Nicholas Chernyshev

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Chernyshev was an archpriest and dean at Votkinsk, in Udmurtia, and was shot together with his daughter, the Holy Martyr Varvara, on 2 January 1919.

His life

Nicholas Chernyshev was born in 1853, in the family of the priest of the Annunciation Cathedral of the Votkinsk works. His father, Andrei Ivanovich Chernyshev, was one of the most enlightened men of the settlement, known for his sermons and his local history research. Nicholas followed his father's example and in 1875 finished the Vyatka seminary. From the start he worked in education and, after twenty-⁠five years of labour in the people's schools, received the Order of Saint Anne, third class. In the Russo-⁠Japanese War he took part in the local Red Cross committee and received a silver medal. With the blessing of Saint John of Kronstadt he founded the Votkinsk Temperance Society and presided over it. He was a cultured man, a preacher and a lover of art, an honorary member of the P. I. Tchaikovsky society of lovers of music and drama. After each service great crowds accompanied him home, asking his blessing. From 1914 he was dean of the Votkinsk and Galevsk volosts. He was widowed early and lived with his youngest daughter, Varvara, born in 1888, who, after the higher courses for women in Kazan, was a teacher in Votkinsk and chose not to marry, so as to stay near her father.

Martyrdom

In 1917 power was seized by the Bolsheviks, who brought terror, executions without trial and plunder. In August 1918 the inhabitants of Votkinsk, mostly workers of the works, rose against them. The dean did not leave his parish: he gave Communion to the dying and encouraged his flock, and his daughter served as a nurse. After the uprising was put down, the town was occupied by the Red Army, and an anti-⁠religious debate was held in the cathedral, at which Father Nicholas defended the faith. The next day he was arrested. It is told that then Varvara clung to her father so tightly that no one could pull her away, neither the soldiers nor he, so they were taken away together. They stayed in prison until 2 January 1919. A relative of the family's housekeeper who visited him found him calm, prayerful and "faithful to Jesus Christ"; another memory says that he asked for an epitrachelion to be brought so as to hear the confessions of the prisoners.

On 2 January 1919 they were taken from the prison and shot on the bank of a pond. A soldier who warmed himself in a neighbouring house told that they could not kill the long-⁠haired one: they fired several times, and he at the end whispered something, moving his lips. When asked to take off his cross, he answered, "When I die, then take it off." Varvara, who was holding him, died with him. In April 1919, after Kolchak freed the town, the people found their bodies and gave them a public farewell in the cathedral. They were buried by the church of the Transfiguration, and their grave is venerated by the people; there are reports of miraculous help through prayer to the archpriest Nicholas in healing from drunkenness, and descendants of Votkinsk people abroad honour them with an icon and an unquenchable lamp in the church of Saint John the Baptist in Berkeley.

On 7 March 2018 the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church numbered them among the saints, with commemoration on 2 January. Nicholas Chernyshev is also remembered on 7 February (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors, and on 11 July (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Udmurtia, in the new style.