Maria Tseytlin

Holy Martyr Maria Tseytlin, called Marionilla in some sources, was a nun of Novodevichy Convent in Moscow and died in 1938, on the way to the camp where she had been sentenced for her faith.

She was born in 1869 in Yaroslavl, in the family of a worker, Vasily Tseytlin. Wishing to serve the Lord in the angelic order, she entered Novodevichy Convent as a novice in 1886, when it stood on the edge of Moscow. After the convent was closed and plundered she lived with other sisters near it, on Bolshaya Pirogovskaya Street. Informers living in the same house or nearby reported to the NKVD that the sisters gathered and compared present life with life before the revolution.

The arrest warrant was issued on 21 March 1938, and in the night of 22 March she was arrested. At her interrogation she said that all authority is from God and that it made no difference to her who ruled. On 3 June 1938 an NKVD troika sentenced her to eight years of labour camp. She reached Siblag on 7 December and died a few days later, on 15 December 1938, at the camp's transit point; she was buried in an unknown place.

The Synod of the Russian Church canonized her in 2004. She is commemorated on 15 December (2 December by the old calendar) and in the synaxes of the saints of Moscow and of Kuzbass.