Lavrentiy (secular name: Evgeniy Ivanovich Knyazev; 2 July 1877, Kashira, Tula Governorate — 1918) — an Orthodox bishop, vicar of the Nizhny Novgorod and Arzamas Diocese with the title "of Balakhna," canonized among the holy martyrs. He suffered a martyr's death in 1918 during the persecutions of the Russian Orthodox Church.[1]
Origins and Family
Evgeniy Knyazev came from the petty-bourgeois estate (meshchanstvo). His father, Ivan Ivanovich Knyazev, was the son of a Kashira merchant; after the grandfather's death, the family business was managed by his grandmother, Anna Afanasyevna Knyazeva, a merchant of the third guild. His mother, Yekaterina Vasilyevna (née Preobrazhenskaya), was the daughter of the priest Vasily Petrovich Preobrazhensky, who served in parishes of Tula Governorate; his last posting was the All Saints' Cemetery Church in Kashira.[1]
His maternal grandfather had two sons: Ivan Vasilyevich Preobrazhensky graduated from the Moscow Theological Academy with a candidate of theology degree and rose through the chancellery of the Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod in Saint Petersburg to the rank of Actual State Councillor and the post of head of department; Mikhail Vasilyevich Preobrazhensky was ordained a priest and served in Yefremov in the Tula Diocese.[1]
On his father's side, there were four sons: the eldest, Ivan, who had been ordained a deacon, died young; two others — Mikhail and Georgy — died in infancy "due to congenital weakness." Evgeniy was born on 2 July 1877 and was baptized the following day in the cathedral Kashira Assumption Cathedral. When he was one year old, his father died of a stroke — on 13 July 1878.[1]
Education
Evgeniy spent his childhood in Kashira, raised in a strictly ecclesiastical environment both in his mother's home and in the household of his great-grandfather, the archpriest. He received his primary education at the Venev Theological School (in the district town of Venev, Tula Governorate), which admitted children of clergy from the Venev and Kashira districts to prepare them for seminary entrance; the course of study lasted four years, and pupils lodged in private apartments. Evgeniy Knyazev studied there from 1887 to 1891. The school had its own chapel dedicated to Saints Cyril and Methodius and an extensive library.[1]
After the school he entered the Tula Theological Seminary, which he completed in 1897 with a first-class certificate as one of its top students. During his seminary years he was noted for a rare and profound spiritual disposition and steadfast observance of the Church's commandments.[1]
Episcopal Ministry and Martyrdom
Having taken monastic vows under the name Lavrentiy, Evgeniy Knyazev was elevated to the rank of bishop and appointed vicar of the Nizhny Novgorod and Arzamas Diocese with the title "of Balakhna." In 1918, at the height of the Soviet authorities' anti-Church persecutions, Bishop Lavrentiy suffered a martyr's death.[1]
The Russian Orthodox Church canonized him as a hieromartyr. The commemoration of Hieromartyr Lavrentiy of Balakhna is included in the list of Nizhny Novgorod new martyrs maintained by the Nizhny Novgorod Metropolis.[1]
He was executed at the Pochaina Ravine in Nizhny Novgorod together with the rector of the cathedral Church of the Transfiguration Archpriest Aleksey Porfyryev and the marshal of the Nizhny Novgorod nobility Aleksey Neydgardt; the exact number of those shot in the ravine during that period is not known with certainty.[2]
The ravine where Bishop Lavrentiy was executed was known as the Zhandarmsky (Gendarme) Ravine — named after the stables that had once stood there; victims of the Red Terror were shot here between 1918 and 1921, after which the bodies were buried on the spot. In the 1960s, the Zhandarmsky Ravine was filled in to improve transport access: tram tracks were laid along its former floor, and the remains of those buried there in all likelihood stayed underground permanently. A park called Internatsionalistov Square was laid out on the site of the ravine in Nizhegorodsky District, at the intersection of Malaya Pokrovskaya Street and Maslyakova Street; for the 800th anniversary of Nizhny Novgorod it was refurbished, and a memorial cross was erected there in memory of the victims of repression, bearing the inscription: "On this spot, in the Zhandarmsky Ravine, victims of the Red Terror were shot and buried."[1][1][1]
Sources
- NewsNN — The ravine where Bishop Lavrentiy was executed was known as the Zhandarmsky Ravine — named after the stables that had once stood there; victims of the Red Terror were shot here… (archive)
- Nizhegorodskaya Pravda — The Source of Nizhny: What Stories Does the Pochaina Ravine Hold (archive)
- nne.ru — Nizhny Novgorod Metropolis (archive)