Nicholas Pokrovsky

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Pokrovsky was a priest at Tikhvin and was shot with the archpriest John Sarv and other martyrs on 3 December 1937. On the Azbyka page he is mentioned only within the group of those who suffered with Father John.

John Sarv

The archpriest John Romanovich Sarv was born in 1867 in the Livonia province, in the family of a landless peasant. He finished the Riga seminary, was a reader and soon a priest in the village of Olgin Krest in the Gdov district. In 1896 he was moved to Saint Petersburg, to the Greek embassy church, and studied at the Theological Academy, finishing in 1902 with the degree of candidate in theology. Teaching religion also at several schools, from 1904 he served at the church of the Transfiguration on Zabalkansky Avenue, and from 1912 was its rector, as archpriest, until 1927; he also led the temperance society of Saint Bonifatius. At the end of the twenties he was sent away from Leningrad and settled at Tikhvin, where he continued his service. In 1934 he was arrested and refused to give testimony, the only one of those arrested at Tikhvin to act so; he received a suspended sentence. He was dean of the churches of Tikhvin. In 1937 a new wave of arrests came.

The Tikhvin group

With Father John Sarv fourteen persons were put in the Tikhvin prison: seven priests, the abbess of the Tikhvin Entry Monastery and six laymen. All were declared a single counter-⁠revolutionary group, led by the dean John Sarv, and the file was titled "Sarv Ivan Romanovich and others". All the clergy in the file were shot, the others received ten years in a camp. Five priests and the abbess Ioannikia refused, despite the torments, to admit guilt and to give testimony against the others, showing a rare example of united Christian courage. The archpriest John Sarv, the venerable martyr Arsenius (Dmitriev), the venerable martyr Ioannikia (Kozhevnikova) and the priests Basil Kandelyabrov, Nicholas Pokrovsky, Aemilianus Panasevich and Nicholas Zelenov were shot at Tikhvin on 3 December 1937.

He is remembered on 3 December and on 7 February (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors, in the new style.