Manefa Komarovskaya was an Old Believer nun, abbess of Manefa's Convent at the Komarovsky Skit on the Kerzhenets, who died in 1816. She is venerated in the Old Believer tradition as a saint of monastic life (prepodobnaya) and is believed to grant miraculous healing to those who come to her tomb.[1]
Komarovsky Skit and Manefa's Convent
Komarovsky Skit was one of the largest Old Believer skits (monastic communities) on the Kerzhenets, founded in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. Manefa came there after the Moscow plague of 1771, at the same time as Ignatiy Potyomkin and Iona Kurnosy, who became the best-known residents of the skit.[2] In time she founded her own convent, which took her name — Manefa's Convent. Two ponds were dug near the convent to serve the needs of its inhabitants.[1]
According to the sources, the skit at its height comprised up to 48 convents with a population of up to 2,000 people, and Manefa's Convent was part of it alongside the Boyarkin Convent, the Ioninsky Convent, and the Ignatyevsky Convent.[2]
Veneration and the tomb
After her death in 1816, Manefa was recognized by the Old Believer community as prepodobnaya. Her grave was fashioned as a stone tomb beneath a wooden canopy; beside it, three bells hung in a bell tower.[1] In 1818, at the expense of Filip Yakovlevich Kasatkin, a first-guild Moscow merchant, a monument was erected over the tomb. An inscription on the tomb, recorded in 1917 by Yu. Prilutssky, read: "My sisters in spirit and companions in struggle, forget me not when ye pray, but beholding my grave, remember my love and pray to Christ that He place my spirit among the righteous."[1]
Pilgrims came to Manefa's tomb in hope of healing; this cemetery, together with the burial ground at Iona Kurnosy's convent, remained one of the two most venerated sites on the territory of the former skit.[1]
Fate of the convent
Following the decree of Nicholas II in 1853 ordering the destruction of the skits of Semyonovsky Uyezd, the Nizhny Novgorod authorities resolved in 1855 to resettle the inhabitants of the skit. The nuns of Manefa's Convent, like many other evicted skitnitsy (female skit-dwellers), found refuge in Semyonov.[1] Komarovsky Skit was not, however, entirely abolished: some of its residents did not leave the old settlement, and in 1860 the Old Believer cemeteries were restored.[1]
In 1911, the site of the former hermitage was visited by the prior of the Spasovtsy from the village of Sysoikha, Dorofey Nikiforovich Utkin, and in 1914 the abbess of the Komarovo cells, Matrena Filatyevna, took monastic vows under the name Manefa the Last — in memory of the first Manefa.[1]
Sources
- irisk.me — Komarovskiy Skit
- navigator.starove.ru — Komarovskiy Old Believer Hermitage — NAVIGATOR Starove.ru (archive)