Martha of Moscow

Blessed Martha of Moscow, in the world Daria, was a schemanun of the monastery of Saint John the Forerunner at Kulishki and a fool for Christ, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries († 1/14 March 1638). Nothing is known of her parents or her life in the world; it is known that she chose virginity, spoke the monastic vows, received the name Martha and then the great schema, and later took up the labour of foolishness. She often spent nights in prayer on the Sparrow Hills, returning to the monastery in the morning, and hid her struggle under the guise of foolishness. The fame of her virtues nonetheless reached the court.

The tsars honour her

The tsarina Evdokia, wife of Michael Fyodorovich Romanov, loved the monastery and came often with her children; after the fire of 1628 she gave help for the burned cells. Having nine children in twelve years, she asked Martha's prayers for easy births, and from this the custom remained in Moscow of pregnant women having memorial services at her grave. Martha died on the very name day of the tsarina and, by imperial command, her coffin was set in the great church, not in the ground, under a white gravestone, an honour usually given only to rulers and bishops. The tsar Michael sent a cover for the tomb, and his son Alexis, who had seen her as a child, ordered her image painted on the wall in 1669. Her name entered the calendars as a saint and righteous one.

Her relics

In 1860, when the old church was demolished, Metropolitan Philaret ordered her bones, found whole, moved with care, and in 1875 they were placed in a marble coffin in the new church. The faithful asked her help for those sick with drunkenness and for prisoners, and she was held to be protectress of the Romanov dynasty. In 1918 a camp was opened on the monastery's territory, and after the cathedral was closed, at the end of 1926, the relics were taken in 1927 to the Vagankovo cemetery; their place is no longer known. In 2004 the tomb was restored at its old site, with the original stone.

She is commemorated on the movable day around 5 September, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, in the new style.