Elena of Moscow

Venerable Elena of Moscow (Elena or Agrippina Semyonovna Devochkina, died 18 November 1547 or in 1548) was the first abbess of the Novodevichy convent in Moscow, a schemanun. The Russian source calls her an "uncanonized saint": she is venerated in the Russian Orthodox Church as a venerable, the local veneration of the convent being known from the seventeenth century, and Patriarch Alexy II renewed her veneration on 10 August 1999. She is commemorated on the Sunday before 26 August (Old Style), in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow.

Life

She was of the Devochkin family, landowners in the districts of Galich, Nizhny Novgorod and Suzdal. Her parents, according to the entry in the convent's synodikon, were the monk Sergius and the nun Taisia. Her baptismal name may have been Agrippina (in the book of donations her commemoration is on 23 June, the day of the Holy Martyr Agrippina of Rome), but perhaps Agrippina was her name as a nun, and Elena the name taken in the schema. She was tonsured in the Protection convent at Suzdal.

In the spring of 1525, with eighteen nuns of the Protection convent, she moved, at the order of Grand Prince Basil III, to the Novodevichy convent in Moscow, founded by him in fulfilment of a vow. Because of the lack of the convent's early documents (burned in the fire of May 1571), it cannot be known how long she led the convent. Before her death, with the blessing of Metropolitan Macarius, she drew up a spiritual testament, which contains both brief biographical news about her and a kind of rule left to the convent. From the testament it is clear that toward the end she was sick with various infirmities, among them deafness and blindness, and did not lead the convent (the abbess at that time was Eunicea), but remained with authority among the sisters.

Her testament gives important data about the first years of the aristocratic Novodevichy convent, where women of noble families were tonsured; their relatives, visiting them, stayed long in the convent, living a worldly life, with servants and irregular meals. Elena opposed this and in her testament forbade laywomen to live in the convent, and forbade the nuns servants and food in the cells.

Repose

She reposed on 18 November 1547 and was buried at the north wall of the altar of the Smolensk cathedral of the convent; according to another source the grave was behind the altar. Beside her was later buried the nun Theophania, probably one of the eighteen sisters who came with her from Suzdal. At the end of the seventeenth century a chapel was raised over the graves, rebuilt in 1720 to 1722; in the first half of the nineteenth century a memorial plaque was placed in the wall. In the 1920s and 1930s the chapel was demolished, and the gravestone today shows only approximately the place of burial. A historian notes that the slab, by its ornament and script, was made in the first half of the seventeenth century.

Veneration

Local veneration in the convent is known from the seventeenth century: the book of donations of 1674 to 1675 and the synodikon of 1705 mention "the memory of the elder Elena Devochkina, the first in the convent of the Most Pure Mother of God". At the beginning of the eighteenth century she is mentioned in the "Praise of the Russian Saints" as "venerable Elena, abbess of Moscow, perfect teacher of the order of virginity, known guide to salvation", which shows veneration across Russia. On 10 August 1999, after the Liturgy in the Smolensk cathedral of the convent, Patriarch Alexy II renewed her veneration; a specially written troparion and kontakion were sung, and the convent's icon painters painted her icon. The icon painters' manual of the eighteenth century describes her "with an appearance like Eudocia, in monastic robes, with a green shift beneath".