The Sharpan Skete was an Old Believer settlement on the Kerzhenets River, active from approximately 1657 to 1928. It was located in the urochishche of Sharpan, in the territory of what is now Semyonovsky District of Nizhny Novgorod Region. It was one of the first and largest sketes of Kerzhenie, serving as a center for the Popovtsy and a source from which the skete way of life spread through the forests of the Kerzhenets and Chernoramenie.[1]
Foundation and Early History
The skete was founded approximately in 1657 by monks of the Bizyukov Monastery in Smolensk, Sergiy Saltykov and Yefrem Potyomkin, who are considered the first Old Believer settlers on the Kerzhenets. The settlement of these riverbanks was facilitated by Dionisiy, a monk from Shuya, who gathered fugitive peasants to the area. A strong influx of settlers was associated with the events of the "Solovetsky Sitting" (1668–1676): after the fall of the Solovetsky Monastery, the monks Arseniy, Sofontiy, and Onufriy fled to the Kerzhenets and founded the settlements of Deyanov, Pafnutovo, and Khvostikovo.[1]
According to legend, the foundation of the Sharpan Skete is connected with a monk named Arseniy, who was guided from Pomorie through swamps and dense forest by an icon of the Kazan Mother of God. The monastery was founded on the spot where the icon came to rest — near the починок (small settlement) of Larionovo. The icon was proclaimed miracle-working and became the skete's principal sacred object; Elder Arseniy, as a monk of the Solovetsky Monastery, was held in particular esteem, and people flocked to him from all directions.[1]
Flourishing and Persecution
Before the persecutions that entered Old Believer memory as "Pitirim's Devastation," the skete numbered up to 2,000 male and female inhabitants. By 1737, as a result of the persecutions carried out by Pitirim, Archbishop of Nizhny Novgorod, Sharpan was the only partially surviving skete on the Kerzhenets and in Chernoramenie. During the crackdown conducted by Vice-Governor Rzhevsky, dungeons for interrogating Old Believers were constructed on the steep riverbank of the urochishche. After Pitirim's death, the skete's population grew again and reached approximately 5,000 people. Following the decree of 1762, large numbers of Old Believers settled in the Sharpan Skete.[1]
Destruction and New Sharpan
By 1826 only one monastery remained in the skete. Its final destruction was linked to the events of 1849, when P. I. Melnikov removed the icon of the Kazan Mother of God from the skete — according to prophecy, the icon's presence there was a condition of the monastery's continued existence. After the loss of the sacred object, the skete's inhabitants dispersed. In 1852 the prayer house in the Sharpan Skete was destroyed, and after 1853 no more than three or four people lived in the sole remaining monastery.[1]
In the 1860s, near the old skete and beside a cemetery containing the grave of the schema-nun Fevroniya, a women's skete was founded and given the name "New Sharpan." Its cemetery was home to the venerated grave of Fevroniya, which was believed to emit healing water on the first day of Easter and through the Apodosis of Pascha; a miracle was also expected from an old pine tree over the grave of the youth Yakov, on which pilgrims reported seeing burning candles or a chandelier. In 1911 the merchant N. A. Bugrov built a stone chapel in "New Sharpan." By 1917, the last schema-nun on the Kerzhenets — Mother Dorofeya — remained in the Sharpan Monastery. The skete was closed in 1928; its last abbess was Mother Meropeia.[2]
In 1911, both sites — "Stary Sharpan" and "Novy Sharpan" — were visited by Dorofey Nikiforovich Utkin, the superior of the Spasovtsy community from the village of Sysoikha in Semyonovsky Uyezd, who left detailed memoirs of the pilgrimage.[1][2]
Condition after closure
At the site of "Stary (Pusty) Sharpan," two "Avramievo" cemeteries have survived — one for men and one for women. The names of those buried were inscribed on the men's cemetery: monastic schema-monk Pavel, Anufry, Savvaty, and Avraamy. On the women's cemetery stood a tomb bearing the inscription "Monastic schema-nun Praskovya," with twelve graves surrounding it. Old Believers venerate Praskovya as Tsarevna Sofya Alekseyevna, who fled to the skete from a Moscow convent, and call her tomb the "tsaritsa's grave." Of the skete itself there also remain ravines, artificial ponds, traces of a dam across the Sanakhta River, and the "Batayeva Tropa" (Batyi's Path).[1]
According to a 1995 survey, "Stary Sharpan" is located in a forest on the bank of "Nikonov Vrag" (a tributary of the Chyornaya Sanakhta River), 2 km from the village of Rozhdestvenskoye in Semyonovsky District. "Novy Sharpan" lies 1.2 km to the northwest of the village of Maloye Zinovyevo in the same district. Both sites are regularly visited by Old Believers — primarily during Bright Week and on the feast day of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God; the graves are tended by local residents and the Semyonov Old Believer community.[1][2]