Moscow, October 1, 2020
Photo: biblsinod.ru
Work is underway in the Moscow Patriarchate’s Patriarch Alexei II Synodal Library to systematize and digitize the extensive archives of New Hieromartyr Damian (Voskresensky) of Kursk (1873-1937).
Documents from his personal archive are particularly valuable historical documents on the history of the Russian Church and national history of the 19th-20th centuries, reports the Synodal Library.
St. Damian was born in a priest’s family on October 23, 1873 in the Kursk Governorate. In 1920, he was sentenced to prison “for storing manuscripts of a counter-revolutionary nature.” He was shot in Karelia on November 3, 1937. He was canonized among the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church at the 2000 Jubilee Council of Bishops of the Russian Church.
His valuable archive was given to the Synodal Library on August 8, 1994 by Igumen Innokenty (Pavlov). The documents remained unsorted for many years, and then an initial inventory was carried out. A scheme for the systematization of storage units was worked out during the first stage of work on the archive earlier this year.
The work on St. Damian’s archives is part of the Library’s larger project to make its archives available online.
