Daria Timagina

Holy Martyr Daria Timagina was a peasant woman of the Nizhny Novgorod province. At fifteen, despite the opposition of her parents, who wished to marry her off by force and from whom she fled twice, she became the cell-⁠attendant of the paralysed ascetic Evdokia Sheikova. For twenty years she bore the labour of prayer and obedience. On 18 August 1919, when Evdokia was condemned to death by shooting on a false charge, Daria chose death of her own will together with her teacher and two other cell-⁠attendants. She was shot and buried in a common grave. Her relics rest in the Dormition church in the village of Suvorovo. She is commemorated on 7 February, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 5 June, at the finding of the relics, on 27 June, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Diveyevo, on 18 August and on 12 September, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Nizhny Novgorod.

Daria was born at the end of the 1870s. When she turned fifteen, she began to go to the martyr Evdokia Sheikova, who lived in the village of Puza, in the Ardatov district of the Nizhny Novgorod province, today the village of Suvorovo in the Diveyevo district, and who had become known for her ascetic life and wonders. A monk of the Sarov Hermitage blessed Daria to go as Evdokia's cell-⁠attendant, but her unbelieving parents were against it. They betrothed her, but she fled to Evdokia. Her parents beat her and led her home and betrothed her a second time, but she went again to the ascetic. Daria Timagina lived with Evdokia for twenty years, years of unceasing labour of prayer and fasting, under the guidance of the ascetic.

On 18 August 1919 Evdokia was condemned to death by shooting by the commanders of a punitive detachment, after a denunciation that she harboured a deserter and agitated against the Red Army. The martyr Daria, together with the other novices, the martyrs Daria Ulybina and Maria, resolved of her own will to share the fate of her teacher. Two hours before their death the priest of the Dormition church in Puza, Father Vasily Radugin, communed them. The novices accompanied Evdokia to the place of execution, shielding her with their own bodies from the blows of the whip, and were shot with her, on 18 August, at the village cemetery, and buried in a common grave, honoured by the local people through all the years of Soviet power. The martyr Daria Timagina was glorified by the Jubilee Council of Bishops of the year 2000. In 2001 the relics of the martyrs of Nizhny Novgorod were uncovered and now rest in the Dormition church in Suvorovo.