Old monastery in the Moscow Kremlin
The
Chudov Monastery
(
Russian
:
Чу?дов монасты?рь
,
romanized
:
Chudov monastyr'
; more formally known as
Alexius’ Archangel Michael Monastery
) was founded in the
Moscow Kremlin
in 1358 by
Metropolitan
Alexius of Moscow
. The
monastery
was dedicated to the
miracle
(
chudo
in Russian) of the
Archangel Michael
at
Chonae
(
feast day
: September 19 [
O.S.
September 6]). The Monastery was closed in 1918 and dismantled in 1929 by the Soviet government.
History
[
edit
]
The construction of the monastery together with its
katholikon
(
cathedral
) was finished in 1365. The katholikon was replaced with a new one in 1431 and then once again in 1501?1503. It was traditionally used for
baptising
the royal children, including future
Tsars
Feodor I
,
Aleksey I
and
Peter the Great
. The monastery’s
hegumen
(
abbot
) was considered the first among the hegumens of all the
Russian
monasteries until 1561.
Alongside
Simonov Monastery
and
Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra
, the Chudov Monastery was the biggest center of the Muscovite book culture and learning. Prominent
monks
of the monastery, who dedicated their lives to translating and correcting
ecclesiastic
books, include
Maximus the Greek
,
Yepifany Slavinetsky
and
Karion Istomin
.
Gennady
, who as
Archbishop of Novgorod
, patronized the first complete
codex
of the
Bible
in
Slavic
in 1499, was hegumen of the monastery prior to his archiepiscopate.
Patriarch Hermogenes
was starved to death by the Poles in the monastery vaults in 1612. The
Time of Troubles
over, they opened the Greek-Latin School with support from
Patriarch Filaret
. In 1744?1833, the cloister accommodated the
Moscow
Ecclesiastic
Consistory
. As time went by, new churches were added to the monastery complex. These included the Church of St Alexius the Metropolitan and the Church of the
Annunciation
(both built in 1680) and the Church of
Saint Andrew
(1887).
During the
French invasion of Russia (1812)
, the French
Marshal
Louis Nicolas Davout
commandeered the monastery for his own use. A painting by
Vasili Vereshchagin
shows Davout
desecrating
the cathedral, using the sanctuary itself as his office. Following the
Bolshevik Revolution
, the Chudov Monastery was closed down in 1918. All of its structures demolished in 1929, as part of the
Soviet Union
's ongoing policy of
state atheism
.
On the site of the destroyed Chudov Monastery and the nearby
Ascension Convent
the Soviet government built the Red Commanders School. All of the monastery’s
manuscripts
of the 11th-18th centuries were transferred to the
State Historical Museum
. The
relics
of Metropolitan Alexius were first moved from the Church of St. Alexius (which he had built) to the
Cathedral of the Dormition
and then to another church in Moscow. Of the hundred or so other interments in the monastery (including Archbishop Gennady), their remains were lost and their whereabouts are still unknown.
[1]
A scene in Mussorgsky's opera
Boris Godunov
is set at the monastery.
In 2007 Orthodox public figure Vitaly Vladimirovich Averyanov in an interview with the Youth Internet Journal of the
Moscow State University
,
Tatiana Day
, explained the possible restoration of the Chudov Monastery and the
Passion Monastery
.
[2]
On 31 July 2014,
president
Vladimir Putin
suggested restoring the Chudov Monastery and the
Ascension Convent
: "As you know, the building that occupies this site [Building 14] was built in the 1930s, but previously there were two cloisters and a church here... That is how the idea came up of rather than restoring the 1930s building, returning the site to its historical appearance instead, with the two cloisters and the church. In today's situation of course, they would be restored as cultural heritage monuments only."
[3]
However, no plans exist to restore the monasteries as of 2024.
Burials
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
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Downtown
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Outer ring
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Destroyed monasteries are in italics
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Kremlin Wall
and
Towers
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Administrative
buildings
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Churches
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Squares
and gardens
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Monuments
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Former
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55°45′8″N
37°37′8″E
/
55.75222°N 37.61889°E
/
55.75222; 37.61889