Nun Alexandra (Princess)

The inscription on her tombstone reads:

“In the summer of 7033 (1525), the blessed princess, nun Alexander of May, died on May 11, and was buried in the land of the same month on day 21” ^[3] .

The inscription on the consecration of the Intercession Cathedral, recorded at one time by the Suzdal archpriest Ananiya Fedorov , supplements this information. It says that the cathedral was consecrated in 1514 in the presence of the nun Alexandra, the sister of the Grand Duke Vasily III Ivanovich ^[3] - obviously, we are talking about the same noble inhabitant of the monastery.

In the life of the Monk Euthymius of Suzdal , quoted by Tokmakov in the description of the monastery, the same instruction is repeated: “This holy and divine church (...) of 7026 (...) was consecrated the swiftness (...) of the same month of the month of Octovry on the 1st day, during the abbess of Juliania, and under the Grand Duchess, the daughters of Grand Duke Vasily Ioannovich of all Russia, nun Alexander ” ^[4] - however, here she was called not his sister, but her daughter, which he didn’t have at all. (Further, there, Tokmakov in the list of burials in the cathedral calls her nevertheless a sister ^[5] ).

The year after the death of the nun Alexandra, Grand Duke Vasily III sent his barren wife Solomony Saburov to this monastery.

However, Vasily III did not have a famous sister with a similar fate - all his full sisters ( daughters from the second marriage of Ivan III with Sofia Paleolog ) either died in infancy or were married. He had an older half- brother - the son of Ivan III (d. 1505) from his first marriage with Princess Maria Borisovna Tverskaya - Ivan Young who died early (d. 1490); his widow Elena Voloshanka (d. 1505) and the little orphan-son Dmitry Vnuk (d. 1509) by the 1500s fell victim to the intrigues of Sophia Paleolog, as a result of which the throne was inherited by Vasily III. Presumably, the nun of Alexander may be unknown from other sources, the full sister of Ivan the Young and half-sister - Vasily III, who was exiled to the monastery due to the victory of Sophia Paleolog. (In this case, her birth date falls after 1452 until April 22, 1467 - the dates of the marriage and death of Maria Borisovna Tverskaya).

N. A. Kazakova and Ya. S. Lurie , referring to the participation in the heresy of the Judaizers Helena Voloshanka, also mention the nun in a note: “In an anonymous article“ Suzdal “, placed in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate” (1945, No. 11, p. 41), it is reported without reference to any sources about the participation in heresy of another member of the princely family - the daughter of Ivan III Alexandra, who was buried in 1525 in the Suzdal Pokrovsky monastery. ” ^[6] . They give a different version of her origin, believing that "the daughter of Ivan III, nun Alexander in the world, apparently, Elena is the second of Ivan's daughters who bore this name." (In total, Helen and Sophia seemed to have three or four, and only the fate of Helena, Queen of Poland , was thoroughly studied). According to them, this second Elena “was indeed buried in the Suzdal Pokrovsky monastery” ^[7] , but nothing is said about her heresy in the sources available to them ^[6] . Her birth date can then be from 1474 (the wedding of Sofia Paleologue) until the 1490s, when the Grand Duchess (d. 1503) gave birth to her last children.