Matrona Alekseeva

Holy Venerable Martyr Matrona Alekseeva, a nun, was born in 1862 in the village of Zamyatino in the Zubtsov district, Tver province, in the family of the peasant Jacob Alekseev. She entered the Novodevichy convent in Moscow and lived in it until it was closed by Soviet power. When the convent was closed, she stayed to live in one of the cells, which had meanwhile been turned into communal apartments.

At the end of the thirties the godless authorities began to arrest the last nuns, and on 21 March 1938 the nun Matrona was arrested and shut in prison. Almost at once after her arrest she fell gravely ill and was taken to the hospital of the Butyrka prison, but stayed there only a short time. The nun Matrona (Alekseeva) died on 1 April 1938 in the prison hospital and was buried in an unknown grave.

She is commemorated on 1 April, the day of her death, in the new style, on the movable day around 7 February in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on the movable day around 5 September in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow.