Alexis Stavrovsky

Saint Alexis Stavrovsky (1834-1918), hieromartyr, was an archpriest in Saint Petersburg, rector of the Admiralty church of Saint Spyridon and dean of the naval churches, killed at Kronstadt in the autumn of 1918, according to tradition after giving his life in place of a young priest. He was numbered among the New Martyrs by the Holy Synod on 26 December 2001. He is commemorated on 1 October.

Life

He was born on 2 (14) March 1834 in the village of Sizhno, Gdov district, Saint Petersburg province, in the family of a priest of an old clerical line. He graduated from the Alexander Nevsky church school, and in 1857 from the Saint Petersburg seminary as first of his class, being sent at state expense to the Theological Academy. He graduated in 1861 as candidate of theology and was appointed teacher at the Alexander Nevsky school. In 1862 he married Anna Nikolaevna Norovskaya, daughter of the rector of the church of Saints Peter and Paul. They had children: Vladimir, Zinaida, Maria and Alexei. On 14 September 1862 he was ordained priest by Archbishop Eusebius for the church of the clinical military hospital in Saint Petersburg. In 1875 he was raised to archpriest. From 1892 he was dean of the army churches of Saint Petersburg and Novgorod, and from 19 August 1896 rector of the church of Saint Spyridon at the Admiralty and dean of the naval churches of Saint Petersburg. In September 1918, after Archpriest George Shavelsky left for the south of Russia, Patriarch Tikhon appointed him acting protopresbyter of the military and naval clergy. He taught religion in several schools and received many church and lay distinctions, among them the Order of Alexander Nevsky. He wrote the history of the church in which he served, a work on the rights and salaries of the military and naval clergy, and edited a complete collection of prayers.

Martyrdom

In August 1918 he was arrested by revolutionary sailors. With a group of arrested men he was first held in a prison in Petrograd, then moved to Kronstadt. In prison he kept his strength of spirit, comforted his fellow prisoners and even gave them in some way the Holy Mysteries. After the murder of the head of the Petrograd Cheka, Uritsky, he was shot with other hostages on a barge, later sunk off the Tolbukhin lighthouse, beyond Kronstadt.

According to Mikhail Polsky's account, shortly after the prisoners were moved to Kronstadt they were taken out of prison and lined up, and told that, in reprisal for the murder of Uritsky, every tenth would be shot, and the others released. Archpriest Alexis was ninth and freedom smiled on him. The tenth was a young priest. Father Alexis said to him, in substance, that he was old and had little time to live, that he had received from life all that could be had, that his wife was old and his children on their feet, so let the young man go with God, and he would stand in his place. And, saying this, he stood in the young priest's place and was shot. The date of his death is not known exactly, probably the end of September or October 1918.