John Konstantinovich

Holy New Martyr John Konstantinovich, Prince of Russia, was born on 5 July 1886 at Pavlovsk and received the crown of martyrdom on 18 July 1918, near Alapayevsk in the Urals. He was the eldest son of Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich and Elisabeth Mavrikievna, born Princess of Saxe-⁠Altenburg. Contemporaries described him as a gentle, religious man, and his relatives lovingly called him "Ioannchik."

Childhood and family

Nine days after his birth, a decree of his cousin Emperor Alexander III limited the title of Grand Duke to the sons and male-⁠line grandsons of the tsar. So John, born a Grand Duke, received the title of Prince of the Imperial Blood, with the style of Highness. He grew up in the Marble Palace, in a family where his father, a poet and translator, brought up his children strictly and in the Orthodox faith: with evening prayer before the icons, the troparia of the great feasts learned by heart, and the Russian language before any other. As a child he was very sensitive.

For a time he considered becoming a monk, but he fell in love with Princess Helen of Serbia, eldest child of King Peter I of Serbia. They married on 2 September 1911, and she took the name Yelena Petrovna. They had a son, Vsevolod (1914-1973), and a daughter, Yekaterina (1915-2007), the last member of the imperial family born before the fall of the dynasty.

War and faith

John fought in the First World War as a cavalry officer in the Imperial Guard and was decorated for bravery, receiving the Sword of Saint George for courage shown in the battles of August 1915. He was at the front when the revolution of 1917 began. Devout from childhood, in his later years he directed a church choir, and early in 1918 he was ordained a subdeacon by Metropolitan Veniamin of Petrograd, whom he served in the churches of the city.

Martyrdom

In April 1918 the Bolshevik authorities exiled him to the Urals. In July of that year, on 18 July, he was killed in a mineshaft near Alapayevsk, together with his brothers, Princes Konstantin and Igor, his cousin Vladimir Paley, Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich and Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodorovna, and other relatives and companions. His body was eventually buried in Beijing, in the cemetery of the Russian Orthodox Mission, which was destroyed in 1986 to make a park.

His mother, sister and wife left Russia in April 1919 with the help of the King of Norway. The Church honors him, with the other martyrs of Alapayevsk, as one of the new martyrs of the twentieth century.