Vera the Silent (? - 6 May 1861) was an Orthodox ascetic, a hermit of the Syrkov Maiden Monastery in the Novgorod region, who kept a vow of silence for 23 years.
Vera the Silent owes her fame to a legend in which she is identified with Empress Elizabeth Alexeevna —Alexander I's wife— who allegedly followed his example after the emperor, having faked his death, became a Siberian elder Feodor Kuzmich.
Biography
Emergence The unknown woman who called herself Vera Alexandrovna appeared in Tikhvin in 1834 and lived in the house of the landlord Vera Mikhailovna Kharlamova. She was respected for her piety and scrupulous adherence to religious rules, but she never talked about her past or gave her surname. She was often seen in the Tikhvin Dormition Monastery praying before the Theotokos of Tikhvin. She also made pilgrimages to other local monasteries. The Tikhvinians treated Vera Alexandrovna with great respect, often visiting her for spiritual talks and sending her to their children to teach them prayers and the law of God.Цеханская К. В. Мнимая смерть Императрицы? Или история монастырской Молчальницы Веры Александровны // Наука и религия. — 1999. — № 12. — pp. 20—23. Продолжение там же. — 2000. — № 1. — pp. 18—22. Thus, if we believe the surviving sources, she lived about three years. Then, having learned that the wife of the deacon of the Vinnitsa pogost in the province of Olonets was seriously ill, she left Tikhvin and voluntarily went to take care of her.Мордвинов И. П. Исторические загадки. Молчальница Вера // Тихвинец. — 1918. — № 3. — pp. 16—19.
A year later she returned to Tikhvin, but soon left the city for good, as is believed, burdened by excessive attention to herself. It was caused by the story of a Tikhvin landlord that in the St. Peter's Fast he saw how Vera Alexandrovna was transformed after taking communion and became like an angelПогожев Е.П. (Евгений Поселянин). Молчальница Вера Александровна // Русские подвижники XIX века. — СПб., 1910. — P. 170. (this story became known in 1852 and in the Syrkov monastery, where Vera then lived, by the landowner Kharlamova, who came to visit her).Силин П.М. Молчальница Вера Александровна. — СПб., 1895. — P. 4. Vera moved to the Valday village of Beryozovsky Ryadok, where she liked the worship and piety of the parishioners of the local church, and at the request of the peasant Prokopiy Trofimov agreed to stay there for some time. There she lived in a separate hut, where she took in only children, painted for them pictures of Christ and the Mother of God, taught them prayers and how to read.Сорока Л.Н. Путешествие в историю. Дата обращения: 17 May 2009. Archive: 20 August 2011. Such a life of Vera lasted about 9 months and aroused the suspicion of the police. In 1838 Vera Alexandrovna was arrested for not having a passport. On a stage she was sent to Valdai prison, where, according to the legend, when asked about her surname and origin, she replied to the investigator: "Judged heavenly, I am the dust of the earth; judged earthly, I am above you".Силин П.М. Молчальница Вера Александровна. — СПб., 1895. — P. 7. The policeman continued to insist, and all he achieved was that Vera Alexandrovna finally stopped answering questions. After that, for 23 years and until her death, she did not open her mouth, answering questions only occasionally by means of notes or very rarely by scraps of sentences.Последний свидетель забытой обители // Новгород. — 13 February 2003. — № 6 (660).
The police considered the strange prisoner insane, and after a year and a half in Novgorod prison she was sent to the Home for the Insane in Koloma, where she spent another year and a half. During her stay in the asylum, Vera wrote the essay "The Lamentation of the Mother of God at the Passion of Her Son, the Lord Jesus on the Cross".Лебедев И. Девица Вера Александровна Молчальница // Странник. — СПб., 1868, June. — P. 110. Vera Alexandrovna's notes on this period of her life have been preserved. About her stay in the asylum she wrote:Силин П.М. Молчальница Вера Александровна. — СПб., 1895. — P. 11."I felt good there; I was blissfully happy there... I thank God for allowing me to live with the prisoners and the poor. God has endured more than that for us sinners!
Life in Syrkov Monastery
In the Kolomovsky house of the insane Vera was found by a local benefactress — Countess Anna Alexeevna Orlova-Chesmenskaya (daughter of Alexei Orlov) and offered the "silent woman" to settle in the Syrkov Cathedral. It is said that she received information about Vera from St. Petersburg.Грузинский Н. Вера Молчальница. — СПб., 1911. — P. 5. For Vera, who gave her consent, the abbess of the convent came and took her to the convent. About Vera's transfer to a convent the decree of the Novgorod Spiritual Consistory from April 10, 1841 was issued, in which it was determined that Vera would be placed in a convent at the expense of Countess Anna Orlova.Грузинский Н. Вера Молчальница. — СПб., 1911. — P. 6. According to the church historian Count M. V. Tolstoy, Vera in the convent took hostile. The abbess went to St. Petersburg Metropolitan Seraphim with a request to expel the silent woman from the convent. To this request the Metropolitan replied:Записки графа М. В. Толстого // Русский архив, 1881, pp. 134—136"You stupid woman! You and I would rather be thrown out than her, and don't you dare mention it". Vera lived in a separate hut cell, with a single whitewashed room and a small hall leading into it. The furnishings of the cell included a cupboard with books, an analogion for reading the Holy Scriptures, a copper samovar, two wooden chairs, a bed and a cuckoo clock (on which Vera pasted a picture of a shepherd's life with quotations from the Bible about death and the hereafter).Силин П.М. Молчальница Вера Александровна. — СПб., 1895. — pp. 13—14. Supporters of the legend point out that her cell was an "exact copy" of the cell of Feodor Kuzmich in Siberia (an hermit who, according to the legend of the House of Romanov, became Emperor Alexander I)Сахаров А. Н. Александр I. — М.: Наука, 1998. — 287 p. — . Archive: 2 April 2018. — which seems very problematic due to the great distance and complexity of communication with Siberian cities and especially with remote villages. Vera's bedside icon was the picture of Christ in bonds, which had been with her since the time of her stay in the home for the insane, in front of which she kept an altar lamp. Vera slept on a bed covered with thin felt, with firewood placed on the sides, forming a kind of coffin for her, reminding her of the brevity of life.Лебедев И. Девица Вера Александровна Молчальница // Странник. — СПб., 1868, июнь. — P. 105.
Vera's first cell-mate was the nun Mariamna, who suffered from epilepsy. Like many sisters, she insulted Vera and once, according to N. Gruzinsky, the priest of the Syrkov convent, she twisted her leg after a disrespectful rebuke about the silent nun, which was considered God's punishment. Countess Anna Orlova appointed a new cell-mate from among her courtiers. The nun Amfiloya (died in 1901) was deaf, and supporters of the existence of some mystery connected with the Silent Woman of Syrkov claim that the Countess, being initiated into it, specially chose a deaf servant so that she could not hear if Vera in delirium or by forgetfulness would say something about herself.
In the monastery, Vera Alexandrovna until her death led a reclusive and very ascetic life, which limited her presence in the monastery cell and in the church (the exception was her traditional exit on Easter, when she climbed the monastery wall for prayer).Силин П.М. Молчальница Вера Александровна. — СПб., 1895. — pp. 11—12. Vera's confessor was the priest John Lebedev, to whom she confessed by means of notes, which he burned in the flame of a candle after the sacrament. Most of the food brought to her (the hermit did not use the monastery refectory) was given to the beggars or fed to the birds. Vera was unpretentious in her dress: in her cell she wore a white knee-length dress and a mobcap, to go to the temple she wore a lustrine jacket (in winter she wore an old cotton greatcoat), a cap and a shawl.Силин П.М. Молчальница Вера Александровна. — СПб., 1895. — P. 13.
During her stay at the Syrkov monastery, Vera gained a reputation for clairvoyance, especially for predicting the death or recovery of sick children (she announced this by signs or gestures).Силин П.М. Молчальница Вера Александровна. — СПб., 1895. — P. 16. Many visitors approached her with requests to pray for them or their loved ones, which Vera immediately did, asking in return to pray for them. To those who wished to receive something from her as a memento, she gave small boxes made of plain paper, which she decorated with crosses, Scripture verses, and bread crumbs. Vera also knitted rosaries out of worsted (wool yarn).
There is a legend that in 1848 the silent nun was visited by Emperor Nicholas I, who talked to her for several hours behind closed doors, and the nun responded to his words in writing, taking up several sheets of paper; when he left, the cautious (or graceful) emperor politely kissed the nun's hand and burned her notes with a lamp.Балязин В. Н. Тайны дома Романовых. — М.: Олма-Пресс, 2005. — P. 242. — Other visitors to Vera included Metropolitan Gregory (Postnikov) of Novgorod, St. Petersburg, Estonia and Finland, and the writer Count Mikhail Tolstoy.Грузинский Н. Вера Молчальница. — СПб., 1911. — P. 8.
Death
On Holy Saturday (April 22), she confessed (gave the priest a written confession), and when he returned it to her after reading it, Vera knelt down and turned the page — there was written: "Father, pray to the Lord for the remembrance of my soul. My end is near and the days are dry".Силин П.М. Молчальница Вера Александровна. — СПб., 1895. — P. 18. On the 27th of April, Holy Week, as usual, she went up to the tower of the monastery, looked at Novgorod and prayed, then went to the northern gate of the monastery and looked at the Khutyn Monastery from there. Having taken some twigs, Vera went to the southern side of the cathedral church of the Vladimir icon of the Mother of God, laid the twigs on the ground and, having made three earthen arcs, pointed to them with her hand, thus determining the place of her burial.Силин П.М. Молчальница Вера Александровна. — СПб., 1895. — P. 19. As the followers of the legend point out, this place was near the grave of the Abbess Alexandra Shubina, who was the godmother of the Empress when she converted to Orthodoxy in May 1793.
When she returned to her cell, the hermit had a high fever. Witnesses of her last days report that she had pneumonia. On April 30, she was already very weak, she wrote confused letters, she wrote a note to the abbess asking her to be sobered up, she asked that this sacrament be performed only by the priest and the abbess, and she added: "I ask and beg you not to take me away", that is, not to perform the washing of her body after her death. On May 5, she was confessed and received Holy Communion, and the nun took the priest into another room and asked him to come the next day and give the dying woman Holy Communion again. At that time, Vera entered the room, crossed herself on the icon of the Redeemer and pointed her hand to the ground. With this gesture she foretold the death of the sick person.Силин П.М. Молчальница Вера Александровна. — СПб., 1895. — P. 20. About 6 o'clock in the evening of May 6, 1861, Vera the Silent died without revealing her true name and origin.