The first printed references to Xenia of Petersburg available on the Presidential Library's portal

On February 6, believers celebrate the day of memory of the saint, whose name is associated with St. Petersburg. Aksinya Grigoryevna Petrova, canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church as Xenia of Petersburg, has been revered by Orthodox Christians for many years not only in our city, but all over the world.

The Presidential Library’s collections contain unique materials about the life of the St. Petersburg saint. Particularly interesting are the first references published long before her official canonization in 1988. And they are all the more important, because very little is reliably known about the earthly life of a saint. Quite a lot is being said about Xenia of Petersburg now, but during her lifetime there were no biographers, and many biography facts were preserved only thanks to popular rumor. Maybe that's why there are some discrepancies in the history of the St. Petersburg saint, which are reflected in the history of our city.

Curious to relate, the first printed mention of the future saint came out in 1845 under the cover of the almanac Physiology of Petersburg, which was edited by Nikolai Nekrasov, and the "frantic" Vissarion Belinsky himself appeared among the authors. In this publication, devoid of religiosity and uniting adherents of progressive literature, the essay Petersburg Side by Yevgeny Grebenka was published. Opening the digitized edition on the Presidential Library’s portal we see the strange name of one street - Andrei Petrovich Street, or Andrei Petrova, it turns out, is directly related to Xenia of Petersburg.

By the way, it is interesting that the patronymic of Andrei Petrov, according to the author of this, the first known to us, printed mention of Xenia of Petersburg, was Petrovich. In later books, he is called Andrei Fedorovich.

This is confirmed, for example, by the book The Servant of God Xenia or holy fool Andrei Fedorovich by priest Dmitry Bulgakovsky, published in 1891.

After the death of her husband “having distributed all the property to the poor, she began to play the fool. At the same time, she assured everyone that she was not Aksinya Grigoryevna, but Andrei Fedorovich, and that Andrei Fedorovich did not die, but only turned into her ... and Aksinya Grigoryevna was not in the world - she died. Therefore, she no longer responded to her former nickname and even became very angry when they called her Aksinya, saying: “don’t touch the deceased, what she did to you, God forgive me! ..“.

As it turned out, this is not just a story of a family tragedy of two lovers from the Petersburg side. This is a story about the strong spirit of a weak woman, about how a strong-willed decision changes not only the essence of the person himself, but also changes the world around.

Xenia did not have her own household, did not have a home, at any time of the year she wore only a green blouse and a red skirt (or vice versa - in memory of her husband's uniform) and a scarf, spent the night in a field outside the city. Everything that was given to her, she gave to the poor. Over time, the people began to notice unusual properties behind the words and deeds of the holy fool.

The people's memory also preserved the fact that she predicted the death of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna. On the eve of her death, "On December 24, 1761, Xenia, going from street to street, shouted: “Do bake pancakes, bake pancakes, all of Russia will bake pancakes”" The next day, the Empress died suddenly.

There is no exact information about the day of Xenia's death. They buried her at the Smolensk cemetery, not far from the temple, which she secretly helped build at night. Coming to work early in the morning, builders often found heavy bricks high above the ground, on the scaffolding. This St. Petersburg holy fool worked at night, helping the craftsmen as best as she could. It is no accident that she is often depicted on icons against the background of this temple.

The time of her burial is mentioned in the historical essay Smolensk Cemetery in St. Petersburg by priest Stefan Opatovich, who for a long time served in the church at the cemetery. His essay was published in the Russkaya Starina magazine in 1873. “One can only roughly indicate”, - the author writes, - the last years of the past and the first years of the present century (the end of the 18th - the beginning of the 19th century. - Note of the press service of the Presidential Library)”. 

Xenia's grave immediately became a place of pilgrimage.