Orthodox Prayer Book (Molitvoslov)
Молитвослов
Господи, Иисусе Христе, Сыне Божий, молитв ради Пречистыя Твоея Матере... помилуй нас.
Our renderingLord Jesus Christ, Son of God, through the prayers of Thy most pure Mother, have mercy on us.
What it is
The Molitvoslov is the standard Orthodox laypeople's prayer book, containing morning and evening prayers, canons, akathists, the preparatory rule for Holy Communion, and occasional prayers for every circumstance of life. A copy with dark blue calico binding and the monograms 'NA' and 'AF' under an imperial crown, dated 6 May 1883, was documented among the Romanov books recovered at Ekaterinburg, and Empress Alexandra learned Church Slavonic specifically to pray from these texts. The Royal Family's prayer rule during their final captivity at Tobolsk and Ekaterinburg was structured on the Molitvoslov cycle. All five Romanov children were instructed in its use as part of the 'Law of God' curriculum prescribed for Orthodox subjects of the Empire.
Why it still matters
Use the morning and evening prayer cycles as a structured daily rule; even a shortened version practiced with consistency over months produces measurable deepening of interior prayer. The Jordanville Prayer Book (Holy Trinity Monastery) is the most widely available English-Slavonic edition.
Kept alongside
Rules for Preparation for Holy Communion
Правила ко Святому Причащению
The formal rule of prayers and canons — three preparatory canons, the Akathist to Jesus, and the Canon of Thanksgiving — used before and after receiving Holy Communion in the Russian Orthodox tradition. A copy inscribed 'To my dear Tatiana, from Mama, 9 February 1912' was documented among the Romanov books recovered at Ekaterinburg, testifying to Alexandra's deliberate formation of her children in sacramental preparation. Nicholas II recorded in his diary the deep significance of receiving Communion, describing his 1900 Kremlin Communion as a profound spiritual milestone. The rule existed in printed prayer-book form as a private devotional, though its liturgical roots are fully public.
The Jesus Prayer
Молитва Иисусова
The short invocation 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner' has been the central personal prayer of Orthodox hesychasm for fifteen centuries, transmitted through the Desert Fathers, the Sinai tradition, and the Athonite hesychasts to Russian monasticism and lay piety. It appears within the Molitvoslov prayer rule documented as belonging to the Romanov family, and Empress Alexandra explicitly commended the prayer to her children by name in her letters and spiritual counsel. Elder Nikolai Guryanov later testified that Tsar Nicholas II recited it daily, though this oral tradition postdates the Tsar by decades and cannot be treated as primary documentation. The prayer's centrality to the Romanov spiritual world is well established; the personal frequency of its use by individual family members is plausible but cannot be confirmed from contemporary primary sources.
The Philokalia (Dobrotolubiye)
Добротолюбие
The Philokalia is the foundational anthology of hesychast spiritual writings spanning the 4th through 15th centuries, assembled on Mount Athos by Sts. Makarios of Corinth and Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain and first printed in Venice in 1782. Paisios Velichkovsky's 1793 Slavonic translation set off a monastic revival across the Russian Empire, and Theophan the Recluse's expanded Russian edition of 1877–1889 brought its teaching on sobriety of mind, watchfulness, and the Jesus Prayer to educated laypeople throughout the late imperial period. The text was the direct source drawn upon by the anonymous narrator of 'The Way of a Pilgrim' and the backbone of the confessor culture surrounding Nicholas II's court, though no individually labelled Romanov copy appears in any known Ekaterinburg inventory. Its influence on late-Romanov Orthodox piety is certain; direct family reading cannot be documented.