Nicholas Vinogradsky

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Vinogradsky was an archpriest of the Russian Church. He was born in 1873 at Dmitrov, in Moscow province, and died as a martyr in 1937, shot on 15 December at the Butovo firing range.

He was born into the family of Priest Vasily Ilyich Vinogradsky, of the church of the Holy Trinity at Zubovo. He graduated from the Volokolamsk clerical school (1887) and the Moscow seminary (1894). From 1895 he was a teacher at the parish school of the Transfiguration church on Peski. In 1897 he was ordained priest and appointed to the church of the Exaltation of the Cross at the Dmitrievsky churchyard, in the Klin district. From 1899 to 1901 he served in Moscow: on 10 November 1899 he was appointed head and religion teacher of the parish school at the church of the Four Moscow Hierarchs, of the diocesan candle factory, with the right to serve in the factory church.

From 29 May 1901 he was priest at the church of Saint Nicholas in the village of Subbotino, Vereya district, and from August 1902 also religion teacher at the district school in the neighbouring village of Kurnevo. From 30 November 1905 he was priest of the church of the Holy Trinity in the village of Ryukhovskoye, Volokolamsk district, and from 1906 also religion teacher at the Ryukhovo school and at the railway school at Volokolamsk station. In 1918 he was moved to Volokolamsk. From 1924 he served at the church of Saint George in the village of Egorye, from 1929 at the church of Saint George in the village of Lekhachevo (now in the town of Dolgoprudny), and from 1931 at the church of Saint Nicholas in the village of Fedoskino. In May 1937 he became rector of the church of the Archangel Michael in the village of Mikhailovskoye, Ruza district. He had already been raised to archpriest.

He was arrested on 27 November 1937 on a charge of counter-⁠revolutionary activity and held in the Butyrka prison. He refused to give testimony against others and rejected the charges. He was shot on 15 December, by the sentence of the special three-⁠man tribunal of the political police for the Moscow region of 5 December 1937, and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo range.

He was numbered among the New Martyrs of Russia by the Jubilee Council of Bishops in the year 2000. He is commemorated on the day of his martyrdom, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo.