RUSSIAN monks all belong to one order, that based on the rule of St Basil the Great, practically the only order of “black” clergy recognised by the Eastern Church. The first monastery in Russia was founded by St Anthony, a Russian who, after living some time on Mount Athos, returned to Kiev, and there, in 1055, conjunctly with St Theodosius, established the Pecherski Monastery, on the same rule as that of the Studemi—one of the strictest of the clerical institutions in Constantinople. The Pecherski still ranks highest among the monasteries of Russia. The one of greatest importance in Moscow, though not the most ancient, is that of the Miracles (Chudov) founded in the fourteenth century by St Alexis, the Metropolitan. It stands within the Kremlin, between the two Imperial palaces, on a spot which long ago was a part of the enclosure around the dwelling of the Tartar bashkak, or “resident.” At the time when one Chani-Bek was khan, his wife, Taidula, fell ill and was healed by Alexis, to whom out of gratitude she presented her gold signet ring with its effigy of the Great Dragon, and a site for the Monastery of the Miracles. The first building was erected in 1365, and the monastery long served as the residence of the primates of Moscow; it has been many times destroyed and rebuilt; the present building dates from the reign of the first Romanof, and, at the time of writing, is in course of extensive alteration. Passing before the Church, with the curious paper ikon outside, a large gateway will be found in the angle where the Chudov buildings abut against those of the smaller Imperial palace; passing through this, the visitor will find himself in a large Courtyard; the Church of St Michael is on the right, a small railed-in cemetery among the trees on the left. The Monastery, a mean, dilapidated, straggling two-storeyed building, extends almost completely around the quadrangle; the chief rooms, on the bel-Étage, communicate with a long outside covered gallery, closely resembling the yard of an old London inn, which is reached by the perron in the western corner. The Church of St Michael, the Archistratigus, was built conjointly with the Monastery in 1365, rebuilt in 1504, and later restored in its primitive style, so has preserved even more than any other church in Moscow the original character of Muscovite ecclesiastic architecture. The interior is well worth seeing, but access is not easy; the best time is after early matins, which are celebrated about thrice weekly at 7 A.M.

The frescoes are very primitive, and for Moscow, original. The old-fashioned low ikonostas is of a type common to “wooden Russia”; the ancient ikons call only for the attention of the student, but on the High Altar is a tabernacle in the form of a church with twelve domes which has wider interest. It is the work of Remizov in the reign of Mikhail Theodorovich. Within the courtyard, traces of Tartar graves have been found; and the cemetery contains the tombs of Edeger—the last “Tsar” of Kazan, 1565—and of many Moscow families, as the Trubetskis, Kovanskis, Sherbatovs, etc. The state rooms are still used by the head of the Church in Moscow; they look out towards Ivan Veliki, immediately above the little window at which the Holy Bread is sold. Although the monastery has been the scene of many important events in connection with the history of the Church and of Moscow—it was here that Maxim, the Greek, studied, and Latin was first taught, 1506—there is nothing either in the refectory or common rooms connected with them, for the monastery was erected during the plague riots of 1771 and spoiled by the French. The church of the Patriarch Alexis is entered from the Tsar’s Square through a portico, of a pseudo-Gothic style, designed by Kasakov in the eighteenth century, but the church itself was constructed in 1686, and the remains of St Alexis the Metropolitan then conveyed there in the presence of the Tsarevna Sophia and the boy-Tsars Ivan V. and Peter I. It occupies the site of an earlier church founded in 1483, and contains the incorruptible remains of the Saint. Alexis, the wonder-worker, was descended from a boyard family named Pleskov. Born in 1292, he passed twenty-two years of his life in Moscow, a student of the Bogo-yavlenski Monastery; after admission he was for twelve years one of the household of the Archbishop, and later became bishop of Vladimir, and Metropolitan of Kief.

His care of the two child princes of Moscow, his direction of Dmitri Donskoi and sturdy championship of Moscow, and his efforts to maintain its supremacy, endeared him to the people. When he died in 1378, at the age of eighty-five, he was buried within the Chudov monastery he had founded; there in 1439 his remains were discovered undecayed, and miraculous qualities attributed to them. In 1519, Balaam the Metropolitan informed Vasili Ivanovich, then the reigning Grand-Duke, that the blind in visiting the tomb of Alexis were restored to sight. Since that date the memory of Alexis has been held in highest reverence by the orthodox, and in the public esteem he ranks with St Peter, first among the Patron Saints of Moscow. Consequently the church is one of the richest; it was spoiled by the French, who cast the silver shrine of the saint into the melting pot, and his moshi were found under a heap of lumber after the flight of Napoleon. Much of the decoration is new, but in the style of the time of Alexis Mikhailovich, of which the pavement is particularly characteristic. The new shrine is of silver, so are the royal doors of the sanctuary; for them some 420 lbs were needed, and the tabernacle, the chandeliers and the elaborate ikonostas are all of sterling metal, and there is a magnificent archiepiscopal mitre presented by Prince Potemkin. The original coffin of the saint, is preserved in a glass case near the silver shrine, and by it are kept the identical pastoral staff he used in Moscow, and other personal relics. Among these are manuscript copies of the New Testament executed by the saint, as also his holograph will. The library has some hundreds of old illuminated and other manuscript books, including a psalter of the thirteenth century, and a collection of old printed books of the seventeenth century. This church, the adjoining chapel of the Annunciation, and the monastery are all closely associated with the introduction of pedagogy to Moscow; it was here that the first scholastic seminary for priests was founded, and later an academy was developed. It became customary for parents to bring their children hither before their entry to any school, in order that the blessing of St Alexis might be asked, and some peasants of the village at one time owned by the saint make a pilgrimage to his shrine on his name day, and pray for their “Lord.” The sacristy has a valuable collection of old plate; the crosses, panagies, mitres, vases, goblets, etc., are remarkable for their beauty and rich decoration, and second only to those of the collection in the sacristy of the Patriarchs.

Naturally the Monastery of the Miracles is closely associated with the more renowned of the wonder-working ikons of Russia. The most celebrated now existing there are: the trimorphic paper ikon of the Holy Trinity, that of St Nicholas the wonder-worker, and that of St Anastasia. In 1771, when Moscow was decimated by the plague, it was believed that the ikon of the Virgin (Bogoloobski) at the Varvarka Vorot wrought miraculous cures. It was so thronged by worshippers and the pestilent stricken that, as a measure of precaution, the Archbishop Ambrose ordered its immediate removal to the Chudov monastery, but the maddened people gathered in the Kremlin and threatened that they would not leave a stone of the monastery standing unless the ikon was at once restored. The Archbishop was forced to give way. The next day he was dragged by the mob from the Donskoi monastery where he was hiding and massacred by the enraged populace. This was on the 17th September: from that date the plague declined and the daily death-rate of 700 returned to the normal average with the advent of winter.

Flanking the eastern wall of the Chudov Monastery are the buildings of the Convent of the Ascension (Vossnesenski), the entrance to which is from the large square of the Kremlin near the Redeemer Gate. There are some indications that this nunnery is of greater antiquity than 1393, the date usually assigned its foundation. Eudoxia, the wife of Dmitri Donskoi, organised the institution, and, after taking the veil there, ordered that it was to be her place of sepulture also. The buildings were destroyed in 1483—ninety years after their erection—again in 1547, 1571, 1612, 1701, and last of all on the great fire of All Saints’ Day, 1737. Its successive rebuildings are due to the great veneration of the orthodox for the tombs of their ancestors, and from 1407 its cemetery ranked first as the place of sepulture for the consorts of the rulers of Muscovy; some thirty-five were interred within its walls between 1407 and 1738.

The cells are mean, and the low plain faÇade not unlike those of English alms-houses of the eighteenth century. It was in this nunnery that Maria Mniszek was housed prior to her marriage with the false Dmitri, and here, too, that Maria Nagoi was forced to recognise the same impostor as her own murdered son. The Cathedral of the Ascension, like that of St Michael in the Chudov, is of a primitive type, preserving many of the characteristics of the original building erected by the Tsar Vasili Ivanovich in 1518; the five domes have not, however, the common bulbous cupolas, these resemble inverted cups—an original type. The interior has the customary four pillars supporting the central dome; there is an ikonostas with four tiers reaching to the arched roof. Of the sacred pictures the most remarkable are that of the Virgin and that of the Ascension; there is also a curious one in the north chapel dedicated to Mary the Mother of the Afflicted.

The tombs of the Grand Duchesses are arranged along the frescoed walls, north, west and south; some are of the white stone used in the earliest buildings in Moscow, others of brick; formerly the portraits of those interred were painted on the walls over their tombs, now many are covered with splendidly worked palls of native design. The remains of Eudoxia (St Euphrosina) are in a modern shrine of silver, replacing that taken by the French; on the right, near the south wall, is the tomb of another Eudoxia (Shtrchnev), the wife of Mikhail Theodorovich; then come the tombs of the Miloslavski and Naryshkin, wives of his son the Tsar Alexis, and the last tomb of all is that of another Eudoxia, the much tortured first wife of Peter the Great. Four of the six, or more, wives of Ivan the Terrible also lie here. In the sacristy among many rich relics are two exquisitely decorated copies of the gospels; the enamel work and enrichment with gems is the most characteristic of the Russian art handicrafts. Not less excellent are the two golden processional crucifixes presented by the Tsar Michael. Such is the summer church of the convent, to which there is a grand ceremonial procession on Palm Sunday, and one on the second Sunday after Trinity to commemorate the great fire of 1737.

The winter church, dedicated to St Michael, is the chapel of Honour of St Theodore of Persia and was built in the eighteenth century only. In addition to a much venerated ikon of the virgin, painted in 1739, there is preserved one of the greatest antiquities of Moscow—a bas relief representing St George the Conqueror (Pobiedonostzev), the head uncovered, which originally was one of the decorations of the Redeemer Gate near by. It was transferred thence to the Church of St George, which was destroyed by the fire of 1737, a conflagration that threatened the convent also, but was stayed by the miraculous ikon of the Virgin of Kazan, now placed in the adjoining new church of St Catherine the Martyr. This is a modern building on the site of a fine old church of the seventeenth century, and of a Russified-Gothic style serves to show, from an artistic point of view, how disastrous is the attempt to combine native designs with those of the west. On the ground floor of the western range of buildings are the ovens, etc., where the Holy Bread is prepared, and the nuns of the convent are celebrated throughout Russia for the excellence of their work with the needle and brush, their copies of the ikons of these churches being in particular request.

The monasteries outside the Kremlin have much the character of small fortified towns, and are the stronger and, architecturally, the more interesting the greater the distance at which they are situated from the town. To visit them, drive out to the Simonov—four miles from the centre of the town—and pass the Krutitski Vorot and the Novo Spasski; the Spasso-Andronievski and the Pokrovski on the return. On the south side of the river to the Danilovski and the Donskoi; to the west the Zachatievski and Novo Devichi. The others, of minor interest are:—Monasteries of St Nicholas, Epiphany, Znamenski, Petrovski, Srietenka, and Alexis; Convents: St Nikita, Rojdestvenka, and Strastnoi.

Simonov Monastery

St Sergius founded the monastery in 1370, but it was not moved to its present site on a hill commanding the Moskva until twenty years later. It educated St Jonah in the fifteenth century, and when he became Metropolitan it increased in importance, but was later surpassed by the Troitsa, and although it owned 12,000 souls—male serfs—in the eighteenth century, it has never attained the leading position, nor even that expected of it. The present walls were built during the reign of Theodore I. but, finished in 1591, they could not keep out the Poles, who completely sacked the monastery in 1612. It is a line, strong looking, dreamy old place, somewhat dilapidated and overgrown with verdure. The wall is half a mile long, commanded by wonderful spire-like towers, some 130 feet high, crowned with two-storeyed domed watch rooms, which look like huge dovecots. There is a covered rampart walk all round, and from the tower near the river, a subterranean passage to the Lizin Prud, a holy well at one time much visited by the sick who had faith in its miraculous healing properties. Some six churches are within its walls, one the Cathedral of the Assumption, a massive building, consecrated in 1405, and having a somewhat bizarre appearance, its faÇade, in the Byzantine style, being also painted in three colours to represent quadrangular facets. It is a building quite foreign to Muscovite style; reminiscent rather of the old country churches of Portugal. The ikon of greatest celebrity is that of God the Father, richly decorated, and once, it is said, blessed by St Sergius, when it was carried with the troops of Dmitri against the Tartars under Mamai.

A Moscow merchant defrayed the cost of the great belfry, 330 feet high, and under the refectory is buried the renowned Field-Marshall Bruce; the sacristy is rich in vestments and some ornamental work of the Tsar Alexis’s Masterskaya in the Kremlin. The most famous inmate was Simeon Bekbulatov the converted Tsar of Kazan, whom Ivan Groznoi made Tsar of Moscow for twelve months; his tomb will be shown. The charm of the Simonov is derived from its stillness, its out of the world air, its roominess, the matured trees, the ample orchard, the long rampart walk, the excellent views of Moscow, the many quaint nooks near the old stores, the grateful shade of pleasant bosquets and the orderly negligence that suggests contentment—an ideal home for dreamers, for cheery mysticism and the inception of unhurried philosophies.

The Novo Spasski

The new monastery of the Saviour, so called because in the fifteenth century removed from the Kremlin to its present site, is pleasantly situated near the Moskva river not far from the Krasnoe Kholmski bridge. Its walls were of wood until the invasion of Devlet Ghiree, after which an attempt appears to have been made to turn all the outlying monasteries into fortresses for the better protection of Moscow. One peculiarity of the Spasski Monastyr is that the towers which flank the wall are all different, one is pentagonal, one round, one hexagonal, and so others vary—some are squat, others have tapering spires from the towers; the belfry is 220 feet high. Its claim to greatness is not due to the spirited defence it made to the Polish attack, but to the fact that within its Cathedral of the Transfiguration, one of the five churches within the walls, is a picture “Neruko-tvorenni,” not made with hands. “In the year 1645, in the town of Khlinov, in the porch of the Church of the Trinity, before the image of our Saviour not made with hands, Peter Palkin, blind three years, stood and worshipped and miraculously received his sight.” The Tsar Alexis ordered the picture to be brought to Moscow for the Spasski Monastery, and a copy of it to be sent to Khlinov, or Viatka. The church is also adorned with a set of fresco portraits illustrating the genealogy of the Tsars of Moscow, from Olga to Alexis: corresponding therewith, the portraits of the Kings of Israel. Behind the ikonostas are some extraordinary mural paintings of the Tsars Michael and Alexis, founders of the cathedral. The Church of the Protection, to the south of the cathedral, was built in 1673 to the memory of the Patriarch Philaret, and a third church, near the cells of the monks, was built in 1652 by Nicholas Cherkassky, to whose family Moscow owes several fine churches. The monastery was the favourite burying place of such noble Moscow families as the Yaroslavskis, Gagarins, Sherbatevs, Naryshkins and Romanofs, whose ancestors are mostly interred in a crypt here, the last being Vasili Yurivich Zakharin.

The monastery of St Andronievski was founded by St Alexis the metropolitan who made a vow, when in a storm at sea during his voyage to Constantinople. The relics of St Andronie are preserved in a silver shrine. All these monasteries were pillaged and profaned by the French, the Andronievski suffered perhaps more than the others since there some monks were shot.

Donskoi Monastery

The Cossacks were the means of enriching the church by recovering the silver looted by the French. The decorations are for the most part quite modern, and the paintings by an Italian. The cemetery has fine monuments, and there the people resort on summer evenings for the shade of the trees and restfulness of this peaceful retreat. Further along the Kalujskaya is the Alexandrina Palace, formerly the property of the Orloffs, with its celebrated pleasaunce “sans souÇi,” extending to the wooded bank of the Moskva, with pretty views of Moscow and one excellent one of the Church of the Saviour seen alone at the extremity of a fine avenue of great trees.

Danilovski Monastyr

The Zamoskvoretski quarter, south of the river, was in mediÆval times little better than a swamp and long uninhabited. The Mongols settled there later, and Tartar names indicate some streets, as Balchoog, “quagmire,” and Bolotnaia, “swamps;” as late as the reign of the Great Catherine, the Island where is now the Babygorodskaia (little town) was open waste land, and there the rebel impostor Pugatchev, brought to Moscow in an iron cage, was beheaded in 1773. A raised road Krimski-val, above the fen-land leads from the Donskoi Monastyr to the Krimski Most, the tubular bridge over the river near the Ostogenka. It obtained its name from the fact that the Krim Tartars in their attacks on Moscow always crossed the river at that point, and it is still better known as Krimski Brode or “ford.”

Novo Devichi Convent

West of the Krimski Most, where the river makes a wide sweep and on three side bounds a large tract of low lying land, is the Maidens’ Field, which tradition asserts is the locality of the market at which the Tartars in old times purchased Muscovite girls for the Mohammedan harems in Constantinople and Ispahan. Historians contend that the name is derived from the convent established there since 1525. There is no doubt that this was established in the early years of the sixteenth century to commemorate the recapture of Smolensk by Vasili III. It is also indisputable that there were already convents existing within Moscow and that Novo Devichi Monastyr means simply New Monastery for Women. Helen, “the maid,” was the first abbess of this, and may have given it the name, but it was customary in Moscow, before and since, to name the convents after the dedication, as Conception, Nativity, Passion, etc., so some earlier use of the popular appellation “Maidens’ Field” is more probable.

NOVO DEVICHI CONVENT
NOVO DEVICHI CONVENT