| Summary: | During the period when the Patriarch of Moscow was Alexy I in the Old
City of Jerusalem, which from 1948 to 1967 was under the jurisdiction of
Jordan, a group of nuns lived there, consisting of ten people, headed by
schema-abbess Eugenia (Mitrofanova), who did not recognize the "schism"
Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia and those who were in spiritual
union with the Moscow Patriarchate. After her death in 1959, Princess М.А.
Putyatina became her elder sister, who received the name of Seraphim in
monasticism, who lived in Jerusalem until 1966. They were practically the
only ones who in 1945–1967 informed the Moscow Patriarchate about the
state of affairs in Jordan, the Jerusalem Patriarchate and monasteries Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. The letters of Schema Abbess Eugenia and Nun Seraphima are valuable documents of that period. The letters
have not been published in whole or in part. The aforementioned sisters
lived in the Old City of Jerusalem and did not have the right to cross the
border with Israel, being direct eyewitnesses to the events in the Jordanian
half of Jerusalem at that time. These letters are one of the few surviving
testimonies in Russian about church life in Jordanian Jerusalem. The letters
served as reports to Moscow and the Moscow Patriarchate about events
in the church life of Jordan and Jerusalem. For decades, they represented
practically the only source of information from Jerusalem, especially until
1963, when diplomatic relations between the USSR and Jordan were not
established. In addition, other monastics who were supporters of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate lived in East Jerusalem.
These included several nuns, as well as Hegumen Seraphim (Kuznetsov) and Archimandrite Anatoly (Sakharov). Few of their letters from the period
studied were also published.
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