In 1524 Grand Prince Vasily III founded the Новодевичий Монастырь (New Maiden Monastery) to commemorate his victory over the Lithuanians in the battle to re-take Smolensk for the Principality of Muscovy in 1514. (Both Russia and Tsardom came later, essentially after Ivan the Terrible conquered the Tatars of Kazan and stared building his Siberian empire.) The main church, which is featured in the next picture, is the Cathedral of the Virgin of Smolensk. When Vasily's wife failed to produce an heir, he sent her to live in the convent here and took an attractive young replacement into his household, though he could not divorce his immured wife. The walls of the Monastery resemble those of the Kremlin. It was an important defensive bulwark to the south-west of Moscow (today it is lies in the inner suburbs) when the Poles and others attacked the capital of the expanding but still precarious Principality. Stability was achieved with the accession of the Romanov dynasty early in the seventeenth century, and within a hundred years, the Monastery owned 36 villages and 15,000 peasants. This financed a nunnery, a military hospital and an orphanage, as well as the normal quota of monks, iconographers and aristocratic ladies under sentence of immurement. Napoleon tried to blow up the buildings in 1812, but he was thwarted by the nuns. However, they failed to thwart the Bolsheviks, 110 years later, when they turned Novodevichi into a Museum of Women's Emancipation. Under pressure to propitiate the religious element in Soviet society during the most desperate days of the Second World War, Stalin returned the Monastery to the Church, though the level of involvement with the general public was, of course, small since no member of the Communist Party was allowed to enter a relgious building. Today, it is a thriving religious and tourist centre.Sunday 20 May 2007
Novodevichi Monastery
In 1524 Grand Prince Vasily III founded the Новодевичий Монастырь (New Maiden Monastery) to commemorate his victory over the Lithuanians in the battle to re-take Smolensk for the Principality of Muscovy in 1514. (Both Russia and Tsardom came later, essentially after Ivan the Terrible conquered the Tatars of Kazan and stared building his Siberian empire.) The main church, which is featured in the next picture, is the Cathedral of the Virgin of Smolensk. When Vasily's wife failed to produce an heir, he sent her to live in the convent here and took an attractive young replacement into his household, though he could not divorce his immured wife. The walls of the Monastery resemble those of the Kremlin. It was an important defensive bulwark to the south-west of Moscow (today it is lies in the inner suburbs) when the Poles and others attacked the capital of the expanding but still precarious Principality. Stability was achieved with the accession of the Romanov dynasty early in the seventeenth century, and within a hundred years, the Monastery owned 36 villages and 15,000 peasants. This financed a nunnery, a military hospital and an orphanage, as well as the normal quota of monks, iconographers and aristocratic ladies under sentence of immurement. Napoleon tried to blow up the buildings in 1812, but he was thwarted by the nuns. However, they failed to thwart the Bolsheviks, 110 years later, when they turned Novodevichi into a Museum of Women's Emancipation. Under pressure to propitiate the religious element in Soviet society during the most desperate days of the Second World War, Stalin returned the Monastery to the Church, though the level of involvement with the general public was, of course, small since no member of the Communist Party was allowed to enter a relgious building. Today, it is a thriving religious and tourist centre.
