Savior Transfiguration Ust-Medveditsky Monastery: History and Sights

In the city of Serafimovich Volgograd region is a monastery, which in ancient times was the spiritual center of the Don Cossacks. During his long history, he suffered many troubles, but thanks to God's protection and deep religiousness of the inhabitants of the region each time found strength for revival. Today, he fully regained his greatness, trampled over the long decades of atheistic obscurantism.

Abode on the banks of the Don

Ust-Medveditsky Savior-Transfiguration Women's Monastery was originally male. Its foundation dates back to 1638. The place for the future monastery was chosen near Don on a low, adjacent to the bank of the steppe area. Looking ahead, it should be noted that such a location of the monastery was fraught with serious problems. In some places, the riverbed narrows, and the spring ice often blocks its current, which leads to spills, disastrous for all who chose its shores for their residence.

The main population of those regions was the Cossacks formed from the runaway peasants settled here at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, fleeing from the serfdom that reigned in the central regions of Russia. They settled large tracts, stretching along the banks of the rivers Yaika, the Urals, the lower Volga and the Don. In 1570, Ivan the Terrible gave them an official status, entrusting the protection of state borders from his aggressive neighbors.

Ust-Medveditsky Savior-Transfiguration Monastery, founded at the request of the Cossacks, sent in 1636 to the Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, was intended for their brethren who retired for old age or because of wounds. Having received the proper permission, the Military District allocated a large land plot for the construction of the monastery, located on the left bank of the Don, near the mouth of the Medveditsa River, whose name was forever included in the name of the monastery.

Monastery-fortress

The time when the Savior-Transfiguration Ust-Medveditsky Monastery was founded was extremely restless, and the Cossack villages were often subjected to Tatars' raids. As a result of one of them, recently erected community cells were burned in a fire, and in 1652 it was decided to move the monastery to the right bank of the Don, hard to reach for nomads, and therefore safer. For this purpose, we chose a spacious and level plot, bounded by a high steep bank.

On the time of the beginning of the construction of the new monastery, very contradictory information has been preserved. Meanwhile, it is accurately established that this happened on the orders of Patriarch Nikon, who released a lot of money for the work, and that in 1565 a wooden Transfiguration Church was erected on the high bank of the Don.

From the historical documents that have survived to us, it follows that the Ust-Medveditsa Savior-Transfiguration Monastery built on a new site was built according to all the rules of fortification. From the raids of nomads from all sides it was protected by a powerful earthen rampart and ditch dug before it. Inside, apart from the church and the abbot cell, there were a refectory and twelve fraternal cells. In all, at that time, the inhabitants of the monastery were fourteen people.

Formation of the monastery and strengthening its economy

The Savior-Transfiguration Ust-Medveditsky Monastery, whose history is inextricably linked with the Don Cossacks, has been under the tutelage of the Military District since its foundation, whose command made every effort to ensure that the veterans of the past battles that were saved in it needed nothing. At the same time, in the war years the monastery was of purely practical significance - on its territory, under the protection of earth fortifications, a hospital was set up for the wounded. But the main thing was that at the distant border of Russia the monastery served as a stronghold of Orthodoxy and was its spiritual center.

At the end of the XVII and the first half of the XVIII century, the Savior-Transfiguration Ust-Medveditsky monastery comprehensively strengthened its economic position. The size of the allotments belonging to him has significantly increased. From the documents of 1705 it is known that in the ownership of the monastery there were more than sixty-five and a half thousand dessiatines of land. In addition to arable land, they included forest land and fishing.

Since the material life of the monastery has become stable and stable, his brothers began to replenish not only at the expense of the elderly Cossacks, but also all those who wished to take tonsure. Accordingly, and the number of inhabitants during this period has increased significantly.

When, in 1707, an uprising broke out under the leadership of Ataman Bulavin, caused by the policy of Peter I, aimed at infringing the rights of the Don Army, the orphans of the Cossacks who died in clashes with government troops found shelter in the monastery. Many of them, having reached the right age, also took a monastic vows.

The trouble that struck the Easter night

By the middle of the 18th century, the wooden church, which was one of the first monastic buildings, was dilapidated, and the question of erecting a new stone church became evident. But these good intentions were not destined to be realized in view of the misfortune caused by the natural disaster that struck the monastery.

As mentioned above, spring ice drifts often block up narrow sections of the Don riverbed, resulting in spills that cause a lot of harm to local residents. The most severe consequences of this natural phenomenon were in 1752. Two rivers emerged from the banks - Don and Medveditsa. The thawed waters so much washed away the high and steep shore on which the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Ust-Medveditsky Monastery was located, that the soil became unstable and landslides were formed in many places.

Every day the situation was aggravated. The cracks appeared on the walls of the buildings and the cracks quickly appeared, and they themselves began to settle slowly into the ground, which suddenly shifted towards the river and assumed the appearance of a loose and unstable mass. In full measure, the tragedy took place on Easter Night, when the slope of the mountain on which the monastery was located moved with all the buildings built on it and collapsed into the spilling Don.

Since the events of the last days prepared the monastery's residents for this development of events, none of them suffered. Moreover, all the most valuable, including icons of the old letter, books and church utensils, could be moved to a safe place beforehand. But on this cold April night the water swept all the logs that had been built over the years by the hard work of several generations, and that was the basis of the life of the monastery.

Arrangement in a new place

Of course, to restore the monastery in its former place did not make sense, since such a disaster could happen again. Therefore, a new site was chosen for the monastery, which was upstream from the former half a mile upstream. There, on the hill, inaccessible to the spring waters, in 1754 the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Ust-Medveditsky monastery was laid, which has survived to the present day.

Over the next few years, a stone church dedicated to the Transfiguration of the Lord was erected on its territory, as well as the parish corps, brother cells and a number of outbuildings. The monks constantly prayed to the Lord for the forgiveness of sins, according to which he allowed them to survive such a serious misfortune.

Conversion of the monastery into a female

A new page in the life of the monastery was opened when, a decade later, by the order of the Holy Synod, it was transformed into a women's monastery. This event took place in June 1785. It is generally believed that the Synodal officials inspired the petition sent to St. Petersburg by the military sergeant AI Ilovaysky, who had considerable connections there.

So it was or was not - for certain it is not known, but only soon in the cells left by the former inhabitants, forty girls from the nearby Sirotinskaya village, who formed the women's Orthodox community, were accommodated there. All of them wished to abandon the way of life that befits their sex, and forever to shut themselves off from the world within the walls of the monastery. Their first abbess was the sister of the army commander, Maria Karpova, and the confessor was the seventy-year-old deacon, Father Vasily (Mikhailov).

Temporary abolition of the monastery

However, the bride of Christ did not have time to settle well in a new place, as a misfortune happened, which no one could foresee in advance, which turned out to be more destructive for the monastery than the spring flood of rivers. She came from the capital, where in those years, the rules of the Empress Catherine II, who left the memory of her reign as a harsh policy towards the church. By the will of the empress, her reign in Russia became a period of secularization (seizure) of church lands in favor of the state, as well as the closure of many monasteries.

In 1788, she issued a decree abolishing a number of the monasteries of the Voronezh diocese, including the Ust-Medveditsa Savior-Transfiguration Women's Monastery. It was already impossible to save him. The temple that was located on the territory of the monastery received the status of a parish church, the inhabitants were dissolved on all four sides, and the property was sold. In the house, where there used to be the abbey apartments, a government institution was located.

Years after the restoration of the monastery

Ten years later, when the son of Catherine II ascended the Russian throne, Emperor Paul I, he abolished the mother's order, and the Seraphimovich Ust-Medveditsa Savior-Transfiguration Monastery was restored again. It was supposed to make him, as before, male, so that the Cossacks wounded in battle could live in it, but then they refused this idea, and the monastery was returned to the nuns. Even the abbess remained the same - all the same Maria Karpova. Later, for the works that were put on the arrangement of monastic life in the monastery, she was awarded the hegumen's staff, which is a very honorable award.

After her death, which followed in 1827, the monastery was headed by a new abbess - Augusta. Her igumenity lasted eight years and was marked by an extremely important innovation. With her, local Cossacks were allowed to give their young daughters for education in a monastery. Over the years, held in its walls, the girls not only studied church singing and the Law of God, but, living in some cells with nuns, learned the rules of spiritual purity and morality.

Returning after this to worldly life, they were examples of true virtue. This very beneficial effect on the spiritual climate of the whole region and exalted in the eyes of its inhabitants the source of piety - the Savior-Transfiguration Ust-Medveditsky monastery. In Russia those years, this practice of education was even new. His mother's path of Augustus completed in 1835, and after her death, the abode was hit by unexpected calamities.

Intercession of Archbishop Ignatius

The fact is that in that year the Holy Synod revised the regulations on the monastery, which he published in 1798, and the new edition did not include items that gave him the right to receive state benefits. This was a real blow for the sisters. From now on, they not only lost the opportunity to engage in charity (including the education of Cossack daughters), but also were doomed to hunger.

The nuns were led by Archbishop Ignatius, who headed the diocese in those years. He personally petitioned for the highest name, and thanks to the order given by the sovereign Nikolai Pavlovich, the monastery residents were restored in their rights and could henceforth not be afraid for the future.

Mother Superior - educator of Donetsk region

Since the mid-sixties of the XVIII century, the life of the monastery was marked by the reign of its most famous abbess, Arsenii, who in 1864 led the Ust-Medveditsa Savior-Transfiguration Monastery. A photo of her those years is presented in the article. The noblewoman, the daughter of the famous warlord of those years, General MV Sebryakov, she, being one of the most educated women of her time, made every effort to spread literacy among the dwellers of the monastery, many of whom could neither read nor write, and devoted a lot of time Cares about education of the inhabitants of the whole region.

The first four-year school was opened in the walls of the monastery by the hegumeness Arsenii, in which children from families of the most diverse social strata of society, including nobility and bureaucracy, were trained. In it, besides the Law of God and the Slavic language, mathematics, Russian language, geography and history were taught. There was also opened an art studio in which the abbess herself, who had a natural talent in this field of art, conducted the lessons. Classes in the school continued until 1918.

The second closing of the monastery

For ten years after the October coup, the sisters still somehow tried to save the Savior-Preobrazhensky Ust-Medveditsky monastery doomed to an imminent closure. The description of their life in those years can be found among the memories left by an eyewitness of events - the local teacher T.V. Polyakova. She talks about how the nuns formed an agricultural commune and, in return for the premises they selected, acquired a small house in which they lived together and prayed to God.

She also recalls how in March 1927 a decree was issued to close the monastery, and how many of its residents were arrested and forever disappeared in the prison wagons that took them to the camps. Those who managed to avoid this fate were deported to the Rostov region during the war years, whence some of them returned to their native lands. Immediately after the closure of the monastery, a children's colony was placed within its walls, which was later replaced by a number of economic institutions that were located there.

In 1933, Ust-Medveditskaya Stanitsa was transformed into a city and renamed in honor of the famous Soviet writer Alexander Serafimovich, as a result of which the abode on its territory after its revival, which followed during perestroika, was referred to as the Ust-Medveditsa Savior Transfiguration Monastery Serafimovich).

However, before the time of spiritual rebirth came in the country, she was destined to endure many misfortunes and misfortunes, among which the main was the war. It so happened that the former monastery was in the thick of the fighting, and as a result, almost all its buildings were destroyed. Only the building of the Kazan Mother of God Church survived by miracles, which has survived to the present day in a very deplorable state.

Revival of the monastery

In 1991, when on a wave of perestroika, the believers were returned many of the things that they illegally took away in the years of numerous anti-religious campaigns, began the path of their revival and the abode in the former Cossack village, now known as the city of Serafimovich. The Ust-Medveditsk Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery was originally supposed to be made male, and before the restoration work began on its territory four monks and several novices settled.

They were destined to be held in the monastery for only ten years, since later the Holy Synod decided to restore it to the status of a nunnery. However, during this time the monks managed to carry out the most urgent economic work, beyond the power of women's hands. In particular, they dismantled the remains of the power station that had been there in recent years, restored the roof of the church, arranged a house church and built rooms for fraternal cells.

In addition, they have plowed the rented monasteries of one hundred and ninety acres of land. All this in many ways facilitated the life of the numerous women's community who moved to the Ust-Medveditsa Savior-Transfiguration Monastery (Serafimovich) in 2001 under the personal order of Patriarch Alexy II from Ukraine. Forty-three residents continued the restoration of the monastery, begun by their predecessors.

Proceedings of the new monastery nuns

Sisters, led by nun George (Borovik), launched extensive economic activity. In the premises left from the once pioneer camp, they created a sewing workshop, a fish workshop and a prosphora. In addition, with the help of the city authorities, it was possible to put into operation a bath-and-laundry factory and build a shop for the manufacture of concrete structures, where employees of Serafimovich are employed for hire. The Spaso-Preobrazhensky Ust-Medveditsk women's monastery, thanks to these measures, secured a reliable material base.

Great work was carried out by the sisters and to restore the once-flowering form of the monastery. Flower beds, flower beds and garden paths were laid out. The greatest attention is paid to the objects that the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Ust-Medveditsky monastery was famous for. The sights that are included in its complex, and the shrines kept in the temples, today, like many years ago, attract thousands of pilgrims.

Shrines and attractions of the monastery

Telling about them, it is necessary to begin with the famous caves, dug during the reign of Abbess Arsenii. They are arranged in such a way that everyone descended into them becomes, as it were, a witness of the last days of the earthly ministry of Christ. Before him appears His Way of the Cross, and also the road along which the Mother of God went to Calvary. In the same place, in the caves, you can see the miracle stone on which Mother Superior Arseny prayed. During one of these prayers she was honored to contemplate the Queen of Heaven. They say that on the stone there are still footprints and hands of the pious hegumen.

Of undoubted interest is the belfry, which stands on the spot where a temple was built in the 18th century, which was blown up in 1934 by order of the authorities. From him remained only the arch, preserved to this day. In its opening, by the order of the hegumenes of George, bells were installed. There are also other attractions, which are rightfully proud of not only residents of Serafimovich, but the entire Volgograd region.

Ust-Medveditsky Savior-Transfiguration Monastery, after a long period of restoration and construction works, opened the doors of two of its churches: one in honor of the icon of Kazan Mother of God consecrated in 2012 and another dedicated to the Transfiguration of the Lord. Its roof is crowned by thirty-three domes.

The monastery, which became a place of pilgrimage

Ust-Medveditsky Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery, whose address is Volgograd Region, Mountains. Serafimovich, Preobrazhenskaya, 7, today, as in previous years, attracts a large number of pilgrims. They come here to worship his shrines, the main one of which is considered a miraculous stone, about which there was a conversation above. Despite the fact that the monastery is located away from major cities and federal highways, it is always full of visitors.

Below is given information for those who wish to visit the Ust-Medveditsa Savior Transfiguration Monastery. How to get to Serafimovich and see this revived to life monument of Russian Orthodox antiquity, is described in detail in the guide to the Volgograd region. In brief, we can inform you that owners of personal transport are advised to get to it on the Rostov highway. Passing Kalach-na-Donu, you should cross the Don and, after reaching Surovikino, turn right in accordance with the road sign indicating the way to Serafimovich.

In addition, you can use the services of numerous travel agencies in Volgograd, organizing trips to the Transfiguration Ust-Medveditsky Monastery. Interesting facts and historical information about his past and today's life to the participants of trips will be informed by professional guides, whose story will pleasantly complement the general impression of the excursion.