Communication of the Old Believers in the Nizhny Novgorod province. Down Kerzhenets: Old Believer monasteries. Research of Old Believer sites and monuments

During a trip down Kerzhenets, I tried to find and capture places associated with the history of the Nizhny Novgorod Old Believers, and today we will talk about one of these places.
This hillock, on which the cemetery and birch grove is located, is completely inconspicuous at first glance, but it is inconspicuous only to people who are not familiar with the tragic events that happened here in 1719. These events once again show how brutally Peter I treated the Old Believers... This place is located near the village of Klyuchi, which is near Pafnutovo - a place where there were once many hermitages...

The cemetery here is also Old Believer (like many in the Semyonovsky district)

The villages along the Linda River are one next to the other. You walk a kilometer or two - another village. Therefore, it was here, in the ancient village of Pafnutovo, that Pitirim, Bishop of Nizhny Novgorod, chose a place for his “dispute,” on the square near the wooden church of the “Three Saints,” built in 1699 as a support of Orthodoxy among the hiding “schismatics.” He, Pitirim, as the folk legend says, had “his own man” here - Elder Barsanuphius. He delivered Pitirimov’s letter with one hundred and thirty bishop’s “tricky” questions to the Kerzhen forests.

Archbishop of Nizhny Novgorod and Alatyr Pitirim (c. 1665-1738)

He handed them to the head of the Kerzhen schismatics - Deacon Alexander, this stubborn tall bearded man with gentle blue eyes. They say that Deacon Alexander was from the Kostroma province. From a young age, he was occupied with questions about the truth of faith. One day he met Elder Elizabeth from the Yaroslavl Monastery, who told him: “True faith is found in hidden places, namely in the forests, and everyone who wants to be saved must go there, into the deep forests.” After these words sunk into his soul, Alexander left his wife, children, and the position of deacon at the church and went first to Yaroslavl. There, at an inn, he met the elder Kyriakos and the monk Jonah and went with them to the Kerzhensky forests.

He lived in different monasteries, moved from one to another, teaching and studying himself. In 1709, at the Lavrentiy monastery, where he was received as a deacon, he was tonsured a monk “according to the schism” and admitted to the priesthood. From that time on, his name became known throughout Kerzhenets.

By 1719, when the answers to Pitirim’s questions were ready, Alexander, with his learning and strength in faith, became the spiritual leader of the Old Believers of the Beglopopovsky persuasion. Therefore, it was he who went to Pitirim to present answers to his “malicious” one hundred and thirty questions.

Like a bolt from the blue, the news spread around the monasteries of Kerzhensk: Pitirim, the Christ-seller, deacon Alexander, was thrown into the monastery prison in Nizhny while giving him answers. Anger and horror gripped the elders and elders of their cells. They wondered what to expect now from him, from the “beast” of this Pitirim. Many went with appeals to the initial elder Macarius, who lived in a cell in the Kerzhen forests for advice. Now it is he, Macarius, who will have to answer to the “heretic” and “tormentor” of Nizhny Novgorod, and he has already scheduled a meeting - a debate on the Feast of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos - October 1, 1719.

Deacon Alexander by this time was brought in chains to Pafnutovo. This is how the writer Yuri Prilutsky (aka priest Peter Shumilin of the Church of the Most Holy Life-Giving Trinity in the village of Epiphany) describes the course of the dispute in his story “For the Cross and Faith,” published in 1917:

« Pitirim came out in full regalia with icons and banners. In the middle of the square, in front of the church, there was a lectern placed on a platform, next to a table with a pile of ancient leather-bound books... From somewhere a hundred guardsmen of the Petrovsky Preobrazhensky Regiment appeared and, mercilessly pushing the crowd aside, made a lane from the village to the square. At the far end appeared a party of skete fathers chained in chains, escorted by a dozen guardsmen with drawn sabers, and behind on a raven (black) horse rode captain of the guard Rzhevsky... Pale, emaciated, with torn out nostrils with mutilated faces, in tattered clothes, covered in blood, with torn beards, but calm, quietly jingling their chains as they walked, the fathers headed to the platform... Alexander began his speech. But in the very heat of his speech, Rzhevsky’s heavy fist fell on Deacon Alexander’s head and he fell to the ground as if knocked down. ».

The dispute did not work out. The electors from the Old Believers of various monasteries, fearing what they saw with great fear and under the formidable influence of Pitirim, signed a “report” compiled by him himself that the answers of the “Old Believers” of the monasteries were incorrect. Judas (traitor) Barsanuphius was the first to set an example and sign. After this, Pitirim showed “mercy” and released the detainees. This is how the “dispute” ended.

The report with the signatures of the “schismatics” was presented to the emperor himself, Peter I. However, the “triumph of Pitirimovo” did not last long. The elders, once free, throughout Kerzhenets “exposed” the lies of the bishop of Nizhny Novgorod. Deacon Alexander, unable to tolerate this untruth, went to the capital, Petersburg, to see Tsar Peter Alekseevich himself. In the royal mansions he was captured and “interrogated with partiality.” Under cruel torture, he did not refuse to testify to Pitirim’s lies. The stubborn “fanatic” was sent in chains to Nizhny to the Pitirimov court.

At this time, in the region of Nizhny Novgorod on the Kerzhenets River, the passions of the Old Believers were seething, condemning the persecutor of the true faith, the faith of their fathers and grandfathers - Pitirim, for his lies, for torturing the elders for signatures. They were condemned and afraid. They were afraid for good reason. The “slander” of the opponents reached Pitirim’s ears. The priest Macarius, the elders Dosifei and Joseph, and seventeen “zealous” defenders of the old faith were captured. All of them were brought under escort in chains, chained to a gentle mountain, which is located between the village of Pafnutov and the village of Klyuchi. Here a large and rather deep hole was dug along the edges of which there were pillars with crossbars and ready-made rope loops. The “stubborn Old Believers” themselves, with the Jesus Prayer on their lips, threw nooses around themselves. A strong push on command and... the end.

Since then, this mountain, where the “Inquisition” took place, has been popularly called Key Mountain(near the village of Klyuchi), and the place where the execution took place - “ Gallows" Now in this place one can see a vast pit with swollen, gentle edges (the earth has settled). Through the efforts of Old Believers who honor the blessed memory of the martyrs for the faith of Christ, in the fall of 2003 a large worship cross with a sign was erected on the “Gallows”. There is an inscription on it: “ Father Macarius and 19 martyrs for ancient Orthodoxy ».

The righteous elder Macarius was recognized as a saint by the Old Believer Church, his name was entered in the synodik (a book in which names are entered for commemoration). We left Deacon Alexander at the moment when we took him to the Pitirim court. And the trial was quick.

On Blagoveshchenskaya Square in Nizhny Novgorod, near the Dmitrievskaya Tower, in front of a large crowd of people, the code of the year 7157 from the creation of the world, the second chapter of the first article was read out: “to inflict on the leader of the Kerzhensky schism of the Besponovshinsky consent to Deacon Alexander, as an evil perjurer, beheading of the head and burning in the fire of his thieves bodies."

Alexander listened to the death sentence calmly, without changing his face. Then they removed the chains from the headless body and burned it here in the square. The deacon's remains were buried in a child's coffin.
This “act” committed on March 21, 1720 shocked the entire schismatic world. This was followed by “revelation” and destruction of the monasteries of the Kerzhensk region. The black forests are deserted. Many zealots of the ancient faith flowed to other places, even beyond the borders of Russia, and those who remained here huddled in the deepest forest, moving away from monasteries and villages...

From the very beginning of the schism of Russian Orthodoxy, the Nizhny Novgorod region was one of the most important centers of the Russian Old Believers. To confirm this, we present several facts: 1. Outstanding ideologists of the “warring parties” - Patriarch Nikon, Archpriest Avvakum, Bishop Pavel Kolomensky, Sergius of Nizhny Novgorod, Alexander Deacon - were born in the Nizhny Novgorod region. 2. The very first Old Believer monastery was founded precisely in Nizhny Novgorod on the Kerzhenets River - the Smolyany monastery (1656).

Supporters of the old faith were persecuted by the government. They had to either abandon it or leave their homes. And the Old Believers went north, to the Nizhny Novgorod forests, to the Urals and Siberia, and settled in Altai and the Far East. In the dense forests in the basins of the Kerzhenets and Vetluga rivers, by the end of the 17th century there were already about a hundred Old Believer monasteries for men and women. They were called monasteries. The most famous were: Olenevsky, Komarovsky, Sharpansky, Smolyany, Matveevsky, Chernushinsky.

Under Peter I, the persecution of the Old Believers was resumed again. When, at the end of the first decade of the 18th century, the emperor paid special attention to the Nizhny Novgorod schismatics, he chose Pitirim as the executor of his intentions. Pitirim - Bishop of Nizhny Novgorod (about). Pitirim came from a simple rank and was at first a schismatic; He accepted Orthodoxy when he was already an adult. Pitirim’s activities were initially purely missionary; To convert schismatics to Orthodoxy, he used exclusively means of exhortation. The result of such activities of Pitirim were his answers to 240 schismatic questions. However, seeing the failure of his missionary activities, Pitirim little by little turned to coercion and persecution. The famous Old Believer deacon Alexander was executed, monasteries were ruined, stubborn monks were sent to eternal imprisonment in monasteries, and laymen were punished with a whip and sent to hard labor. As a result, the Old Believers fled to the Urals, Siberia, Starodubye, Vetka and other places.

Belokrinitsky (Austrian) agreement. Okrugniks: the most significant features of this direction of the Old Believers were: the presence of the clergy and bishop, a vibrant social and church life in the form of the organization of Old Believer unions, brotherhoods, congresses, publishing activities, and the intensification of missionary activity among Nikonians. The difference between the neo-okruzhniks is, first of all, in the denial of all compromises with state power and Nikonianism, which was part of it: disobedience to the government, restriction of communication with Nikonians, adherence to “Domostroy”

The Bespopovites do not have their own episcopal rank; the clergy were very small in number and, due to their origin from the Nikonian church, did not enjoy any special authority. All affairs were managed in agreement by representatives of the church community: trustees, charter members, authoritative and competent old people. For this reason, they live in self-governing communities. They do not build churches; all rituals are performed in the prayer house.

Beglopopovsky (Novozybkovsky) agreement. His followers firmly stood on the conviction that without the priesthood the true church cannot exist. Due to the lack of Old Believer bishops, it was decided to accept priests from the Nikonian Church who agreed to serve according to the old rites. To do this, they resorted to various tricks: the priests were lured and secretly taken to Kerzhenets, smeared with “myrrh” (Myrrh is oil with red wine and incense, a fragrant oil that is used in Christian church rituals. Chrismation is the name given to the Christian sacrament - the rite of anointing the face and eyes with myrrh , ears, chest, arms, legs as a sign of communion with divine grace), consecrated under Patriarch Joseph.

From the first days of the schism, the Nizhny Novgorod region became one of the strongholds of “ancient piety.” This is not surprising if we take into account the fact that the key figures of the schism - the initiator of church "innovations" Patriarch Nikon and his fierce antagonist Archpriest Avvakum - both came from Nizhny Novgorod.

Finding themselves outside the sphere of influence of the official Orthodox Church, adherents of the “old faith” quickly disintegrated into various directions and trends (“talks,” as they said then). The most important difference was between the “priestly” and “non-priestly” sense. The difference was that the former recognized the rank of priesthood and monasticism, the latter did not, and in their communities the main ones were not priests, but elected officials from among the laity. In turn, other trends and sects sprang from these rumors. As for the Nizhny Novgorod region, the Nizhny Novgorod Old Believers for the most part belonged to the “clergy” and recognized priests and monks. It is these Old Believers that we will mainly talk about.
At the end of the 17th century, fleeing persecution, Nizhny Novgorod schismatics went into the deep forests beyond the Volga, where they set up their monasteries (a union of several Old Believer monasteries). Especially many of them settled on the banks of the Kerzhenets River.

Kerzhenets River

Since then, the Old Believers in the Nizhny Novgorod region began to be called “Kerzhaks,” and the word “Kerzhachit” began to mean “adhere to the old faith.” The Kerzhaks lived differently: relatively peaceful times alternated with periods of brutal repression. The persecution was especially strong at the time when Pitirim was appointed Bishop of Nizhny Novgorod. Under him, the famous “dispersal” of Kerzhenets or

Pitirim's devastation

Pitirim was at first a schismatic, he converted to Orthodoxy already in adulthood and considered the fight against schism to be his life’s work. In 1719, he was appointed Bishop of Nizhny Novgorod and Alatyr and in his “report” to Tsar Peter he proposed a whole system of measures against schismatics. Peter was a man deeply indifferent to purely religious issues, but he had no reason to love schismatics: they participated in the Streltsy riots that darkened Peter’s childhood and youth, and, moreover, were the most ardent critics and opponents of Peter’s innovations. The mercantile aspect also played a significant role: it was proposed to take a double per capita salary from schismatics, from which the sovereign’s treasury would benefit a lot. The Tsar approved all of Pitirim’s undertakings, and ordered the Nizhny Novgorod governor Yu.A. Rzhevsky to provide him with all possible assistance.
Mass persecution of Old Believers began. From 1718 to 1725 in the Nizhny Novgorod diocese, up to 47 thousand people were open schismatics; of these, up to 9 thousand converted to Orthodoxy; some were enrolled in double salary, so for 1718 and 1719. Rzhevsky collected about 18 thousand rubles from 19 thousand people; stubborn monks were sent to eternal imprisonment in monasteries, and laymen were punished with whips and sent to hard labor. Military teams were sent into the forests, who forcibly expelled schismatics from the monasteries, and destroyed the monasteries themselves. One of the ways to resist the tyranny of church and civil authorities was self-immolation - when schismatics, priests and laymen with their wives and children, locked themselves in some building, most often in a wooden church, and set themselves on fire. Several such cases were recorded in the Nizhny Novgorod region.
But more common were escapes, when schismatics left their homes and fled wherever they looked, most often to Siberia, where they brought their nickname. Therefore, in Siberia, schismatics are still called “Kerzhaks” - too many people from Kerzhenets moved there at the beginning of the 18th century.

Archbishop of Nizhny Novgorod and Alatyr Pitirim

After the death of Pitirim (1738), there was less persecution of schismatics. During this period, Old Believer migration flows from the Urals, Siberia and other regions rushed to the Nizhny Novgorod Volga region. Not only those who previously lived here and were forced to leave their native lands due to the repressions of Pitirim are returning, but comrades of the “old faith” are also heading here from other parts of the country. Under these conditions, the revival of Old Believer monasteries in the Volga region is taking place. The most significant monasteries were Komarovsky, Olenevsky, Ulangersky, Sharpansky. All these monasteries are mentioned in the novels “In the Forests” and “On the Mountains,” and the most famous and rich Komarovsky monastery is one of the places where the novel takes place. The abbess of one of the monasteries of the Komarovsky skete, Mother Manefa, appears as one of the heroines of the novel.
The schismatic monks and nuns lived mainly due to the alms of local schismatics, but most of all - due to the considerable financial assistance of wealthy “benefactors” from among the Old Believers merchants: both from Nizhny Novgorod and from other cities. In addition, monks and nuns collected alms at the Makaryevskaya fair, which took place in the summer in Nizhny Novgorod, and at various festivals organized by the Old Believers. One of the most notable was the celebration of the icon of the Vladimir Mother of God. It took place annually on the shores of Lake Svetloyar, with which it was inextricably linked

The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh

Lake Svetloyar is a holy place, especially revered by Nizhny Novgorod schismatics. Associated with its history is a poetic legend about the miraculous immersion of the city of Great Kitezh in its waters, which did not want to surrender to Batu’s army. “When Batu’s troops approached the great city of Kitezh, the righteous elders turned in prayer to the Queen of Heaven, calling for help. Suddenly, divine light illuminated all those suffering, and the Mother of God descended from heaven, holding in her hands a miraculous cover that hid the city of Kitezh.” “That city is still intact - with white stone walls, golden-domed churches, with honest monasteries, patterned towers and stone chambers. The city is intact, but we cannot see it.” And only the righteous ringing of Kitezh bells can be heard on the lake.
Gathering near the shores of the lake, the Old Believers organized something like an “all-night vigil”: they prayed and read excerpts from ancient legends about the city of Kitezh. And at dawn they began to listen and look closely: there was and still is a belief that in the dawn hours the most righteous can hear the ringing of Kitezh bells and can see in the clear waters of the lake the reflection of the golden domes of the churches of the invisible city. This was considered a sign of God's special grace and mercy.

Lake Svetloyar from a bird's eye view

This whole “Kitezh legend” has come to us in Old Believer adaptations and retellings of the 17th and 18th centuries. This is the “Book of the Verb Chronicler,” the second part of which is the legend “About the Hidden City of Kitezh.”
Thanks to the Old Believers, a huge number of early printed and handwritten ancient books were preserved, which after the introduction of Nikon’s “innovations” were recognized as heretical and subject to destruction. The Old Believers also contributed greatly to the preservation of ancient Russian household items. Most of these items, of course, were preserved in wealthy boyar and noble families, but it was the representatives of the upper class in the post-Petrine era who were the fastest to squander their grandfather’s heritage. Antique brothers, ladles and bowls; women's and men's clothing embroidered with precious stones; ancient weapons, and sometimes even rich vestments from icons - all this was mercilessly melted down and remade by the “enlightened” nobles in order to quickly acquire items of newfangled luxury. When interest in the ancient Russian heritage arose in the mid-19th century, it turned out that the noble noble families, whose ancestors were mentioned in all Russian chronicles, had nothing to see or study. But the Old Believers had considerable treasures of Russian culture of pre-Petrine times in their bins.
As for Lake Svetloyar, holidays are held there even today, but not only Old Believers, but also Orthodox, Baptists, and even representatives of non-Christian faiths, such as Zen Buddhists and Hare Krishnas, take part in them. And this is not at all surprising: there is something amazing and bewitching in the beauty of Lake Svetloyarsk. Where did it come from - deep and transparent - in this not at all lake region, where in the depths of the forests there are only swamps with rusty water, and tiny reed oxbows of small forest rivers? Nizhny Novgorod local historians and geologists are still arguing about this. And Svetloyar Lake itself is silent, stubbornly, in Kerzhak style, silent...

The invisible city of Kitezh

But even taking into account the generous collections of alms at various festivals like Svetloyarsk, the Old Believer monasteries still had to live rather meagerly. And the hand of rich “benefactors” became less and less generous every year. The old people died, and the young became “weak in faith”: they began to shave their beards, wear “German” clothes, and smoke tobacco. The monasteries became poorer and scarcer. This was, for example, the fate of the Boyarkin monastery in the Komarovsky monastery (the monastery was founded in the mid-18th century by Princess Bolkhovskaya from a noble boyar family - hence its name) or the Manefina monastery in the same Komarovsky monastery. The Manefina monastery (otherwise Osokin monastery) was named after its founder - Abbess Manefa Staraya from the wealthy merchant family of the Osokins, who lived in the city of Balakhna, Nizhny Novgorod province. At the beginning of the 19th century, Osokin merchants received the title of nobility and converted to Orthodoxy. Help from them to the monastery ceased, the monastery became impoverished, “dry up” and received a new name - the monastery of the Rassokhins.
A very powerful blow to the Nizhny Novgorod, and indeed the entire Russian Old Believers, was dealt by the compromise movement, which reached an agreement with the official Orthodox Church

Unity of faith. Austrian priesthood

Edinoverie arose at the end of the 18th century and represented something of a compromise between Orthodoxy and the Old Believers of the “priestly” kind. Edinoverie immediately received strong support from both civil and church authorities of the Russian Empire - they realized how effective this movement could be in the fight against schism. The Old Believers, stubbornly adherent to the old church customs, were allowed to pray according to their canons, but at the same time they were placed under the strict control of the state and the Orthodox Church. In the early to mid-19th century, some Old Believer monasteries and monasteries in the Nizhny Novgorod region converted to Edinoverie.

Malinovsky monastery in the 19th century

This further strengthened the “zealots” of the old faith in their desire to remain faithful to the “ancient piety.” Old Believer communities from all corners of Russia are trying to get closer and unite on the eve of inevitable and sad changes for them. In the 40s of the 19th century, they even decided to choose their own bishop, and then the metropolitan. For this purpose, their eyes turned to their fellow believers living outside the borders of the Russian Empire. For a long time, schismatics who fled from Russia settled on the territory of the Austrian Empire in Belaya Krinitsa (now the territory of Ukraine) and established their diocese there. It was from there that the Russian schismatics of the “priestly” persuasion decided to take a bishop for themselves. Relations between the schismatics and Belaya Krinitsa were carried out according to all the laws of the detective genre: first secret correspondence, then direct relations, accompanied by illegal border crossings on both sides.
The news that Russian schismatics wanted to establish an “Austrian priesthood” alarmed all the Russian authorities of that time. This was no joke for Nikolaev Russia, where everyone had to walk in formation and begin public affairs only with the permission of their superiors. The times were alarming: there was revolutionary ferment in Europe, which soon erupted in the revolutions of 1848, relations with Turkey and European neighbors were strained, and the Crimean War was approaching. And then suddenly there was news that subjects of the Russian Empire, and not just any, but dissenters suspicious of the authorities, had direct and illegal relations with a foreign state. Russian authorities feared that in the event of a military conflict with Austria, 5 million Russian schismatics could play the role of a “fifth column.” This was of course not true, but the then authorities of the Russian Empire saw “sedition” in everything.
Russian Old Believers, especially those who lived in monasteries, have long been in bad standing with the authorities, and not only because they did not recognize the official church. In the Old Believer hermitages, quite a few “state criminals” (for example, participants in the Pugachev rebellion) and fugitive serfs were hiding. All of them lived without documents, without passports, and the police regularly raided monasteries in order to identify and arrest the “passportless.”
The attempt to establish an “Austrian priesthood” overflowed the patience of the Russian authorities. They decide that it is time to begin to eradicate and “drive out” the schismatic monasteries and begin to act in this direction in 1849. A young official of special assignments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for schism affairs took the most active part in the “drive out” of the Nizhny Novgorod monasteries -

Melnikov Pavel Ivanovich (1818-1883)

He was born into a poor Nizhny Novgorod noble family. He was a great expert on the schism, which did not prevent him from actively and firmly taking part in the eradication of the Old Believers. First of all, in 1849, miraculous icons began to be confiscated from schismatic monasteries. And this is not without reason! The most revered of these icons - the miraculous image of the Kazan Mother of God - was kept in the Sharpansky monastery. The Kerzhen schismatics had a strong belief associated with it - as soon as it was confiscated, it would mean the end of the Kerzhen monasteries.
The actions of the official Melnikov were expressively described by the writer Andrei Pechersky:

Quote:

“Experienced in matters of this kind, the St. Petersburg official, entering the Sharpan prayer room, ordered all the candles to be extinguished. When his order was carried out, the light of the lamp standing in front of the image of the Kazan Mother of God appeared. Taking him in his arms, he turned to the abbess and the few eldresses who were in the chapel with the words:
– Pray to the holy icon for the last time.
And he took her away.
How the residents of Kerzhenets and Chernoramenye were struck by thunder when they learned that the Solovetsky icon was no longer in the Sharpan monastery. I was crying and there was no end to the screams, but that’s not all, that’s not how it ended.
From Sharpan, the St. Petersburg official immediately went to Komarov. There, in the monastery of the Glafirins, there has long been an icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, also revered by the Old Believers as miraculous. He took it in the same way as he took the Solovetsky one from Sharpan. There was even more fear and horror in the monasteries of Kerzhensky and Chernoramensky, where everyone considered it finished for themselves. The St. Petersburg official fulfilled his promise...: the Solovetsky icon was transferred to the Kerzhensky Annunciation Monastery (of the same faith), and the icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker was transferred to the Osipovsky skete, which had recently converted to the Edinoverie. After that, having toured all the monasteries and monasteries, the St. Petersburg official returned to his place.”

In 1853, Emperor Nicholas issued a decree where the fate of the schismatic monasteries was finally decided. Again, a word to the writer Andrei Pechersky:

Quote:

“Soon the highest authorities from St. Petersburg made the following decision about the monasteries: they were only allowed to remain as before for six months, after which time they all must certainly be completely destroyed; those of the monastery mothers who were assigned to the monasteries according to the latest revision were allowed to remain in their places, but with a significant reduction in their buildings. Those of the monastery mothers who, according to the audit, were assigned to different cities and villages were ordered to have a permanent presence there without even short-term absences to monasteries and other places.
All this was entrusted to the local police, and the police officer himself toured the monasteries several times for this purpose... No matter how much the police officer ordered the peasants of Ronzhin and Elfimov to destroy the monastery buildings, none of them touched them, considering it a great sin. Especially the Komarov chapels were inviolable and holy for them... No matter how much the police officer fought, he finally saw that nothing could be done about it, and therefore gathered witnesses, mainly from the Orthodox. They immediately got to work. When the roofs of the Manefin monastery, which was considered the most important of all the monasteries, were demolished, voices began to groan...
Thus, the Kerzhen and Chernoramen monasteries, which had stood for about two hundred years, fell. The neighboring men, although at first they did not dare to raise their hands to the chapels and cells, after a while they took advantage of the cheap timber for their buildings: they bought the monastery buildings for next to nothing. Soon there were no traces left of all the hermitages. Only those assigned to them according to the audit were left in their places, and each resident was assigned a spacious cell, but there were no more than eighty old women of these assigned to all the monasteries, and before all the monastery residents there were almost a thousand. Both Kerzhenets and Chernoramenye were deserted.
After some time, the local governor, together with another St. Petersburg official, was ordered to inspect all the monasteries. They found complete desolation everywhere.”

Many have probably already guessed that the official Melnikov and the writer Andrei Pechersky are one and the same person. How did it happen that an ardent opponent of the split became its singer in his future books?
In the 40s and early 50s, P.I. Melnikov shared the official point of view on the Old Believers. He was also concerned about the creation of a schismatic diocese in Belaya Krinitsa. In his “Report on the current state of the schism in the Nizhny Novgorod province” in 1854, Melnikov spoke extremely negatively about the schismatics. He assessed them as a destructive force that did not contribute to the strength of the Russian Empire; he also remembered their participation in the rebellions of Stepan Razin and Kondraty Bulavin, and in the Streltsy riots, and in the Pugachev uprising (and Pugachev himself and his accomplices were schismatics). In those same years, he began his literary activity; in a number of stories and tales he writes about schismatics, and everywhere he portrays them as a gathering of religious fanatics and fanatics.
But in the mid-50s, with the accession of Alexander II, the liberal winds began to blow. The persecution of schismatics stopped. In addition, not many Russian schismatics recognized the Belokrinitsa diocese, and in 1863 they even finally broke with it and elevated their Archbishop Anthony to the rank of metropolitan. In his note on the schism of 1864, Melnikov already greatly softens his previous views on the schism. He begins to be impressed by the schismatics’ commitment to everything ancient and primordially Russian. Even later, in 1866, in a letter to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Melnikov already wrote: “The schismatic community, despite its religious errors, has many good sides... The educated Old Believers will introduce “new” elements into our lives, or, better yet, “old ones.” “, forgotten by us due to the influx of Western concepts and customs...” And he even declares at the end: “But I still see the main stronghold of the future of Russia in the Old Believers.”
In those same years, he began work on the main work of his life - the duology “In the Forests” and “On the Mountains,” which truly became a monument to the Nizhny Novgorod Old Believers. His favorite hero, Patap Maksimych Chepurin, embodied all the best features of an Old Believer entrepreneur who came from the bottom: intelligence and business acumen, indestructible honesty, the absence of extreme religious fanaticism, and at the same time, a strong commitment to the original Russian foundations and customs.
In addition, Melnikov-Pechersky entered the history of Nizhny Novgorod forever as one of the founders of scientific local history. In his legacy one can find articles about outstanding Nizhny Novgorod residents - Kulibin and Avvakum, about the Grand Duchy of Nizhny Novgorod, works about the cities of the Nizhny Novgorod region and about the activities of the Makaryevskaya fair.
This is how he remained in the memory of Nizhny Novgorod residents - a cruel administrator who destroyed the walls of the monastery log houses and the foundations of old Kerzhenets, whose name was cursed by the Nizhny Novgorod Old Believers and frightened children with it in the Volga villages. And at the same time - a careful guardian of the ancient language and memory, who in his novels erected a sublime and spiritual monument to Kerzhak Rus.

Pavel Ivanovich Melnikov (Andrey Pechersky)

And what about the monasteries, destroyed through the efforts of P.I. Melnikov and the police authorities? Some of them were later revived in their places, like the famous Komarovsky monastery. Others arose in new places under the old name - like the Sharpansky monastery, which became known as New Sharpan. But most remained abandoned and never rose again. Time and the natural course of events increasingly undermined the “old foundations” - old monks and nuns died, and few or no new ones came to take their place. The most famous Komarovsky monastery lasted the longest; its resettlement took place already in 1928 under Soviet rule.

Komarovsky monastery in 1897

At this time, Old Believers continued to live in the cities and villages of the Nizhny Novgorod region, to profess their faith, but in the eyes of the new government they were no longer considered something special and became equal to the bulk of believers. Their persecutors, the Nikonians, themselves found themselves in the position of persecuted people; Soviet officials treated both of them with equal suspicion.

Nizhny Novgorod Old Believers today

The 90s of the last century are rightly called the time of religious revival in Russia and throughout the post-Soviet space. The Nizhny Novgorod schismatics did not remain aloof from this process. New parishes arose, and in some places new Old Believer churches were erected.

Dormition Ancient Orthodox Church in Gorodets

At the Assumption Ancient Orthodox Church in Gorodets there is a Sunday school for children of Old Believers.

Sunday school students at the Assumption Church

Nowadays, several tens of thousands of Old Believers, both priests and non-priests, live in the Nizhny Novgorod region. The main organizational structures of the priests are the Russian Orthodox Old Believer Church and the Russian Old Orthodox Church; Bespopovtsy - Ancient Orthodox Pomeranian Church.
The newspaper “Old Believer” has been published in Nizhny Novgorod since 1995. Newspaper for Old Believers of All Concords,” which contains on its pages both historical and local history materials and information notes dedicated to the life of the main Old Believer consents.
In addition, Nizhny Novgorod Old Believers continue to gather at their holidays in places dear to their memory in the Nizhny Novgorod land:

near Lake Svetloyar

at the tombstone of the abbess of the Komarovsky monastery of Manefa

at the ancient cross, which stands on the place where the Komarovsky skete used to be

and in many other places where old images of the legendary Trans-Volga region come to life - images of Kitezh Rus'.
Finally, a story closely related to the theme of the Nizhny Novgorod Old Believers. There is such a character in Melnikov-Pechersky’s novel and in the series created “based on” his book - Flenushka, the illegitimate daughter of Abbess Manefa. Flenushka and the merchant Pyotr Danilovich Samokvasov have known each other for three years, and for all three years the lover Samokvasov has been trying to persuade her to marry him. Her mother, Abbess Manefa, also diligently persuades her to become a nun. Flenushka agrees to the last meeting with her lover and there gives herself to him - for the first and only time. Now he no longer asks, but demands that she marry him: this must be covered with a crown. Flenushka sends him away for three days, promising during this time to pack up and leave with him. And now Pyotr Stepanovich returns:

Quote:

“I went, but I had just entered the monastery fence, and I saw that everyone was leaving the cellar. Here is Manefa, next to her is Marya the headwoman, two more squirrels, the treasurer Taif, behind everyone is the new mother.
“Now they will all sit at Manefa’s, and I will go to her, to my bride!..” thought Pyotr Stepanych and briskly went to the back porch of the abbess’s flock, which was placed near the Flenushkin chambers.
With a quick movement, he swung the door wide open. Taifa is in front of him.
- You can’t, benefactor, you can’t! - she whispers, anxiously waving her hands and not letting Samokvasov into his cell. - Who do you want?.. Mother Manefa?
“To Flena Vasilievna,” he said.
“There is no Flena Vasilievna here,” Taifa answered.
- How? - asked Pyotr Stepanych, who turned white as snow.
“Mother Philagria is here,” said Taifa.
- Philagria, Philagria! - Pyotr Stepanych whispers.
His vision became clouded, and he sank heavily onto the bench that stood along the wall.
Suddenly the side door swung open. The stately, stern mother Philagria stands motionless in a black crown and robe. The crepe basting is thrown back...
Pyotr Stepanych rushed towards her...
- Flenushka! – he screamed in a desperate voice.
Mother Philagria straightened up like an arrow. The sable eyebrows knitted together and the angry eyes flashed with a sparkling fire. How to eat Manefa's mother.
She slowly extended her hand forward and said firmly, authoritatively:
- Get away from me, Satan!..

And at the fair the harp is humming, at Makarya’s they are playing, life there is merry, there is no melancholy, no grief, and they don’t know the sadness there!
There, into this pool, Pyotr Stepanych rushed out of despair.”

M. Nesterov "Great tonsure"

And here is some purely historical material that I have in Lev Anninsky’s book “Three Heretics”:

“I was not surprised when, in the magazine “Russian Antiquity” for 1887, I unearthed the history of the prototypes from which the love of Flenushka and Samokvasov was written. No, there was no such thing as a “disturbed festivities” in which the good fellow drowned the “grievous little thing”. In life, Samokvasov parted with his mother Philagria differently: he killed her, locked the corpse, and, leaving, told the novices that the abbess was sleeping: he didn’t order them to disturb her. An hour later, the novices became worried, broke down the door and saw the abbess tied with a scythe to the samovar tap and scalded from head to toe: she died from burns without making a sound. There was no investigation: in order to avoid a scandal, the schismatics gave to whomever they should a “sieve of pearls” - and Mother Philagria, aka the fiery Flenushka, went down into the grave, just as weeds go down between weeds from the garden - silently and resignedly.”

Melnikov-Pechersky, who thoroughly knew the history of the Nizhny Novgorod schismatic monasteries, could well have heard this story, and having remade it, inserted it into his novel, removing the most cruel moment - the terrible murder of the schismatic abbess by her former lover, whom she abandoned to become a nun. And the fact that the matter was hushed up is also not surprising. The schismatics were more afraid than death of any contact with the police, but here was such a brutal murder: it could have come to the point of “dispersing” the monastery, and this was unnecessary for them.

Original taken from cheger in Down Kerzhenets: Old Believer monasteries

Of course, when talking about Kerzhenets, one cannot help but talk about its Old Believer monasteries, of which there were once a lot here, but now practically nothing remains of them. You can see more about them in my journal under the tag, the condition of many of them has already been described there, but now I would like to talk about three new monasteries that I managed to find. We will talk about the Chernukhinsky, Gorodino and Yakimov monasteries.

First in line for me was the Chernukhinsky monastery. Getting there turned out to be very problematic, since in fact there is no road there, and the one that exists was torn apart by timber trucks. We had to make our way through these remains and right through the clearings.

In the “confessional” painting of the Kerzhenskaya volost of the village of Semenova for 1742 it is said that in addition to settlements and hermitages along the rivers in the Chernoramensky forests, there were cell residents in various tracts and, in particular, there were thirteen of them along the Chernukha river.

In 1764, General Maslov, by order of Tsarina Catherine II, “ruined” the monasteries along the Vyatka River and evicted about thirty thousand Old Believers from them. Many of the “persecuted” appeared in the Kerzhen forests and founded their monasteries and monasteries. Near one of the cells on the Chernukha River, a mile from the modern village of Medvedevo, the Chernukha monastery of fugitive priestly consent thus appeared. Over the years, it grew, expanded and began to occupy both banks of the river. Lay people also lived near the monastery, mainly along the right bank. The hermitage buildings abounded in internal passages, side walls, small rooms, closets, basements and undergrounds with several exits to the outside. This type of building was developed by life itself in order to hide during sudden searches or to hide something that should not be visible.

No matter how complex the system of buildings was, however, it could not save the monastery from the “Melnikov ruin” of 1853. This is how the abbess of the Chernukhinsky monastery, Mother Eudoxia, tells the St. Petersburg writer Pavel Usov about this in 1884. " He (Melnikov) caused us a lot of harm. I can’t remember him without my heart. I remember now the eve of Dormition Day (August 14, old style), when he came to our monastery, menacing, stern, he appeared in the chapel where we were all, and sternly said: “Well, quickly take all your books and leave.” And then sealed our chapel».

Documents indicate that during 1853 - 1857 more than two thousand icons were confiscated from Chernukhinsky, Ulangelsky, Komarovsky, Olenevsky and other monasteries. In total, during the “black” October 1853, 358 residential buildings in the monasteries were destroyed, 741 people were deported, including 164 nuns. After the “visit” of Pavel Ivanovich and his team, one monastery was left in the Chernukhinsky monastery, and there were only five nuns in it. The prayer room was also left. The icons were removed from it, only those that belonged to Mother Eudoxia personally remained.

Before the destruction, there were 129 icons on the iconostasis of the prayer room and, in addition, 41 in the refectory. Some of them were transferred to the Edinoverie church in the village of Medvedev, and 103 icons were sent to Nizhny Novgorod. In 1860, 19 icons of the Chernukhinsky monastery ended up in the Academy of Arts as the most valuable. One of them, the image of St. Nifantius, has survived to this day and is kept in the collection of the State Russian Museum. Before the seizure, she was in the refectory of the Chernukhinsky monastery. There is an inscription on the icon, it says that the icon was painted in 1814 by master Vasily Ryabov in the village of Pavlovo (now the regional center of the Nizhny Novgorod province).

The prayer monastery itself was built at the end of the 1111th century, during the time of Empress Catherine II, and with the permission of the government, which saved it from destruction. The monastery was unable to fully recover after the “ruin,” but it existed.

Instructors of the Chernukhinsky monastery

The nuns, like the abbess herself, upon the persuasion of the priest of the Medvedev Church and other hierarchs, refused to accept the same faith, remaining faithful to the faith of their fathers. Therefore, as a result of a denunciation by Father Myasnikov of the Medvedev Church, the prayer room was sealed in October 1881. In his denunciation to the Nizhny Novgorod spiritual consistory, he wrote: “ In the house of a peasant woman from the village of Chernukha, Elena Osipovna Lesheva (after the tonsure of Evdoksey’s mother), an Old Believer prayer house was set up..." To seal the prayer income, an investigator, a steward, the dean priest Myasnikov and fifteen witnesses. Having taken the old printed books, the remaining ancestral icons in the prayer room and in the residential building of Mother Eudoxea, sealing the prayer room, they left.

Evdoksey's mother grew up in the village of Nizhneye Resurrection, on the Vetluga River (now the regional center of Voskresensk in our Nizhny Novgorod region), in the merchant family of Osip Leshev. In early childhood, the girl Elena was sent to be raised and trained at the Chernukhinsky monastery, where after several years she became abbess, accepting the monastic rank.

The abbess of the monastery, Mother Eudoxia, saw great injustice in the confiscation of icons, so she made a demand - a request - to the Nizhny Novgorod authorities to return the selected shrines to her, especially those that belonged to the Leshchev family. In response, she heard that prison awaited her for unauthorized construction of a prayer room. Realizing that you won’t get justice here, she goes to the capital, St. Petersburg, to work. Thanks to his persistence, he gets an appointment with the Russian Minister of Internal Affairs, Count Dmitry Tolstoy. We must pay tribute, the count understood the essence of the matter and gave the order: “ Print out the prayer service, as it was arranged with permission».

This is how Pavel Usov (mentioned above) describes his impressions of visiting the Chernukhinsky monastery: “ On the porch of a wooden one-story house, standing in the middle of a fairly spacious courtyard, we were met by an elderly woman, about sixty years old, of average height, slender, with lively, intelligent eyes. She was wearing a sundress made of dark chintz, of a special cut, clean, neat... On her head was a small black cap, which looked like a black bandage... Finally, Elder Eudoxia led us to the door, which was locked with several locks. When it was opened, we found ourselves in a vast room, the back of which was lined with icons up to the ceiling... Among the icons, the most remarkable is the icon of the Savior in ancient writing, belonging to mother Eudoxia, in whose family it is passed down from generation to generation. These generations also passed on to each other the legend about this icon that it was never given into the hands of the “Nikonians” when they tried to remove it from the place where it was located».

Judging by these notes by Pavel Usov in 1884, justice has triumphed; the icons of Mother Eudoxia were returned back at the end of the 19th century. Mother Eudoxia complained to St. Petersburg resident Usov that among the current female generation there are few willing to devote themselves to monastic life and that the monasteries have become meager in population. Gradually, for various reasons, monastery life died out not only in Chernukha, but throughout Russia. A particularly strong blow was dealt during the years of Soviet power, although the Chernukha Old Believers fought for a long time for survival, for the purity of their faith. Seeing the machinations of Satan in the “victories” of civilization, they lived until the end of their days without radio, without electricity. From time immemorial they got up here at sunrise and went to bed at sunset. On long winter evenings, their homes were illuminated by a candle and a lamp in front of the images of the Saints. And instead of news and films, there was reading of old printed books and singing of psalms from the Psalter.

Chernukhinsky monastery

In 2005, the last two houses stood here in Chernukha. One was sold and taken away. The second one burned down. In 2004, the last resident of this village, Zhirnova Tatyana Fedorovna, left the former settlement of Chernukha, moving to live in Medvedevo with her niece. Tatyana Fedorovna seemed to have returned to her homeland; she was born here, in Medvedev in 1916. In 1937, she got married in Chernukha, and I think she lived there all her life. According to her, two cemeteries remained from the monastery. One is old, on the left bank of the river. They were buried there from the foundation of the skete until Melnikov's destruction (until 1853). Now the forest there is deaf, not even the crosses have been preserved: “if you don’t know, you won’t find it.”

The second is more “fresh”, located on the right bank of the river, along the Zuevskaya road. They are located almost opposite each other, across the river, half a kilometer from the village. On the second there are crosses and fences. The last burial was ten years ago, although the cemetery itself is also old.

Thus, one of the conductors of ancient piety, the Chernukhinsky monastery, faded away. This was facilitated by: in 1720 - the Pitirimov ruin, in 1853 - the Melnikov ruin, in 1930 - the Soviet ruin. These years were years of life tragedies for the inhabitants of the monasteries, but these same years were years of the greatness of their spirit, their steadfastness in their faith.

Remains of the fence

Once upon a time there was a pond

In search of a cemetery, I drove a little into the forest and came across a large plot. The forest here, as elsewhere in the Volga region, is being cut down in full. Moreover, it is such a wilderness that as soon as I got out of the car to take a photo, a huge hare rushed past me literally 20 meters away. I was not able to find cemeteries, since, as I already said, the wilderness here is incredible!

Once upon a time there were houses here...

If you go from Semenov to Krasnye Baki, then between the Zakharovo platform and the Kerzhenets station on the left side of the railway you can see the ancient Yakimikha. Few people know about this village, but it has existed for three hundred years. For the first time there is a mention of it in the list of Old Believer monasteries and cells of the Kerzhensky volost for 1718 under Tsar Peter I. It is written about it: “near the mill of Joachim there are two cell residents.” No one now knows where Joachim, or in our opinion, Yakim, came from, only God knows. It is known, however, that on a small river called Ozerochnaya he set up a water mill and ground rye and oat grain, providing flour to the surrounding villages: Dorofeikha, Kirillovo. Kondratyevo. Over the years, other newcomers built next to the cell, the dwelling of Yakim (Joachim), and a monastery was formed. They all professed the “ancient” faith. the faith of their fathers and grandfathers, which means they were Old Believers. The spiritual center in those places was the village of Kondratyevo, two miles from Yakimikha. The Old Believer life was headed by the pop schismatic Yakov Krasilnikov. He had his own prayer house, where Old Believers came from all over the area to hold services on Sundays and holidays. In Yakimikha itself, Marfa Martynova was famous for her righteousness of life and book learning, who also had a prayer room in her house.

In 1898, as legend says, the house of priest Yakov in Kondratyev burned down, and the prayer house also burned down. It is not known why the fire happened. Some said that Yakov himself was to blame for handling the fire carelessly, others said that the “servant” set the fire (that is, the children). The priest managed to take everything from the fire that had devoured him, ancient icons and old printed books. For safety, while the new house was being built, I decided to take it to Marfa Martynova’s prayer house in Yakimikha.

By chance, for the sake of fire, the parishioners began to go to services pleasing to God, not as before in Kondratyevo, but in Yakimikha, in Martha’s house. They go for a month, two, six months. During this time, the parishioners fell in love with the Yakimikha prayers. They fell in love so much that the entire former parish of Father Yakov moved to this village, and the parish is not small - 17 villages, if you count Yakimikha. Bystrena, Belasovka, Dorofeiikha, Kondratyevo, Kirillovo, etc., about eight hundred parishioners. Mother Martha’s prayer room, as people began to call her, turned out to be too small, and in 1902 the altar was cut down and a porch was made in front of the entrance. A dome (small dome) and a cross brought from Nizhny Novgorod were attached to the top of the prayer room. For the convenience of living, Marfa herself had a separate room. Now the prayer room looked just like a church, even bells were installed.

It would seem that everything is going well, but life is life. They reported to the authorities in the district town of Semyonov that in the small village of Yakimikha, a “hornet’s nest”, a “nest of schismatics”, which does not respect the Orthodox Church, was expanding and growing. Based on this denunciation, a bailiff came here in 1904. He drew up a protocol about the unauthorized construction of a prayer house and about illegal “thieves’” divine services in it. Marfa was interrogated, but the case did not go to court, the bailiff's report remained without consequences. While the proceedings were ongoing, 1905 came, and in this year the Tsar - Emperor Nicholas II issued a decree on freedom of religion. Based on this decree, the Old Believers of the Yakimikha parish officially registered as an Old Believers religious community in the name of the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin Mary. At the general council of the community's believers, the priest from Kondratiev, Yakov Krasilnikov, was still elected rector. However, either due to old age, the priest was already about seventy years old, or he had committed a fine before the church hierarchs, but in 1912 he was removed from service. Instead, they replaced him with the young, forty-four-year-old father Naum (Burlachkov). He was originally from Maly Zinoviev, and led the priesthood to Kovernino.

With his arrival in Yakimiha, church services became lively. The number of parishioners increased to two thousand. Before the First World War in 1914, trouble suddenly came. In the afternoon, Father Naum performed the rite of baptism of the baby. After finishing the service, they closed the church and went home. And in the evening the church was gone. The fire destroyed everything. They said that the sexton was to blame. When he lit the censer and fanned it, a small coal fell under the floorboard, but he, absentmindedly, did not notice.

In that fire, ancient icons and ancient liturgical books burned, but their ancestors, fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers - the pillars of the ancient faith - prayed to those icons. The saddened parishioners and Father Naum decided at a general parish council not to restore this church, but to build another in a new place, outside the outskirts, a hundred meters from the village. Through the efforts of Father Naum and the head of the prayer house, Varenkov, log buildings were purchased and construction began. Bishop Innocent came from Nizhny Novgorod to lay the foundation stone for the temple, who laid the first stone and erected the cross where the throne should stand (It stands in the altar).

By Assumption Day (August 28), the church was erected, and by the Nativity of the Virgin Mary (September 21), the bell salvaged from the old prayer room was raised to the belfry. They say that during the fire, when the prayer house was burning, one of the parishioners, risking his life in order to save the shrine, removing it from the bell tower engulfed in fire, was badly burned, but remained alive and saved the bell. God did not give offense, it’s a holy thing. The service was conducted in the new consecrated church to the ringing of a bell scorched by the flames. Icons and church books were found by brothers in faith in the surrounding villages, which they transferred for the common good to the newly built church. Benefactors from Semenov and Nizhny Novgorod did not leave us in trouble.

The years of Soviet power have arrived. Due to the agitation of godless atheists, repression and threats from the authorities, the number of parishioners has sharply decreased. By 1930, only two to three hundred remained. In 1939 the temple was closed completely. Priest Naum, aged seventy, was arrested. The icons, as the old-timers said, were sent from the temple to heat the school. Since then, the Old Believers “went underground” and began to pray secretly in their homes so that the authorities would not find out.

Now is the 21st century. Freedom of religion again. But time has passed. There was practically no one to pray in Yakimikha.

If you decide to visit this small but beautiful village, Yakimov and Marfinin’s homeland, then when you approach it, on the left side you will see a cemetery, it is new, it is only about a hundred years old. It has a brick foundation overgrown with weeds. These are the remains of a former temple built after a fire. Bow down to them. In the village itself, as a reminder of a turbulent life, there are centuries-old linden trees that grew on the resting place of Marfina’s prayer house, which burned down in the old days. It seems that these linden trees tell us, living now, about the life - the existence of fathers and grandfathers, who often sacrificed their lives for the sake of our better lot, for the sake of our salvation.

Cemetery

The people living right next to these places do not know about the glorious history of their village and were very surprised when I told them all this.

Well, the last monastery where I went was Gorodinsky

On the high Kerzhensky bank between the villages of Merinovo and Vzvoz, in times distant from us, the Cheremis tribe lived. This is what modern Mari were called in years past. The places here are nice. There is a lot of game in the forests. Partridges and black grouse, as if chickens were walking around the huts. The river is full of fish, you can even scoop it up with a bucket. There are herds of deer, elk and other living creatures around. The Mari lived, rejoicing in the sun, glorifying nature and their gods. Over time, the settlement increased so much that the surrounding tribes began to call this settlement a city. So they said: “the city where the Marys live” - the Mari, that means, or simply the city of Mary.

Probably, a town with such a beautiful name would still exist today, if not for the sudden attack of enemies - the wild Tatars. Like animals, immeasurably hungry, they attacked and overnight destroyed everything that had been created over the years, and perhaps centuries. The buildings went up into the sky in a fiery tornado. Some people were taken into captivity, others were chopped up with crooked swords. Many fell in an unequal battle. A sad picture was revealed to those who returned from hunting from the surrounding forests, and to those who came from other settlements.

First of all, they collected the remains of their fellow tribesmen - their relatives - and laid them on the temple for the burial ceremony near the sacred grove. Having poisoned the souls of the dead along with the smoke of the funeral pyre to a “heavenly residence,” they began to think about a new place for the survivors. The city of Mary is deserted. Only the ashes and the grave mound above the ashes of our ancestors reminded us of the past. According to the rules of that time, they could not stay here, since the law of their ancestors forbade building on the site of the fire for three years. We chose a new place above Kerzhents, near a sharp bend, where the village of Merinovo now stands. The name of the settlement remained the same - Mary, but they only explained that it was new. So it turned out to be Mary - novo or Merinovo. This is a beautiful but dramatic legend - a legend about the emergence and decline of the city of Mary in the 12th - 13th centuries.

Another legend continues the story and takes us to the 15th - 16th centuries. She claims, after the destruction of the Macarius - Yellow-haired Monastery, that at the mouth of the Kerzhenets, in 1439, the Kazan Murza Ulu - Makhmet, the surviving monks, together with the righteous Macarius, went “saving their bellies” to the heights of the Kerzhensky. Where, tired, they stopped to rest after a difficult journey, they erected a cell for living. Having rested and gained strength, Macarius and his brothers continued their journey further, and in the cell they left one of their companions, Orthodox monks, for the sake of eradicating paganism in these places and establishing Christianity. Here, in a furnished cell, in the place where the town of Mary was two centuries ago, Gabriel was left. Soon a monastery was formed near his monastery. A wooden church was erected. From here the Orthodox faith, the Christian faith, began to spread. Local residents, remembering that there was a city here, albeit a small one, called this place Gorodinka, and therefore the monastery that was founded began to be called Gorodinsky. The righteous monk Gabriel, seeing an increase in the number of his followers, left the monastery and moved higher along Kerzhenets, founding another monastery there - a settlement that now bears his name - Gavrilovka.

By the end of the 17th century, as legend says, the entire district was Orthodox. Paganism as a religion was eradicated in past centuries. Those who did not agree to accept the faith of Christ were driven out into the forests of Vetlugirsk and Vyatka. In the lands of Merinovo they honored the covenants of Elder Gabriel, were baptized with two fingers, made religious processions according to the Sun, divine services were held according to old printed books, and therefore, when Nikon’s news broke out, they did not accept them. They rejected changes in rituals and prayers with all their hearts. They remained faithful to the behests of their ancestors, the righteous I Avriil and Macarius, the holy elder.

This worried the provincial authorities and the bishop of Nizhny Novgorod, and therefore in 1720, in order to eradicate the “hornets’ nests” of the “schismatics,” it was decided to move the old dilapidated church from the Gorodinsky monastery, which was closed, to a new place, to a spring, higher up the Kerzhenets. That spring with the purest spring water has long been considered sacred by local residents and, as they said, healed many from illnesses. Near the spring, in a free place, huddled several peasant huts “meager in life.”

Now, with the construction of a new, rebuilt church, this settlement became a village called Pokrovsky, since the consecration of the church was on the day of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos.
From that time on, the Old Believers became fewer and fewer every year, just as there were pagans in the old days. History repeats itself. Now on the site of the Gorodino skete there is the Merinovskoe cemetery. It was able to calm and reconcile the pagans - the Mari and the Old Believers, and both with the new Orthodox. Here everyone is equal before each other, and in their deeds before God.

According to legend, the pagans of the 12th - 14th centuries, the ancient Orthodox Old Believers of the 15th - 18th centuries found "shelter" here, and our contemporaries of the 21st century find "shelter" here. In that shelter, everyone is united and the faith is the same. Only everyone has their own sins.

House pits are still visible

From the high hill where the monastery once stood, you can still see Kerzhenets - before, I think, there were no trees here and there was an excellent view of the river, and a path along which they carried water winded along the slope towards it...

Next time I will definitely tell you about the most ancient of all the Trans-Volga monasteries - Olenevsky.

The text of the book “Sketes of the Kerzhen Region” by A. Mayorov was used

In the 17th century, a movement of “God lovers” appeared in Rus', who fought for the purity of morals and for the supreme power of the church in society. Among them was the future Patriarch Nikon And Avvakum, the main thinker of the Old Believers. Both of them were from Nizhny Novgorod. By the middle of the 17th century, a split occurred among religious spiritual leaders. Nikon, approaching the king Alexey Mikhailovich and becoming Patriarch of Rus', he carried out a reform of the Orthodox Church. Some of the Orthodox, inspired by Archpriest Avvakum, did not accept the reform and adhered to the old faith and rituals, for which they were persecuted. Hiding from persecution, the Old Believers went into the deep forests of the Trans-Volga region, where they set up their monasteries - secluded monastic-type settlements.

Grigorovo is the native village of Archpriest Avvakum. Photo:

In the footsteps of the Old Believers

Programmer Anton Afanasyev Born in Sukhumi, he moved to the Nizhny Novgorod region, as he put it, “in his conscious childhood.” But it so happened that, having read “In the Woods” and “On the Mountains” in my youth Melnikov-Pechersky, became seriously interested in the history and ethnography of the Old Believer areas. Anton travels around the region, looking for places of former settlements, studying history and life and talks about it in his illustrated blog. His two hobbies, photography and travel, came in handy for his extensive research. This is almost ethnography, only amateur. And popular - his blog already has eight thousand subscribers.

Anton Afanasyev is a blogger and ethnographer. Photo: AiF / Elfiya Garipova

“Not much is known about the life of the Nizhny Novgorod Old Believer hermitages,” says Afanasyev, “so I decided to study these places and see what is happening now in the lands of the Old Believers.”

Afanasiev first heard the word “monastery” when he began treasure hunting. Many diggers liked to wander with metal detectors in the area of ​​Old Believer settlements, so Anton immediately got the impression that these were rich places.

“It’s quite difficult to find the remains of monasteries,” says Afanasiev. — Local residents often don’t even know that they live next to former monasteries: after all, sometimes all that remains is a dilapidated cemetery. Local shepherds often helped in the search: they turned out to be one of the few who knew where the settlements of the Old Believers were located.”

In places where entire settlements once existed, there are now wastelands with occasional crumbling buildings. Photo: From the personal archive of Anton Afanasyev

Over the course of several seasons, the blogger traveled to almost all the monasteries and found the descendants of local Old Believers. Some continue to adhere to the faith of their ancestors, while others have long forgotten about the principles of the Old Believers.

At first Anton thought that photographing the Old Believers would be difficult: “At first glance, they are quite secretive people and do not allow strangers to approach them. But no. They are ready to communicate."

Cultural monuments are gradually falling into disrepair, even though they are under protection. Photo: From the personal archive of Anton Afanasyev

Surviving monastery

Afanasyev managed not only to photograph the people themselves, but also to film the service in the only surviving and operating Nizhny Novgorod monastery - Malinovsky. It was built at the end of the 19th century with money the richest merchant-industrialist Nikolai Bugrov(the same one who owned the rooming house in Nizhny Novgorod, known as the prototype of the rooming house from Gorky’s play “At the Lower Depths”). During the Soviet period, utility rooms were built in the monastery church. Now almost all the frescoes have been completely restored, since since July 1994 the Malinovsky Skete complex has been placed under state protection as a historical and cultural monument of regional significance.

Church choir of the Malinovsky monastery. Photo: From the personal archive of Anton Afanasyev

In the city, Anton rarely goes to church, but at the Malinovsky monastery he wanted to watch the service. Knowing that Old Believers, as a rule, do not allow anyone other than fellow believers to go further than the vestibule, the photographer stood there and watched the service begin.

There is a worship service in progress. Photo: From the personal archive of Anton Afanasyev

“One woman from a church shop saw me,” says Anton. - She turned out to be his wife Father Alexander who performed the service. She invited me to come in, write a note about my health, and even take pictures of the interiors and the service itself, which I didn’t expect at all! Obviously, my interest in what was happening played a role. After the service they even invited me to lunch.”

Lunch after the service. Photo: From the personal archive of Anton Afanasyev

Dump at the cemetery

The situation with the restored Malinovsky monastery is rather exceptional: in place of most of the Old Believer monasteries, only crosses stand. They are the only reminders that once there was not only a cemetery, but also a rich settlement.

There are many crosses of Old Believers, but there are almost no Old Believers themselves left. Photo: From the personal archive of Anton Afanasyev

“Local residents have practically no memory of the Old Believers,” says Afanasyev. “As I was told in one of the villages, already at the end of the 70s of the last century there were no people who could properly tell a visitor about the monasteries and show them.”

In the village of Sharpan, Afanasyev was looking for a grave Old Believer Father Nikandriy, which I discovered in a local cemetery. But at the site of the elder’s half-dugout, Anton was unpleasantly surprised by an improvised landfill, which finally buried the old logs of the monastery, dug into the ground. And this despite the fact that this place is officially under state protection (document on acceptance for state protection No. 219 - author’s note).

There are practically no Old Believers left in Sharpan. For example, the former teacher Nina Alexandrovna all of her ancestors were Old Believers, but she no longer considers herself one of them. Although he still keeps Old Believer icons at home.

“They will kill for an icon”

“This grandmother told me that lonely old women are deceived by buyers,” says Afanasiev. — People come from the city and voluntarily and compulsorily exchange ancient icons for new ones. I ask why you agree. He answers, we are afraid, they say: they will come at night, rob or kill for these icons. It is clear that they are making rude money from these grandmotherly icons. Not only icons are taken away, but also preserved church utensils. The old women also looked at me with suspicion at first: was I a junk dealer?”

A descendant of the Old Believers, Nina Alexandrovna, is afraid of icon buyers. Photo: From the personal archive of Anton Afanasyev

Old Believers' churches are mostly destroyed by time and the barbaric attitude of those around them. For example, in the former Old Believer community of Budilikha, the church is already in disrepair: the boards are being pulled away onto fences, and the dome has long been lying on the ground.

Destroyed church in Budilikha. Photo: From the personal archive of Anton Afanasyev

The situation is the same in the ancient village of Martynov: the church has been destroyed and is in terrible condition. A little time will pass, and all that will remain from it is a pile of old boards and logs. If they don't get stolen too.

“They say that there is nothing to restore these churches and there is no one for anyone,” Afanasiev shakes his head, “they say that there are fewer and fewer Old Believers here every year - they are all young, either in Orthodoxy, or not believers at all.”

The church onion is lying on the ground. Photo: From the personal archive of Anton Afanasyev

Church - on bricks

Anton Afanasyev not only studies historical places with great attention, but is also keenly interested in people living in abandoned, remote corners of the region. Here he finds subjects for his photographs.

Anton talks about meeting a bearded man fireman Sergei and his partner, shows photographs. Stokers heat the local school, which is located in a former noble estate Berdnikova. To heat the school and teacher's house, they must haul and burn 12 wheelbarrows of coal every day. Sergei told Afanasyev that in the courtyard of this former estate there used to be two marble steles - of Berdnikov himself and his wife.

Sergey the fireman is a resident of the northern regions of the Nizhny Novgorod region. Photo: From the personal archive of Anton Afanasyev

“So, according to Sergei, in the early 90s, both steles were “taken away” somewhere,” says Afanasyev. - And then a rumor spread that the son of this same Berdnikov, a serious businessman from France, intends to visit his native place! And he’s even thinking about a joint venture in his father’s homeland: he wanted to restore a local factory. Sergei said that they were scared, the whole village was looking for these steles: it was awkward in front of a foreign guest. And they found it! They were lying in someone’s backyard.”

In the north of the region, people live poorly - people do not care about preserving cultural heritage. Photo: From the personal archive of Anton Afanasyev

The steles were returned to their original place. Only there was nothing left to restore: the walls of the factory had long been dismantled, as well as the local church.

Anton tells how in the region, far from more or less large cities, signs of desolation are visible everywhere: devastation is all around, there is almost no work. Everything that was possible was taken away into bricks.

Young people leave, old people stay. Photo: From the personal archive of Anton Afanasyev

Returning to the conversation about monasteries, Afanasyev sighs: “Of course, I am not an ethnographer, although I am now receiving a second – historical – education. I simply photograph what I see and try to describe what remains. I understand: time does a lot to destroy Old Believer settlements. But if they had been properly cared for, many things would probably have been preserved for posterity. And maybe it’s not too late?”