Horse-stone ( Fin. Hevoskivi ) - a boulder of gray granite with veins of quartz measuring about 9 × 6 meters, a height of just over 4 meters and weighing more than 750 tons. Located on the island of Konevets in Lake Ladoga , 7 km from the coastal village of Vladimirovka, the Gromovsky rural settlement of Priozersky district, Leningrad Region .
Historically, the boulder is one of the rare surviving Finno-Ugric sanctuaries ( investigators ). It is believed that pagan rituals were once held near him.
Content
- 1 Name
- 2 Stone horse in the monastery years
- 3 notes
- 4 Literature
Title
The shape of the stone vaguely resembles a horse's head. Perhaps from here came its name.
The legend that the Karelians used the island of Konevets as a summer pasture for their horses and sacrificed one horse each year appeared in the description of the life of Arseny Konevsky [1] , which was compiled in the 16th century [2] , about a hundred years after the death of the ascetic . The author is Konevsky igumen Varlaam.
Meanwhile, since the time of the settlement on the island of St. Arseny, the island of Konevets was covered with dense forest [3] . This can also be seen in the fresco in the arch of the bell tower of the Konevsky Monastery , which depicts the scene of the meeting between the Monk Arseny and Archbishop Euthymius of Novgorod [4] .
To this day, forests cover more than 80% of the island [5] . Currently, only in the area of the Kazan Monastery there is a so-called “cultural development zone”. It consists of a small park and several hectares of meadow land that arose as a result of cultivating the land for monastery agricultural needs.
In addition, transportation of horse herds to the island through the waters of Ladoga in the 14th century and earlier seemed unsafe, despite the fact that the continental area adjacent to the lake, in which the Korel tribes lived, was a very fertile plain with an abundance of grasses and water sources [6] .
Horse-stone also gave the name to the island of Konevets, while the Finns called it Rantasaari ( Fin. Rantasaari ) - Coastal island.
Stone horse in the monastic years
At the end of the XIV century St. Arseniy Konevsky came to the island. According to legend, here he met a fisherman named Philip and learned from him about the sacrifice. St. Arseny, as stated in his life, considered this place “more than the dense forest surrounded by the demonic horror”. According to legend, he spent the whole night in prayer in his cell, and the next morning he made a procession around the stone with the icon of the Virgin in his hands and sprinkled the boulder with holy water. According to the life, the spirits came out of the stone, turned into black ravens and flew away to the opposite shore of Lake Ladoga, which since then began to be called Devil's Bay (Sortan-Lakhta). Together with demons, according to legend, snakes disappeared from the island.
In 1895, a wooden chapel of Arseniy Konevsky was built on Horse-Stone [7] .
Notes
- ↑ Rev. Arseny, Konevsky (inaccessible link)
- ↑ Rev. Arseniy Konevsky
- ↑ The Life of St. Arseny Konevsky
- ↑ Yandex. Photos
- ↑ Flora of Konevets Island
- ↑ Crosses over Ladoga (Unavailable link) . Date of treatment January 24, 2010. Archived May 18, 2008.
- ↑ Small islands of Russia
Literature
- Nizovsky A. Yu. The most famous monasteries and temples of Russia. M.: Veche, 2001.