Pühtitsa Convent

Pühtitsa Convent (Estonian: Kuremäe Jumalaema Uinumise nunnaklooster, Russian: Пюхтицкий Успенский женский монастырь) is a Russian Orthodox convent in Eastern Estonia (Ida-Viru County) between Lake Peipus and the Gulf of Finland. A small Orthodox Christian church was built in Pühtitsa in the 16th century. The convent was founded in 1891 and has grown into the largest Orthodox community in the Baltic states.

History

The convent is located on a site known as Pühitsetud ("blessed" in Estonian) since ancient times. According to a legend, a shepherd from the village of Kuremäe witnessed

oak tree

. The icon still belongs to the convent.

In 1888, the

Russian Revival

style. It was consecrated in 1910.

There are six churches in the convent dedicated to a number of Orthodox Christian Saints such as

Lutherans, who opposed the spread of Orthodoxy in Estland. It was the first Orthodox monastery built in Estonia (to the delight of mostly Orthodox local peasants of Jõhvi county).

stacks

In 1919, after Estonia became independent from Russia, the new government confiscated most of the convent's land and transferred the convent to the Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church, independent of Moscow. During the Second World War the battlefront was at times only a few kilometres away from the convent and Germans organized a concentration camp for Russian prisoners of war inside the monastery compound.

Following the second invasion and occupation of Estonia by the

Patriarch Alexius II who was the bishop (later the archbishop) of Tallinn

and Estonia in the 1960s was instrumental in the fight to keep the convent from closure.

The Pühtitsa Convent and the

Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia

.