Location: Serpukhov
Constructed: 1374
Vysotsky Monastery is an Eastern Orthodox convent
that dates back to the medieval period in the historic town of
Serpukhov. It was found in 1374 by St. Sergius of Radonezh, and
Prince Vladimir the Bold. In 1571 Crimean Tatars burned the monastery on their
way to Moscow, but subsequently
it was restored by private donations of aristocratic Naryshkin
family. Following generations of the noble clan came here on their
regular pilgrimages. Natalia Naryshkin, mother of the future Russian
emperor Peter the Great frequented to Vysotsky Monastery. Vysotsky
monastery experienced a certain decline in the XVIII century as some
of the lands were confiscated by the government. But in the XIX
century it flourished and grew in size and number of monks. After
Russian Revolution in the 1920's Vysotsky Monastery was closed. Part
of circumferential walls and Church of All Saints were destroyed.
The main church of the Vysotsky Monastery, the Conception Cathedral
was built in the 16th century shortly after destruction by the
Crimean Tatars. It is surrounded by arcaded gallery with a small
chapel of the Nativity of the Virgin.
Near the cathedral is the former refectory with the Church of the
Intercession that dates back to the 19th century. It holds one
of the most venerated icons in Orthodox Church, an icon of Our Lady
of "The Inexhaustible Cup". After religion was legalized again after
the end of Soviet rule hundreds of pilgrims come to Serpukhov every
week.
The "new" three-storey bell tower of the monastery was built around
1840 to replace the old medieval one, which has come into disrepair
and collapsed. Soon after its second tier of the temple was
constructed in the name of the Three Great Hierarchs and Ecumenical
Teachers Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John
Chrysostom. Vysotsky Monastery belltower was consecrated in 1843 by
the holy Metropolitan of Moscow Filaret (Drozdov). Trehsvyatitelsky
(Three Great Hierarchs) Temple was the first temple in which daily
services began in 1991 in the newly re- opened monastery.
In the summer of 1373, the Golden Horde regiments of Khan Mamai
subjected the Ryazan Principality to a brutal attack, after which there
was an urgent need to strengthen the defense and, first of all, cover
the most important route from the middle Oka to Moscow, which passed
through the old village of Serpukhovskoye, the estate of Prince Vladimir
Andreevich the Brave. The site of the ancient settlement was surrounded
by a wall, and a decision was made to build a monastery. The
construction of the monastery was part of a program to strengthen the
borders of the principality and the princely residence on the Oka.
The monastery was founded by Serpukhov Prince Vladimir the Brave
with the blessing of St. Sergius of Radonezh in 1374. First mentioned in
the Simeon Chronicle of the 15th century:
That same summer, the same
Christ-loving Prince Volodimer Andreevich thought in himself the thought
of the good, even about the saints and the church of Bolzhii, and even
about the monastic dispensation; by the grace of God, do not only
thoughts, but also do it in deed. If you want to reward yourself with a
monastery in Serpokhov on Vysokoy and if you want to build a pilgrimage
...
As the ruler of the city of Radonezh, Prince Vladimir the
Brave turned to St. Sergius of Radonezh with a request for blessing and
for help in building a monastery. At the invitation of the prince, Saint
Sergius and his disciple Athanasius came to Serpukhov on foot and chose
a place for the future monastery. The chosen place was cleared, and the
Monk Sergius performed a prayer on it. For the construction of the
monastery, Sergius, at the request of the prince, left his student.
The Monk Athanasius Vysotsky the Elder zealously set about building
the monastery. The number of residents grew. Worthy disciples appeared
among them, who subsequently shone with their holiness: Nikon of
Radonezh (the future successor under the abbot of St. Sergius) and from
1375 Athanasius Vysotsky the Younger. Book writing began to develop
rapidly in the monastery. This direction, thanks to the Vysotsky
monastery, soon acquired the significance of the center of Byzantism in
Rus'.
From the Vysotsky Monastery comes the so-called Vysotsky
rank - the Deesis rank, the style of which is believed to have had some
influence on the icon-painting style of Andrei Rublev. The information
of the later inhabitants of the monastery about the existence of a stone
church there even in the time of Dmitry Donskoy is not confirmed by the
latest research.
In September 1380, on the Kulikovo field, the
Russian army won a great victory over the Golden Horde. The outcome was
decided by an ambush regiment commanded by Prince Vladimir Andreevich of
Serpukhov, nicknamed Brave and Donskoy. Upon returning from the battle,
the noble prince buried the remains of Serpukhov warriors, including
forty boyars, within the walls of the Vysotsky monastery. Above the mass
grave, in memory of the great victory, a white-stone cathedral was
erected in honor of the Conception of the Most Holy Theotokos by the
holy righteous Anna, as well as a stone church-refectory for the
brethren in gratitude for the deed of prayer. The burial place of
soldiers can be seen in the basement of the Zachatievsky Cathedral.
In the spring of 1381, St. Sergius again visited the monastery. He
accompanied St. Cyprian, who arrived at Vysokoye to consecrate the
Conception Cathedral and the stone church-refectory in honor of the
Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos.
In August 1382, Khan
Tokhtamysh moved to Rus'. The first blow was taken by Serpukhov and the
Vysotsky Monastery, which were robbed and ruined.
In 1387, the
Monk Athanasius Vysotsky the Elder, together with Saint Cyprian,
departed for Tsargrad with the aim of writing off liturgical books for
the Russian Orthodox Church, and the holy Monk Athanasius Vysotsky the
Younger, who is now revered as the heavenly patron of Serpukhov, became
the second hegumen of the Vysotsky Monastery.
In 1395, after the
death of Athanasius the Younger, the rectorship passed to the Monk
Nikita, a relative and disciple of Sergius. The Monk Nikita successfully
managed the monastery for 19 years and, according to the references of
Joseph Volotsky, had the rank of archimandrite, which in those years was
assigned to the abbots of only the most significant monasteries.
In 1408, after Edigei's raid, the monastery was again devastated, but
thanks to the efforts of Nikita, it was restored.
The time of the
management of the monastery by the first three holy abbots amounted to
its holy fortieth anniversary and entered the history of the ancient
Vysotsky monastery as the most precious page.
In the future, the
history of the monastery is closely connected with the history of
Serpukhov. The city and the monastery were often attacked by enemies,
reviews of troops were often held under the monastery, which were
usually attended by tsars, grand dukes, boyars and governors. The
Vysotsky monastery was often visited by the nobility and the king
himself. For such cases, the monastery had special "royal chambers".
Eminent persons often made large donations of money, estates with arable
land and forests, donated liturgical books, vessels, vestments, and so
on, which were rare at that time. In the 16th century, St. Nicholas and
Sergius churches, a chapel in honor of the Nativity of the Virgin and a
gallery around the cathedral were built in the monastery.
By the
middle of the 16th century, four churchyards, 89 villages, and Vysotsky
Bor were assigned to the monastery.
In 1542, Tsar Ivan the
Terrible gave a letter that the monastery was granted the right to judge
the peasants in their estates, to extract iron ore on the monastery
lands, to protect the monastery forests from arbitrary felling.
In 1556, 1571 and 1574 Tsar Ivan IV Vasilyevich the Terrible visited the
monastery.
By a charter of 1570, food money was not taken from
the shops of the monastery peasants.
In the spring of 1571, the
Crimean Tatar Khan Devlet-Girey again ruined the monastery, robbing and
desecrating the temples.
With a preferential letter of 1572, the
ruined monastery was exempted from paying taxes and taxes for five
years.
In February 1610, the monastery was burned down by the
troops of the Polish colonel A. Mlotsky, then restored again.
With the accession to the Russian throne of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich
Romanov, the time of prosperity and revival came for the monastery. The
most generous donations came from representatives of the Naryshkin
family, whose patrimony was on Serpukhov land, and especially from
Tsarina Natalia Kirillovna, mother of Emperor Peter I. By the end of the
17th century, many churches and iconostases were renovated with
donations from the Naryshkins and other contributors. There was a rich
sacristy and a library of rare books. In 1627 and 1628, Patriarch
Filaret of Moscow donated books, a wooden carved cross and money.
Contributors to the monastery were the landowners of Serpukhov and
neighboring counties: princes and boyars Voratynsky,
Akhamashukov-Cherkassky, Zasekin, Lobanov-Rostovsky, Lykov, Sontsov,
Patrikeev, Tutolmin, Shishkin, Buturlin, Voeikov and others. In 1697,
the iconostasis of the Intercession Church was built at the expense of
the royal steward, Prince O. V. Zasekin.
In 1647, to ensure
defense against the Crimean khans, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich ordered
Archimandrite Pafnutiy to put up a stone fence, giving 1,000 rubles for
its construction, and by the end of the 17th century, the monastery
acquired a stone wall with towers.
In 1678, 400 households were
assigned to the monastery, and the income was 90 rubles. In 1700, he had
379 households, in 1744 2963 peasants were assigned.
In the 17th
- early 18th centuries, the Serpukhov Vladychny Monastery, two chapels
on the Nara River and the Tula Highway were assigned to the monastery.
In Moscow, on Pyatnitskaya Street, the monastery had a wooden courtyard.
The monastery owned vast estates: Zaborye, Igumnovo, Borisovo,
Buturlino, Goltsy, Nefedovo, Sobakino, Stromilovo, Novinki, Ivanovskoye,
Panikovo, Drakino, Martyanovo, Arneevo, Knyaginino, as well as a mill on
Nara and others.
Passing through Serpukhov in the 18th century,
Andrei Bolotov paid special attention to this monastery and to the
Vvedensky Vladychny Monastery located behind Nara:
At the same time,
everywhere in this [city] I admired the majestic view of the Vysotsky
monastery, which presented to my gaze in the middle of a wide opening
between two dense and high forests that had adorned this hill for many
centuries and saw our forefathers. No less than that, I was consoled by
the beauty of another such fence, across the Nara River, under a large
pine forest erected by my ancestors, and marveled at the zeal and
special desire of the ancient Russians to build these monuments of their
piety. The first of them, and still destroying everything, the hand of
time spared from destruction; Chernorizians still live in it to this
day, devoting their lives to sending up uninterrupted prayers to the
Creator of all creatures.
From the second half of the 18th century, with the introduction
of states for monasteries by Empress Catherine II, the well-being of
the monastery began to decline. According to the decree of 1764 on
the secularization of church possessions, the monastery lost its
estates and switched to state maintenance by the state and
donations. By this time, the monastery was inhabited by:
Archimandrite Innokenty, 70 inhabitants, 57 clerks and various
servants, 22 military invalids.
From the beginning of the
19th century, the well-being of the monastery began to grow again:
old churches were restored, new ones were built. The flow of
pilgrims increased. A school for boys and a hospital were opened in
the monastery.
Around 1840, a three-tiered bell tower was
built (instead of the old one that collapsed from time to time), in
the second tier of which there was a temple in the name of the Three
Hierarchs and Teachers of the Ecumenical Basil the Great, Gregory
the Theologian and John Chrysostom. The consecration of this church
in 1843 was made by Metropolitan Filaret of Moscow.
In 1872,
the Church of the Intercession was expanded by adding an annex on
the north side of the chapel in the name of the Praise of the Most
Holy Theotokos, which previously existed at the monastery hospital,
the building of which was dismantled.
In 1878, in memory of
the 500th anniversary of the monastery, a majestic temple was
erected over the burial place of St. Athanasius the Younger in the
name of St. Athanasius of Athos and Sergius of Radonezh, instead of
the old wooden church, built in 1697 with donations from the
Naryshkin boyars.
In 1896, at the expense of the manufacturer
Nikolai Konshin, according to the project of the architect Roman
Klein, a Byzantine-style temple was built in the name of All Saints
with the family tomb of the temple builder in the lower floor.
The monastery had the richest sacristy, located in the
Zachatievsky Cathedral above the St. Nicholas Church. Among other
things, there were kept two vestments belonging to St. Sergius of
Radonezh, bedspreads and shrouds embroidered with old Russian
embroidery of the 17th century, more than 20 altar crosses - silver
and gilded, carved cypress, etc., various church utensils, mitres of
the abbots of the monastery. There were many wonderful icons in the
monastery. Among them, seven icons of the famous Vysotsky tier of
Byzantine writing stood out, sent from Constantinople in 1395 by the
Monk Athanasius Vysotsky the Elder for the iconostasis of the
Conception Cathedral, which were located above the Royal Doors until
1920. Now six of them are in the Tretyakov Gallery and one in the
Russian Museum.
In November 1918, the monastery was occupied by the 4th company of
the 5th Zemgale Latvian Rifle Regiment. For about a year, under the
walls of the monastery, the Latvian Red Riflemen shot those suspected of
desertion and aiding the old regime. After the departure of the Latvian
regiment, part of the monastery was turned into a camp for keeping
prisoners and those suspected of sympathy for the tsarist government. In
a small part of the monastery, the monks conducted church services.
In the summer of 1924, Patriarch Tikhon visited the monastery and
performed services.
In 1928, the authorities closed the Vysotsky
Monastery, with the exception of the Intercession Cathedral, in which,
as in a parish church, divine services were performed. Many monks were
arrested in 1928-1931 and served their sentences in different camps.
In 1931, the monastery completely ceased its activities and was
closed. The architectural ensemble of the monastery was used, like other
former monasteries. For 50 years, organizations and institutions,
barracks, warehouses, garages, communal apartments and cattle pens were
located here. At the same time, three towers and most of the walls were
destroyed. The monastic complex was dilapidated, and repair work began
in it, during which in 1967 the church in honor of St. style with a dome
and a cross).
On March 25, 1991, the Holy Synod of the Russian
Orthodox Church decided to open and revive the Serpukhov Vysotsky
Monastery. The first services were held in a small church in the name of
the Three Hierarchs. The only temple suitable for winter worship was the
16th-century Nikolsky Church, used in Soviet times as a sawmill.
In 1992, work began on the restoration of the Church of the
Intercession, which by that time had fallen into disrepair. On July 9,
1993, the chapel was consecrated in honor of the Praise of the Most Holy
Theotokos, on September 8, 1994 - the main altar in honor of the
Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos. In the same year, on September
24, the holy relics of St. Athanasius of Vysotsky the Younger were
uncovered.
On September 25, 1995, on the day of the 600th
anniversary of the repose of the Monk Athanasius Vysotsky the Younger,
Patriarch Alexy II visited the monastery.
In early 1996,
restoration work began at the Sergius Church.
In 1998, in the
restored building, a house church was consecrated in honor of the icon
of the Mother of God "Quick Hearing".
Since 2001, restoration
work began in the temple in the name of All Saints. In the
post-revolutionary period, the graves in his tomb were opened and
looted. The temple was in disrepair.
On June 17, 2021, the Holy
Synod decided to transform the Vysotsky Monastery in the city of
Serpukhov, which operates on the territory of the Podolsk diocese, into
a stauropegial monastery.
In the Vysotsky monastery, many shrines are collected, reverently
revered by believers.
A special place is occupied by the
miraculous image of the Mother of God "The Inexhaustible Chalice", which
is located in the Intercession Church. In the lower left corner of the
icon is inserted an ark with a particle of the girdle of the Most Holy
Theotokos. The image is glorified by many miracles and healings, mainly
from the passions of wine drinking, drug addiction and smoking.
The relics of the second abbot of the monastery, St. Athanasius Vysotsky
Jr., also rest in the Intercession Church, from which the suffering
receive grace-filled help. In the same temple there is an ancient
miraculous image of the 15th century of the Great Martyr and Victorious
George of the Novgorod letter, who in the past accompanied the Serpukhov
militia in military campaigns. The icon of "Nikola Mozhaisky" of the
14th century, "Nicholas the Wonderworker" of the 15th century, as well
as icons of the 17th century.
More than 200 particles of the
relics of various saints of God[13], glorified from the first centuries
of Christianity to the New Martyrs of Russia, have been collected in the
monastery. The largest particles of the relics are stored in the altar
of the Intercession Church in special arks, among which a silver ark in
the form of a miter with parts of the relics of Sergius of Radonezh
stands out. In the monastery there are reliquaries with relics of: the
holy orthodox Anna (mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary); the apostles
Luke, Andrew the First-Called, Matthew, Mark and Thomas; Panteleimon;
Mary Magdalene; John the Baptist; Rostov saints: Abraham, Isaiah,
Demetrius of Rostov; princes Alexander Nevsky and Daniil of Moscow; Tsar
Constantine, Prince Vladimir; Nicholas the Wonderworker; Basil the
Great; Great Martyr George; Saints Nikita, Barbara, Tatiana and
Catherine; Ephraim the Sirin; Herman of Alaska (gift of Patriarch Alexy
II); about 50 relics of the Kiev-Pechersk saints; Optina elders and many
other saints of God.
Parts of the Tree of the Life-Giving Cross
of the Lord, a part of the Holy Sepulcher, a particle of the Nail of the
Crucifixion of Christ, embedded in the hat of an exact silver copy of
the Nail stored in the Moscow Kremlin Museum, are kept.
Personal
belongings of St. John of Kronstadt: chalice, epitrachelion, sacramental
cross and the book "The Sun of Truth" with his dedicatory inscription.
Part of the shirt of St. Seraphim of Sarov, stained with blood, when
he was beaten to death by robbers, and much more.
Representatives
of famous noble families are buried in the vast necropolis of the
monastery, in particular, such famous figures as the first Russian
chancellor Gavrila Golovkin and the navigator and hydrographer Fyodor
Soymonov, whose tombstone has been lost.
Zachatievsky Cathedral, a building from the time of Boris Godunov on
a high basement with an encircling open two-tier gallery (ambulance) and
five large domes. The arches and domes were transferred in 1697 at the
expense of L.K. Naryshkin. The original painting was practically not
preserved in the records of 1800 and 1899.
The refectory single-domed
Church of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos (the end of the
17th century on the cellars of the 16th century) with a vast northern
chapel of the Praise of the Most Holy Theotokos (1872–78), was renovated
and rebuilt in 1834, decapitated in Soviet times, renovated in the
1990s.
Church of St. Sergius of Radonezh, a small three-story
extension to the cathedral, which replaced the Nikolsky chapel at the
end of the 17th century.
Bell tower with the gate church of the Three
Hierarchs (1831-40, architect D. F. Borisov)
The Church of All Saints
(1896), built in the Russian style according to the project of R. Klein
at the expense of N. N. Konshin, is the family tomb of the Konshins.
The church of the icon of the Mother of God "Inexhaustible Chalice" is
equipped in the pilgrimage building.
The Church of the Icon of the
Mother of God “Quick to Hear” operates in the rectory building.
Church of Athanasius Athos and Sergius of Radonezh demolished in 1967.
Since 1853, the monastery has had a courtyard on the former Tula tract -
the chapel of Our Lady of Iver.