Schema-⁠abbess Tamar Marjanishvili

Venerable Confessor Tamar (Phamar), schema-⁠abbess, born Princess Tamara Alexandrovna Marjanishvili (Russianized Marjanova), was born at Kvareli in Georgia in 1869 and reposed in Moscow on 23 June 1936. She founded the Seraphim-⁠Znamensky Skete near Moscow and is a saint of both the Georgian Church and the Russian Church. Her brother was the actor Konstantin Marjanishvili, and a nephew, the son of her sister Nina, was Georgy Eliava.

She came of a noble family: her father was Colonel Alexander Andreevich Marjanov (Marjanishvili), a military engineer (1834 to 1876), and her mother was Elizabeth Solomonovna (Simonovna), born Chavchavadze (1851 to 1887 or 1888), a second cousin of Ilia Chavchavadze. After the death of her parents she entered the monastery of Saint Nino, Equal to the Apostles, at Bodbe as a novice, and after twelve years she was tonsured a nun with the name Juvenalia by Archbishop Flavian, exarch of Georgia. While she was still a novice, Saint John of Kronstadt foretold that she would become a nun, an abbess and receive the great schema.

In 1905, by decree of the Holy Synod, she was appointed abbess of the Protection Convent in Moscow. In 1910 she founded the Seraphim-⁠Znamensky Skete near Moscow, and in 1915 she was tonsured to the great schema in the skete with the name Phamar (Tamar).

The skete was closed in 1924. In 1931 Schema-⁠abbess Phamar was arrested with two sisters of her community and sentenced to exile in the Irkutsk region. After her term ended, in 1933, she returned to Moscow and lived in a settlement of country houses near the Pionerskaya station on the Belarus railway line. In the last period of her life she sat as a model for the painter Pavel Korin for his picture Russia Departing.

She reposed on 23 June 1936, gravely ill with tuberculosis. The funeral service was performed at her home by Bishop Arsenius (Zhadanovsky) of Serpukhov. She was buried in the Vvedenskoye (German) Cemetery, in plot 14.

She was canonized by the Georgian Orthodox Church on 22 December 2016. The Russian Church entered her in its calendar on 28 December 2017, setting her commemoration on 10 June, which is 23 June by the new calendar. On 13 June 2018 her relics were found and were solemnly carried to the Seraphim-⁠Znamensky Skete in the village of Bityagovo, Domodedovo district, Moscow region. In December, during a working visit to Georgia, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the Moscow Patriarchate's Department for External Church Relations, gave the Georgian Church a part of the relics of the venerable confessor Phamar.