Marfo-Mariinsky Convent

Construction

The monastery was founded by Princess Elizabeth Fedorovna. After the death of her husband, the Moscow Governor-General of the Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich , she renounced social life and sold her jewelry, giving some of them to the treasury and relatives. The proceeds went towards the creation of the Martha-Mariinsky monastery ^{[1] [2]} .

According to the plan of Elizabeth, the sisters who lived in the monastery brought vows of chastity , non-possession and obedience , however, unlike nuns , after a time they could create a family and be free from previous obligations. Like evangelical Mary, they turned to spiritual life, and following the example of Martha, they provided active charitable and medical assistance to all those in need and destitute. Before the creation of this charter of the monastery, the princess went to monasteries, communicated with the elders and studied the ancient scriptures. Some members of the Holy Synod were skeptical, suspecting in her actions the revival of the institution of deaconesses , accusing them of Protestantism and the spread of Western values. Nicholas II helped speed up the adoption of the charter, but Elizabeth had to redo it several times to satisfy all the requirements of the Synod ^{[3] [4] [5]} .

To equip the monastery in 1909, the princess bought a manor with four houses and a garden on Bolshaya Ordynka Street . A two-story building housed a dining room, kitchen, pantry, hospital. Nearby was the abbess's house, as well as an outpatient building with a pharmacy. In the fourth building, to which the prosphora was attached, there was an apartment for the priest and classes for training. On the territory of the monastery there was a hotel for pilgrims . According to the project of architect Leonid Stezhensky, the premises that previously served as a winter garden were transformed into a hospital church, which was consecrated in the name of Martha and Mary. It was arranged so that patients through the open doors of the hospital could see the service without getting out of bed ^{[1] [2] [6]} .

The monastery began to work in February 1909, at that time there were six sisters in it. A year later, Bishop Tryphon ordained 16 more girls and the Grand Duchess ^[7] . Physically healthy Orthodox women from 21 to 40 years old were accepted as residents . In 1911, on the donations of the merchant, Maria Morozova and her heirs, a three-story house was built in the neoclassical style, in which the sisters lived and a needlework was arranged. By connecting it, it was connected with an outpatient clinic and a pharmacy ^{[1] [8] [9]} .

The construction of the cathedral church in the name of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary was entrusted to the architect Aleksey Shchusev and artists Mikhail Nesterov , Nikifor Yakovlevich Tamonkin and Pavel Korin . After the construction was completed in 1910, Nesterov began painting the premises. In the altar and apse of the temple, he depicted "The Protection of the Virgin", below - " Liturgy of Angels". An underground tomb was also arranged in the temple, painted by Korin with the plot “The Path of the Righteous to the Lord”. In it, the abbess bequeathed to bury herself. The consecration of the cathedral took place on April 8, 1912 ^{[10] [11] [12]} .

Activities

Three services were carried out in the monastery: guardianship, enlightenment, and active. The first included visiting sisters in need and taking care of them outside the monastery, the second - raising girls in an orphanage, working in a Sunday school , the third - serving in a hospital, pharmacy, outpatient clinic. All sisters were taught spiritual nourishment and the basics of medicine ^{[8] [13]} .

Doctor of medicine A. I. Nikitin, surgeons F. I. Berezkin and A. F. Ivanov worked in a free hospital with 22 beds and an operating room ^[14] . Nearby, on Donskaya Street , until 1913 there was a shelter for those suffering from consumption . Then the building was converted into cheap apartments for poor girls working in factories. They were visited weekly by the confessor of the monastery for the service of prayers ^{[15] [16]} .

A library was available to sisters and patients, numbering up to two thousand volumes in four sections: religious and moral literature, fiction and history, magazines, and children's literature. The cloister issued brochures and leaflets that were distributed among patients ^[16] . Caring for increasing literacy among women, Elizaveta Fedorovna opened a Sunday school, where classes were held under the guidance of priest Eugene Sinadsky ^[13] . The cloister for the poor also worked in the monastery, preparing daily from 100 to 300 dinners. Food was mainly given to women with many children and working in the day job ^[17] .

As of 1913, an orphanage for girls contained 18 people from 12 to 17 years old. They were trained in two areas: a maid and a maid or nanny with sewing skills. To instill in people a sense of compassion for the disadvantaged, Elizaveta Fedorovna organized the program “Children's Mite”, which operates in the fall and winter. Wishing adults and children gathered in the Nikolaev Palace and after prayer they sewed clothes ^[17] .

The sisters of the monastery paid special attention to the inhabitants of Khitrov Market , the most disadvantaged area of ​​Moscow at that time. Despite warnings from the police department , Elizaveta Fedorovna and other sisters visited those in need. The princess persuaded the poor parents to give their children upbringing: the boys were placed in hostels, and the girls were assigned to closed schools or shelters ^[17] .

During World War I, Elizaveta Fedorovna established the All-Russian Combat Headquarters of Mercy. She set up donation depots and sent collected things to the front , and also opened two-month training courses for nurses. To collect money, the princess organized several art exhibitions, concerts and performances. In 1914, her book “Under the Grace of Heaven” was published, the proceeds of the sale of which went to the needs of children of war veterans. At the same time, the hospital housed a seriously injured hospital with 50 beds ^{[18] [19]} . In 1916-1917, according to the project of architect Alexei Shchusev, a chapel was built next to the hostel ^[20] .

Close

After the revolution of 1917, the Moscow Council Commission was established to protect monuments of art and antiquity. In the Marfo-Mariinsky monastery, the interior decoration of the Intercession Church, mosaics, icons and murals of Nesterov were subject to protection. However, in the 1920s they were excluded from the list of protected sites ^[21] .

Elizaveta Fedorovna, associated with the Romanov clan, was arrested on May 7, 1918. Together with the sisters of the monastery, Varvara Yakovleva and Ekaterina Yanysheva, she was sent to Perm , then sent to Yekaterinburg . Two months later they were brought to Alapaevsk , where Catherine was released, and the princess and Varvara, who wanted to share the fate of the abbess, were thrown into the Novaya Selimskaya mine 18 kilometers from the city on the night of July 18, 1918. In October of that year, the White Guards took the remains of the dead and transported them to Shanghai , from where they delivered them to Jerusalem by ferry ^{[22] [23]} .

In February 1919, church property was transferred to the Martha-Mariinsky labor community, which included Valentina Sergeevna Gordeeva, KP Gumilevskaya, E. N. Zhurilo, M. A. Khadzhi and others ^[23] . A year later, the parish council of the Intercession Cathedral received an order from the Mossovet church department to close the church of Saints Martha and Mary. Its members sent a letter asking them to leave the church open, since there were services in the winter:

Pokrovsky temple on B. Ordynka is a significant monument of modern church art. Its architecture is owned by the famous architect Academician Shchusev. The walls of the temple are painted by the artist Nesterov, all the utensils are also stylish artwork. Therefore, the Glavmuzey asks to approach the liquidation of the house church more carefully, since the liquidation of the cold Church of the Intercession will inevitably be adapted for worship and the question of the actual liquidation will be decided at the expense of the cold church, and the preservation of its artistic values ​​will be at great risk ^[24] .

The temple was not closed, but in 1922 a significant part of church values ​​was confiscated. In August 1923, Gordeeva was accused of spreading rumors about the imminent fall of Soviet power and the restoration of the monarchy . She was detained in Butyrka prison , but in December of the same year she was released for lack of evidence ^{[7] [24]} .

In 1924, the Moscow Workers and Peasants Inspectorate arranged an inspection of the Martha-Mariinsky community and prepared a decree on transferring the hospital with all the property to the disposal of the Moscow Health Department. However, on concessional terms, it was bought out by the community, and the pharmacy was transferred to Moscow State University ^[7] . A year later, the community’s charter was canceled and re-registered in the “Martha-Mariinsky Artel of Sisters of Mercy” ^[25] .

In October 1925, the newspaper Pravda published an article entitled Saints Martha and Soviet Mary, in which the monastery was accused of embezzlement and anti-Soviet activities. Despite the rebuttal written by the community, the audit bodies suggested immediately dismissing it, bringing it to justice and recovering 5,258 rubles. 92 kopecks unpaid rent. It was also proposed to transfer the premises to the committee for the establishment of the Mineral Resources Institute. By decree of the head of the 6th branch of the Secret Operations Directorate, Yevgeny Tuchkov , they decided to liquidate the monastery and expel all its members from Moscow ^[26] . On January 12, 1926, after the interrogation of the sisters, a decision was issued on charges under article 68 of the RSFSR Criminal Code (harboring and aiding counter-revolutionary crimes). All the premises of the monastery were transferred to the Zamoskvoretsky district council, some sisters were sent to the Tver region , most to Kazakhstan and Central Asia ^[26] .

In 1928 the Sanprosvet club was housed in the Intercession Church, in which, in the middle of the salt , a statue of Joseph Stalin was erected. Then the premises were occupied by the city cinema and the club of the car-repair plant ^[2] . In the 1940s, Pokrovsky Cathedral was threatened with demolition, but the USSR Academy of Architecture in alliance with Yevgeny Lansere , Viktor Vesnin , Igor Grabar , Mikhail Nesterov, Vera Mukhina , Alexei Shchusev, Alexander Gerasimov defended it . During the Great Patriotic War, the temple was used by the headquarters of the Local Air Defense . In 1945, the building was transferred to the State Central Art and Restoration Workshop , and the chapel was rebuilt as a checkpoint. In the same year, a major overhaul began: the roof, pipes, heating system were restored, the murals of the temple were strengthened ^{[11] [27]} .

The Marfo-Mariinsky Church was given to the outpatient clinic named after Professor Fyodor Rein , her temple icon depicting the Holy Myrrh-bearing Women was transferred to the Church of St. Nicholas in Kuznets . Then it housed the laboratory of the All-Union Institute of Mineral Resources named after Fedorovsky and the cabinet of physiotherapy exercises ^{[27] [21]} .

In 1990, a monument to Elizaveta Fedorovna by the sculptor Vyacheslav Klykov was erected in the courtyard of the monastery. Two years later, by the decision of the city ​​government, the Martha-Mariinsky monastery was transferred to the Moscow Patriarchate. Divine services began in the Church of Saints Mary and Martha in 1992, the Intercession Cathedral passed to the monastery in 2006 ^{[2] [9]} .

By 2008, walls, floors, a dome and stucco work were repaired in the Intercession Church, and the iconostasis was restored. The restoration project of the infirmary with the church of Martha and Mary was carried out by the workshop of architect Alexander Ryzhov. The premises were recreated decoration. In the chambers of Elizabeth Feodorovna opened a house-museum, introducing the life of the founder and the history of the monastery ^{[28] [29]} . The rest of the buildings were restored, the territory was landscaped and landscaped, a cross was erected in memory of the Alapaevsk martyrs ^{[11] [30]} . Restorer Kirill Kutyrin described the work done:

After a century-long break in 2011, the tradition of celebrating White Chamomile Day , dedicated to the fight against tuberculosis, resumed in the monastery. The funds collected at the festival are sent to help those in need: in almshouses , shelters, hospitals ^[32] . Three years later, the monastery was transformed into a stauropegial convent with the preservation of a special way of life, and was appointed abbess Elisaveta (Pozdnyakova) ^[2] .

As of 2018, a shelter for orphaned girls, a charity canteen, a patronage service, the Marfo-Mariinsky Medical Center “Mercy”, which has a Respect for seriously ill children ^[33] , a development center for children with cerebral palsy, are working in the monastery ) "Elizabethan Garden", a children's palliative visiting service and other social projects ^{[22] [34]} . In 2018, the Mercy Center opened free preschool courses for children with moderate and severe forms of cerebral palsy ^[35] .

The house church of Saints Martha and Mary, consecrated for the first time in 1909, is located in a former manor house built in the mid- 19th century . In 1912, in the center of the complex, a two-pillar Pokrovsky Cathedral was erected in the Neo - Russian style with two belfries , each of which is crowned with an elongated head . The construction project was developed by Alexei Shchusev, sculptures were made by Nikifor Tamonkin, mosaics and paintings by Mikhail Nesterov and Pavel Korin. The pylons on the sides of the iconostasis were decorated with the story “The Annunciation ”, the north side - the fresco “Christ with Martha and Mary”, the south - with the image “The Resurrection of Christ ”. On the heads of the church are four gilded crosses. The belfry, arranged by Nikolai Pomerantsev , has twelve bells . The walls of the temple are decorated with embossed stamps , designed by Sergey Konenkov , and narrow windows, closed with bars with floral motifs. Under the temple is a tomb church in the name of the Powers of Heaven and all the Saints, painted by Pavel Korin ^{[36] [5] [9]} . The sacristy adjoins the cathedral from the south side, and the narthex from the north side ^[37] .

Along the northern border of the cloister there is a three-story building of a sisters' dormitory, connected to a pharmacy and an outpatient. The gates of the complex with carved wooden bars, stylized as medieval ones, were created by Schusev. The monastery also has a garden with two fountains and a gardener's house, reconstructed in 2007-2008 ^[5] .

• Church of the Intercession of the Virgin
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  Decoration of the northern facade, 2004

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  Decoration of the northern facade, 2004

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  Carved detail of the western facade, 2015

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  The Apostle Matthew, fragment of the Image of the Royal Doors, 2013

• Арсеньев Б. Неисчерпаемая Якиманка. В центре Москвы — в сердцевине истории. — М. : Центрполиграф, 2014. — 494 с. — ISBN 978-5-227-05087-8 .
• Бурак Е., Сапронова Т., Смолицкая Г. Названия московских храмов. — М. : Муравей, 1998. — 138 с.
• Gorinov M., Ivanova E., Sharipov A., Voitikov S. Marfo-Mariinsky monastery of mercy. 1909-2009. To the 100th anniversary of the creation of the monastery. - M .: White City, 2009 .-- 496 p. - ISBN 978-5-7228-0160-9 .
• Marfo-Mariinsky Monastery of Mercy. - M .: Novospassky Monastery, 2006 .-- 28 p.
• Sisters of Mercy of Russia / ed. N. Belyakova. - SPb. : Faces of Russia, 2005 .-- 392 p. - ISBN 5-87417-211-4 .

• Official site of the Martha-Mariinsky Convent
• Marfo-Mariinsky Monastery of Mercy on the website Patriarchy.ru
• Official site of the Marfo-Mariinsky Medical Center “Mercy”