Eleazar Spiridonov

Holy Hieromartyr Eleazar Spiridonov, a priest, was born in 1874 at Evpatoria in Crimea, in a family of Crimean Greeks, and died in the camp at Kolyma on 6 December 1937, at the age of sixty-⁠four. The Russian Church honours him among the New Martyrs and Confessors of the twentieth century.

Early life and priesthood

His father was a clerk at the town's salt works. From childhood he sang in the choir of the Greek church in Evpatoria. As a youth he received as a gift from the Greek community money collected by the faithful so that he could make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. His spiritual father was Jacob Chipurin, a well-⁠known priest of Evpatoria, who served at the Saint Nicholas cathedral which he had built at his own expense.

The same father married him to Xenia Ivanovna Yankova, who was herself later to suffer for Christ. In 1899 Eleazar was ordained priest, served in the Taurida province and taught at the parish school in Evpatoria. With the money saved in twelve years of service he bought fifteen desyatinas of land and raised two cows. But the revolution came and a redistribution of land and other property was announced, and the priest offered the local peasants to take the cows and the land from him.

Left without these goods, he moved into the city and began to serve at the church of the Holy Prophet Elias in Evpatoria, built with the money of the Greek community and of the shipowner P. E. Davydov. In 1920 there was a great famine and many of his relatives died.

His parishioners loved him for his good and gentle nature, for his meekness and lack of possessions. He was a firm teetotaller, did not drink wine and did not keep it in the house, setting an example to his flock. Though in straitened circumstances, he received all who were in need. Two nuns from the devastated Saints Cosmas and Damian Monastery lived in his family.

The Bolsheviks quartered two soldiers in his home, and he received them without murmuring and fed them at his own cost. At the end of the 1920s he became a close friend of the spiritual writer Alexander Vasilievich Popov, whose outlook and spirit matched his own; Popov was arrested at the end of 1934 or the beginning of 1935 and died in a camp near Moscow.

Persecution and arrest

After the revolution life changed quickly and terribly. It happened that during the service youths incited by the authorities broke the windows. The priest was constantly called in for interrogations. He was asked to cooperate with the authorities, threatened with reprisals if he did not renounce his rank, and told not to appear in the city in a cassock. Father Eleazar refused to inform on his parishioners and to take off his cassock: I am a priest and will go about in clothing befitting my rank.

The cassock was taken from him only after his arrest. After such summonses he would sit at the piano in silence and immerse himself in the Slavonic chants that he loved and performed masterfully. He understood that arrest could not be avoided, and his things for that case were already packed. He was arrested right after the looting of the church of Saint Elias. The pretext was a letter of the Greek community of this church to the Greek consul, sent with his blessing, speaking of the plundering of the church and the oppression of the community.

The other members of the community, as Greek subjects, were not dared to be arrested, but only gave a pledge not to leave the locality. Each parishioner was interrogated many times to get testimony against their priest, but the members of the community held firm, did not admit guilt and gave no testimony.

The sentence

The ground for the sentence was books taken from the church where he served. The priest was placed in the city prison in Simferopol. From the indictment: On examining the literature seized in the search of the Greek church in Evpatoria, elements of monarchist propaganda were found in it. In 1936 the Patriarch of Constantinople died and, of course, a memorial service was served at the church of Saint Elias, and on this basis Father Eleazar was accused of having served memorial services for foreign subjects and for enemies of the Soviet Union living abroad.

At the interrogations he behaved with dignity. Held almost a year in prison in pre-⁠trial detention, worn out by frequent and tormenting interrogations, he gave the authorities none of the testimony they wanted: I do not admit guilt in the charge brought against me, for I have never carried on agitation against Soviet power and have not preached fascist ideas. With Father Eleazar other members of the community were condemned, because they refused to testify against their priest.

In July 1937 Father Eleazar was sentenced to five years in a labour camp at Kolyma. He worked in the Kolyma mines less than five months and died on 6 December 1937, at the age of sixty-⁠four.

He is commemorated on 6 December, the day of his death, on 7 February in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church (new style), on 2 December in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of the Metropolis of Crimea and on 28 December in the Synaxis of the Saints of Crimea.