Donskoy Monastery
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Monastery information | |
---|---|
Order | Orthodox |
Established | 1591 |
Disestablished | 1918 |
Reestablished | 1992 |
Diocese | Moscow |
People | |
Founder(s) | Feodor I of Russia |
Site | |
Location | Moscow, Russia |
Coordinates | 55°42′52″N 37°36′7.5″E / 55.71444°N 37.602083°E |
Donskoy Monastery (
History
Muscovite period
The monastery was built on the spot where
Initially, the
In the mid-17th century the monastery was attached to the
Imperial period
Since 1711, the Great Cathedral's vault was used for burials of
In 1724, the monks and the property of the Andreyevsky Monastery were transferred to the Donskoy Monastery. By 1739, it had already possessed 880 households with 6,716 peasants, 14 windmills, and a few fisheries. In 1747, the authorities wanted to transfer the Slavic Greek Latin Academy to the Donskoy Monastery, but the cloister confined itself to paying salaries to the academic staff from its own treasury.
Soviet period and beyond
After the
The Soviet authorities moved remnants of many monasteries and
In 1924, some of the facilities of the Donskoy Monastery were occupied by a penal colony for children. A more notorious use was the unmarked burial of those shot and cremated by the secret police between 1934 and the 1950s. Only after 1985 were such unmarked burials remains finally marked.[4]
After the collapse of communism and the establishment of the
Architecture
When the monastery was established, Boris Godunov personally laid the foundation stone of its cathedral, consecrated in 1593 to the holy image of Our Lady of the Don. This diminutive structure, quite typical for Godunov's reign, has a single dome crowning three tiers of zakomara. In the 1670s, they added two symmetrical annexes, and a refectory leading to a tented belltower. Its iconostasis, executed in 1662, formerly adorned one of Moscow churches demolished by the Communists. From 1930 to 1946, the cathedral was closed for services and housed a factory.
The New (or the Great) Cathedral, also dedicated to the Virgin of the Don, was started in 1684 as a votive church of Tsarevna
After the monastery lost its defensive importance, its walls were reshaped in the red-and-white
Necropolis
Several families of high aristocracy chose the Donskoy monastery as location of their
The
Since no Communists were buried in the old necropolis inside the monastery, the relatives of some notable
A large new necropolis was inaugurated in 2010 just outside the monastery walls. It contains three
References
- ^ "Донской-Богородицкий монастырь". Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron (in Russian). Vol. 11 (Домиции — Евреинова). 1893.
- ^ "Donskoy Monastery ➔ Orthodox Monastery in Moscow ✮ Russia 2019". www.moscovery.com. September 23, 2016. Archived from the original on July 30, 2020. Retrieved March 19, 2019.
- ^ Донской монастырь (in Russian). XPOHOC. Retrieved November 25, 2012.
- ^ "MOSCOW Donskoe graveyard [C]* Burials & Cremations". mapofmemory.org. August 19, 2014.
- ^ Lists of those shot in Moscow 1937-1952: The Donskoe cemetery [crematorium], edited and compiled by Seleznyov, Yeremina, and Roginsky, Memorial: Moscow, 2005 (596 pp).
External links
- Media related to Donskoy Monastery at Wikimedia Commons
- Official website (in Russian)