Finally, hands got around to show in detail the amazing artifacts found in 1999-2000 when clearing the territory of the Luzhetsky Ferapontov Monastery in Mozhaisk (Moscow Region). Information has already flashed on the net, in particular A. Fomenko and G. Nosovsky wrote about it in some detail. There is an interesting work by L. A. Belyaeva "White stone tombstone of the Ferapontov monastery" describing the first artifact of this kind found in 1982. However, I haven’t come across extensive photographic materials, let alone a detailed analysis of artifacts.
I'm trying to fill the gap.
It will be about such stones.
Thanks to an impressive photo session made by my brother Andrey, there is an opportunity to consider all this in more detail and in detail. I have already written somewhere that I am gradually curtailing my own historical research focusing exclusively on writing and language, but perhaps the publication will stir the inquisitive minds of other researchers and we will finally be able to at least partially understand what Russia was like before the Schism, before the reforms of Patriarch Nikon, and according to some versions up to the present, the actual baptism of Russia in the 17th century and not in the mythical 10th.
This topic is especially dear to me because it is about my small homeland. On the ruins of this monastery, as boys, we played war and told each other legends about black monks, underground passages and treasures, which of course are hidden in this land and walled up in these walls.:)
Actually, we were not far from the truth, this land really kept treasures, but of a completely different kind. Directly under our feet there was a History, which perhaps they wanted to hide, or maybe they destroyed it due to thoughtlessness or a lack of resources. Who knows.
What can we say for sure - before us are the fragments (literally:)) of the real history of Rus 16-17 (and according to Belyaev, even 14-17) centuries - genuine artifacts of the past.
So let's go.
Promotional video:
Historical reference
Mozhaisky Luzhetsky Nativity of the Bogoroditsa Ferapontov Monastery - located in the city of Mozhaisk, has existed since the 15th century. The only one (except for the temple complex on the site of the former Yakimansky monastery) of the 18 medieval monasteries of Mozhaisk, which has survived to this day.
The monastery was founded by St. Ferapont Belozersky, student of Sergius of Radonezh at the request of Prince Andrey Mozhaisky. This happened in 1408, after 11 years from the founding of the Belozersk Ferapontov Monastery by him. The dedication of the Luzhetsky monastery to the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary is associated with the decision of Ferapont himself. Apparently the Nativity of the Virgin was close to his soul, since the Belozersk monastery was also dedicated to Christmas. In addition, this holiday was especially honored by Prince Andrew. It was on this holiday in 1380 that his father, the Grand Duke of Moscow Dmitry Ioanovich, fought on the Kulikovo field. According to legend, in memory of that battle, his mother, the Grand Duchess Evdokia, built in the Moscow Kremlin the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin.
The first stone cathedral in honor of the Nativity of the Virgin stood in the Luzhetsky monastery until the beginning of the 16th century, after which it was dismantled, and in its place, in 1524-1547, a new, five-domed one was built, which has survived to this day.
The first archimandrite of the Luzhetsk monastery, the Monk Ferapont, having lived ninety-five years, died in 1426 and was buried at the northern wall of the cathedral. In 1547 he was canonized in the Russian Orthodox Church. Later, a temple was built over his burial.
The Luzhetsky monastery existed until 1929, when, according to the protocol of the Moscow Oblast Executive Committee and the Moscow City Council, on November 11, it was closed. The monastery survived the dissection of the relics of the founder, ruin, destruction and desolation (it was abandoned in the mid-1980s). In the pre-war period, the monastery housed a hardware factory and a workshop for a medical equipment plant. At the monastery necropolis there were factory garages with observation pits, storage rooms. Communal apartments were arranged in fraternal cells, and the buildings were transferred to the canteen and club of the military unit.
Later, a temple was built over his burial …
This short phrase from the wiki precedes our entire story.
The temple of the Monk Ferapont was erected in the second half of the 17th century i.e. after Nikon's reforms.
Everything would be fine, but its construction was accompanied by a large-scale collection and laying of gravestones from the surrounding cemeteries into the foundation of the temple. This practice is not comprehensible to our minds, but actually it was quite widespread in the old days and is explained by the economy of a scarce stone. The gravestones were not only laid in the foundations of buildings and walls, but even paved the monastery paths with them. I can't find links now, but you can search the net. Such facts definitely exist.
We are interested in the slabs themselves, although their appearance makes us wonder whether it was only because of saving resources that they were hidden so deeply.
But first, let's orient ourselves on the terrain:).
This is actually what is now left of the temple of the Monk Ferapont. This is the very foundation that the workers stumbled upon when clearing the territory of the monastery in 1999. The cross was erected at the place where the relics of the saint were found.
The entire foundation is made of tombstones!
The usual stone is not there at all.
Along the way, for supporters of the theory of disasters, well, the one when everything fell asleep:)
The part of the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (first half of the 16th century) where the red brick is visible - was completely underground. Moreover, in this state, he underwent later reconstructions, as evidenced by the position of the gate. The staircase of the main entrance to the cathedral is a remake, restored from the excavated fragments of the original.
The height of the cathedral's masonry freed from the ground is about two meters.
Here's another view of the foundation.
But actually the plates themselves.
Most of the artifacts are designed according to a single principle and contain a patterned edging, a fork-shaped cross (at least as it is commonly called in scientific literature) at the bottom of the slab, and a rosette at the top. At the branching point of the cross and the center of the rosette there is a round extension with a solar symbol or a cross. It is noteworthy that the solar symbols at the cross and rosette are always the same on the same slab, but different on different slabs. We will touch on these symbols, but for now, their types are just large.
Branching the cross
Sockets
Curbs
Plates are quite thin, 10 centimeters, medium, about 20 centimeters and quite thick up to half a meter. Medium-thickness slabs often have side curbs like this:
“… There are inscriptions in Russian” © ВСВ
Somehow it’s hard to believe that the above photographs refer to Russia, and even Christian Russia. We see absolutely no signs of the traditions to which we are accustomed. But according to the official history, Russia at that time had already been baptized for six centuries.
The bewilderment is legitimate, but there are artifacts that are even more puzzling.
Some slabs contain inscriptions, mostly in Cyrillic, sometimes of a very high level of execution.
For example, such.
"In the summer of 7177 December, on the 7th day, the servant of God, the monk, the schema monk Savatey [F] edorov, son of Poznyakov,"
The inscription leaves no doubt that a Christian monk is buried.
As you can see, the inscription was made by a skilled carver (the ligature is very good) on the side of the stone. The front side remained free of inscriptions. Savatey died in 1669 from r.kh.
And here's another. This is a masterpiece of the favorites. It was this plate that turned my life upside down:), it was with it that I actually got sick with Russian script as a unique way of writing, several years ago.
"In the summer of 7159 January, on the 5th day, the servant of God Tatiana Danilovna died in the foreign shop, the schema of Taiseya"
Those. Taisiya died in 1651 from r.kh.
The upper part of the slab is completely lost, so there is no way to know how it looked.
Or here is a sample where the side with the inscription is laid in the joint of the blocks. It is impossible to read it without destroying the masonry, but it is clear that a great master worked there as well.
Questions emerge from these three pictures.
1. Don't you find so rich the gravestones of monks strange? Schemniks, of course, are honored in Orthodoxy, but is it enough to have such last honors?
2. The dates of the burial make one doubt the version that only old gravestones were supposedly used for construction (there is such a point of view). These slabs went into the foundation very young, which, incidentally, is evidenced by their safety. As if cut yesterday. It’s your will, but it’s very strange how it treats fresh burials and even the holy brethren.
I can cautiously assume that … they were not brothers, they were already Nikonian reenactors, but, as it were, people of a different faith. And with the departed gentiles it is possible not to cerimonate, then they did not take great care of the living.
A few more slabs with inscriptions of varying quality before we complete this part of the material.
As can be seen from the last examples, the practice of engraving the epitaph on the patterned horizontal surface of the slab also took place. Apparently, in this case, the inscription was made in the field between the pitchfork cross and the upper rosette.
Here it is clearly visible. And the border and the rosette and the cross and the inscription coexist quite organically.
So what do we have?
At the end of the 17th century, upon completion of the reform of Patriarch Nikon, the temple of St. Ferapont was erected on the territory of the Luzhetsky monastery. At the same time, the gravestones that were present in the area at that time are placed at the base of the foundation of the temple. Those. slabs of different ages are preserved in the foundation for three hundred years. For three hundred years, the pre-Nikonian canon of the Orthodox tomb is also preserved. What we can see now is essentially the state of quality, wear and tear, and, indirectly, the age of the artifacts at the time they were laid in the foundation.
Obviously, the less worn slabs date from about 1650-1670. The samples presented in this part correspond mainly to this time.
But! There are also older slabs in the foundation and they also have inscriptions on them.
Above, we looked at the most impressive examples of the tombstones of the Luzhetsky monastery and the details of the elements of their design. Impressive precisely for their aesthetics and preservation of inscriptions and drawings. All of them can be dated to the middle of the 17th century, and almost from the new have gone into the foundation of the temple of St. Ferapont of Mozhaisk.
However, there are also older samples in the range of plates. They are not so aesthetic, but no less interesting.
Let's look at this one for example.
The traces of the rosette and border are barely visible. The inscription is practically scratched, although quite neatly and at the same time looks newer than the slab itself.
Here's another. Here the handwriting is even less accurate.
And then the impression that they learned to write on the old slab:) The letters strongly resemble the writing of Novgorod's birch bark letters. Or maybe they are from the same time? And birch bark letters, as we remember, are the 9-15th century. Maybe - we will not guess.
Here's another example from the same series.
However, it can be both marriage and drafts or training samples:)
One thing is clear.
Old slabs were used and the quality of the ornament itself is clearly not student.
There are intermediate samples, for example this one. There is a hint of quality here, but not comparable to 17th century slabs.
And again we see that the patterned drawing is of higher quality and clearly older.
Here you can see it better.
The next sample is unique for the collection of slabs of the Luzhetsky Monastery.
The slab, described in detail by Fomenko and Nosovsky in the book "The Secret of Russian History". Paired burial of two babies - Andrey and Peter Klimentyev. The babies died in 1641 and 1643.
The tombstone is not canonical and we do not see a fork-shaped cross here, but it is made very high quality, and the pattern of the edging and the letters were clearly made at the same time and by the same master.
Judging by the condition, this slab was in the air for a long time before it lay in the foundation.
However, I am not sure that the stove was there at all. It is exhibited in the necropolis on the other side of the cathedral and, possibly, it was a part of it.
What can we tell by looking at these pictures?
1. Even before the Schism, there was a practice of tombstones without a pitchfork cross, as evidenced by the Klementyevs' plate (40s of the 17th century). At the same time, the border ornament is present invariably.
2. The practice of writing on slabs is a later tradition. Those. the content of the inscription (Christian epitaph) should not be identified with the drawing - these are different traditions.
3. Originally unwritten but patterned plates could be produced in a separate production and possibly much earlier than they were used in business.
4. The oldest slabs in terms of wear and probably in the time of manufacture had a simpler toothed ornament of the edging, as opposed to the later one - a twisted three-cord wave.
Unobvious but probable
Now a few examples from the realm of hypotheses and riddles.
For example, here is a truly Chudinov sample.:)
A fragment of a slab with a very high-quality ligature and along the edge we see half-erased small letters.
Here is a snapshot of the other half of this stone.
The letters are less noticeable, but the fact that the inscription is continued here is seen quite well.
What are the hypotheses?
It might make sense to take a closer look and photograph the edges of other slabs.
Are these inscriptions random?
When are they done?
What could have been written there?
In general, there are solid questions.
Interestingly, here we see clear, albeit subtle, ruler guides for writing.
It should be noted that most of the inscribed samples do not have such rulers. This does not mean at all that the masters worked in flight without guides, rather, they simply wore off from time to time, as they were initially made as invisible as possible.
A note about guides is important for the next sample.
The first thought that arises is what clear and even guides the master made here.
But the question arises - why?
These are almost cuts, and the rulers (if they are) are much thicker than the letters themselves or are comparable to them.
It is doubtful that these are guides.
What then?
Let's see the details and play with the snapshot using V. A. Chudinov.
Let's show what can be shown.
Funny features and cuts:)
Of course, this can be attributed to marriage or student experiments, but you can look at it differently.
The nature of the inscription clearly reminds us of something.
Let's twist it in any way to understand its true position in the litas.
Variant 3 is especially interesting, especially since, according to the position of the remnants of the ornament on the slab (and it is badly damaged), such an arrangement of the inscription is closest to the correct one.
See what it looks like?
This version of ligature writing "below the line" is typical for … Veles Book and Devanagari - the writing form of ancient Sanskrit.
I also attribute this recording technique to the Khari karuna - one of the four types of ancient writing of the Aryans.
That's it:)
I do not draw any conclusions
See for yourself!
This is only a guess, but it is obvious that the artifact requires serious study.
Perhaps a hundred kilometers from Moscow in the open air lies a sample of the oldest written language, the existence of which is so hard to prove by the supporters of its existence.
Gifts from Borisogleb
So. Borisogleb village, Vladimir region, Murom district.
Borisoglebsky monastery is rumored as early as the 11th century.
It is presented in stone from the second half of the 17th century, before that it was completely wooden.
Now it looks something like this:
Today the Church of the Nativity and the bell tower remain from the monastery.
In the 90s, it was transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church and is now being reborn as a convent.
But aside from the turbulent reconstruction of the monastery, on what looks like a local vegetable garden, there are six of these stones, just speckled with very high-quality, albeit beaten by time, Russian script.
So we will watch them.
Go.
All pictures below are clickable for those who are especially curious:)
All slabs are regular parallelepipeds with no pattern on horizontal planes.
In general, horizontal surfaces have clearly been treated. If you remember on the Mozhaisk slabs we saw there the remains of a plot with a pattern, a pitchfork cross and a rosette. There are none here. Only and exclusively side inscriptions in ligature.
So what do we see on the first slab?
The standard epitaph of a nun, very similar to those from the Luzhetsky monastery.
In the field of date, there is a traditional attempt to dig something, then "the reign of the servant of God Agathius in the foreign workshop of Alexander"
There is one more difference from the Mozhaisk slabs - the ornament around the inscription.
There was no such thing on the stone of the schema-ness Taisiya. The very nature of the pattern is also unique - it is clearly a growth plot. Such were not found on the stones of the Luzhetsky monastery.
What about the date?
All that can be made out there so far is 73 … and even in the top three there is no certainty.
If this is a troika, then we can talk about burial from the end of the 18th to the end of the 19th century.
Doubtful! So I think that this is not a triple.
Let's see further.
The slab is pretty battered by life. I'm not even trying to crush the inscription yet.
But let's see the date
And … bummer again.
7 thousand is clearly visible, then there is clearly AND (i) decimal, which is not used in the representation of the digits, and then 2 which does not save us.
However, this stone is interesting to others
You won't believe it, but a CROSS appears on the arena:)
What we have been looking for so unsuccessfully throughout the entire research has been found!
Here it is larger against the background of rather strong erasures in the date area.
There, by the way, some letters are visible, but it's completely unreadable.
Move on.
Here the cross is already visible quite well.
The cross is an Old Believer, pre-split … and seems to be painted on, for the quality of work is incomparable with the ligature.
This is of course only a guess.
We also see traces of inscriptions around the cross and in its body, or rather, these are individual letters, which is not surprising.
Apparently there was something like this.
They tortured the stove a lot. And scraped and chipped off and even whitewashed.
But we can guess the date !!! and read something.
So, if the date is separated by a cross, then it is 7173 or 1664 from px.
The caption reads as follows:
"In the summer of 7273 November, 21 days the servant of God, the maiden Pelageya Dmitrieva, died …" the ending niasilil:)
By the way, the ornament is also floral, but slightly different than on the plates above.
This slab is the third type of ornament. Although the cross is well worn, it looks familiar with the inscription.
The caption reads:
“In the summer of 717? general … the servant of God, Dmitry Fedorov, son of Borisov, has died”
Dmitry died between 1661 and 1670.
Here we have a third type of floral ornament.
And finally the last two plates
It was also impossible to make out the date here (but the first two digits are undoubtedly 71 … that is, between 1591 and 1690) and besides, here we see an attempt not to draw, but to gloss over or knock down the cross.
In general, there were no joke battles of traditions.:)
This slab suffered the most, and is interesting only for the fourth type of ornament and very obvious traces of erasure, and it seems that it is not at all in the date area. However, it may be just traces of mechanical destruction because the plate is well chipped.
So, what can we say about what we saw?
1. All slabs that could be dated by epitaphs refer to the 60s of the 17th century ie directly at the time of the reform of Patriarch Nikon.
2. Tombstones from this period have an Old Believer cross. Those. in the 17th century, at the time of the Schism, such a tradition existed at least in the Vladimir province and was completely absent in the Moscow province, as the finds of Mozhaisk and Zvenigorod tell us.
3. Borisogleb's ornaments have a pronounced plant character and are different in pattern on most of the slabs. Those. there is a lack of any rigid canon here. Similar ornaments are also completely absent in Mozhaisk and Zvinigorod.
4. The quality of the work of the ligature is generally comparable to that of Mozhaisk.
That's all for now. I hope it was interesting:))