Konstantin is a true biography

The official website of the Rostov-on-Don of the diocese a year ago, on December 7 ago, in Rostov-on-Don, the holy man of martyr Konstantin Vertetsky, who was counted to the face of the new martyrs and confessors of the Russian Church, was solemnly glorified to the glorification of the holy martyr, was solemnly glorified. For the Don land, the feat of the holy martyr Konstantin was a landmark: after His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon, he did not be afraid to expose supporters of godless power and humbly, with hope of the will of God, accepted death from their hands, not forgetting about his pastoral duty.

The shepherd, the son of the shepherd Konstantin Aleksandrovich Vertetsky came from the well-known in the Yekaterinoslav diocese, which belonged to Rostov-on-Don up to a year, a priestly dynasty [2]. He was brought up in the spirit of the values ​​of piety, the devotion of the Church of Christ, traditional for that time, and saw only one way in front of him - the path of serving Christ.

At the end of the Yekaterinoslav Seminary, K. Vertska stood on a path of law Teaching [3]. His many years of activity as a law teacher and head of various educational institutions was marked by numerous awards [4]. In the year, after the marriage, Konstantin Veretsky was ordained a holy dignity [5]. In the year, he was appointed to the place of the Third Priest of the Troll Church in the name of all the saints of the city of Rostov-on-Don [6].

Priest Konstantin was distinguished by a strict and attentive attitude to church service and to spiritual nourishment of his parishioners, participated in the work of a parish fraternity, whose activities consisted in providing charitable assistance to those in need [7], was a member of the parish council [8]. According to the memoirs of a relative of the holy martyr E.

Rosinsky, Father Konstantin was always open to the people, they came to him both for comfort and for help, and he did not refuse anyone [9]. He did not refuse the help of his brother, priest John of Versitsky, who was naughty in the year: Father Konstantin took his widow and four daughters in the care of his care [10]. Thanks to the cares of uncle, the girls were educated at the diocesan female school of G.

Following the traditions of the Vertaksky family, the children were brought up in faith and piety. Even before a direct clash with the Red Guards in late January - early February, events began to occur that caused the murder of the priest Konstantin Vertsk. First of all, the area of ​​Rostov-on-Don, where Father Konstantin served, was the center of the revolutionary movement.

The tragic events of the revolution of the year were played here. Residents of Nakhalovka - workers prone to the support of the Bolsheviks - were annoyed by the priest’s sermons, who called for preventing further bloodshed and exposing the rigidity, accompanying the confrontation of red and white. Father Konstantin did not belong to any political movement and did not express a desire to join him.

He did not urge to provide civil or military resistance to the Bolsheviks, his sermons were full of calling for repentance and to refuse to participate in the cruelty of that difficult time. Decisive in the confrontation between the priest of Konstantin Vertetsky, who called for traditional Christian values, and the part of his flock, which supported the Bolsheviks, was the message of the Holy Tikhon, the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, of January 19, “On the anathematization of the inability and the chasers of Vera in the Church of the Orthodox” [11], in which the words of the Holy, were voiced, the words of the Holyness were heard, The Bolsheviks caused a special bitterness: “Come back, madmen, stop your bloody reprisals.

After all, the fact that you are doing, not only a cruel business, is truly a Satanic business, for which you are subject to Geena’s fire in the life of the future - the afterlife and terrible curse of the offspring in the life of the real - earthly one. The authorities, given to us from God, forbid you to proceed with the secrets of Christ, anathematize you, if only you wear Christian names and although by your birth belong to the Orthodox Church ”[12].

Priest Konstantin, and previously calling his parishioners to repentance, following his priestly duty, as his father, priest Alexander Veretsky, read the Epistle of His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon in the church: “My son read the letter of Patriarch Tikhon in the church and repeated the words about the anathema. He knew that the Bolsheviks were angry with him, but he did not think to hide from them ”[13].

The pronounced position of the priest Konstantin Vertetsky, based on the message of His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon, caused the special hatred of those who supported the Bolsheviks. Father Konstantin repeatedly received threats to his address from local Bolshevik cells. However, fulfilling his pastoral duty, he did not leave Rostov-on-Don along with Denikin’s Volunteer Army retreating in the year of February.

On February 10, on February 10, parts of the Red Guards under the command of R. Red Army were eager to kill the murders and were ready to kill, as evidenced in their memoirs, the Menshevik A. Lokerman [14] [14]. The Orthodox clergy caused particular hatred among the Red Guards.Dissatisfied with the sermons of Konstantin, the parishioners informed the new government about the rebellious priest.

Further, according to the testimony of the wife of the father of Konstantin, Evlampia Ivanovna Vertetskaya, the events developed as follows: “February 10 pr [in the lobby], that is, th. My husband, Konstantin Aleksandrovich Veretsky, a priest of the church of all saints, went out into the street without resistance, where there was a crowd, which consisted mainly of women.

The crowd was hostile and demanded that her husband be taken directly to the steppe for execution. I did not go out of the apartment to the street, but when I asked the soldiers in the apartment, for which they arrested my husband, I received an answer that for sermons against the Bolsheviks. The husband was led by the fraternal per [eulka] towards the steppe and there, in the quarter between Kuznetsk and the last street, he was shot.

There were several bullet and bayonet wounds on her husband’s body, and, in addition, the skull was so unleashed, apparently, with the blow of the butt of the gun ”[15]. The aggressive behavior of women of the new settlement, who ate hatred of the church and the clergy, is not surprising. The famous specialist in the problems of the Civil War in the south of Russia, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor A.

Venkov believes that “the flip side of female emancipation appeared here. Injected by revolutionaries to fight for their rights, many women at a low level of political and general culture also participated in the policy of terror and provoked the murders of people that were objectionable to them ”[16]. Menshevik A. Locherman wrote about this: “The audience, filling the sidewalks and streets, demanded an immediate reprisal.

Women who showed some amazing bloodthirstiness were especially rampant ”[17]. Answering the investigation questions carried out in April in the year I blessed him, he kissed my hand and, without crouching, left. About two hours, as I said, he was taken by the Bolsheviks, but at three o’clock he was gone. He foresaw that it would be bad with him. One of the parishioners on the same day warned him about the danger, but he replied that since this was destined, then the will of God.

He repeatedly said in the sermons that all the good people from the soldiers left their homes, returned to their families, and only one prisoners remained. For this, the Bolsheviks were angry with him. Some woman was especially harassed by his death ”[18]. In his article, published in May, it was said: “The first victim of the Bolsheviks who entered on February 9 in Rostov was the priest of the All -Site in the new settlement of the Church, Father Konstantin Vertsk.

A wonderful preacher, a true clergyman by calling, the late father Konstantin, not denying the positive aspects of the ideological Bolshevism, in strong sermons did not spare colors to characterize and evaluate those planters of the Bolshevism that Rostov’s ... Falled Rostov and the Bolsheviks came for a long time. A huge crowd has already gathered against the porch, mainly women who brought even infants with them.

The crowd kept the grave silence and silently went after the priest, heading along the Bratsk Lane to the steppe. This exclamation was intercepted by a dozen other women. To the headquarters or here to end? The scene of the murder of the priest makes the gospel words recall: “Cross, cut him off! The described execution also saw in the events that took place the evable history, comparing the last hours of the life of the priest of Konstantin Versitsky with the events in the Gethsemane Garden and the last days of the life of Christ [20].

In memory of the martyr, an appeal to the sources describing the death of the priest of Konstantin Vertetsky shows that his death is martyrdom. The priest suffered for the exposure of the vices of the revolutionary society, in which it was plunged, renouncing the eternal values ​​testified by the blood of Christ. Despite the opportunity to remain silent and, abandoning Christian ideals, to go in the line of the then political conjuncture, Priest Konstantin Veretsky remained faithful to Christ and his priestly oath.

Caught in the face of his killers, he showed neither doubt nor cowardice, he did not attempt to prove his innocence and appeal to his pity and the remnants of humanity in his killers. He, like a true shepherd, went to death with faith. Like the martyrs of the primary Christian Church, he deliberately accepted the martyrdom. The martyrdom of the priest did not leave indifferent either priests or parishioners of the church in the name of all saints.

Father Constantine was buried in the fence of the temple. Three months after his death, attempts were made to perpetuate the memory of him. Veretskiy and decided to allocate from the funds of the parish council to the indicated subject of the rub. When the chapel is built, put there a marble board for the recording of the Holy [Ennik] about [tsa] K. Vertetsky; About others, about all those killed during the Civil War at the request of their relatives every Saturday of three hours of [ASA] days of death about [tzu] Konstantin to call the Great Panchid, which will be given the hairstyle of the All -Site Church ”[22].

No, let's remember!The church commemoration of Konstantin Vertska continued until the temple in the name of all saints was transferred to the renovationists who, after the closure and destruction of the majestic Rostov Cathedral of the Holy Prince Alexander Nevsky, who was the center of the renovation of the Metropolitan District [23], made the center of the rash of the whole consistent church.

Renovationists, demonstrating the loyalty of Soviet power, did not need a memory of a priest who showed all her crime with his feat. Most likely at this time, the service of the Panichids of Father Konstantin Veretsky was discontinued. Further destruction of the memory of the priest Konstantin Vertetsk was associated with the closure of the year and the subsequent destruction of the whole Council, and during the period of the Khrushchev persecution - with the destruction of the church in the name of all saints [24].

Together with the temple, the grave of the father of Constantine was erased from the face of the earth [25]. However, it cannot be argued that the destruction of the temple and graves caused the oblivion of the priest's feat. After the destruction of visible signs, the memory of his father Konstantin was concentrated around his family and relatives.

The parishioners of the temple and the parish council, until the transfer of the church, was supported by the family of Father Constantine. For several years, his wife Evlampy Ivanovna received monetary remembrance [26]. After the transfer of the church, the former parishioners continued to support the wife and daughter of the murdered priest [27].

After the rest of the parishioners and close relatives of the father of Konstantin Vertetsky, the memory of him, albeit insignificant, but remained among the distant relatives of the Vertsk and indigenous Rostovites. Until today, one can hear from venerable Rostovites the story of a priest of the now destroyed all -Sixovite church, who was killed in the year. The revival of the memory of the father of Konstantin Veretsky in the Rostov and Novocherkassk diocese began in the X.

At first, veneration was of an unstable character and was limited to the circle of people who knew the circumstances of his death. These people became a kind of “keepers of memory” and the successors of prayer commemoration. Since the year, the Commission on the canonization of the saints of the Don Metropolis began centrally collecting certificates of the death of the priest, found the now healthy relative of the priest Konstantin, his grandsonous niece E.

Rosinsky, who kept family traditions. On the initiative of the commission of E. Rosinsky, a book of memoirs about Father Konstantin and his family was written and published "... and to disrupt the peace of your souls." In the revival of memory of K.'s priest, the Versetskoy was played by the foundation in the year of the church in the name of all saints G. as before, this temple became the place of the purely commemoration of Father Constantine.