Grief Monastery (Khmelevo)

The grieving community in Pokrovsky uyezd was founded in 1902 ^[1] in the village of Khmelevo of the Funik volost, near the Sheredar River. A native of these places, a Moscow merchant of the second guild and an honorary citizen of Moscow, Ivan Mikhailovich Meshkov, on his own initiative and at his own expense, founded a monastery in the name of the icon of the Mother of God “Joy of All Who Sorrow”. The land for the construction of the monastery was donated by local peasants. There was one church in the community in honor of the icon of the Mother of God “Joy of All Who Sorrow” - a wooden, house, built in 1901 - 1903 . architect I.T. Baryutin, with adjoining abbot chambers arranged in a former manor house. The church had a four-tier iconostasis, in which there were 73 large icons. In Soviet times, when the temple was closed, they disappeared, only the icon of the Great Martyr Catherine was preserved, in honor of which the house church in the cell building of the monastery was consecrated on December 31, 2000 .

From the stone Holy Gates (also destroyed) past the cell building, the alley leads to a stone bell tower, in the first tier of which there was a small church of the Assumption of the Mother of God (the altar was dismantled) and a tomb. The hotel and clergy houses were wooden. The monastery was surrounded by a wooden fence, along its perimeter were alleys of birches and oaks . The entire area of ​​the monastery was planted with fruit trees. The bell tower is made of bricks made at a brick factory located in the monastery. After the monastery was closed, 9 bells were removed from it. The plant was requisitioned in 1919 .

Every year, three religious processions took place in the Grievous Community: July 26, the day the temple was laid, September 4, in memory of its consecration, and October 24, the patronal feast of the monastery. In 1921, there were 72 monks in the monastery who founded an agricultural artel for their food. In a note to the information on the land ownership of the monastery in 1921, someone’s sympathizing nuns wrote: “On this land they work for their own food, with their own labor they get their own food, heating and fodder for livestock ... The nuns and novices in the monastery are literally poor and from peasant origin, from different provinces , part of an orphan, having no relatives, and laboring with physical labor. ”

The cell building, built in 1903 from a brick made at the monastery factory, and a huge stone, on which events related to the emergence of the monastery are preserved, have been preserved.

The monastery was closed in 1924 (according to other sources in 1928), the nuns were expelled, and there is evidence that some of them were forcibly taken out and executed. The abbess, Mother Superior Meletina, died near the monastery in the village of Halino . A colony for juvenile delinquents was located on the site of the female monastery. Subsequently, the school, village council, club, cinema , library were alternately located on the territory of the monastery. The wooden church of the icon of the Mother of God of "All Joy of All Who Sorrow" was sold for export, the abbot building (a former manor house) burned down not so long ago. Disassembled farm buildings, fence, clergy houses, hotel , chapel. In 2000, the monastery was transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church , then monastic activity resumed in it. Currently, a bell tower is attached to the cell building. ^[2]

• Add. photo - Khmelevo estate post from Vadim Razumov
• Map of the village of Khmelevo in the Vladimir region indicating the monastery.

• A detailed map of the village of Khmelevo in the Vladimir region .

• Hmelevo. Grief convent
• The official website of the monastery.