Faith, Hope, Love, and their mother Sophia. Presidential Library marks Christian feat of great martyrs

Every year on September 30 (September 17 according to the old calendar), believers celebrate the Day of Remembrance of the Holy Martyrs Vera, Nadezhda, Lyubov, and their mother Sophia.

The teacher, folklorist, and children's writer Maria Serova (1877–1942) dedicated her lines to the holy martyrs: "There are three of them: Hope, Faith, and Love." The complete handwritten text of the poem is available in the library's collection.

A pious widow named Sophia lived in Rome at the beginning of the second century AD during the reign of the godless Emperor Hadrian (117–138 AD). Sophia means "wisdom" in Greek. The woman was a Christian, and she named her three daughters Faith, Hope, and Love in honor of the main Christian virtues. "Indeed, what else could Christian wisdom give birth to but these three most important Christian virtues?" we read in the publication  The Life and Suffering of the Holy Martyrs Faith, Hope, and Love and Their Mother Sophia.

After the birth of her third daughter, the woman was widowed. Sophia raised her children in the Christian tradition, despite the severe persecution of Christians by the authorities at that time.

The Roman emperor Hadrian learned of the beauty and wisdom of Sophia's daughters. He demanded that they renounce their Christian faith and worship pagan gods. But the girls showed fortitude despite their young age. The eldest, Vera, was 12 years old, Nadezhda was 10, and the youngest, Lyubov, was nine.

For their disobedience, Adrian subjected the three children to a martyr's death in front of their mother. Three days later, Sophia died on her daughters' grave. Together with them, she was canonized by the church.

The Presidential Library's collection includes rare publications describing their lives and commemorative celebrations.  The oldest one is A Complete Christian Calendar of All Saints Celebrated by the Orthodox Greek Church, with a Brief Historical and Chronological Description of Their Lives and Deaths..., printed in Moscow in 1818. The book is bound in expensive "marocheno binding," that is, embossed morocco leather with gold embossing on the spine and covers. The library's collection also includes The Book of the Lives of the Saints (in Old Slavonic) , published in September 1864.  The Life and Suffering of the Holy Martyrs Vera, Nadezhda, and Lyubov and Their Mother Sophia is dated 1895. With notes and images of the saints, the book  Lives of the Saints, in Russian, based on the guidance of St. Dimitry of Rostov's Cheti-Minei was printed in 1908.

Other publications devoted to describing the lives of Orthodox saints are also presented. For example, Lives of the Saints (1759), A Manuscript Book in Church Slavonic contains a selection of excerpts from the Cheti-Minei: Lives of the Saints (Cyprian, Charalampius of Magnesia, Onuphrius the Great), Teachings of Macarius of Egypt, John Chrysostom, prayers, as well as excerpts from the Great Moscow Collection of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, Old Russian Lives of Saints as a Historical Source by Russian historian Vasily Klyuchevsky (1871).

Information about the Presidential Library's electronic reading rooms, which are open in Russia and abroad, is available on the portal in the section "Electronic reading rooms on the map."