Bogoroditsky Monastery, Kazan: address, history, shrines, rector

For a long time, one of the most revered Russian shrines is the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God. Many times, according to her prayers, the Queen of Heaven concealed her earth from misfortunes and misfortunes, for which she made many lists with her, also famous for her miracles. On the site of finding the image, the Kazan Bogoroditsky Monastery was founded, which later became the leading spiritual center of Russia.

Vision of the Matroe

For a long time it was, but the legend preserved for us a story about the grief that was struck in 1579 by the archer's centurion Danil Onuchin, who settled in Kazan fifteen years before. To know, the servant man angered the Lord, since the King of Heaven let the matter happen in his house, recently built up and still smelling of fresh pine logs, a fierce fire. Either the candle fell from the goddess or the coal shot from an unclosed stove, but only the flames blazed so that Daniel managed to jump out and pull his wife Katerina out of the fire with her 12-year-old daughter Matrona.

Stood, burned, but what to do - the Will of God. Until the time, the people of Pogorelists had sheltered good people. And so, one night, the mother of the Matron is the Queen of Heaven herself, and orders to go to the place where their house stood, and to find there her honest image hidden under a pile of ashes. She was a damsel, but she had the same vision again and again. Then, in great fear, she told everything to her mother, and she hurried straight to the archbishop of Kazan, Jeremiah.

The discovery of the miraculous icon

The Shepherd of God took his story with all the confidence, and immediately at the head of the church clerk, with prayers and hymns, went with Katerina to the ashes. For a long time I had to tear up piles of ashes and firebricks, until finally, in the hands of the daughter of Katerynina Matrona, the very icon about which the Queen of Heaven was speaking was not in the hands. Great was the joy, and on the same day the shrine was moved to the nearby church of St. Nicholas of Tula.

The monastery, born of the sovereign's estate

It happened in 1479, that is, under the emperor Ivan Vasilyevich (Grozny). Truth be told, though the lute was a king, but at times he showed examples of piety. Here and this time, after having examined the miraculous finding of the icon, he ordered to lay the church on that very spot, and how it would be ready, to set up a female abode beside her, so that the nuns would prayerfully praise the mercy bestowed on the Queen of Heaven. Thus, by the sovereign's order, the Kazan-Bogoroditsky women's monastery was founded, in which both Katerina and her daughter Matrona, who was named Mavro, were tonsured. The Lord granted it afterwards to become abbess of the monastery.

After the death of his father, the new Emperor Fyodor Ioannovich, as well as his father, ascended to the throne of Moscow, was generous to the new monastery and ordered the erection of a stone church in memory of the miracle shown here. Since the Volga bank along with the royal decree arrived and money to implement it, the work began to boil, and no more than a year later the walls of the majestic church ascended to the sky in honor of the appearance of the Kazan icon of the Mother of God. In it, it was solemnly transferred from the old wooden church.

Pilgrimage Center

As soon as many evidences of miracles appeared on prayers before the icon of the Mother of God, the Bogoroditsky Monastery (Kazan) quickly became a place of universal pilgrimage. From all parts of Russia, the pilgrims came to him, and sometimes even walked for a thousand miles. It is known that not a candle, even a pood, is needed for the Queen of Heaven, but for the work that the Orthodox man has to go to and worship her image.

Here and dusted along the roads of boundless strings of voluntary pilgrims, heading to where the Kazansky Bogoroditsky Monastery is. They were not stopped by winter cold or summer heat. Especially tried to keep up with November 4, when the Day of the Icon of Kazan Mother of God was celebrated. In this holiday the pilgrims account went to thousands.

Visits to the monastery by reigning people

The Kazan Bogoroditsky Monastery was visited by members of the reigning house. Many of them, traveling on the Volga, considered it their indispensable duty to bow to the image of the Blessed Virgin, which was kept within the walls of the monastery. By the way, curious information has remained, according to which, in those years, the city budget consisted of 70% of the proceeds from numerous religious processions held in the monastery and mass pilgrimage.

Especially memorable for the monastery were two visits to the reigning persons. In the spring of 1722, Tsar Peter I visited here, and in 1767 the Bogoroditsky Monastery (Kazan) was honored by the presence of Catherine II. Mother Empress donated precious diamond crowns, which did not reach us, to the decoration of holy images of the Most Blessed Virgin and Savior, and irrevocably sunk in the ocean of stormy events of the 20th century.

In the fire of Pugachevshchina

In the days when the Volga banks were covered by the fire of the Pugachev uprising, the monastery became not only a witness, but also an involuntary participant in those dramatic events. Residents of Kazan tried to find within its walls salvation from the bloody revelry of rebels, but in vain.

One of the detachments broke into the monastery and, after driving the nuns out of it, placed in it artillery guns, from which the fire flickered across the Kremlin. It is interesting to note that, despite all their unbridled nature, the rebels did not touch either the miraculous icon or its ornaments. They were not afraid of the earthly judgment, but they still trembled before the Heavenly.

Bookmark the new cathedral

The Old Kazan Cathedral, in which the wonderworking icon was kept for two centuries, was very dilapidated by the end of the 18th century and, since the architectural commission recognized it as not subject to restoration, was dismantled. To replenish this loss in the same place in 1796, in the presence of Emperor Paul I, his son Alexander, the future victor of Napoleon, and the second son of Constantine, the new cathedral was solemnly laid.

The author of his project, executed in classical style, became the famous St. Petersburg architect I.E. Starov, famous in the city on the Neva with such masterpieces as the Trinity Cathedral of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, the Prince Vladimir Cathedral, the Tauride Palace, and a number of other magnificent buildings.

The last century of monastic prosperity

The next XIX century was a period of particularly rapid construction, during which the Bogoroditsky Monastery (Kazan) changed beyond recognition. At the very beginning, the St. Sophia Cathedral was built on the donations of the Musyn-Pushkin nobleman's house , and soon a draft of the complete reconstruction of the monastery was developed and approved, which was put into practice almost till the end of the century.

The oldest building of the monastery, the Nikolo-Tula Church, erected once by the order of Ivan the Terrible, was finally demolished. In its place a new warm church was built, where since then a miraculous icon was kept in the winter. The Rector's Corps and the premises in which the cells of the nuns were housed also were erected. In the last quarter of a century, a structure appeared on the territory of the monastery, named the Cross Exaltation Corps. It housed a temple in honor of the Exaltation of the Life-Giving Cross of the Lord, a sacristy, a refectory, a school of painting, kvass, bread and a number of utility rooms.

The Abduction of the Shrine

At the end of June 1904, Russia was shocked by the terrible news: unknown intruders, having penetrated the Bogoroditsky Monastery (Kazan) at night, stole from their temple the main shrine - the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God. The best investigators of the country were connected to the search for criminals, because it was a question of the sacrilege unprecedented until then, which caused the broadest resonance in the society.

The thieves were detained, but they did not have the icons. Moreover, neither of their testimonies, nor on the basis of additional investigations, could establish its location. The subsequent fate of the icon remains a mystery to this day.

Nevertheless, the misfortune that befell the monastery did not reduce the number of pilgrims who aspired to it, especially on the Day of the Icon of the Kazan Mother of God. In the absence of a shrine, people went to worship at least the place where she once lived. In the temple itself, or rather in its cave, in the place where the miracle-working image was once found, in 1913 an underground church was built in honor of the three hundredth anniversary of the Romanovs' house. The money for its creation was donated by the Grand Duchess Elisaveta Fedorovna - the Empress's sister.

Hard times

After October 1917, the same catastrophe fell on the monastery, as on other monasteries of long-suffering Russia. Some of the premises were immediately taken from the sisters and transferred to the disposal of one of the military units. At the end of the twenties, the situation worsened considerably due to the fact that the monastery was completely closed, and most of the living space was used as a dormitory for students of the pedagogical technical school.

Future teachers and educators, called to "sow reasonable, good, eternal", led the monastery into a lamentable state. Even the wild Pugachev horde did not cause the abode of such troubles. Young teachers broke doors and windows, broke historical tombstones, and also burnt wooden stairs and railings.

For some time the territory of the monastery was used as storage for the zagotkontory, and then it was transferred for the construction of the film studio. For this purpose, several historical buildings were demolished. To top it off, the Kazan Cathedral, created according to the project of the Russian genius IE, was blown up. Starova. A lot of other troubles survived the monastery during the years of the God-fighters.

The newly established male monastery in Kazan

An uneasy path to the revival of the monastery began in 1993, when the local diocese was transferred to the Gateway Church of St. Sophia, built in the XIX century. After it, they returned to their former owners and other miraculously preserved, but lost the former appearance of the structure. There was a difficult and expensive work to restore them.

The monastic life returned to the ancient walls in 2005. By the decision of the Holy Synod, the monastery was reborn, but already as a man. At the same time the Kazan Bogoroditsky Monastery experienced one more joyful event. Arrived in the city His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Alexy II donated a list of the miracle-working icon of the Virgin stolen in the beginning of the 20th century as a gift of the monastery. Before, it was kept in the Vatican and was handed over to the Russian Orthodox Church personally by the Pope. Today he is in the restored and functioning Holy Cross Church of the monastery.

Today, the brethren of the monastery, which is headed by Hegumen Mark (Vilensky), is still very small and consists of only eight people. Six of them have the rank of hieromonks, that is, the monks ordained to the priesthood and thus obtained the right to perform sacraments. Two more - hierodeacons. They are deacons, but, unlike their fellow white clergy, who took monastic vows.

Despite such a small brotherhood, Kazan Bogoroditsky Monastery in Kazan, whose address: st. Big Red, 5, once again acquires the importance of an important spiritual center. His main shrine is the "Vatican" list of the stolen icon, which was mentioned above. In addition, the shrines, undoubtedly, are miraculously preserved after decades of atheistic timelessness of the three currently functioning monastery churches.