On June 18, 1597, a gigantic landslide from the hill completely destroyed the monastery; signs of the impending catastrophe had appeared a week before the incident, and all the monks were moved to a safe place in advance, taking with them the icons, vestments, and utensils. After the landslide, the monastery was rebuilt in a new location, farther upstream and closer to the city; the construction was supervised by the "tsar's journeyman of stonework" Antip Vozoulin, Fyodor Oparin, the elder Izosima, as well as masons from Kostroma and Balakhna, and the monastery complex with its main five-domed Cathedral of the Ascension was completed by the middle of the 17th century. By the start of Catherine II's reforms in 1764, the monastery held up to 6,000 desyatinas of arable land, 8,236 peasant souls, three metochions in Nizhny Novgorod, and one in Moscow. After the secularization of monastery lands, times of poverty set in for the monastery: instead of landed estates, the monastery was assigned a salary, which was not enough to keep the buildings in proper condition.[1]

Voznesenskiy Pecherskiy Monastery – a monastery founded by St. Dionysius between 1328 and 1330.

Location

The Ascension Cathedral has a complicated construction history. It is a large five-domed church on a high white-stone substructure.

The Nizhny Novgorod Voznesensky Pechersky Monastery, located on the steep right bank of the Volga, halfway up the slope, about three kilometers downstream from the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin, is one of the oldest monasteries of the Nizhny Novgorod land.

History of the Founding

The monastery was founded between 1328 and 1330 by Dionysius, a monk of the Kyiv Monastery of the Caves. Under the leadership of this prominent figure of Ancient Rus, the monastery quickly grew stronger economically and became the most important spiritual and cultural center of the Suzdal-Nizhny Novgorod Principality. The monastery of the Caves produced St. Euthymius of Suzdal and St. Macarius of Zheltye Vody.[1] Here one could receive an education that was a high one for its time, and a monument of the written culture of those years is the oldest chronicle compilation to have come down to us, put together in 1377 by Laurentius, a monk of the Pechersky Monastery — the so-called Laurentian Chronicle. By decision of the NKVD for the Nizhny Novgorod Governorate, it was closed in 1924. It was reopened in 1993.

The Monastery Today

Today the architectural ensemble of the Nizhny Novgorod Pechersky Voznesensky Monastery, dating from the 17th–19th centuries, is recognized as an architectural monument of federal significance. As of January 1, 2004, the small brotherhood of the Voznesensky Pechersky Monastery was made up as follows: the abbot (namestnik), Archimandrite Tikhon; hieromonks — 6; hierodeacons — 3; monks — 3; inoks (monks of the lowest rank) — 2; novices — 6.

Contact Information

Address: 603063, Nizhny Novgorod, Privolzhskaya Sloboda, 108. Tel.: (831) 436-25-79

Links

See also

Links

Sources

  1. nne.ru — Nizhny Novgorod Metropolia (archive)