Sergius Shein

Saint Sergius Shein, venerable martyr (born Basil Pavlovich Shein, 1870 to 1922), was a jurist and deputy of the State Duma, then a priest, monk and archimandrite, condemned and shot in Petrograd on 13 August 1922 in the trial of those who opposed the confiscation of church valuables. The Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church numbered him among the saints as a venerable martyr in 1992.

Family and career

He was born on 30 December 1870 in the village of Kolpna in the Novosil district of the Tula province, of an ancient noble family. He was the tenth child of the collegiate secretary Paul Vasilievich Shein and his wife Natalia Akimovna. His upbringing was steeped in the spirit of the Church, and he said later that he had been in the Church from childhood and had grown wholly close to her.

In 1893 he graduated with a gold medal from the School of Jurisprudence. He then worked in the chancery of the Land Survey Department of the Ministry of Justice, in the chancery of the Senate and in the legal service of the ministry, while teaching civil law at the School of Jurisprudence. In 1897 he was sent abroad for four months of study. He rose step by step in the Senate, the Ministry of Justice and the State Chancery, and in 1905 he sat on the committee for raising funds to build a church in memory of the sailors who fell in the Russo-⁠Japanese War.

In 1906 he took part in the work of the preparatory commission for the local council, and from 1907 he was assistant to the State Secretary of the State Council. From 1908 to 1912 he headed the legislative department of the chancery of the State Duma. In 1912 he was elected to the Fourth Duma for the Tula province. He served on the committees for the affairs of the Orthodox Church, for the Old Believers, for the budget, the press, communications and local government, and in 1915 he joined the Progressive Bloc. In 1916 and 1917 he worked in the preparatory bodies of the local council, notably on the law concerning church courts. He never married.

Priesthood and monastic life

In 1917 and 1918 he was a member of the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church and secretary of the Council and of its Council Board. On 12 September 1920 he was ordained priest and, it seems, raised at once to the rank of archpriest. When Archimandrite Sophronius, abbot of the Trinity-⁠Sergius Metochion in Petrograd, died on 28 February 1921, Patriarch Tikhon summoned Archpriest Basil Shein, who declared himself ready to take over the leadership of the metochion. In April or early May 1921 he was tonsured a monk at the Trinity-⁠Sergius Lavra with the name Sergius, after Saint Sergius of Radonezh, raised to archimandrite and appointed abbot of the metochion in Petrograd. He supported two sisters who had been left without employment or means.

The trial and martyrdom

In 1922 he was arrested and, from 10 June, was one of the principal defendants in the Petrograd trial concerning resistance to the confiscation of church valuables. He was charged above all with membership of the Society of Orthodox Parishes, although his part in its work had been merely nominal. At the trial he bore himself with courage, and his answers to judges and prosecutors were calm and exact. Asked about his attitude to the "Living Church", the renovationist movement, he replied that he knew only one living Church, the one of which the Apostle writes that it is the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15).

According to eyewitnesses, his last word made a strong impression. He described the austere life of the monk and said that, having renounced the cares of the world, he had given himself wholly to inner labour and prayer. Only one weak, bodily thread, he said, bound him to this life, and he asked whether the tribunal thought that the breaking of it could frighten him. He told his judges to do their work, that he pitied them and prayed for them. He was sentenced to death.

In prison, together with Archpriest Michael Cheltsov, he read akathists, served memorial services for the departed and read the writings of Saint John Chrysostom. Before being led to the execution he confessed to Father Michael. In the night of 12 to 13 August 1922 he was shot together with Metropolitan Benjamin of Petrograd, the lawyer I. M. Kovsharov and Professor Yuri Novitsky, according to some sources on the outskirts of Petrograd near the Porokhovye station.

Commemoration

Saint Sergius Shein is honoured as a venerable martyr and commemorated on 31 July (13 August New Style). In 2026, in the Polyustrovo Park in Saint Petersburg, work began on a monument to the jurist new martyrs, Archimandrite Sergius Shein, John Kovsharov and Yuri Novitsky, and on 23 June 2026 Metropolitan Barsanuphius of Saint Petersburg blessed its foundation stone.