reviews_and_ramblings (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
reviews_and_ramblings) wrote2009-06-27 02:37 pm
reviews_and_ramblings) wrote2009-06-27 02:37 pm
Around the World: Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery
The lasting impression I have of my travel in Russia is of a wonderful country, full of history, but with a sadness inside, I don't know, as a cloak of silence that covered everything. Then suddently, you turned a corner, or enter a street, and you had a sight of a burst of colors, of gold, and pink, and blue, all the color more deep and alive. And the contrast with the silence was even greater.
by Elisa, Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery, Russia, 2001
http://www.elisarolle.com/travel/2001Russia.htm
Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery is one of the oldest walled Monastery in all the Russia. It's now an open air museum, and the many churches inside the walls are deprived of their icons, that are conserved in a building at the entrance of the Monastery. When we arrived there, the group I was with decided to visit the building with the icons, I instead preferred to wonder among the fields and the abandoned churches. This is only one of the wonderful views that I found, and I swear, the colors were exactly like that deep pink and blue.
Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery (Russian: Кирилло-Белозерский монастырь), loosely translated in English as the St. Cyril-Belozhersk Monastery, used to be the largest monastery of Northern Russia. The monastery was dedicated to the Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos, for which cause it was sometimes referred to as the Dormition Monastery of St. Cyril. By the 20th century, the town of Kirillov had grown nearby.
The monastery was founded in 1397 on the bank of Lake Siverskoye, to the south from the town of Beloozero, in the present-day Vologda Oblast. Its founder, St. Kirill of Beloozero, following the advice of his teacher, St. Sergius of Radonezh, first dug a cave here, then built a wooden Assumption chapel and a loghouse for other monks.
Being a member of the influential Velyaminov clan of boyars, Kirill relinquished the office of father superior of the greatest cloister in medieval Moscow—the Simonov monastery. His ties with the ruling elite were still close, however, as his letters to sons of Dmitri Donskoi clearly demonstrate. It seems that the Muscovite rulers regarded Kirill's monastery as an important strategic point, both for Northern trade and in their struggle with the Novgorod Republic.
In the 16th century, the monastery was the second richest landowner in Russia, after its model, the Trinity Monastery near Moscow. Ivan the Terrible not only had his own cell in the cloister, but also planned to take monastic vows here. During political struggles, the monastery sided with non-possessors, who disapproved of church landlordism. The leader of the movement, Nil Sorsky, founded a separate monastery (skete) nearby. The cloister was also important as a political prison. Among the Muscovite politicians exiled to Kirillov were Vassian Patrikeyev, Tsar Simeon Bekbulatovich, Patriarch Nikon, and the prime minister Boris Morozov. (From Wikipedia)
by Elisa, Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery, Russia, 2001
http://www.elisarolle.com/travel/2001Russia.htm
Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery is one of the oldest walled Monastery in all the Russia. It's now an open air museum, and the many churches inside the walls are deprived of their icons, that are conserved in a building at the entrance of the Monastery. When we arrived there, the group I was with decided to visit the building with the icons, I instead preferred to wonder among the fields and the abandoned churches. This is only one of the wonderful views that I found, and I swear, the colors were exactly like that deep pink and blue.
Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery (Russian: Кирилло-Белозерский монастырь), loosely translated in English as the St. Cyril-Belozhersk Monastery, used to be the largest monastery of Northern Russia. The monastery was dedicated to the Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos, for which cause it was sometimes referred to as the Dormition Monastery of St. Cyril. By the 20th century, the town of Kirillov had grown nearby.
The monastery was founded in 1397 on the bank of Lake Siverskoye, to the south from the town of Beloozero, in the present-day Vologda Oblast. Its founder, St. Kirill of Beloozero, following the advice of his teacher, St. Sergius of Radonezh, first dug a cave here, then built a wooden Assumption chapel and a loghouse for other monks.
Being a member of the influential Velyaminov clan of boyars, Kirill relinquished the office of father superior of the greatest cloister in medieval Moscow—the Simonov monastery. His ties with the ruling elite were still close, however, as his letters to sons of Dmitri Donskoi clearly demonstrate. It seems that the Muscovite rulers regarded Kirill's monastery as an important strategic point, both for Northern trade and in their struggle with the Novgorod Republic.
In the 16th century, the monastery was the second richest landowner in Russia, after its model, the Trinity Monastery near Moscow. Ivan the Terrible not only had his own cell in the cloister, but also planned to take monastic vows here. During political struggles, the monastery sided with non-possessors, who disapproved of church landlordism. The leader of the movement, Nil Sorsky, founded a separate monastery (skete) nearby. The cloister was also important as a political prison. Among the Muscovite politicians exiled to Kirillov were Vassian Patrikeyev, Tsar Simeon Bekbulatovich, Patriarch Nikon, and the prime minister Boris Morozov. (From Wikipedia)