Life and Service
Barbara was born around 1880 in Tver. According to the convent record she came to the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent in Moscow from Yalta on 20 August 1910, at the age of thirty-one, having served as Grand Duchess Elizabeth's maid before taking the veil; she was known by the affectionate name 'Varya.'
The convent that Elizabeth founded was devoted to extensive charitable work, including carrying food to the homes of the poor, a home for women suffering from tuberculosis, a hospital for the sick, an orphanage, and care for the disabled, for pregnant women, and for the elderly.
Exile and Martyrdom
After the Revolution of 1917, Grand Duchess Elizabeth was arrested and sent into exile. Barbara, who refused to leave her Abbess, voluntarily accompanied her. The group was held first at Yekaterinburg and later at Alapayevsk.
On 18 July 1918, the prisoners were taken into the woods outside Alapayevsk, struck, and thrown one by one into a mineshaft, into which grenades were then hurled. According to the accounts, those at the bottom of the shaft could be heard singing hymns for some time before, one by one, they lost consciousness and died.
Relics & Shrines
After the White Army reoccupied the area, the bodies were recovered from the mineshaft and the testimony of a witness to the recovery was recorded. The relics were carried eastward out of Russia, first to Beijing, where they were placed in the Church of St Seraphim of Sarov, and afterward to Jerusalem.
Barbara's relics now rest in the Church of St Mary Magdalene at Gethsemane in Jerusalem, together with those of Grand Duchess Elizabeth. In May 1982 the bodies of Elizabeth Feodorovna and Barbara were moved from the crypt to the upper church.
Miracles & Traditions
Historically Documented: The recovery of the relics from the Alapayevsk mineshaft after the White Army retook the region was recorded by a witness. In 2004 a reliquary carrying portions of the relics of Grand Duchess Elizabeth and the Nun-Martyr Barbara was taken on a tour through sixty-one Russian dioceses.
Traditional Accounts: The accounts relate that those cast into the shaft could be heard singing hymns for some time afterward, and that as she lay dying Elizabeth bandaged the wounds of Prince Ioann, who had been thrown in with them.
