The Goritsky Resurrection Monastery for women is located on the banks of the Sheksna River, at the foot of a hill overgrown with fir trees called Mount Maura. Its low white walls with rounded corner turrets blend harmoniously into the picturesque landscape. And upon entering the territory of the monastery, it is as if you are entering the Garden of Eden - such an abundance of flowers here. But pilgrims who admire this beauty do not even suspect what terrible secrets the monastery walls keep.
Victims of the fearsome king
The history of the Goritsky Monastery is tragic from the first years of its foundation. The aristocrats of medieval Russia had a radical way to get rid of their hateful wives: they were forcibly tonsured into nuns, condemning them to life imprisonment. Among the most eminent inhabitants of the Goritsky Monastery were two wives of Ivan the Terrible - Anna Koltovskaya and Maria Nagaya, Princess Ksenia Godunova, Princess M. N. Cherkasskaya, I. I. Miloslavskaya and many others. From 1739 to 1741, E. A. lived here under strict supervision. Dolgorukova is the daughter of A. G. Dolgorukov, a member of the Supreme Privy Council, the failed empress, declared the bride of Peter II, who, before the wedding, died of smallpox.
The irony of fate lies in the fact that one of the first prisoners of the monastery was its founder - Princess Efrosinya, the widow of Prince Andrei Ivanovich Staritsky, the uncle of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. This appanage prince, considering himself an unjustly bypassed contender to the royal throne, fled to Novgorod in 1537, where he tried to raise a rebellion against the Moscow sovereign, but was cunningly lured into the capital and died (killed?) In dungeon.
Efrosinya Andreevna with her young son Vladimir was also imprisoned for four long years. In 1541, at the request of Prince Shuisky, they were released, and the Staritsky inheritance was returned to Vladimir. But Efrosinya, a domineering and decisive woman, did not calm down and continued to weave the threads of the conspiracy. The situation escalated to the limit in March 1553, during the tsar's grave illness, when the boyars split into two parties, one of which saw not the son of Ivan the Terrible, Tsarevich Dimitri, but Vladimir Staritsky as a contender for the throne. The king recovered, but finally lost confidence in dangerous relatives.
Meanwhile, through the efforts of Efrosinya, the conspiracy followed a conspiracy involving an increasing number of boyars. Finally, in 1563, by order of the Terrible, the princess was forcibly tonsured into a nun under the name of Evdokia and sent to the Goritsky monastery founded by her. But at the same time, she was allowed to keep her servants and close boyars with her. Juliania Dmitrievna, the wife of Prince Yuri Vasilyevich, the brother of Ivan the Terrible, lived with her in the monastery under the name of Alexandra. Efrosinya could also leave the monastery on pilgrimage to neighboring monasteries.
With the introduction of the oprichnina, the maniacally suspicious Ivan Vasilyevich decided to exterminate the hated Staritsky family to the root, despite the loyalty of Prince Vladimir. In 1569, Vladimir Staritsky was accused of trying to poison the tsar. Grozny hypocritically declared that he did not want to shed kindred blood, and therefore the executioners forced the prince, his wife and young children to drink poison.
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Following this, Grozny sent a detachment of guardsmen to the Goritsky Monastery. They perpetrated a cruel reprisal there: nun Evdokia (Efrosinya Staritskaya), Alexandra (Princess Juliana), Maria and Abbess Anna were drowned in Sheksna, and women from Princess Staritskaya's retinue were hunted down with dogs, shot from samopals and left to lie under the open sky, birds and animals devoured.
Subsequently, in the 19th century, the Trinity Cathedral was erected in the Goritsky Monastery over the graves of nuns Evdokia and Alexandra.
Vision of Prophetess Kaleria
The ghosts of the princesses-martyrs from time to time appeared both inside the monastery and in its vicinity. Most often they came to warn the nuns of impending disasters.
Soon after the October Revolution, the ghost of a nun, a stately woman with a stern, domineering face and a formidable, piercing gaze, appeared to Mother Kaleria. She realized that before her was the founder of the monastery herself. Efrosinya warned that a Bolshevik detachment was sent to the monastery to destroy the monastery and destroy its nuns. Having heeded the warning, the nuns, safely burying the most valuable treasures and relics, hid themselves in the surrounding villages. But some of the sisters did not want to leave the monastery. Their fate was tragic. The uninvited guests, discovering that a significant part of the monastic values had disappeared, began to torture the nuns, but none of them betrayed the secret. Then the commissars, like the guardsmen of Ivan the Terrible, drove the nuns onto a barge and drowned with her either in the White Lake, or in the upper Volga.
And mother Kaleria lived a long life. She possessed the gift of clairvoyance. She predicted war, famine, and the impoverishment of faith. She said that there will be demonic dances in the Trinity Cathedral. Indeed, under Soviet rule, a village club was set up there. But the prophetess predicted the revival of the monastery.
Choir of "samovars"
After the Great Patriotic War, a home for the disabled was built in the Goritsky Monastery. Here, in the Vologda outback, far from human eyes, the most difficult, hopeless disabled veterans, who had lost both arms and legs, were taken. Such people were called "samovars". And from these "stumps of war" the wonderful enthusiast Vasily Petrogradsky created a choir. In the spring, with the onset of warm days, nurses carried the disabled on green-brown blankets outside the walls of the monastery and laid them out in rows on the steep bank of the Sheksna. In the upper row, against the wall, they put the lead singer - Bubble, below - tenors, even lower - baritones, and on the very bank of the river there were basses. When passenger steamships, going up and down the Mariinsky water system, moored at the Goritskaya pier, the choir of "samovars" gave a concert, and soon the rumor about this miracle spread throughout the North-West.
But here we will talk about another miracle. One fine May day (most likely on Victory Day) the disabled, as always, were taken out for a walk. While they were basking in the sun, the nurses decided, as usual, to celebrate the great holiday. In the evening they brought their charges back. Yes, as if it were a sin, one of the drunken eyes was forgotten. The poor man lies, suffers. Business by night. And the nights in the north are cold, even in May. Frozen, trembling. I was going to die completely. And suddenly a young girl in a black monk's cassock bent over him, said gentle words, tucked the blanket on all sides, and he felt so good and calm as never before in his life.
And the nurse, who was supposed to bring this disabled person into the ward, calmly went to bed. Suddenly in the middle of the night she woke up as if from a jolt. She looks, there is a young blue woman standing in front of her and sternly shakes her finger. The drinker immediately realized what she had done - and ran to the shore. And her ward sleeps as an infant, even smacks his lips in his sleep. The woman lifted him from the ground (where did the strength come from!) - and headlong back until the authorities saw.
And it seems that the ghost of nun Alexandra (Princess Juliana) saved the invalid.
Re-education of the harlot
In the 1970s, the milkmaid Glashka lived in Goritsy. They say she was a hard-working woman, but dissolute, although she was married, she loved to take a walk. And so another boyfriend appointed her a meeting near the walls of the monastery (the monastery had long ceased to function, there were a state farm office, workshops, a club), on the banks of the Sheksna, almost where the choir of "samovars" used to sing. Glashka came first. She sat down under the blooming bird cherry, waits. And the nights are already white. And suddenly he saw a figure in a black cassock rising from behind the steep bank, looking sternly at the harlot and threatening with a bony hand. Not remembering herself, Glashka rushed home. And since then she has become such an exemplary wife that everyone around was surprised.
Who scared Glashka so much? In 1690, a case arose about the "cheating" of the maiden Martha. It turned out that this nun was confused with the "black priest" from the Kirillovsky Monastery, Sergei Troitsky, became pregnant and, in order to hide her sin, fled from the monastery. Having reached the village of Mikulino, Martha gave birth to a stillborn child and herself died during childbirth. By order of the Vologda bishop, the sinned nun was taken to Goritsy and buried there “on the shore” without a church funeral service. And since then, her ghost wanders along the banks of the Sheksna, threatening dissolute women, turning them away from their sins.
There are many stories to tell about the ghosts of the Goritsky Monastery. They say that quite recently a buoy-keeper saw a tall old woman in a monk's attire on the banks of the Sheksna. Efrosinya Staritskaya appeared again. What did she want to tell the world this time, what to warn us sinners about?
Victor MEDNIKOV