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Saint Tatiana is an early Christian martyr who is revered by the Orthodox and Catholic Churches and in Russia is considered the Patron Saint of Moscow State University and indeed of all students.
The main source of information about Tatiana in Russia is the story of the Saint’s life written by Dmitry Rostovsky in the 17th century, according to which Tatiana lived in the 3rd century, was born in Rome into a rich and noble family (her father was a consul three times). Her parents were Christians, and therefore raised their daughter in piety and purity. Having reached adulthood, she became completely indifferent to wealth and other blessings and came to love a spiritual way of life with all her heart. She forever renounced marriage and chose the path of “the bride of Christ”, taking a vow of chastity. During her virtuous life, Tatiana was made a deaconess, thus becoming the first woman who could assist in the church ministry, because before her only male priests could take this rank. In this position, Tatiana diligently cared for the sick, visited the dungeons, helped the poor, tried to please God with fervent prayers and good deeds.
It was difficult for Christians in those days in Rome. The city was pagan and very religious, and therefore not a single important event was complete without sacrifice to idols – whether it was the accession to the throne of a new emperor or the military victories of Roman legionnaires, the onset of a new year or the birth of a child. There were few Christians in Rome, and almost all of them were in hiding, fearing reprisals from the authorities.
So, during the next persecution of Christians under the emperor Alexander Severus (who reigned from 222 to 235), Tatiana was seized at the behest of the city governor Ulpian. She was taken to the temple of Apollo, where they tried to force her to bow to the statue of this pagan god, but the girl offered a prayer to Jesus Christ, after which a terrible earthquake suddenly began. The Apollo statue and part of the temple collapsed and buried several priests and many pagans under it. For several days, Tatiana was beaten, tortured, burned… – but God protected her, and even the traces of those cruel tortures instantly disappeared from her body. In anger, the tormentors imprisoned Tatiana again, and the next day she was brought to the Colosseum and thrown into the pit with a hungry lion. Nevertheless, the lion did not touch her and lay at her feet.
The judges decided that the girl was engaged in sorcery with the help of her hair, cut her hair off and locked her for two days in the temple of Zeus. However, on the third day, the priests, having come to the temple to sacrifice to Zeus, found his statue broken and Tatiana unharmed. The story of Tatiana’s life tells about this with many artistic details, “The devil who lived in the idol, with a loud cry and sobbing, fled from that place, and everyone heard the cry and saw a shadow that swept through the air.”
After that, she was sentenced to death, and on January 12, AD 226, Tatiana was beheaded with a sword.
Her father, seeing the suffering of his daughter, no longer wished to remain a secret Christian and decided to open up and share the fate of his beloved daughter. He was also executed. Eight servants of the city, who tormented the Holy One, seeing the power of God over her I live, came to believe in Jesus Christ, and after the torment, they were also beheaded with a sword…
Tatiana, for such torments for the sake of faith, was canonized as a Saint, and it is customary to honor her day on January 25, when prayers are traditionally read in churches, and ordinary parishioners ask Saint Tatiana to give them happiness and patience… Moreover, many modern students ask her for success in their studies; they pray to her on the eve of important events, ask for help before exams, and simply in protection from evil forces, because in Russia Saint Tatiana is considered the Patron Saint of enlightenment, students and education.
This tradition was born after January 12 (23), 1755, on the day of memory of the Holy Martyr Tatiana and on the name day of Ivan Ivanovich Shuvalov’s mother. The Russian Empress Elizaveta Petrovna approved his petition and signed a decree on the opening of Moscow University, which became one of the centers of Russian advanced culture and social thought in Russia. According to the surviving memoirs, “Shuvalov deliberately chose this day to present the project to the empress; in memory of the Holy Great Martyr Tatiana, who was a Patron Saint for his mother: he wanted to please her with his new appointment as curator of the Russian University. Therefore, Tatiana’s Day began to be celebrated annually, first as the birthday of the University, and later as a holiday for all students.
The holiday was established in 1850. Initially, only students of Moscow University took part in it, later the holiday spread to students of other educational institutions, and by the middle of the 19th century, Tatiana’s Day had actually turned from a holiday of students and professors of Moscow University into a holiday of the Russian intellectuals.
The celebration of the student’s day in the Russian Empire was noisy and cheerful. At first, this holiday was celebrated only in Moscow, but almost the entire city took part in it. The holiday began with a prayer service in the university church, and then official ceremonies were held in the university building in the presence of status guests.
Then noisy and cheerful festivities took place throughout the city. Lucien Olivier, the former owner of the Hermitage, even gave away the hall of the restaurant for the student “party”, where students and professors celebrated the holiday. True, after 9 pm, students moved to restaurants Yar and Strelna located closer to Tverskaya Zastava. On Tatiana’s Day, ordinary public was not served in these establishments, choirs did not sing, and only vodka and beer were served and consumed. Moreover, beer was poured directly from kegs.
Well, on that day students really drank, but the tsarist gendarmes, having met a drunk student, did not touch him, on the contrary, offered their help.
It is known that lawyers who graduated from the Faculty of Law of Moscow University annually celebrated Tatiana’s Day in the Prague restaurant.
In one of his humorous feuilletons, university graduate Anton Chekhov wrote about this day, “This year we drank everything except the Moskva River and this was due to the fact that it was frozen… Pianos and grand pianos crackled, orchestras did not stop. It was so fun that one student, out of an excess of feelings, bathed in a tank where sterlets swim.” Vladimir Gilyarovsky wrote, “Moscow streets have never been as noisy as every year on this day. The police did not arrest students that day; they were also ordered to keep out of sight of the students.“
After the revolution of 1905, students stopped visiting The Hermitage and organizing noisy festivities there, and closer to the First World War, historical revels began to fade away.
After the October Revolution, Tatiana’s day was rarely celebrated. Only after the opening in 1995 of the church in honor of the Holy Martyr Tatiana at Moscow University, this holiday came to life again, and since 2005, January 25 has been celebrated in Russia as The Day of Russian Students.
The symbolism of the holiday as a student holiday is emphasized by the coincidence with the academic calendar – January 25 is also the last day of the 21st academic week, the traditional end of the examination session of the first semester, after which the winter holidays come.
By the way, since 1993, on Tatyana’s Day, Viktor Sadovnichiy, the rector of Moscow University, has been treating students with the university style medovukha pouring it into glasses and mugs with his own hands.
He spied the idea of pouring drinks at Humboldt University. Any student of the university could buy beer, which was kept in a keg in the university courtyard. Once a student, jokingly, grabbed a mug, ran up to the rector of the university and asked him to pour beer. The rector had to not only pour, but also pay for this drink. However, at Moscow State University on Tatyana’s Day, the rector himself, and for free, pours not beer… but traditional Russian medovukha. Moreover, at Moscow State University they make classic medovukha, the way it should be according to all the old canons. For this medovukha, good clean water is taken, often spring water, honey and “bee bread” are added to it… By the way, the so-called “bee bread” is made by bees in the hive, that is, they put honey in honeycombs and enrich it with their “saliva” – useful enzymes. Medovukha is aged, as it should be, for at least a month, and it is called “medovukha in the university style”.
Afterwards, of course, students start singing songs, among which the song of vagants (itinerant students, wandering in medieval Europe) Hospita in Gallia (which was translated into Russian by Lev Ginzburg) and is especially popular. The original Latin song of the vagantes was associated with the realities of students’ life at the University of Paris. That was a song about the fears of a Swabian youth going to Paris to study, where professors might “torture him to death”, and those fears were quite justified. The fact is that the course of study at one of the faculties in the University of Paris, theological, lasted ten years… In the debate at the final exam, which lasted twelve hours without interruption – from six in the morning to six in the evening – the student was confronted by twenty disputants who changed every half hour. The student was deprived of rest and could neither eat nor drink at that time. If he passed this test, he became a doctor and was crowned with a special black cap, which eloquently told everyone – this person knows that “learning is light, and ignorance is darkness”, obscurantism, demons and devilry…!
Well, learning, of which Saint Tatiana is in charge!
