Historians give strong arguments that Svyatogorsk originally arose as a defensive point in the south of the country and served our ancestors as a reliable defense against raids by hostile nomadic tribes. It was for this purpose that secret underground passages and caves were dug in the chalk mountains. Some historians suggest that Svyatogorsk was founded even before the Tatar-Mongolian invasion, i.e. until the middle of the thirteenth century. It is quite possible that in those distant times a monastery was also founded here. Svyatogorsk was first mentioned in official documents of the 16th century, when it was one of the outposts of Kievan Rus. In 1526, the German ambassador to the Moscow court, Sigismund Herberstein,
… in his book "Notes on Moscow Affairs", also mentions the area called "Holy Mountains", lying near the Donets.
The first evidence of the existence of the monastery dates back to 1624. This is the Sovereign's charter for the monastery to receive an annual allowance in money and bread. The Russian tsars saw and appreciated the merits of the Svyatogorsk monastery. Mikhail Fedorovich and Alexei Mikhailovich paid special attention to the Holy Mountains. They ordered to protect the monastery, to keep a special guard there. Tsars Fyodor and Ioann Alekseevich gave letters that provided the monastery from various troubles and harassment. The state endowed the monastery with lands and lands.
In the 16th century, the cave church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, excavated in the depths of a cliff, served as the main temple in a still small monastery.
After the pestilence that visited many places in our Fatherland at the beginning of the 18th century, the Svyatogorsk monastery was terribly devastated. She was ruined and impoverished by the monks. A few decades later, the monastery was re-equipped and provided with land and everything necessary for a comfortable existence.
It was at this time that the Nicholas Church appeared - the most interesting and ancient ground monument of the monastery complex. Nicholas Church is a unique building. Her altar, located, as is customary, in the eastern part, is carved into a rock mass. A distinctive feature of the temple is its compositional unity with the chalk rock and the surrounding natural landscape. At the end of the 16th century, the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was located in its place. After a landslide that destroyed the top of the cliff, it became necessary to build a new temple. The history of the construction of the temple has a centuries-old legend. According to her, the construction was carried out in secret, behind a chalk wall left to camouflage in front of the facade of the building. After the construction was completed, one fine morning, at dawn, the wall was collapsed and, on the site of a bare cliff, a beautiful temple arose. For this, among the people, he received the name "Chalk Church".
In the 17th - early 18th centuries, the Nicholas Church served not only as a temple, but also as a shelter, a fortress, where guards and monastics kept the defense. It is no coincidence that the original window openings of the 17th century were in the form of loopholes.
Being beyond the line of Russian settlements, the Svyatogorsk Monastery at first was subjected to terrible Tatar raids - more than once the monks and abbots were captured and languished in heavy captivity.
During the attacks, the salvation for the besieged were the caves penetrating the cliff throughout its entire volume. The origin of the caves is unknown. Tentatively, the oldest of them belong to the end of the XI - the beginning of the XII century.
Not far from the Holy Mountains was the capital of the Polovtsy Sarkel (Belaya Vezha). This cliff served as a natural fortress for her. And in those days, in the fortifications, they always made secret passages to the water, so as not to die of thirst during the siege, when all land routes were blocked. The cave complex, more than 800 meters long, carved by the hands of unknown workers, is a complex labyrinth of passages, underground churches and cells, a refectory and a necropolis.
In addition to the St. Nicholas Church, the complex of the chalk cliff includes a small building located to the east of it. This is the so-called St. Andrew's Chapel or the Upper Pilgrims' Pavilion.
The brother of the famous Decembrist, a friend of Pushkin, a man to whom Lermontov dedicated more than one poem - Andrei Muravyov - often visited the Potemkin estate and was very interested in the life of the monastery. In the name of his angel - Andrew the First-Called - the chapel was consecrated. The monument was built in the middle of the 19th century. This is a four-column arbor with a tented completion.
From the site of the Upper Pilgrims' Pavilion, a picturesque view of the left bank of the Seversky Donets opens up.
It was about this place that St. Philaret said: "Here is so close to heaven, and so far from earth! If you don't learn to pray here, then where!?." At the end of the XVII - beginning of the XVIII centuries. the architectural ensemble on the "hem" was finally formed.
In 1698 the construction of the Assumption Cathedral began at the expense of Colonel Izyumsky Regiment F.V. Shidlovsky.
In 1708 construction was completed. During this period, a number of utility rooms, a gate bell tower were built.
In 1774 academician Gildenstein visits the monastery, who left the following entry in his diary: "... at the foot of the steep mountains lies the Svyatogorsk Monastery; the monastery buildings, consisting of two churches and the house where the archimandrite lives with the rest of the monks, are surrounded by a quadrangular wall, each of which has 60 steps.
At that time, the monastery owned about 2000 souls of serfs, more than 27 thousand acres of land. The abbot of the monastery was Archimandrite Venedikt. The monastery flourished.
At the end of the 18th century, during the reign of Catherine II, the secularization of monastic and church lands was carried out in order to strengthen the political role of the nobility and its material support. The Svyatogorsk Monastery was preparing to meet the royal guest, but ... instead of her, on August 29, 1787. Korbe, head of the economy of the Ekaterinoslav governorship, appeared. Based on the decree on the closure of some monasteries, including Svyatogorsk, he described all the property, put a guard on it. The monks were expelled from the monastery, the property went to the treasury, the monastery was closed for many decades...
The monastery was transformed into the estate of Catherine II, which she soon handed over to her favorite, the Most Serene Prince of Tauride - Grigory Potemkin. In the surviving correspondence between Catherine and Potemkin, there is a letter where the Empress grants him this "dacha with a grove."
After the death of Grigory Potemkin, the Svyatogorsk estate was inherited by his relatives; nephew General Engelhardt; from him to his sister, Princess Sofia Yusupova (who was in her first marriage to Potemkin - Grigory Potemkin's namesake). After the death of Princess Yusupova, the estate passed to her son from his first marriage, Count Alexander Mikhailovich Potemkin, a retired colonel of the guard, leader of the St. Petersburg nobility.
For more than half a century the monastery was in disrepair. His village buildings fell into disrepair, collapses occurred in some caves.
In 1844, at the initiative of the owners of the monastery lands, Alexander Mikhailovich and Tatyana Borisovna Potemkin, and a number of clergy, by decree of Emperor Nicholas I, the monastery was reopened.
Wooden buildings of the 17th - 18th centuries were demolished and the construction of new stone buildings began. They repaired the Nicholas Church, the Assumption Cathedral, cleared the caves.
Assumption Cathedral is the main temple of the monastery. It was erected in 1859-1868 according to the project of the St. Petersburg academician A.M. Gornostaev. The construction contractor was Yakov Eremin, a peasant from the Vladimir province.
This most monumental building of the monastery combines elements of Russian and Byzantine architectural style.
Intercession Church. During the heyday of the Svyatogorsk Holy Assumption Monastery, before the events of 1917, everyone entering the monastery first saw the Intercession Church, which was, as it were, the face of the monastery.
Eight bells were installed on its bell tower, the main of which weighed more than six tons (394 pounds). It is known that sounds are well carried over water, so it is not surprising that along the Donets, the ringing at the bell tower of the Intercession Church can be heard even ten kilometers away.
A clock made by a self-taught master monk Antonin was built into the drum of the bell tower.
Before the revolution, the monastery was one of the largest in Eastern Ukraine. Tens of thousands of people (15-20 on holidays, 3 on weekdays) flocked here daily for prayers.
In 1922, a rest house was organized on the basis of the complex of buildings of the Svyatogorsk monastery.
In 1993 the monastery was restored. Read completely ↓
