New Martyr 20th century

New Virgin-Martyr Xenia

c. 1881 – 1937

Also known as Xenia

A woman martyred in the Soviet persecution (1937)

Feast Day

September 2

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Commemorated as

The Holy New Martyr Xenia (Cherlina-Brailovskaya) of Diveyevo

Life

Xenia (Cherlina-Brailovskaya) was a Russian nun who died in the Soviet persecution of the Orthodox Church and is numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. By the accounts that survive she was born around 1881 in Kharkiv and entered the Seraphim-Diveyevo Convent, one of the great monastic centers associated with Saint Seraphim of Sarov, where she lived as a nun until the convent's life was broken up after the Revolution of 1917.

Arrested in 1933 and sentenced to a labor-camp term for alleged participation in a so-called counter-revolutionary monarchist organization, she was deported to the Karaganda camp system (Karlag) in Kazakhstan. There, in 1937, during the height of the Soviet terror, she was condemned to death and shot. She is commemorated on September 2 (old style) / September 15 (new style) and was formally glorified among the New Martyrs of Russia by the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000.

Timeline 5 moments Read Hide

c. 1881 Birth Born, by the surviving accounts, around 1881 in Kharkiv (Kharkov) in what is now Ukraine.
until 1917 Nun at Diveyevo Lived as a nun of the Seraphim-Diveyevo Convent until the upheaval of the Revolution; after the convent's suppression she is said to have continued a wandering monastic life.
1933 Arrest and sentence Arrested and sentenced to eight years in corrective-labor camps on a charge of belonging to a 'counter-revolutionary monarchist organization,' and sent to the Karlag (Karaganda) camp system in Kazakhstan.
1937 Martyrdom Condemned to death by a camp tribunal and executed by shooting in the autumn of 1937, during the most intense phase of the Soviet terror against the Church.
2000 Glorification Glorified among the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church by the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000.

Contributions & Legacy

1 contributions Read Hide

Among the New Martyrs of Diveyevo

Xenia is commemorated as one of the new martyrs connected with the Seraphim-Diveyevo Convent, a community devastated by closures, arrests, and executions across the 1920s and 1930s. The Orthodox Church in America's Synaxis of the Saints of Diveyevo lists her repose as September 2/15, 1937, alongside other martyrs of the same monastery who suffered in the Soviet decades.

Her case follows the common pattern of the Russian new martyrs of the late 1930s: a monastic dispersed when her convent was closed, arrested on a fabricated political charge, sentenced to the camps, and finally shot during the Great Terror. The fuller biographical record survives chiefly in Russian-language martyrological reference works, while English notices are brief.

Commemorated with Read Hide

Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia

Synaxis

Notes

Among the Synaxis of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia

Sources: Synaxarion