The first nun the Bolsheviks threw into the abandoned mineshaft was best known as the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, the sister of the Russian Empress Alexandra.
After the 1905 assassination of her Grand Duke husband, Elizabeth became an Orthodox nun, giving away her wealth to build hospitals and orphanages. She was executed, in 1918, along with others linked to her doomed brother-in-law, Tsar Nicholas II.
When the nuns didn't drown, a soldier used a grenade. He later testified that "we heard talking and a barely audible groan. I threw another grenade. And what do you think -- from beneath the ground we heard singing! … They were singing the prayer: 'Lord, save your people!' "
Finally, there was silence. The body of St. Elizabeth the New Martyr was buried in 1920 at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. Her life inspired many, including her grieving niece, the Greek Princess Alice of Battenberg. Alice was the great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria of England and the mother of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and for 73 years the husband of Queen Elizabeth II.
The complicated history of the royals, past and present, loomed over the short, dignified funeral for Prince Philip in St. George's Chapel, Windsor -- with only 30 mourners due to COVID restrictions. The prince's liturgical choices shaped an Anglican rite that stressed images of service, eternal hope and the beauties of God's creation.
The man many Brits called the "grandfather of the nation," was born on the Greek island of Corfu in 1921, the fifth child and only son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Princess Alice. He was baptized Greek Orthodox, before his life was rocked by wars and revolutions that shattered his family.
