Newly found poem attributed to Abbess Tamar presented in Tver region

A previously unknown poem attributed by priest Vladimir Klyuyev to Schema-Abbess Tamar Mardzhanova was presented at a teachers’ conference in Tatevo, Tver region, organisers reported on October 16.

Organisers said the poem appeared on previously blank pages of the notebook Memorable Tales. It concerns Metropolitan Alexy’s healing of Taidula, wife of Golden Horde Khan Uzbek, in 1357.

Klyuyev, rector of a Moscow church in Novokosino, said the handwriting matched Tamar’s signature and cited that comparison as the basis for attributing authorship. Arseny Zhadanovsky was her spiritual father and tonsured her into the Great Schema in 1916.

Tamar became abbess of Moscow’s Intercession convent in 1905. Work on the Seraphim-Znamensky skete near Moscow began with her involvement in 1910. She and two sisters were arrested and exiled to Irkutsk region in 1931. She died on June 23, 1936.

The Georgian Orthodox Church canonised Tamar on December 22, 2016. On October 11, 2023, her name was included among the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.

More than 70 teachers attended the conference on Sergey Rachinsky’s educational legacy and Nicholas of Japan’s missionary work. Bishop Siluan of Rzhev and Toropets read the discovered poem to participants.