St. John the Theologian Monastery: Poshupovo in the Ryazan region. St. John the Theologian Monastery in Poshchupovo

The St. John the Theologian Monastery in Poshupovo is considered one of the most ancient monasteries of the Ryazan land.

Its foundation dates back to the end of the 12th century.

True, there is no documentary information about this. There are only ancient legends about the Greeks who founded the monastery.

Greek monks brought with them the icon of John the Theologian, after which the monastery was named.

According to the same legend, at first the monastery was underground. The caves still exist today, but during our short visit to the monastery we could not figure out where they were.

In the Middle Ages, the monastery was plundered several times by Tatar nomads, and only Batu, who ravaged Ryazan, did not touch the monastery.

The history of the monastery is similar to the stories of other monasteries. In the middle of the 17th century, the first stone buildings appeared in it.

After the reform of 1764, which took away most of the land holdings, the monastery became poor, but by the middle of the 19th century there was a benefactor - David Ivanovich Khludov, through whose efforts the St. John the Theologian Monastery became one of the most comfortable monasteries of the Ryazan diocese.

After the revolution of 1917, the monastery was first plundered by the new government, and then, in 1931, it was completely closed.

In monastery buildings over time Soviet power There was also a colony for minors and a school for mechanization and air traffic control.

In 1988, the monastery was transferred to the Church.

Under the leadership of Archimandrite Abel, the restoration of the St. John the Theologian Monastery began.

Now a lot has been done and you can see the beauty of the monastery in photographs, as well as when you come to Poshupovo in person.

Usually the central entrance to the monastery is the Holy Gate.

Now in the ancient Holy Gates there is a chapel of the Iveron Icon of the Mother of God.

The fact is that the fence has expanded somewhat since the 17th century and they ended up inside the monastery.

The Holy Gates have been preserved due to the high artistic value of the frescoes located inside.

But, as you can see in the photo, the degree of preservation of the frescoes is certainly not the best...

And here is the modern Holy Gate.

The tented bell tower appeared in the monastery in the middle of the 17th century. And the new bell tower was built in 1901 by the architect S.S. Tsekhansky. The bell tower is very high, only 5 meters lower than the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in the Moscow Kremlin.

Between the two bell towers is the cellar building, which, like the tented bell tower, was built in the middle of the 17th century.

In the lower tier of the tented bell tower there is a church, from which the restoration of the monastery began.

This church is consecrated in the name Tikhvin icon Mother of God, Saint Nicholas and the blessed Tsar-Passion-Bearer Nicholas.

Nearby is a cemetery with old tombstones.

The central cathedral of the monastery is St. John the Theologian Cathedral

The time of construction of this cathedral is the end of the 17th century.

In the middle of the 19th century the cathedral was located in in emergency condition. And only with donations from D.I. Khludov managed to stop the destruction and renovate the cathedral by 1862.

After the revolution, the cathedral housed a club and various outbuildings, and only after the return of the monastery to the Church did its restoration begin.

Another large church of the monastery is the Assumption Cathedral.

It was built and consecrated in 1870. However, even before him, a temple in honor of the Dormition of the Mother of God stood on this site.

IN Soviet era it was used as a garage for equipment, so its condition at the end of the 20th century was extremely depressing.

Now the cathedral has been restored and is operational.

The decoration of the cathedral is very interesting - its iconostasis is made of faience.

Perhaps this is precisely the reason for the original tradition - in the cathedral (at least on ordinary days) candles are not lit, they are simply placed in front of the icons.

Most likely there is a fear that open fire and candle smoke will quickly destroy the interiors of the cathedral...

The fraternal building with the church in honor of the icon of the Mother of God "Quick to Hear" was built in 1868-78

The temple is not very noticeable, but many of the monastery’s shrines are kept here.

There are also new buildings in the monastery, for example this cell building for pilgrims with the Church of Boris and Gleb.

The building fits well into the monastery ensemble.

There is a small house near the Assumption Cathedral. It's called the "Hestster's House"

Archimandrite Abel lived here for a long time, who headed the monastery after the return of its Church, and made a lot of efforts to restore the monastery.

You cannot go to the St. John the Theologian Monastery and not visit the healing spring located next to it.

Moreover, the path to the source lies through the most beautiful places.

The area near the source is being improved, but it is still very good there. How about a drink on a hot summer day? cold water from the source - just pleasure.

The baths at the source are located in the same building with separate entrances - for women and men.

The wooden building of the old bathhouse still stands. Then she was both for women's and men's. One by one, women and men entered, while others waited. But when the popularity of the spring increased, the bathhouse was clearly not enough, so a new one was built.

But we still haven’t figured out the purpose of this building.

If you go up from the source to the parking lot, you will see a gorgeous view of the monastery from the hill.

On the hill there is a cross dedicated to the Passion-Bearer Tsar and the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.

And finally, instead of a traditional cat, there is a monastery horse.

And here is the map to Poshupovo. Next to it there is another remarkable place - the Sergei Yesenin Museum in Konstantinovo.

Everyone goes to Poshupovo for their own reasons. Some are in search of peace of mind and forgiveness for sins, others are in search of a wonderful photograph, others are in search of holy relics in the hope of healing from an illness. And people are drawn to the spring for a sacred ablution or to test their strength of spirit in contact with water at a temperature of five degrees. Both of them return to the hill, carrying the treasured burden (some try to carry up to six five-liter eggplants in two hands). The purest natural water from Poshupovo in an era of environmental turmoil is a priceless treasure available to everyone. There are also those who strive to go down to the monastery basement, where numerous skulls and bones of long-dead monks are laid out in rows on several shelves.

The guests of the monastery are a motley mass of real pilgrims, wanderers from distant places, families with children, tourists with SLR cameras and excursion groups arriving on large comfortable buses as part of pilgrimage tours around the country or taken for a walk after a major scientific conference in one of the universities in Ryazan. Both are amazed by what an experienced architect and designer would call the ideal fit of the architectural ensemble into the landscape.

The monastery occupied an advantageous position on a high cape of the interfluve plateau, the steep slopes of which form the ledge of the Oka valley and the left side of a deep ravine. The same one that separates the spring oak forest from the monastery, creating some difficulties in approaching the font.

There is a rare historical monument nearby - a secret underground prison where the most dangerous state criminals were kept. The entrance to it is located a kilometer from the monastery on the slope of a hill - it is a kind of hole in the ground. Somewhere there is an extensive system of underground passages with three chambers in the center and niches in the walls. At one time, human remains in shackles were found in one of the cells.

Getting to Poshupovo is quite easy. From the M5 Ural highway Moscow - Chelyabinsk you need to turn to Rybnoye and head towards the Yesenin places. Then the road will split, the left one will go to Konstantinovo, and the right one will lead to Poshupovo, the turns are equipped with appropriate signs. A monastery shop will appear where you can get hold of honey, kvass, sbiten or herbal tea. The bell tower in the immediate vicinity will amaze with its impressive size, as will the landscaping of the courtyard at the entrance to the arch of the Holy Gate: in warm time Every year there are always a huge number of flower beds in the bushes of a variety of roses.

In ancient times, this place, as storytellers write, had a gloomy, harsh and secluded appearance, “which involuntarily forced a lover of desert living to choose this place for the thought of God.” Old-timers said that the area was completely covered with oak forest. And they claim that they saw several oak stumps on which one could “lie down any way you like.”

There is a legend that once upon a time monks reached these places and brought with them the miraculous icon of the Apostle John the Theologian, painted in the 4th century in Byzantium by an orphan boy. Nothing is known about the founder or the time of foundation of the monastery. It is only known that this happened exactly before Batu’s invasion of Ryazan in 1237: chroniclers testify that Ryazan was turned to ashes that winter, but the Theological Monastery remained intact. They write that Batu wanted to rob the monastery, but John the Theologian suddenly appeared to him, which is why the khan was horrified and attached his golden seal to his image. Batu then abandoned the bad thoughts and left the ring, which was allegedly kept for 416 years, until they decided to gild the holy cup of water with it.

Chroniclers have repeatedly pointed out that the icon of John the Theologian saved the monastery from adversity. The reason for the resettlement was repeated attacks Crimean Tatars. After another such devastation, they decided to take the monks under the protection of the border guards - to relocate them to the abatis line in Mikhailovsky district. Only John the Theologian did not approve of the decision. The brethren went to the squad, taking the icon of the saint on a long journey. But the image of John disappeared from the new temple, appearing again in its old place in the monastery forest on a huge oak tree. Of course, the brethren, seeing a sign from above in the return of the icon, returned back to the oak tree, where the cathedral in the name of John the Theologian stands today. The cut of that oak was placed on top of the main altar of the monastery.

The buildings of the monastery themselves were made of wood in ancient times. Until the middle of the 17th century, when the fence and the Holy Gate were assembled from stone. The frescoes on them have also been preserved from those very times when Russia was recovering from the turmoil under Alexei Mikhailovich “The Quietest”, but at the same time it was shaken by peasant unrest, which remained in history as the salt, copper and other riots.

Life in the monastery goes on as usual: the two-story St. John the Theological Cathedral and the Assumption Church are being built, both made of stone. The second one fell into disrepair over the centuries and has not survived to this day. But from the buildings of the 17th century we can see today the rectory and the small hipped bell tower.

In 1764, Empress Catherine II issued the famous Decree on the secularization of church lands. The idea arose much earlier. In particular, seven years earlier, Empress Elizaveta Petrovna tried to limit the property of the church. Then in 1762 he took up the matter Peter III, and after his death, Catherine completed what she started. By that time, an extremely difficult situation had developed in Russia: the church owned a huge area of ​​land, for which it paid nothing at all, and this in conditions when the state needed money. The result was a total seizure of church lands in favor of the state.

Slightly less than half of the monasteries were simply abolished. The remaining 536 monasteries were divided into two groups: 226 were put on state support, the remaining 310 were deprived of financial support. The amount of budget funding was small and therefore even those monasteries that received support from the state budget could barely make ends meet. Ultimately, it was necessary to limit the number of inhabitants. There was not enough money for repairs, and the walls were deteriorating. The abbots, apparently, were afraid to report problems, fearing the disastrous deprivation of state budget support. Assessing the results from a macroeconomic perspective, Russia certainly won. The lands began to generate income, the treasury was replenished, and the country began to dictate terms in the European arena. At the same time, the Europeans themselves were perplexed, saying that even the Basurmans did not allow themselves to do this with Orthodoxy.

While the authorities were putting national affairs in order, a benefactor volunteered to improve the affairs of the St. John the Theological Monastery. State Councilor David Ivanovich Khludov, having resigned as the head of Yegoryevsk, moved in 1860 to Ryazan. Having received a strict religious education, he donated generously to monasteries and churches. The Ryazan province was luckier than others. Khludov rebuilt the Poshchupovsky Monastery: with his financial support, he reconstructed the St. John the Theologian Cathedral - it became one-story, and the iconostasis in the cathedral was updated. Later, a new Assumption Cathedral and a three-story fraternal building, Gostiny Dvor, an almshouse with a pharmacy and its own paramedic, and a parochial school were erected. Peasant boys studied science here; textbooks and office supplies were provided by the monastery. After Khludov’s death, but with his funds, in 1901 a 76-meter bell tower was built, in which a library with valuable books was placed.

Hard times came for the monastery at the beginning of the 20th century - the persecution of the church under Soviet rule did not pass without a trace. The inhabitants of the monastery were accused of counter-revolutionary activities, and the then rector, Archimandrite Zosima, was arrested and exiled to Kazakhstan. The monastery was closed, and during the downtime, the main shrine disappeared from it - the miraculous image of the Apostle John the Theologian. The location of the icon has since been unknown.

In the year of the millennium of the baptism of Rus', the St. John the Theologian Monastery was returned to the Russian Orthodox Church. The Holy Synod appointed Archimandrite Abel as vicar. For many years he served on Ryazan land: in the village of Gorodishche, Rybnovsky district, in Borisoglebsky cathedral Ryazan. The priest served in Yaroslavl and Smolensk lands, and on Holy Mount Athos in Greece. During the 15 years of Abel’s service under him, the Poshchupovsky Monastery was transformed beyond recognition. The parishioners loved the priest: in the memory of the people of Ryazan, Abel remained a wise and kind old man. The house where Abel lived his recent years on the territory of the monastery, now turned into a museum named after him.

Today you can see the complete transformation of the Poshchupovsky Monastery. There is a carved iconostasis in the St. John the Theologian Cathedral. Moscow icon painter Alexander Chashkin painted the altar. The Assumption Cathedral has been restored. The fraternal building with the refectory was restored. At the end of the 1990s, under a small tented bell tower, a temple was consecrated in honor of the Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God and St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. An ancient tyablo iconostasis is installed in the temple. In the ancient Holy Gates a chapel was built in honor of the Iveron Icon of the Mother of God. In the fraternal building on the third floor, a temple was also consecrated - in honor of the icon of the Mother of God “Quick to Hear” and the Great Martyr Panteleimon. A refectory for pilgrims and a temple in honor of princes Boris and Gleb were built. The monastery houses relics with the relics of Saints George the Victorious, healer Panteleimon, and Nicholas the Wonderworker. Under the altar of the Theological Cathedral there is a temple in honor of the Venerable Seraphim of Sarov and the Hieromartyr Juvenal of Ryazan.

And at the holy spring the chapel was recreated, a spacious font and a monastery church shop were opened.

Today I want to talk about an already “promoted” place in the Ryazan region - Ioanno-Bogoslovsky monastery. I call this monastery “my home” because we go there often, exactly once a month. Especially when you have to take it important decisions: you walk around, think about it, and somehow it immediately becomes clear which of them is correct.
Once upon a time, little Seryozha Yesenin went here on a pilgrimage with his grandmother. These are his words: “The monastery on high mountain».
Getting to the monastery is quite easy. In Rybnoye, behind the former traffic police post (from Moscow), we turn following the sign for Konstantinovo (you won’t pass by, it’s a large stand with a portrait of Yesenin), then follow the signs for Konstantinovo until turning right to Novoselki. There is a sign to the monastery itself, and then follow the signs to the monastery.

The monastery is one of the most ancient in the Ryazan region: the date of its foundation is considered to be the end of the 12th - beginning of the 13th century. Scientists believe that it was founded by Greek monks. They brought with them an icon of the holy Apostle John the Theologian, which for many years was the shrine of the monastery. Unfortunately, it is now lost.
In 1237, Batu attacked Ryazan. The city was devastated, but the monastery remained intact and unharmed. They say that John the Theologian himself appeared to the khan, and Batu, frightened by this, had mercy on the monastery. However, later the Tatars ruined it more than once.
Initially, the monastery was wooden, and only in the second half of the 17th century stone construction began, and already at the end of the 17th century the monastery was named the third among the monasteries of the Ryazan diocese. But then years of desolation began in its history; by the middle of the 19th century, the monastery plunged into hopeless poverty; many in the Ryazan land did not even know about its existence.
More likely, the monastery would have remained run-down, but in 1859 David Ivanovich Khludov bought a dacha near the monastery, and so he put a lot of effort into reviving the monastery. At his request, Archimandrite Vitaly (Vinogradov) became rector. And it was they who, by the end of the 19th century, made the monastery one of the most beautiful in Ryazan. At the same time, a school for peasant children was opened at the monastery; it was these “children” who saved the monastery from closure after the revolution.
The monastery “held out” until May 31, 1931, when the monks were arrested and sent into exile; only 82-year-old Archimandrite Zosima (Musatov) managed to escape. Following Soviet tradition, various institutions visited the monastery. By the end of the eighties of the last century, complete devastation reigned here.
The revival of the monastery is associated with the name of Archimandrite Abel (Macedonov). He was born in the village of Nikulichi, Ryazan region. For a long time headed the St. Panteleimon Monastery on Mount Athos, and since 1989 headed the Poshchupovsky Monastery. He died in December 2006, but the monastery honors and remembers him: under the altar of the St. John the Theological Cathedral, in the St. Seraphim Church there is his grave, and there is also a small museum in the archimandrite’s house (unfortunately, I never got there).

The monastery is surrounded by a stone fence in the form of an irregular heptagon. The territory of the monastery is small, but very well-groomed.

Mostly, pilgrims come to the New Holy Gates, and from there they begin to explore the monastery. If you are dressed inappropriately, security will give you a skirt and scarf. Taking photographs on the territory of the monastery is prohibited, but I did it more than once (but not blatantly), no one personally kicked me out.

Immediately behind the bell tower we are greeted by the ancient Holy Gates, and now the Chapel of the Iveron Icon of the Mother of God, very often they are open, you can go up to the icon, pray, light a candle.

The old one appeared in the middle of the 17th century, on Easter, everyone can ring the bells. Once, we did this too, only it turns out to be a cacophony, after all, ringing bells beautifully is an art.

The new bell tower was built in 1901 by Tsekhansky in the pseudo-Russian style. It is about 76 meters in height, which is only 5 meters less than the famous Ivan the Great.

There are two main churches in the monastery: St. John the Theologian and Assumption Cathedrals.

St. John's Cathedral was built in the second half of the 17th century, most likely in 1689. By the middle of the 19th century, the temple fell into complete disrepair, so after reconstruction it had to be re-illuminated in 1868. The second revival of the temple took place after 1988.
Lately I can’t get into it - we rarely go to services, but under its Altar there is my “favorite” church of St. Seraphim of Sarov. It is very small, there is the grave of Abel and the remains of the monastery brethren (it is these that it reminds me of the Inkerman Monastery), as well as the icon of Seraphim of Sarov.

The second temple, the Assumption Church, is almost always open, so nothing prevents you from coming in, praying,

and enjoy the view of the magnificent porcelain iconostasis.

Also in the monastery there are many particles of the relics of saints: St. George the Victorious, St. Theophan the Recluse, St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, St. John Chrysostom, St. Gregory the Theologian, St. Isaac of Dalmatia, St. Ambrose of Milan, St. Herman of Valaam, Great Martyr Theodore Stratilates.

After visiting the monastery, you can go to the source (if you have not done so before): by car or on foot along the path along the walls of the monastery or along the path, going out through the gate. But keep in mind that to get to the source (no matter what path you choose, including getting there by car), you will have to walk along steep paths, so in icy conditions or after heavy rains Evaluate your shoes for slipping capabilities, otherwise you may fall more than once.
Through this gate you can go to the road to the source.

Through this gate - onto the paths.

This is a view of the monastery from the side of the path.

Holy spring

You can walk to the source from the monastery or drive up to the parking lot by car. I’ll explain how to get there from Rybnoye, because we usually first go to the source, and then go to the monastery: to do this, we turn at the next turn after the Medvedevo sign and drive to the parking lot, where we leave the car, and we ourselves enjoy the views, going down along trees to the source.

The gray car is just opposite the right turn.

The holy spring is famous for its healing power: residents of surrounding villages began to come here a long time ago, take a dip, and take water. Many were healed. In my experience, the source really gives some kind of strength: you plunge into cold water (4 degrees), and you come out as if you were born again. Of course, according to the rules, you need to go around the source inside the bath three times, reading a prayer, then we plunge three times, then we go around again, and so on three times, but the most persistent can withstand 9 baths. On Epiphany, people come to the spring from all over the Ryazan region, and the queues here are simply huge. Well, now some photos.

Rules of conduct at the source.

Bench for rest.

The source itself.

Chapel.

Here you can buy monastery products, maybe a little expensive (offhand, half a kilo of cottage cheese is 100 rubles, one and a half liters of kvass is 70), but everything is really very tasty. Herbal tea is blessed. When buying black bread, keep in mind that it is truly rye (75%). We also always buy herbal tea and pancakes, it really warms you up after a swim. Previously, they ate on tables near the kiosk, but now there is a gazebo.