Aha ! Like the word matador, for example, "he who kills the bull". Good thinking, Maria.
I was working on an allusion to Mata Hari last night, but it got too late. This was the name adopted by a notorious Dutch woman in the period leading up to World War I> don't look up her life unless one wants to be thoroughly polluted.
The name she chose for herself for a career in what is now euphemistically called 'exotic dancing' was from the Bahasa Indonesia language [ recall that the Dutch were involved in Indonesia for nearly 350 years, and this woman spent some of her earlier years on Java ].
In the Indonesian language, a variant of Malay, Mata means "EYE". Isn't that a STRANGE 'coincidence' ? A semi- intelligence agent who never collected any significant intelligence - but was killed by a French firing squad, again showing the death connection you mentioned, Maria.
Could agents of the Cheka and its modern day derivatives have selected Matrona, blind from birth, as a subtle connection to Mata Hari ? There is the rumor of Matrona's having been consulted by WWII leader Stalin upon which KGB agents putting together the case for veneration of a new, Muscovite 'saint' would have built her appeal during the Soviet era.
Modern Russian sources, including the Pravoslavie/OrthoChristian site, downplay that as only a legend. But some recent articles on Mata-Matrona persist in labeling her "Stalin's Saint". So ! We have a Hugging Saint who was faintly possibly involved in governmental intrigue, like her Dutch 'namesake'; the prominent feature of each having been related to the Eye. Or - was it the evil eye at work through the superstar of Moscow ?-! For I receive a bad jolt every time I glance at that real life photo, which signals something seriously wrong with this cult of Sri Mata Matrona, possibly manufactured by secret operatives.
If this sounds ridiculous, which it well may, let us wonder WHY all Russian émigré visitors to their 'homeland' are shoehorned into visiting Sri Matrona. I mean, for example, the story of the life of a White Russian émigré oarishioner of San Francisco's Holy Virgin Cathedral recently published by OrthoChristian in English, previously released in Russian. The story is riveting... until one gets to this sentence about the émigré's son, Protodeacon Nicholas Triantafillidis. Afflicted with a bad disease
"He then went with his family to St Petersburg to pray before Blessed Xenia of St Petersburg, and then to Moscow to pray before the relics of St Matrona of Moscow."
http://orthochristian.com/114007.html
Out of ALL MOSCOW, Protodeacon Nicholas only went to 'see' Matrona to beg for relief from his ailment ?
VERY SUSPICIOUS. There are literally hundreds of great Saints from Moscow and the surrounding region [ Golden Ring cities, and many other towns, each with its own beloved Saints ]. The ill protodeacon may have visited other shrines as long as he had traveled all that way from the West Coast of the U.S. > Why, then, did Olga, the reporter of the Moscow Patriarchate Pravoslavie media outlet, speak only of Sri Mata Matrona ? Surely this is a suggestion to readers that THEY consider making a pilgrimage to venerate this supremely important figure. Questionable statements repeated endlessly hammer ideas into susceptible minds, after all.
Though the Soviet Union vanished, its unsubtle, often heavy handed methods of molding attitudes may linger on, at least in MP affairs as we can observe in the systematic building up of an international cult of the Russian Hugging Saint.
Let's say that the Russian-Greek-American protodeacon did not feel well enough to go anywhere else besides Matrona's flower-filled shrine. Then why would he have chosen just that one destination in Moscow, going out of his way from St Petersburg merely to visit the Pokrovsky Convent's famous attraction ? Close nearby is the much more beautiful and interesting Novospassky Monastery with so many historical tombs, such as those of the mysterious Eldress Dosifea and the early Romanovs - even a Grand Duke from the beginning of the 20th century.