the holy new martyrs of eastern russia - Coptic Orthodox teaching

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making stockings. When blessing someone he sometimes gave them
stockings.
He was so well-known that in his novel “The Affair of the Artamonovs”,
Maxim Gorky used the image of the fool-for-Christ elder-bishop in his
character of the hunchbacked monk Nicetas Artamonov.
On coming out of reclusion he continued to live for some time in Saratov.
His cell-attendant was Hieromonk Pitirim, who had been James Ivanovich
Ivanov in the world. In his youth he had intended to marry, but his bride died
on the eve of their wedding, which so shook the young man that he remained
a bachelor.
James Ivanovich wanted to see Bishop Nicholas, about whom he had heard
many good things. Once he hired a cabby and went to look at him. He was
sitting under an umbrella and getting ready to look at him, when Bishop
Nicholas came out onto the porch of his little house, turned towards him and
said unexpectedly:
"James Ivanovich, I've been waiting for you for a long time."
This event was a fresh shock for James Ivanovich. After all, he had never
seen the bishop before, and the bishop could not have known anything about
him. After thinking about it for a long time, he was tonsured into monasticism
with the name Pitirim and then became a hieromonk and Bishop Nicholas'
cell-attendant.
Between March and June 15, 1928 Bishop Nicholas carried out secret
monastic tonsures together with Bishop Thaddeus (Uspensky) of Saratov.
After a time the authorities forced Vladyka to go and live in Moscow. At
first he lived with his spiritual children. Then as he began to acquire more and
more admirers among the inhabitants of the Zamoskvorechiye, he went from
one to the other. Everyone was glad to give refuge to Vladyka.
Finally, the authorities decided to expel certain bishops from Moscow.
They summoned Bishop Nicholas and gave him a choice of three cities, one of
which was Kiev. Vladyka chose Kiev.
In Kiev he lived with his cell-attendant in the private house of Popov on
the corner of Reznitskaya and Klovsky spusk. The nun Mariamna (in the
world Princess Alexandra Lvovna Shakhovskaya) lived in one small room of
this house, and the three others were let by Bishop Nicholas and Hieromonk
Pitirim. Vladyka Nicholas lived very quietly in Pechersk, receiving almost
nobody and not serving Divine services. He went only to the church of the
women's monastery of the Entrance of the Mother of God into the Temple.
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