , 21 years old Maria, 19 years Anastasia , 17 years Alexei , 13 years

And Evgeny Botkin, life physician Ivan Kharitonov, cook Alexey Troupe, valet Anna Demidova, housemaid

Almost immediately after the announcement of the execution of the Tsar and his family, sentiments began to arise in the religious layers of Russian society, which ultimately led to canonization.

Three days after the execution, on July 8 (21), 1918, during a service in the Kazan Cathedral in Moscow, Patriarch Tikhon delivered a sermon in which he outlined the “essence of the spiritual feat” of the tsar and the attitude of the church to the issue of execution: “The other day a terrible thing happened: the former Sovereign Nikolai Alexandrovich was shot... We must, obeying the teachings of the word of God, condemn this thing, otherwise the blood of the shot will fall on us, and not just on those who committed it. We know that he, having abdicated the throne, did so with the good of Russia in mind and out of love for her. After his abdication, he could have found security and a relatively quiet life abroad, but he did not do this, wanting to suffer with Russia. He did nothing to improve his situation and resignedly resigned himself to fate.”. In addition, Patriarch Tikhon blessed the archpastors and pastors to perform memorial services for the Romanovs.

According to the Russian Orthodox Church, the reverent respect for the anointed saint characteristic of the people, the tragic circumstances of his death at the hands of enemies and the pity that the death of innocent children evoked - all these became components from which the attitude towards the royal family gradually grew not as victims of political struggle , but as Christian martyrs. As Metropolitan Yuvenaly (Poyarkov) of Krutitsky and Kolomna noted, “the veneration of the Royal Family, begun by Tikhon, continued - despite the prevailing ideology - throughout several decades of the Soviet period of our history. Clergy and laity offered prayers to God for the repose of the murdered sufferers, members of the Royal Family. In the houses in the red corner one could see photographs of the Royal Family." There are no statistics on how widespread this veneration was.

In the emigrant circle, these sentiments were even more obvious. For example, reports appeared in the emigrant press about miracles performed by the royal martyrs (1947, see below: Announced miracles of the royal martyrs). Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, in his 1991 interview characterizing the situation among Russian emigrants, pointed out that “many abroad consider them saints. Those who belong to the patriarchal church or other churches perform funeral services in their memory, and even prayer services. And in private they consider themselves free to pray to them,” which, in his opinion, is already local veneration.

In 1981, the royal family was glorified by the decision of the Council of Bishops of the Russian Church Abroad. This event increased attention to the issue of the holiness of the last Russian Tsar in the USSR, so underground literature was sent there and foreign broadcasting was carried out.

July 16, 1989. In the evening, people began to gather in the vacant lot where Ipatiev’s house once stood. For the first time, public prayers to the Royal Martyrs were openly heard. On August 18, 1990, the first wooden cross was installed on the site of the Ipatiev House, near which believers began to pray once or twice a week and read akathists.

In the 1980s, voices began to be heard in Russia about the official canonization of at least executed children, whose innocence does not raise any doubts. Mention is made of icons painted without a church blessing, in which only they were depicted, without their parents. In 1992, the Empress's sister, Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna, another victim of the Bolsheviks, was canonized. However, there were many opponents of canonization.

Arguments against canonization

Canonization of the royal family

Russian Orthodox Church Abroad

The results of the Commission’s work were reported to the Holy Synod at a meeting on October 10, 1996. A report was published in which the position of the Russian Orthodox Church on this issue was announced. Based on this positive report, further steps became possible.

Main points of the report:

Based on the arguments taken into account by the Russian Orthodox Church (see below), as well as thanks to petitions and miracles, the Commission voiced the following conclusion:

“Behind the many sufferings endured by the Royal Family over the last 17 months of their lives, which ended with execution in the basement of the Ekaterinburg Ipatiev House on the night of July 17, 1918, we see people who sincerely sought to embody the commandments of the Gospel in their lives. In the suffering endured by the Royal Family in captivity with meekness, patience and humility, in their martyrdom, the evil-conquering light of Christ's faith was revealed, just as it shone in the life and death of millions of Orthodox Christians who suffered persecution for Christ in the 20th century.

It is in understanding this feat of the Royal Family that the Commission, in complete unanimity and with the approval of the Holy Synod, finds it possible to glorify in the Council the new martyrs and confessors of Russia in the guise of the passion-bearers Emperor Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra, Tsarevich Alexy, Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia.”

From the “Act of the Conciliar Glorification of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian 20th Century”:

“To glorify the Royal Family as passion-bearers in the host of new martyrs and confessors of Russia: Emperor Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra, Tsarevich Alexy, Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia. In the last Orthodox Russian monarch and members of his Family, we see people who sincerely sought to embody the commandments of the Gospel in their lives. In the suffering endured by the Royal Family in captivity with meekness, patience and humility, in their martyrdom in Yekaterinburg on the night of July 4 (17), 1918, the evil-conquering light of Christ's faith was revealed, just as it shone in life and death millions of Orthodox Christians who suffered persecution for Christ in the 20th century... Report the names of the newly glorified saints to the Primates of the fraternal Local Orthodox Churches for their inclusion in the calendar.”

Arguments for canonization, taken into account by the Russian Orthodox Church

• Circumstances of death- physical, moral suffering and death at the hands of political opponents.
• Widespread popular veneration the royal passion-bearers served as one of the main reasons for their glorification as saints.
• « Testimonies of miracles and grace-filled help through prayers to the Royal Martyrs. They are talking about healings, uniting separated families, protecting church property from schismatics. There is especially abundant evidence of the streaming of myrrh from icons with images of Emperor Nicholas II and the Royal Martyrs, of the fragrance and the miraculous appearance of blood-colored stains on the icon faces of the Royal Martyrs.”
• Personal piety of the Sovereign: the Emperor paid great attention to the needs of the Orthodox Church, donated generously for the construction of new churches, including outside Russia. Their deep religiosity distinguished the Imperial couple from the representatives of the then aristocracy. All its members lived in accordance with the traditions of Orthodox piety. During the years of his reign, more saints were canonized than in the previous two centuries (in particular, Theodosius of Chernigov, Seraphim of Sarov, Anna Kashinskaya, Joasaph of Belgorod, Hermogenes of Moscow, Pitirim of Tambov, John of Tobolsk).
• “The Emperor’s church policy did not go beyond the traditional synodal system of governing the Church. However, it was during the reign of Emperor Nicholas II that the church hierarchy, which had until then been officially silent for two centuries on the issue of convening a Council, had the opportunity not only to widely discuss, but also to practically prepare for the convening of a Local Council.”
• Activities of the Empress and Grand Duchesses as sisters of mercy during the war.
• “Emperor Nikolai Alexandrovich often likened his life to the trials of the sufferer Job, on whose church memorial day he was born. Having accepted his cross in the same way as the biblical righteous man, he endured all the trials sent down to him firmly, meekly and without a shadow of a murmur. It is this long-suffering that is revealed with particular clarity in the last days of the Emperor’s life. From the moment of abdication, it is not so much external events as the internal spiritual state of the Sovereign that attracts our attention.” Most witnesses to the last period of the life of the Royal Martyrs speak of the prisoners of the Tobolsk Governor's House and the Yekaterinburg Ipatiev House as people who suffered and, despite all the mockery and insults, led a pious life. “Their true greatness stemmed not from their royal dignity, but from the amazing moral height to which they gradually rose.”

Refuting the arguments of opponents of canonization

• The blame for the Events of January 9, 1905 cannot be placed on the emperor. The petition about workers' needs, with which the workers went to the tsar, had the character of a revolutionary ultimatum, which excluded the possibility of its acceptance or discussion. The decision to prevent workers from entering the Winter Palace square was made not by the emperor, but by the government headed by the Minister of Internal Affairs P. D. Svyatopolk-Mirsky. Minister Svyatopolk-Mirsky did not provide the emperor with sufficient information about the events taking place, and his messages were of a reassuring nature. The order for the troops to open fire was also given not by the emperor, but by the commander of the St. Petersburg Military District, Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich. Thus, “historical data does not allow us to detect in the actions of the Sovereign in the January days of 1905 a conscious evil will turned against the people and embodied in specific sinful decisions and actions.” Nevertheless, Emperor Nicholas II did not see reprehensible actions in the actions of the commander in shooting demonstrations: he was neither convicted nor removed from office. But he saw guilt in the actions of Minister Svyatopolk-Mirsky and mayor I. A. Fullon, who were dismissed immediately after the January events.
• Nicholas’ guilt as an unsuccessful statesman should not be considered: “we must evaluate not this or that form of government, but the place that a specific person occupies in the state mechanism. The extent to which a person was able to embody Christian ideals in his activities is subject to assessment. It should be noted that Nicholas II treated the duties of a monarch as his sacred duty.”
• Abdication of the tsar's rank is not a crime against the church: “The desire, characteristic of some opponents of the canonization of Emperor Nicholas II, to present his abdication of the Throne as a church-canonical crime, similar to the refusal of a representative of the church hierarchy from the priesthood, cannot be recognized as having any serious grounds . The canonical status of the Orthodox sovereign anointed to the Kingdom was not defined in the church canons. Therefore, attempts to discover the elements of a certain church-canonical crime in the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II from power seem untenable.” On the contrary, “The spiritual motives for which the last Russian Sovereign, who did not want to shed the blood of his subjects, decided to abdicate the Throne in the name of internal peace in Russia, gives his action a truly moral character.”
• “there is no reason to see in the relations of the Royal Family with Rasputin signs of spiritual delusion, and even more so of insufficient church involvement.”

Aspects of canonization

Question about the face of holiness

In Orthodoxy, there is a very developed and carefully worked out hierarchy of faces of holiness - categories into which it is customary to divide saints depending on their works during life. The question of which saints the royal family should be ranked among causes a lot of controversy among various movements of the Orthodox Church, which have different assessments of the life and death of the family.

Canonization of servants

Along with the Romanovs, four of their servants, who followed their masters into exile, were also shot. The Russian Orthodox Church canonized them together with the royal family. And the Russian Orthodox Church points out a formal error committed by the Church Abroad during canonization against custom: “It should be noted that the decision, which has no historical analogies in the Orthodox Church, to include among the canonized, who accepted martyrdom together with the Royal Family, the royal servant of the Roman Catholic Aloysius Egorovich Troupe and the Lutheran goblettress Ekaterina Adolfovna Schneider” .

As a basis for such canonization, Archbishop Anthony of Los Angeles (Sinkevich) argued “that these people, being devoted to the king, were baptized with their martyr’s blood, and they are thus worthy of being canonized along with the Family.”

The position of the Russian Orthodox Church itself regarding the canonization of servants is as follows: “Due to the fact that they voluntarily remained with the Royal Family and accepted martyrdom, it would be legitimate to raise the question of their canonization.”. In addition to the four shot in the basement, the Commission mentions that this list should have included those “killed” in various places and in different months of 1918: Adjutant General I. L. Tatishchev, Marshal Prince V. A. Dolgorukov, “uncle” of the Heir K. G. Nagorny, children's footman I. D. Sednev, maid of honor of the Empress A. V. Gendrikova and goflektress E. A. Schneider. However, the Commission concluded that it “does not seem possible to make a final decision on the existence of grounds for the canonization of this group of laity, who accompanied the Royal Family as part of their court service,” since there is no information about the wide-ranging prayerful commemoration of these servants by believers; moreover, , there is no information about their religious life and personal piety. The final conclusion was: “The commission came to the conclusion that the most appropriate form of honoring the Christian feat of the faithful servants of the Royal Family, who shared its tragic fate, today can be the perpetuation of this feat in the lives of the Royal Martyrs.” .

In addition, there is another problem. While the royal family is canonized as passion-bearers, it is not possible to include the servants who suffered in the same rank, since, as Archpriest Georgiy Mitrofanov, a member of the Synodal Commission, stated, “the rank of passion-bearers has been applied since ancient times only to representatives of grand-ducal and royal families.” .

Reaction to canonization

The canonization of the royal family eliminated one of the contradictions between the Russian and Russian Churches Abroad (which canonized them 20 years earlier), noted in 2000 the chairman of the department of external church relations, Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad. The same point of view was expressed by Prince Nikolai Romanovich Romanov (chairman of the Association of the House of Romanov), who, however, refused to participate in the act of canonization in Moscow, citing that he was present at the canonization ceremony, which was held in 1981 in New York by the ROCOR.

I have no doubt about the holiness of the last tsar, Nicholas II. Critically assessing his activities as an emperor, I, being the father of two children (and he was the father of five!), cannot imagine how he could maintain such a firm and at the same time gentle state of mind in prison, when it became clear that they would all die. His behavior at this moment, this side of his personality evokes my deepest respect.

We glorified the royal family precisely as passion-bearers: the basis for this canonization was the innocent death accepted by Nicholas II with Christian humility, and not political activity, which was quite controversial. By the way, this cautious decision did not suit many, because some did not want this canonization at all, while others demanded the canonization of the sovereign as a great martyr, “ritually martyred by the Jews.”

Modern veneration of the royal family by believers

Churches

Figures of the Romanov saints are also found in the multi-figure icons “Cathedral of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia” and “Cathedral of the Patron Saints of Hunters and Fishermen”.

Relics

Patriarch Alexy, on the eve of the sessions of the Council of Bishops in 2000, which performed an act of glorification of the royal family, spoke about the remains found near Yekaterinburg: “We have doubts about the authenticity of the remains, and we cannot encourage believers to venerate false relics if they are recognized as such in the future.” Metropolitan Yuvenaly (Poyarkov), referring to the judgment of the Holy Synod of February 26, 1998 (“Assessment of the reliability of scientific and investigative conclusions, as well as evidence of their inviolability or irrefutability, is not within the competence of the Church. Scientific and historical responsibility for those adopted during the investigation "and studying the conclusions regarding the "Ekaterinburg remains" falls entirely on the Republican Center for Forensic Medical Research and the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation. The decision of the State Commission to identify the remains found near Yekaterinburg as belonging to the Family of Emperor Nicholas II caused serious doubts and even confrontations in the Church and society." ), reported to the Council of Bishops in August 2000: “The “Ekaterinburg remains” buried on July 17, 1998 in St. Petersburg cannot today be recognized by us as belonging to the Royal Family.”

In view of this position of the Moscow Patriarchate, which has not undergone any changes since then, the remains identified by the government commission as belonging to members of the royal family and buried in July 1998 in the Peter and Paul Cathedral are not venerated by the church as holy relics.

Relics with a clearer origin are revered as relics, for example, the hair of Nicholas II, cut at the age of three.

Announced miracles of the royal martyrs

• The miraculous deliverance of hundreds of Cossacks. A story about this event appeared in 1947 in the Russian emigrant press. The story set out in it dates back to the time of the Civil War, when a detachment of White Cossacks, surrounded and driven by the Reds into impenetrable swamps, called for help to the not yet officially glorified Tsarevich Alexei, since, according to the regimental priest, Fr. Elijah, in trouble, one should have prayed to the prince, as to the ataman of the Cossack troops. To the soldiers’ objection that the royal family had not been officially glorified, the priest allegedly replied that the glorification was taking place by the will of “God’s people,” and swore to the others that their prayer would not remain unanswered, and indeed, the Cossacks managed to get out through the swamps that were considered impassable. The numbers of those saved by the intercession of the prince are called - “ 43 women, 14 children, 7 wounded, 11 old people and disabled people, 1 priest, 22 Cossacks, a total of 98 people and 31 horses».
• The miracle of dry branches. One of the latest miracles recognized by the official church authorities occurred on January 7, 2007 in the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savvino-Storozhevsky Monastery in Zvenigorod, which was once a place of pilgrimage for the last tsar and his family. Boys from the monastery orphanage, who came to the temple to rehearse the traditional Christmas performance, allegedly noticed that the long-withered branches lying under the glass of the icons of the royal martyrs had sprouted seven shoots (according to the number of faces depicted on the icon) and produced green flowers with a diameter of 1-2 cm resembling roses, and the flowers and the mother branch belonged to different plant species. According to publications referring to this event, the service during which the branches were placed on the icon was held on Pokrov, that is, three months earlier. The miraculously grown flowers, four in number, were placed in an icon case, where by the time of Easter “they had not changed at all,” but by the beginning of Holy Week of Great Lent, green shoots up to 3 cm long suddenly erupted. Another flower broke off and was planted in the ground , where it turned into a small plant. What happened to the other two is unknown. With the blessing of Fr. Savva, the icon was transferred to the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, to the Savvin chapel, where it apparently remains to this day.
• The descent of the miraculous fire. Allegedly, this miracle occurred in the Cathedral of the Holy Iveron Monastery in Odessa, when during a service on February 15, 2000, a tongue of snow-white flame appeared on the throne of the temple. According to the testimony of Hieromonk Peter (Golubenkov):

When I finished giving communion to people and entered the altar with the Holy Gifts, after the words: “Save, Lord, Thy people and bless Thy inheritance,” a flash of fire appeared on the throne (on the paten). At first I didn’t understand what it was, but then, when I saw this fire, it was impossible to describe the joy that gripped my heart. At first I thought it was a piece of coal from a censer. But this small petal of fire was the size of a poplar leaf and all white. Then I compared the white color of the snow - and it’s impossible to even compare - the snow seems grayish. I thought that this demonic temptation happens. And when he took the cup with the Holy Gifts to the altar, there was no one near the altar, and many parishioners saw how the petals of the Holy Fire scattered over the antimension, then gathered together and entered the altar lamp. Evidence of that miracle of the descent of the Holy Fire continued throughout the day...

Skeptical perception of miracles

Osipov also notes the following aspects of canonical norms regarding miracles:

• For church recognition of a miracle, the testimony of the ruling bishop is necessary. Only after it can we talk about the nature of this phenomenon - whether it is a divine miracle or a phenomenon of another order. For most of the described miracles associated with the royal martyrs, such evidence is absent.
• Declaring someone a saint without the blessing of the ruling bishop and a council decision is a non-canonical act and therefore all references to the miracles of royal martyrs before their canonization should be viewed with skepticism.
• The icon is an image of an ascetic canonized by the church, therefore miracles from those painted before the official canonization of the icons are doubtful.

“The rite of repentance for the sins of the Russian people” and more

Since the late 1990s, annually, on the days dedicated to the anniversaries of the birth of the “Tsar-Martyr Nicholas” by some representatives of the clergy (in particular, Archimandrite Peter (Kucher)), in Taininsky (Moscow region), at the monument to Nicholas II by the sculptor Vyacheslav Klykov, a special “Rite of repentance for the sins of the Russian people” is performed; the holding of the event was condemned by the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church (Patriarch Alexy II in 2007).

Among some Orthodox Christians, the concept of the “Tsar-Redeemer” is in circulation, according to which Nicholas II is revered as “the redeemer of the sin of infidelity of his people”; critics call this concept the “royal redemptive heresy.”

In 1993, “repentance for the sin of regicide on behalf of the entire Church” was brought by Patriarch Alexy II, who wrote: “We call to repentance all our people, all their children, regardless of their political views and views on history, regardless of their ethnic origin, religious affiliation, regardless of their attitude to the idea of ​​​​the monarchy and to the personality of the last Russian Emperor.”. In the 21st century, with the blessing of Metropolitan Vladimir of St. Petersburg and Ladoga, a penitential procession of the cross from St. Petersburg to Yekaterinburg to the place of the death of the family of Nicholas II began to be held annually. It symbolizes repentance for the sin of the Russian people’s deviation from the conciliar oath of 1613 to allegiance to the royal family of the Romanovs.

see also

• Canonized by ROCOR Martyrs of the Alapaevsk Mine(Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, nun Varvara, Grand Dukes Sergei Mikhailovich, Igor Konstantinovich, John Konstantinovich, Konstantin Konstantinovich (junior), Prince Vladimir Paley).
• Tsarevich Dmitry, who died in 1591, canonized in 1606 - before the glorification of the Romanovs, he was chronologically the last representative of the ruling dynasty to be canonized.
• Solomonia Saburova(Reverend Sophia of Suzdal) - the first wife of Vasily III, chronologically the penultimate of those canonized.

Notes

Sources

1. Tsar-Martyr
2. Emperor Nicholas II and his family are canonized
3. Osipov A. I. On canonization of the last Russian tsar
4. Shargunov A. Miracles of the Royal Martyrs. M. 1995. P. 49