Euthymius Tikhonravov

Holy Hieromartyr Euthymius Tikhonravov, a priest, was born on 17 April 1881 in the town of Shuya in the Vladimir province, and received martyrdom by shooting on 4 February 1938, at Ivanovo. The Russian Church honours him among the New Martyrs and Confessors of the twentieth century.

Priesthood

According to some accounts, his father, Sergei Tikhonravov, was a priest. Euthymius Sergeevich finished the parish school. He married Tatiana Alexandrovna Speranskaya, daughter of the psalm-⁠reader of the Transfiguration church in the village of Doronino, and in 1904 moved to that village, where he served as sacristan of the Transfiguration church and, like many church servers of that time, earned his living by peasant labour.

They had three children. In 1917 atheist power was established in Russia, which at once began the persecution of the Russian Church. The local authorities in Doronino were harshly hostile to the Church and threatened the priest serving there that all his property would be confiscated if he did not cease to serve. He had a large family, and for the children's sake the priest left the church.

The bishop sent another priest, but he too served only briefly, because the authorities began to threaten him as well. The parish was again left without a priest, and Euthymius, sorrowing with the believers left without a shepherd, asked the bishop to ordain him priest. He was weak in health from birth, and some relatives dissuaded him: Such a time, everyone refuses, hides, and you want to be ordained? But he was resolute, and in 1933 he was ordained for the Transfiguration church at Doronino.

Many inhabitants of the village, extremely hostile to the Church, demanded its closing. When Father Euthymius walked along the street, curses and laughter often followed him. In 1935 he could not pay the taxes set by the authorities, his property was confiscated, and the church was closed. After the closing, the godless began to ravage it, carrying out the icons and destroying them. One of them, carrying out icons, threw them to the ground and trampled them with the fury of a possessed man; later his hands and feet froze and he lost the ability to move, and his son, born soon after the blasphemy, had crippled hands and feet from birth. The local authorities made in the church first a grain store, then a stable, then a fertilizer warehouse, almost destroying the building.

Arrest

After the church was closed, Father Euthymius lived for some time in the village, celebrating services at the request of believers. Life grew ever harder for him and he moved to Ivanovo, where he took a job as watchman at a medical institution, but there too he celebrated services at the request of believers. He lived in the so-⁠called workers' settlement, in a wretched corner, only to sleep.

Rooms were rented to anyone who asked, and complete strangers slept on the floor in one room. After some time it was learned that Father Euthymius was a priest and, at the height of the fiercest persecution of the Church, it was reported that a priest lived illegally in a house. On 1 January 1938 he was arrested and put in prison at Ivanovo. After a few days he was interrogated.

The investigator told him that he was arrested as a participant in an illegal counter-⁠revolutionary group of retired clergy that had conducted anti-⁠Soviet agitation. He answered that he did not admit guilt, because he had conducted no anti-⁠Soviet agitation and had belonged to no underground organization. Then false witnesses were questioned, first of all the landlady of the lodging. She said that Tikhonravov, throughout 1937, in her presence had made counter-⁠revolutionary sallies against Soviet power, saying that life had become impossible, that ministers were taxed beyond what they could pay, to destroy religion, and that he spread provocative rumours about the exploitation of prisoners.

Another false witness said that in November 1937, in a conversation about the elections to the Supreme Soviet, he had said that these elections were the same as before and that the canals they boasted of had been built by the hands of prisoners, work no better than Egyptian slavery.

Martyrdom

On 3 February 1938 the NKVD troika sentenced him to death. The day after the sentence, the investigator interrogated him again, and he answered that he did not admit guilt and considered the information of the investigation false. On the same day, 4 February 1938, the priest Euthymius Tikhonravov was shot at Ivanovo and buried in an unknown common grave.

He is commemorated on 4 February, on 7 February in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church (new style), and on 20 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Ivanovo Metropolis.