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The Martyrdom of ‘the Most Beautiful Woman in Europe’

Described as “the most beautiful woman in Europe,” she was to marry a prince. And yet that same woman was to end her last days in the service of the sick and the poor, wearing only the plain garb of a nun, eventually, to die in an industrial wasteland as a martyr for her Christian faith.To get more news about 亚洲日本一区二区三区在线, you can visit our official website.

A journey that started for her on the Mount of Olives, and continued with the Cross being laid on her shoulders on a February day in 1905, was ended as she began an ascent of Calvary to make her final oblation in July 1918.

Her Grand Ducal Highness Princess Elisabeth was born in Grand Duchy of Hesse on Nov. 1, 1864. She had been named after her distant ancestor, St. Elizabeth of Hungary. Ella, as she was to be known, was the second child of the Royal House of Hesse, a minor Germanic principality. Her upbringing was conventional; charming and bright, she was also beautiful. Many suitors were proposed or came hoping for her hand in marriage. One of these was a Russian noble, Sergei.

Thereafter, Ella left home and family, headed for a distant land to become a member of a formidable dynasty: Imperial Russia’s Romanovs. Ella and Sergei were married on June 15, 1884 at the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. Initially, Sergei and his new bride were enveloped by life at court, with all its petty rivalries and dubious charms, but theirs was a love set apart, one based primarily on a shared Christian faith.

In 1888, the young couple represented the Russian Royal House at the dedication of the Russian Orthodox Church of St. Mary Magdalen on the Mount of Olives. There, whilst priests intoned prayers and incensed icons, Ella felt the first stirrings of her heart away from the Lutheranism of her birth. As it turned out, this visit to Jerusalem and the Holy Places impressed Ella greatly. Although always a devout Christian, her faith began to deepen from this time as she entered into an intense period of prayer and study, which eventually lead her to the Orthodox faith of her husband.

In the spring of 1891, Sergei was asked by his brother, Tsar Alexander III, to assume the position of Governor of Moscow. It was a significant post that was growing in importance on account of unrest from workers, intellectuals and anarchists. This city, that was to become Ella’s home, was then the seedbed of the revolutions that followed. And, as state repression followed unrest, soon that cycle became a deadly one for all concerned, not least its governor. Eventually, Sergei was to step down, but there were those who still sought revenge upon him.

On February 17, 1905, a grenade was tossed into the former Governor of Moscow’s carriage. It detonated immediately. As it did so, the windows of the nearby Kremlin rattled. Ella knew instantly that it was the sound of her husband’s assassination, and ran from the palace out onto the snow-covered streets.

Stunned but still calm, she knelt in the blackened snow beside the mangled wreckage, as an equally stunned crowd gathered around her. As help came to collect the mortal remains of her husband onto a stretcher, in the snow Ella noticed the religious medals he was wearing. Bending down, she gathered these into her palm, before rising to pass silently through the crowds back into the Kremlin’s dark emptiness.

Sergei’s assassin was easily apprehended at the scene, having also been wounded. Later, as he lay recuperating in his heavily guarded cell, the door opened to reveal, in the faint light, a strikingly beautiful woman dressed in mourning. As she drew near, she said: “I’m his wife”