Nicholas Ershov

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Ershov was a priest in the Vladimir province and later in the Yaroslavl region, and he died in detention on 16 December 1937.

He was born on 14 April 1888 in the village of Ryuminskoye in the Alexandrov district of the Vladimir province, in a peasant family. He studied at a two-⁠class school at Andreevskoye and until 1912 was a teacher at the parish school of Nedyurevo. On 19 September 1912 he was named reader at the Saint Nicholas women's hermitage at Solba, in the Pereslavl district, married Maria Vasilievna Lavrova, daughter of a deceased deacon, and was ordained deacon. He served as deacon until 25 March 1918, when, by the choice of the Pereslavl town duma, he was named priest of the Boris and Gleb cemetery church and ordained presbyter. In 1923 he was moved to the church in the village of Gorki, Yuryev district, where he served until September 1930. Then the church council of Pavlovskaya Pustosh called him as rector, with a pay of about fifty roubles a month. In 1924 he had been left a widower. In the years of divisions and schisms he remained faithful to the Patriarchal Church, saying that he held to the "Tikhonite orientation", and swerved neither from fear nor from gain. The authorities, who supported the Renovationist schism, did all they could so that the "Tikhonite" churches could not exist, and in April 1931 the church at Pavlovskoye was closed and later reopened as Renovationist. From January 1931 he served in the village of Romanovo, in the Yaroslavl region, and from 1936, on the recommendation of the dean Leonid Gilyarevsky, he was named rector in the village of Gorodishche. He fulfilled his pastoral duties with zeal, teaching his parishioners the Orthodox faith and fidelity to the Church.

On 17 October 1937 he was arrested and accused of "taking part in an anti-⁠Soviet group, discrediting the building of collective farms and carrying on agitation for rebellion". At the interrogation he rejected all the charges. On 19 October an NKVD troika sentenced him to eight years in a labour camp. After two months, on 16 December 1937, he died in detention in unknown circumstances. He was rehabilitated on 24 July 1989, and in August 2000 the Council of Bishops numbered him among the new martyrs and confessors.

He is remembered on 16 December, on 5 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl, on 6 July in the Synaxis of the Saints of Vladimir, and on 7 February (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors, in the new style.