For a long time, one of the most revered Russian shrines is the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God. Many times through prayers in front of her, the Queen of Heaven covered Our land with Her Veil from misfortunes and misfortunes, for which they made many lists from her, also famous for miracles. The Kazan Bogoroditsky Monastery was founded on the site of the image acquisition, which later became one of the leading spiritual centers of Russia.
Vision of Otrokovice Matrone
Although it was a long time ago, the legend has preserved for us the story of the grief that befell in 1579 the archery centurion Danilu Onuchin, who had settled in Kazan fifteen years before. To know that the servant was angry with the Lord, once the King of Heaven allowed the incident in his house, recently rebuilt and still smelling of fresh pine logs, to a fierce fire. Either the candle fell from the goddess, or a piece of fire shot from an unclosed stove, but only the flames flashed so that Daniel managed to pop out the force and pull out his wife Katerina from the fire with his twelve-year-old daughter Matrona.
They forced, burned, but what to do - the Will of God. Good people shelter the fire victims. And so, one of the nights, the Queen of Heaven, the young woman, is Matron herself and orders to go to the place where their house stood and find Her honest image there, hidden under a pile of ash. The damsel was startled, but the same vision was again and again. Then, in great fear, she told everything to her mother, and she hurried straight to the archbishop of Kazan, Jeremiah.
Finding a miraculous icon
The Shepherd of God reacted to her story with all confidence, and then, at the head of the church clergy, with prayers and hymns, he went along with Katerina to the ashes. It took a long time to pile piles of ash and firebrand, until, finally, in the hands of Katerinina’s daughter Matrona the very icon that the Queen of Heaven spoke about was in her hands. The joy was great, and on the same day the shrine was transferred to the nearby Church of St. Nicholas of Tula.
Monastery born of the sovereign
This happened in 1479, that is, under the sovereign Ivan Vasilievich (Grozny). The truth is, although the king was a fierce, sometimes he showed examples of piety. So this time, having learned about the miraculous acquisition of the icon, he ordered the church to be built on that very spot, and as soon as it was ready, he would set up a convent near her so that the nuns prayerfully glorify the mercy sent by the Queen of Heaven. Thus, the Kazan-Bogoroditsky nunnery was founded by the sovereign, in which Kateryna herself and her daughter Matron, monasticly called the Moor, took tonsure. Her Lord likened her to become abbess of the monastery later on.
Having ascended the Moscow throne after the death of his father, the new sovereign Fyodor Ivanovich, like his father, was generous to the new monastery and ordered to erect a stone temple in it in memory of the miracle revealed here. Since money for its implementation arrived on the Volga coast along with the tsar’s decree, the work began to boil, and no more than a year later the walls of the majestic temple ascended to heaven in honor of the appearance of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God. In it, she was solemnly transferred from the old wooden church.
Pilgrimage center
Since soon there were many testimonies of miracles revealed through prayers before the icon of the Mother of God, the Bogoroditsky Monastery (Kazan) quickly became a place of general pilgrimage. From all over Russia, pilgrims gathered in it, and sometimes walked for a thousand miles. It is known that not a candle, even a pound, is needed by the Queen of Heaven, but the work put by an Orthodox person on reaching and worshiping her image.
So the dust of the roads of endless Russia was a string of voluntary wanderers, heading to where the Kazan Bogoroditsky monastery is located. Neither winter cold nor summer heat stopped them. We especially tried to keep up to November 4, when the Day of the Icon of the Kazan Mother of God was celebrated . On this holiday, thousands of pilgrims counted.
Monastery Visits
Kazan Bogoroditsky monastery was visited by members of the reigning house. Many of them, traveling along the Volga, considered it their indispensable duty to bow to the image of the Blessed Virgin, stored in the walls of the monastery. By the way, curious information has been preserved, according to which, the city budget in those years consisted of 70% of the proceeds from the numerous processions held in the monastery and mass pilgrimage.
Two visits of reigning persons became especially memorable for the monastery. In the spring of 1722, Emperor Peter I visited here, and in 1767 the Bogoroditsky Monastery (Kazan) honored Catherine II with her presence. Mother Empress donated precious diamond crowns that did not reach us and irrevocably sunk into the ocean of the turbulent events of the 20th century to decorate the holy images of the Blessed Virgin and Savior.
In the fire of Pugachevschina
In the days when the Volga shores were swept by the fire of the Pugachev uprising, the monastery became not only a witness, but also an involuntary participant in those dramatic events. The inhabitants of Kazan tried to find salvation from the bloody revelry of the rebels, but in vain.
One of the detachments burst into the monastery and, driving the nuns out of it, placed artillery pieces in it, from which fire was fired on the Kremlin. It is curious to note that, despite all their unbridledness, the rebels did not touch either the miraculous icon or its decoration. They were not afraid of an earthly court, but still trembled before Heavenly.
Bookmark the new cathedral
The old Kazan Cathedral, in which a miraculous icon has been stored for two centuries, was very dilapidated by the end of the 18th century and, since the architectural commission recognized it as irreparable, it was dismantled. To make up for this loss in 1796 in the presence of Emperor Paul I, his son Alexander, the future winner of Napoleon, and the second son of Constantine, a new cathedral was solemnly laid.
The author of his project, executed in the classical style, was the famous St. Petersburg architect I.E. Starov, who became famous in the city on the Neva for his masterpieces such as the Trinity Cathedral of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, the Prince Vladimir Cathedral, the Tauride Palace, and a number of other magnificent buildings.
The last century of monastic prosperity
The following XIX century was a period of particularly rapid construction, during which the Bogoroditsky monastery (Kazan) changed beyond recognition. At its very beginning, the St. Sophia Cathedral was erected with donations from the Musin-Pushkin noble house, and soon a project for the complete reconstruction of the monastery was developed and approved, which was implemented almost until the end of the century.
The ancient monastery building, which had completely decayed by then, was demolished - the Nicholas-Tula Church, which was erected once by order of Ivan the Terrible. A new warm church was built in its place, where a miraculous icon has been kept since winter. They also erected the Rector’s building and the premises in which the nuns' cells were located. In the last quarter of a century, a building called the Cross Exaltation Corps appeared on the territory of the monastery. It housed a temple in honor of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the sacristy, the refectory, the school of painting, leaven, bread and a number of utility rooms.
Shrine Abduction
At the end of June 1904, Russia was shocked by the terrible news: unknown attackers, having penetrated the Bogoroditsky Monastery (Kazan) at night, stole the main shrine - the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God - from its temple. The best investigators of the country were connected to the search for criminals, because it was a question of sacrilege unprecedented until then, which caused the widest resonance in society.
Thieves were detained, but they did not have an icon. Moreover, neither of their testimonies, nor on the basis of additional investigations, could establish her whereabouts. The subsequent fate of the icon remains a mystery to this day.
Nevertheless, the misfortune that befell the monastery did not reduce the number of pilgrims seeking it, especially on the Day of the Icon of the Mother of God of Kazan. In the absence of the shrine, people went to bow at least to the place where she once resided. In the temple itself, more precisely in its underground, in the place where the miraculous image was once found, an underground church was built in 1913 in honor of the centenary of the Romanovs' house. The funds for its creation were donated by the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna - the sister of the Empress.
Hard time
After October 1917, all the same misfortunes fell on the monastery as on other monasteries of long-suffering Russia. Part of the premises was immediately taken from the sisters and transferred to the disposal of one of the military units. In the late twenties, the situation worsened significantly due to the fact that the monastery was finally closed, and most of the living quarters began to be used as a hostel for students of the pedagogical college.
Future teachers and educators, called “to sow the rational, good, eternal,” brought the monastery into a deplorable state. Even the wild Pugachev horde did not cause the abode of such misfortunes. Young teachers broke down doors and windows, smashed historic tombstones, and also burned down wooden staircases and railings.
For some period the territory of the monastery was used as a warehouse for zagotkontory, and then it was transferred for the construction of a film studio. For this purpose, several historical buildings were demolished. To crown it all, the Kazan Cathedral was blown up, designed by the project of the Russian genius I.E. Starova. The monastery experienced many other troubles during the years of the atheism.
The newly established monastery in Kazan
The difficult path to the revival of the monastery began in 1993, when the gateway to St. Sophia Church, built in the 19th century, was transferred to the local diocese. Following it, other miraculously preserved, but having lost their former appearance, structures returned to their former owners. The difficult and costly work of restoring them was coming.
Monastic life returned to the ancient walls in 2005. By the decision of the Holy Synod, the monastery was revived, but already as a man. Then Kazan Bogoroditsky Monastery experienced another joyful event. His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Alexy II, who arrived in the city, donated to the monastery a list of the miraculous icon of the Virgin Mary stolen at the beginning of the 20th century. Previously, it was stored in the Vatican and was transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church personally by the Pope. Today he is in the restored and operating Holy Cross Exaltation Church of the monastery.
Today, the brethren of the monastery, headed by Hegumen Mark (Vilensky), are still very small and consists of only eight people. Six of them have the rank of hieromonk, that is, monks ordained to the priesthood and thereby received the right to perform the sacraments. Two more are hierodeacons. These are deacons, but, unlike their brothers, belonging to the white clergy, who took monastic tonsure.
Despite such a small fraternity, Kazan Bogoroditsky monastery in Kazan, whose address is: st. Bolshaya Krasnaya, 5, regains the importance of an important spiritual center. Its main shrine is the "Vatican" list of the stolen icon mentioned above. In addition, the shrines are undoubtedly the three existing monastery churches that have survived after decades of atheistic timelessness.