Road to the Russian North

via Kirillov-Belozersky monastery

At the very beginning of summer, a couple of years ago my wife and I went on a short trip to the Russian north. The trip to Lake Onega was very interesting and informative. The main purpose of the trip was Kizhi island. There is a museum reserve with the same name. This place is interesting for its collection of wooden architectural objects typical of northern Russia. In addition, there is a unique wooden cathedral - the Church of the Transfiguration.

The road from Kostroma to the place from where you can swim to the island of Kizhi is long. About 13 hours by car or 1000 kilometers.

The road passes by several interesting places that are definitely worth a visit. Firstly, it is the Kirillov-Belozersky monastery.

Another very interesting object is the Ferapontov Monastery.

Monasteries are not very far from each other. But the first on the highway is the Kirillov-Belozersky monastery. This is an important religious and cultural center of Russia. It is located on the shore of Lake Siversky.

This place is interesting not only from a historical and cultural point of view, it is also beautiful there.

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Brief historical background

The monastery was founded at the end of the XIV century, when the Monk Kirill Belozersky, a monk of the Moscow Simonov Monastery and a student of the Monk Sergius of Radonezh, together with his associate the Monk Ferapont Mozhaisky, settled in this place. Earlier, the Blessed Virgin herself told Cyril to leave for Beloozero. Initially, Cyril and Ferapont erected a wooden cross and dug a cell-cave on a small hill in the forest, on the shore of Lake Siversky. In 1397, the first temple was built in honor of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which is usually considered the founding date of the monastery. Ferapont soon left the nascent monastery, but soon students began to arrive at Cyril and by the time he died in 1427, there were 53 of them. In the first year, 30 of them died, and the monk often appeared in a dream with support and guidance.

Already during the second abbess Trifon, the monastery gained fame throughout Russia and continued to grow rapidly. Here the tradition of icon-painting is laid, which began the monk of the monastery Rev. Dionisy Glushitsky, who wrote in 1424 the lifetime image of Cyril Belozersky as well as the image of St. Demetrius of Prilutsky, which was then stored in the Spaso-Prilutsky monastery. The monastery received all kinds of support from the Moscow princes. With these funds, Abbot Tryphon erected a new wooden Assumption Church, decorating it with “icons and other beauties”. In 1447, Vasily the Dark came to the Kirillo-Belozersky monastery with his opponents. Blinded by his enemies, exiled to Vologda, he was forced to give Dmitry Shemyaka a godmother kiss that he would not look again for the Moscow table. Hegumen Trifon removed the cross kiss from Basil the Dark, and justice was restored. In 1497, the cathedral church burned down and a stone cathedral was built in its place.

The monastery was one of the strongholds of non-possessiveness - a spiritual and moral movement, which feared the over-enrichment of monasteries. In the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery lived the spiritual leaders of non-possessors - Rev. Neil Sorsky, monk Vassian (Patrikeev), chronicler and scribe Guri Tushin, hence the spiritual preaching of non-possessors sounded throughout Russia. The influence of non-possessors led to the fact that from 1482 to 1515 the monastery did not acquire land holdings. The richest monastery library in Russia is also being created here: 17 manuscript books belonged to the founder of the monastery, and Elder Efrosin in the 15th century became the main compiler of the library. A well-known spiritual writer and hagiographer Pachomius Serb worked in the monastery.

From the first half of the 16th century, the Moscow princes and kings began to regularly go on pilgrimage to the Kirillov Monastery. With their funds, the cloister quickly began to be built up with stone buildings. In 1528, Grand Duke Vasily III came to the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery with his young wife Elena Glinskaya to beg the heir, who became the future Tsar John the Terrible, from God and the holy saints of Belozersky. In memory of this, a church was built in the monastery in the name of the Nativity of John the Baptist, and later, Ivan the Terrible donated a huge sum of 28 thousand rubles to the monastery. Having visited the Cyril Monastery three times, Ivan Vasilievich expressed a desire to get a monk's haircut in it, and before his death he received tonsure from the monk of the Kirillo-Belozersky monastery at the courtyard in Moscow.

In the years of the oprichnina, the monastery served as a place of exile for many famous figures of that time, such as the governor Prince Vorotynsky - the hero of the Kazan campaign, the metropolitan of Moscow Joasaph, the Kasimovsky prince Simeon Bekbulatovich, the learned monk Sylvester, the boyars of the Sheremetyevs, the princes Vorotynsky and the representatives of many other noble families. The exiled boyars made significant contributions to the monastery, with these funds, in particular, a church was erected in the name of Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir over the grave of Prince V.I. Vorotynsky.

In the XVI century, many new churches and buildings were erected in the monastery, so by the end of the century the sprawling monastery was divided into two parts - the area around the very hill where Rev. Cyril lived, surrounded by temples and services and surrounded by a fence, was called the Gorny, or Small John Monastery. At the end of the 16th century, the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery was a powerful fortress at that time with a stone wall about a kilometer long, with eight towers and three access gates.

Despite many weaknesses, the fortress allowed the monks in three years to recapture three times the attempts of the interventionists, led by Pan Pesotsky and the "thieves" to capture the monastery. And, although the vast monastic economy was ravaged to the ground, the monastery itself survived. By the 1630s, the monastery restored the destroyed economy, new temples began to be built. In the 1640s, stone buildings of abbot and fraternal cells were also built. In June 1648, in the walls of the Kirillo-Belozersky monastery, boyar Boris Ivanovich Morozov, a teacher and relative of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, was hiding from the Moscow uprising. The king wrote to the monks: “If you protect me, I will grant you so much that they did not see such mercy from the beginning of the world.” For the salvation of Morozov, the abbots of the monastery received the rank of archimandrite, and the monastery received funds for the construction of new fortress walls: the tsar donated 45,000 rubles, and 5,000 more were given by boyar Morozov. The construction of the walls began in 1654.

In the years 1676-1681, Patriarch Nikon lived in the monastery under strict supervision.

By the beginning of the 18th century, the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery became one of the richest monasteries in Russia. Under him even a whole settlement was formed, from which the city of Kirillov subsequently grew.

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