Nicholas Popov

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Popov, archpriest in the Don village of Verkhne-⁠Gnutov, was killed in 1919 at Morozovsk by the Bolsheviks. He was numbered among the new martyrs and confessors of Russia by the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church on 17 July 2006, at the proposal of the diocese of Rostov. He is commemorated on 13 March, Old Style (26 March New Style), and in the synaxis of the new martyrs of Russia; in our record the date appears as 25 January, which the Russian source does not confirm.

Family and youth

He was born on 3 May 1864 in the stanitsa of Uryupinskaya, Khopyor district, of the Don Host Territory, into the family of a Host official, Khariton Ivanovich Popov, founder of the Don Museum and researcher of Don antiquities, and of Alexandra Petrovna, a priest's daughter. The family had ten children: four sons, Nicholas, Peter, Alexander and John, and six daughters. After Nicholas's birth the family moved to Novocherkassk, where he finished the boys' gymnasium, then entered the agricultural school at Kharkiv. He served in the 12th Don regiment.

Priest on the Don

In 1891 he entered the fifth year of the Don theological seminary, which he finished in 1893. In the same year Archbishop Macarius of the Don and Novocherkassk ordained him deacon at the Dormition church in the stanitsa of Aksaiskaya. Then he married Zinaida Georgievna Zheltkevich, a priest's daughter, and they had the daughters Theodora, Helen, Julia, Maria, Alexandra and the son Nicholas. In November 1894 Archbishop Donatus ordained him priest at the prayer house of the Dormition of the Mother of God in the hamlet of Kolodezny. Through his effort, in February 1895 a parish school was opened in the hamlet, and on 1 September 1896 at the prayer house a second-⁠class school with courses for teachers and agriculture and craft departments, at which he taught the Law of God from 1896 to 1901. In April 1901 he was moved as rector to the church of Saint John the Theologian in the hamlet of Verkhne-⁠Gnutov, stanitsa of Esaulovskaya. After the start of the civil war he continued to fulfil his ministry, even before the advance of the Red Army. At the beginning of 1919 he went through typhus.

Arrest and death

Soon he was arrested by the local soviet and on 23 March 1919 taken to the station of Morozovskaya. The tribunal there sentenced him to death. On 26 March he was able to send his family a note, in which he wrote to his wife and children to forgive their enemies everything and to forgive also his martyr's death. In the summer of 1919 another priest, Alexander Skibenko, answering a questionnaire of the Special Commission for Investigating the Atrocities of the Bolsheviks attached to the Commander of the Armed Forces of South Russia, wrote that in the parish of the church of Saint John the Theologian services, teaching of the Law of God and removal of icons from schools had not been forbidden or hindered. In the same questionnaire he says that Archpriest Nicholas Popov, brother of the present chairman of the Council of Department Heads of the Don Host, who had hardly begun to go out of the house after typhus, was arrested by the local soviet on 24 March and sent to the district tribunal at Morozovskaya, where in the night toward 27 March (9 April New Style) he was cut down with a sword. His body was found on 5 July (18 July New Style) with the marks of wounds, the head barely held by a piece of thin skin, was brought to the parish and buried in the church fence. The same priest adds that no other violence against the clergy had been observed. In the journal "Don Christian Thought" the committee of the diocesan society of mutual aid asked the clergy to enter in the church diptychs, at the commemoration of the departed, the names of Archpriest Nicholas, Taisia and Theodore Popov.

On 17 July 2006, at the proposal of the diocese of Rostov, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church numbered him among the new martyrs and confessors of Russia, and set his day of commemoration at 13 (26) March. His icon appears beside that of Holy Hieromartyr Constantine Veretsky in the church of Saint Alexander Nevsky in Novocherkassk and in the Dormition church at Aksai.