Church of the Nativity of Christ on the Sands

One of the most important churches in St. Petersburg — the Nativity of Christ on the Sands — was built at the end of the 18th century by the architect P. E. Egorov. The community of the temple actively carried out charitable activities. Its rector, Archpriest Alexander Gumilevsky, in 1863 created the first charitable church society in Russia — the parish of the Nativity of Christ Alexander-Joseph Brotherhood, whose activities continued until 1918. The church was closed in March 1934, a number of its clergy were repressed during the Soviet era, including five abbots. One of them, the holy martyr Archpriest Grigory Serbarinov, was glorified as a saint. The investigative cases covered in the article have not yet been studied by researchers. The article is prepared on the basis of a significant set of previously unknown archival documents.