Saint Vera la Taciturna

Vera the Silent (? - 6 May 1861) was an Orthodox ascetic, a hermit of the Syrkov Maiden Monastery in the Novgorod region, who kept a vow of silence for 23 years. Vera the Silent owes her fame to a legend in which she is identified with Empress Elizabeth Alexeevna —Alexander I's wife— who allegedly followed his example after the emperor, having faked his death, became a Siberian elder Feodor Kuzmich. The unknown woman who called herself Vera Alexandrovna appeared in Tikhvin in 1834 and lived in the house of the landlord Vera Mikhailovna Kharlamova. She was respected for her piety and scrupulous adherence to religious rules, but she never talked about her past or gave her surname. She was often seen in the Tikhvin Dormition Monastery praying before the Theotokos of Tikhvin. She also made pilgrimages to other local monasteries. The Tikhvinians treated Vera Alexandrovna with great respect, often visiting her for spiritual talks and sending her to their children to teach them prayers and the law of God. Thus, if we believe the surviving sources, she lived about three years. Then, having learned that the wife of the deacon of the Vinnitsa pogost in the province of Olonets was seriously ill, she left Tikhvin and voluntarily went to take care of her. A year later she returned to Tikhvin, but soon left the city for good, as is believed, burdened by excessive attention to herself. It was caused by the story of a Tikhvin landlord that in the St. Peter's Fast he saw how Vera Alexandrovna was transformed after taking communion and became like an angel (this story became known in 1852 and in the Syrkov monastery, where Vera then lived, by the landowner Kharlamova, who came to visit her). Vera moved to the Valday village of Beryozovsky Ryadok, where she liked the worship and piety of the parishioners of the local church, and at the request of the peasant Prokopiy Trofimov agreed to stay there for some time.