SCHEMA ABBESS MAGDALINA OF YEKATERINBURG (+ 1934)

By Vladimir Moss

In the world Pelagia Stefanovna Dosmanovna, was born in 1847 in the city of Irbit, Perm province। On January 19, 1859 she entered the Novo-Tikhvin monastery in Yekaterinburg and worked in the candle factory. From 1871 she became the assistant of Abbess Magdalina (Neustroyeva). On January 19, 1893 she was tonsured into monasticism. In July 8, 1896 she was appointed treasurer. On February 23, 1897 she was raised to the rank of abbess and received a golden chest cross. Under her, the monastery reached its greatest flourishing, becoming the third largest monastery in Russia with 911 inhabitants in 1917. In 1900 she was appointed guardian of the church-parish schools of the diocese. After the closure of the monastery in 1919 she secretly gathered around her the nuns who remained in Yekaterinburg; the majority of them worked in the city’s hospitals. She was arrested eight times, but then released. She died on July 16, 1934 and was buried in Yekaterinburg, next to the altar of the church of St. John the Forerunner. Three days before her death, she had a vision of the Mother of God who told her the exact day of her death, after which she took the schema.