"Izborsk. Part 1".
"Titov's stone. Part 2"
"Devil's glade in Lokna. Part 3"
"Pskov Dracula. Part 4"
"Rattle Tower. Crusades. Part 5"
"Prince Izbor. Part 6"
Residents of Pechora are very fond of telling visitors about their city legends. One of the most popular, tells about two visits to the city by Tsar Ivan the Terrible.
Wolf skin.
Promotional video:
The first, took place during the campaign of Russian troops to Riga, in 1569-1570. during the Livonian War. Then the Tsar was greeted with the ringing of bells, a procession of the cross, and bread and salt, which the abbot of the monastery Cornelius presented. In a conversation with him, Tsar Ivan asked about what the monastic brethren needed and how he could help them.
Monument to the Monk Korniliy of the Caves. Pechory, pl. Cathedral.
To this Cornelius replied that the times are now dashing, that enemies are coming from all sides, and I will not save foreigners from robbery and violence. We must, he says, build a fortress to protect the townspeople from raids. And the state will benefit from that. Fortress cannot be superfluous.
- Do you need a big fortress? - asked Ivan Vasilyevich.
- No, Father Tsar. It's the size of a wolf's skin. - The cunning abbot answered.
Then Ivan the Terrible gave the abbot a wolf's skin, and said: "Here's a wolf's skin for you, build a wall, I will order to pay from the state treasury." But the abbot cheated. I decided to lead the Tsar. The monks spent the whole night in labors. The task was almost impossible. It was necessary to cut the skin in such a way that the strap came out of it no thicker than a linen thread, and at the same time did not break off.
But the brothers did it. The coil of the wolfskin strap turned out to be so long that after unwinding the strap and laying it on the ground in a circle, it turned out that the fortress should be truly great, 329 fathoms (about 700 meters). But, for this there is the Tsar's word, that it is not taken back. Ivan will pay, will not go anywhere!
Of course, in reality this could not be. Legends about wolf skins, and more often about ox skins, are attributed to the history of the construction of many fortresses, but rational thinking only allows you to smile upon hearing such stories.
Bloody track.
As you know, that campaign ended in failure. Despite many glorious military victories in Livonia, thanks to diplomatic games, Riga fell under the influence of the Poles for forty years, and then passed from the Prussians to the Danes, and from the Danes to the Swedes, until, finally, in the eighteenth century, Russia bought these lands from the Swedish king …
Frustrated by the failure, the Tsar, having arrived in Pechory, was terribly angry when he found in his rear a powerful fortress with towers and impregnable walls. He immediately suspected treason, and anger overshadowed his mind. I dismounted, and went up to Cornelius, who, under the ringing of bells, with the brethren, met the King of the Benefactor with a loaf and salt.
He took out a saber from its scabbard, and with one blow cut off Cornelius's head. But then a miracle happened. Cornelius got to his feet, headless, picked up his head from the ground, and raised it high in outstretched arms, turning his face with a frozen smile and blood on his lips to his killer. The king was afraid of this, picked up the body of Cornelius in his arms, and himself carried it down the hill in his arms, to the Assumption Church.
Assumption Church. All its interior rooms are carved into the rock.
And all this time from the neck of Cornelius crimson blood flowed to the ground. Since then, the path followed by Ivan the Terrible with a decapitated body is called so: - Bloody path, or Bloody path.
Bloody track.
The legend is beautiful, of course, but it has little to do with reality. It is known for certain that Ivan the Terrible himself did not kill anyone. And Cornelius was executed by the people of the sovereign, after an inquiry and a trial, which proved that Cornelius was involved in a conspiracy, together with his relatives against the Tsar. Cornelius was from a noble family of the Pskov boyars.
Abbot Cornelius was allegedly killed at this place on February 20, 1570.
And there was a conspiracy. In fact, some of the Pskov people, led by Prince Andrey Kurbsky, were bribed by the Livonian princes, and could well have planned the surrender of the Pechora fortress to the Livs and Poles. Well, the fact that Korniliy actively promoted the separation of the Pskov principality from Russia, he himself did not hide. He wrote about this in great detail in his writings, which can be read in the monastery library today. Those. he is not innocently repressed, but a separatist and traitor, instigator and rebel. Therefore, he was executed legally, and to consider him a great martyr, at least, is incorrect.
Punishing fire.
In the caves, deep under the Pechora fortress, there is a real city of the dead. It has its own streets, avenues, and even squares. The bodies of the buried are in wooden coffins sealed with special ceramic plates. Either in separate cells, or in fraternal cells, containing dozens of coffins with bodies, of the defenders of the fortress, priests, monks, and people famous throughout the world.
The underground city of the dead. Pechora.
And all the bodies are preserved in the form in which they were buried. The fact is that the catacombs have a special microclimate that prevents decomposition. The bodies are mummified in a natural way, without even spreading the smell of decay. The air in the caves is always fresh and clean. It is here that the Monk Cornelius is buried, canonized by the church.
The coffin of the confessor - mentor of the President of Russia, John Krestyankin, who was considered a saint during his lifetime.
Ceramic seals covering the chambers with the coffins of the dead.
The guides show tourists the coffin with the body of Cornelius, which allegedly has a burnt piece of wood in one place, where the lid is adjacent to the coffin itself. There is a legend about how during the capture of the fortress by the Swedish troops, one of the soldiers decided to commit sacrilege and to open the coffin with the relics of the saint. He tried to open the lid with his sword, but at that moment a sacred fire burst out of the coffin, burning the invader's sword to red, and he supposedly immediately fell dead.
The coffin with the incorruptible relics of St. Cornelius of the Caves.
Again, a very beautiful legend, and again has nothing to do with reality. The fact is that it is known for certain that the Pechora fortress in the entire history of its existence has never been taken by the enemy. She has withstood hundreds of attacks and many days of sieges. She did not submit to either the Poles, the Swedes or the Livs. But for the first time, the enemy appeared in the fortress only in July 1941, when the fortress was no longer a fortification, and served as a monastery for Orthodox monks.
However, I am not at all inclined to see this as a reason for frustration. Delving deeper into the study of history in order to distinguish truth from speculation, you inevitably discover such amazing facts, against which the most incredible legends and myths fade. Even less is believed in the reality of what happened in reality than in beautiful legends!
We need to tell the children not fairy tales about the saints, but the true history of the Russian army, about the courage and perseverance of which the plans of hundreds of conquerors were shattered. Whoever laid siege to the Pechora fortress, no matter what elite forces of the enemy tried to break the resistance, but no one … No one ever managed to conquer the defenders of the fortress. These "crazy Russians" scored brilliant victories every time, even on the defensive. Such victories that the enemy would go home, inevitably suffering huge losses, and for a long time then licked his wounds.
This is what needs to be taught in schools. To be worthy of our ancestors, and to prove in practice that we are not worse. And they will help us from heaven. Certainly. If we remember about them. We will also remember the names of the traitors. A bitter truth is better than a sweet lie.
Continuation: "Dukhova Mountain. Part 8".
Author: kadykchanskiy