Nicholas Pokrovsky

Saint Nicholas Pokrovsky, hieromartyr, was a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Simbirsk governorate and was shot on 18 March 1919, in the village of Goryushki, Sengiley district. In 2006 he was numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Simbirsk.

He was born in 1864 into a priest's family. He studied at the theological seminary of Simbirsk, which he finished in 1889, and served as psalm-⁠reader at the church of the Nativity of Christ in the village of Sherauty, Buinsk district. In 1891 Bishop Varsonuphius of Simbirsk and Syzran ordained him deacon, then priest to the church of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God in the village of Staroe Nikulino. He taught religion at the local zemstvo school. In 1895, by decree of the Simbirsk spiritual consistory, he was transferred to the Annunciation convent in the village of Kashpir, Syzran district, where he served thirteen years.

In 1898 he received the priestly belt, and in 1906 the skufia and the medal In Memory of the Reign of Emperor Alexander III. In 1907, during a crop failure in the Volga region, he organized the collection of bread for the starving, for which on 12 August 1908 he received the high thanks of Her Imperial Majesty the Empress Maria Feodorovna. In the same year he received the thanks of the diocesan school council.

In 1908, following the resolution of Archbishop Jacob of Simbirsk and Syzran, he was appointed rector of the church of the Great Martyr Demetrius of Thessalonica in the village of Goryushki, Sengiley district. During the Chapan War, in the night of 18 March 1919, he was arrested by a detachment of Red soldiers. He was shot by sentence of the Goryushki district revolutionary committee for incitement and a counter-⁠revolutionary parting sermon before the insurgents. With his wife Elena he had raised an orphaned niece, Valya.

In 2006, by decision of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, on the proposal of the diocese of Simbirsk, he was numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.