Nicholas Dmitrov

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Dmitrov was an archpriest in the village of Zavidovo in the Tver province, an example of almsgiving and constancy, and was shot at Tver on 8 March 1938.

His life

He was born on 14 May 1878 in the village of Kuntsevo, near Moscow, in the family of the priest Lavr Dmitrov, a Bulgarian by origin. He finished the Moscow seminary in 1900 and worked as a teacher in his village. Later, through his cousin, he met Ekaterina, the daughter of the priest Nicholas Rozanov of Zavidovo, who was ill with paralysis; she agreed to marry but asked that the wedding be put off a year, to finish gymnasium. The wedding took place in 1908, and in 1909, in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, Nicholas Lavrovich was ordained priest for the church in Zavidovo, where he patiently bore the cross of ministry until martyrdom. The church had a winter and a summer part, and the parish embraced the village and the surrounding villages, some twenty-⁠five versts away. The parishioners came to love him for his kindness, his devotion and his flawless service. Even when the godless authorities had taken his horse, he went on foot to distant villages to give Communion to the sick. With his wife he had four children, whom he raised in love for God and the Church. Besides the priesthood, he worked in the fields with the children and, seeing an old woman alone in the field, said, "Come, boys, let us help her." He always invited the poor to his table, and the children too learned to give.

Persecution

In the time of persecution he had to sell his house and buy a hovel, in order to pay the taxes which rose every year. For many years the authorities urged him to leave the church and give up his rank, promising to cancel his taxes, but he always answered: "I will never leave the church and I will never take off my rank." In the years of persecution he was raised to archpriest. In 1930, when the other priest of Zavidovo, the archpriest Gregory Raevsky, was arrested, false testimony was demanded of him, but he refused and said that Father Gregory had shown nothing against the authorities. In 1932 he was ordered to cut and deliver a hundred and fifty cubic metres of firewood in three months; the children had left home and there was no one to help him, so he wrote a complaint, and the local authorities halved his quota. In 1933, unable to pay the taxes, he was arrested and sentenced to a year in a camp. Returned, he was threatened again with arrest, until in 1937 Father Gregory Raevsky was arrested.

In the night of 8 February 1938 Father Nicholas was arrested too, though gravely ill. His wife prepared him and saw him off, and he, though sick, stayed alert in spirit and urged her not to be cast down, not to depart from the Church and the faith. The next day he was interrogated and said that he had not carried on counter-⁠revolutionary agitation; asked why he had packed a suitcase of linen as early as 1930, he answered that he had known since then that he would be arrested, and in 1937 he had bought linen on purpose. On 6 March an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and on 8 March 1938 the archpriest Nicholas Dmitrov was shot in the Tver prison and buried in an unknown common grave in one of the city cemeteries.

He is remembered on 8 March (a movable day), on 18 July (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver, on 5 September (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, and on 7 February (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors, in the new style.