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Derevianitsky monastery in honour of the Resurrection of Christ (Деревяницкий монастырь; pronunciation: Derevianītsky monastery; another variant of transliteration: Derevyanitsky monastery) is an inactive monastery in Veliky Novgorod, Russia.

The first chronicle reference to the monastery reports that the Church of the Resurrection was founded there in 1335. In the republican period the monastery played a special role, serving as a residence for retired archbishops of Novgorod and as an episocpal burial place. After the downfall of the Novgorod Republic the monastery no more played important roles. The cloister was harmed seriously during the occupation of Novgorod in 1611 – 1617 within the Ingrian war. As a result, it had been rebuilt entirely in the 17th and 18th centuries. Although it had been a male monastery, in 1875 the cloister was transformed into a convent to adopt a female seminaria arranged within the holy walls. The convent was closed in 1917 and still is inactive. The monastery lost some of its buildings during the Soviet period. It was harmed severly during World War II. Now the monastery is in emergency conditions.

Republican history


The monastery was founded at the North-East of Veliky Novgorod, at the confluence of the rivers Volhov and Derevianitsa (mondern name - Derevianka); the river gave the name to the monastery. The date when the groundbreaking occurred is not clear. However, the first written reference to the monastery, made in the Novgorod First Chronicle under the year 1335, tells about erecting the church of stone in honour of the Resurrection of Christ as follows:

The cloister was established in the capital of the northernmost state of Kievan Rus’, attained its independence in 1336 to form a separate realm. The monastery played a special role in the ecclesiastical life of the Novgorod republic, being closely related to the Episcopal house of Novgorod and serving as a place where archbishops of Novgorod were dwelling in retirement. It was an Episcopal burial place as well. There are retained written evidences about the following archbishops of Novgorod to find their last resort:


 * Alexis (died in 1390);
 * Johannes (died in 1417);
 * Simeon (died in 1421);
 * Euthimius (died in 1498).

Novgorod First Chronicle describes a curious occasion occurred with Alexis the archbishop, who had gone to the Derevianitsky monastery for retirement, but was turned back from the monastery by the citizens who wanted him to be their archbishop.

Leaning upon written sources, it appears possible to draw a picture of the monastery as it was before the Novgorod land had become a part of Muscovy as well as in the first years after the bloody massacre. The original monastery complex was formed by:


 * The Church of the Resurrection in the role of a catholicon. Originally, it was a stone church, erected in accordance to the republican traditions of the Novgorodian architecture. It was able to be aligned with other Novgorodian churches of the period.


 * The Church of the Assumption of Our Lady was located nearby the catholicon. It is mentioned in the Novgorod Second Chronicle, which reports that Moses the archbishop has erected one more stone church in the monastery in 1335. The 2 churches were placed in the centre, forming the core of the monastery; other buildings and constructions were located on the perimeter.
 * The Church of Saint Nicholas made of wood, jointed with a wooden refectory, is mentioned by Ambrose the archbishop in his inventory made in 1584.


 * Large cells of wood served as housing quarters for retired archbishops of Novgorod. In the written sources it is described with the Russian word “horomy”, a traditional name for houses of Russian aristocracy.


 * “Episcopal gardens” are mentioned in the cadastres of 1584.


 * A fence of wood and utility buildings seem to finish the monastery complex with themselves.

Macarius the archbishop introduced the principles of the cenobitic monasticism in the cloiser in 1528. The monastery was a comparatively large landowner: it possessed 2 steads at the north of the Novgorod Republic (in modern Karelia and Leningrad Oblast), and a stead at the south-east of the Novgorod Republic (it is in the modern Tver Oblast). It also had 2 metochions: inside the Novgorod Kremlin, and at the modern Bayana street of Novgorod.

Later history


The bloody massacre splits the history of Novgorod into “before” and “after”. Monasteries of Novgorod were not an exception. In 1570 all monasteries in Novgorod were subjected to defeat by Ivan the Terrible and his men, the monks - to violence and humiliation.

About a decade later the monastery had been accepting the brethren of the Konevsky Monastery who were evacuated from the north by order of Ivan the Terrible because of the Livonian war. The brethren got back in their alma mater in 1589, but undertook the second evacuation to the Derevianitsky monastery in 1610: this time because of the Ingrian War. They brought with themselves the miraculous icon called Our Lady of Konevitsy, their holy artefact. The icon had been storing in the Cathdral of the Resurrection till 1799.

A next strike at the wellbeing of the monastery was made during the Swedish occupation of Novgorod in 1611 - 1617. During the occupation the monks were dwelling at the Tihvin Monastery, and the monastery was ravaged by the Swedes. According to the inventory of Novgorod for 1617, the monastery was "ravaged entirely": the 2 churches have been deprived of roof, the cells and the fence have been burned down, the monastery assets have been plundered. The monastery bells had been sent to Sweden, but did not reach the destination, being drowned in the Baltic sea. In 1987 the expedition of the Maritime Museum of Finland had discovered two of them in the sea near the Mulan Isle. During the Swedish ravage, the monks were sheltering in Tihvin. The reconstruction, undertaken consequently in the 1610s, has altered the look of the cloister substantially. The catholicon was repaired along with the Church of Saint Nicholas, but there are no written references to the ancient Church of the Assumption of Our Lady made after 1617. The decision to abandon it had apparently been taken. Instead of this, the monastery complex was added with a temple in honour of Our Lady of Tihvin, erected right above the main entrance to the monastery and forming a single construction with the monastery fence of wood. Evidently, it was aimed to memorialize the exodus in the Tihvin monastery, undertaken by the monks during the Ingrian war. However, the gate church is known to be disassembled in 1799.

The most substantial alteration took place in 1694, when the decision to rebuild the Church of the Resurrection was made. Nevertheless, that construction collapsed "from top to bottom" three years later, in 1697. Subsequently, the church preserved till the present days was erected in 1698 - 1700.

The monastery complex continued its formation during the 1720s and the 1730s, when the refectory jointed with the Church of the Assumption of Our Lady and the bell tower were erected. Two-floored cells were made of stone by Sabbas Pavlov basing on a civil contract signed in 1729. In addition, a 2-floored abbot chamber was erected that period. Other buildings were made of wood: a hut, a brewery, a smithy, a building to dry seeds and hay, granaries and 2 saunas. A garden with apple and cherry tries was located within the perimeter. There was a number of utility buildings out of the perimeter, including a stable and windmills. The monastery was assessed as third class after the secularization reform, conducted by Catherine the Great in 1764.

In 1875 the cloister was turned into a convent, the brothers (whom were not many) were transferred to other monasteries of Novgorod. The reason was linked to the decision to arrange a school for orphans there. To perform the project, a tree-floored campus of stone was erected in the there. The project had been fulfilled successfully.

The decision to abolish the convent by merging it with the Znamensky Monastery was taken by the Novgorod Diocesan Council in 1905, but it had not been executed in fact, though: the convent was active a while even after the October Revolution in Russia had occurred. Of course, the first years of the USSR were not a period of prosperity; monastery assets, including cash and funds, real estates and agriculture equipment, were appropriated by the new government in 1918. To fulfil the appropriation, a special commission had been arranged, which selected 24 valuable icons and a number of church utensils as culturally and historically significant to store them at museum vaults; other assets were sent to Moscow. The convent was abolished in the 1920, the churches were afforded to the local congregation for free using, the monastery school was occupied by an agriculture boarding school. The former nuns arranged an agriculture enterprise within the holy walls.

Some of the monastery buildings have been disassembled for bricks during the first decades of the soviet reigning. The next sequence of destructions came with World War II, when the churches were harmed seriously by guns: the roofs were damaged; the walls were covered with cracks; the central ceiling was broken. A restoration of the 1964 – 1973 returned the original look of the monastery back.

Present days
At the present time the building of the monastery school is occupied by a clinic for drug addicted people, other buildings are not in use. The Cathedral of the Resurrection, which had been used before as a warehouse by a fibreglass plant located nearby, stands empty now, being in unsatisfactory conditions. The cathedral lost its main dome in the October 2013; another dome had been collapsed before. Other buildings are in emergency state.

The Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ






The cathedral has been rebuilt entirely 3 times in its history. The church erected in 1335 was built in the Novgorod style of architecture. It was a humble and simple construction complied with the traditions of minimalism inherent to the architecture of the republican Novgorod. That is reasonable to make a compare with the The Church of Transfiguration of Our Saviour at Kovalyovo, finished about a decade later in the same style, to get an idea about the initial design.

The church completed in 1694 had replaced with itself the ancient construction due to its dilapidation as a result of ravaging within the Swedish occupation of Novgorod.

The construction works were blessed by Cornelius the metropolitan. The thorough description of the prioject, preserved well till the present days, allows to build a graphic model. It was a tall, 3-tier building in the style of Naryshkin Baroque. Modeling allows to match it with the Church of the Intercession at Fili and the Church of Our Savior at Oubory. However, virtually the workers were not well in the new-founded style of architecture, and the construction collapsed "from top to bottom" three years later, in 1697. It was interpreted by Anthony the abbot as “the great trouble".

The present cathedral completed in 1700 was built right on the retained basement of the previous construction collapsed before. After the main space had been completed in the September 1698, the process of construction was suspended due to a lack of funding. To finish the cathedral, Anthony the abbot appealed to Job the metropolitan with a pleas:

Apparently, the request had been satisfied, and the outbuildings finished up with themselves the cathedral in 1700. As a result, the cathedral presents a large monumental building of geometrical (symmetrical) forms with 5 domes, 2 chapels and large galleries. The design noted with an innovative idea which underpins the architectural solution. The cross-in-square style, leaning on architectural canons and traditions heavily, implies 4 columns to form the cross-shaped device of nave and to provide a necessary support for main dome. However, the architects had taken on a deviation from this canon, using 2 columns only and therefore expanding the visual and physical space of the nave. That forced them do develop a new scheme to distribute the weight of the domes by means of arc constructions. The discovered scheme was borrowed and applied in a number of later churches in Russia. The nave is jointed with the chapels at its corners by a gallery, which encompasses the cathedral from 3 sides. The chapels are deprived of apses, inheriting the scheme of the previous construction, collapsed in 1696.

The nave was frescoed in the 18th century, while decorating of the chapels had been delayed significantly due to a lack of funding to be completed much later. The idea which underpinned the interior design in the nave was to embed pictures with biblical scenes in the white surface of the walls, emphasizing them. The decorations have not been preserved till the present days. The pieces of frescoes were found out during the restoration works in the 1960s.

Iconostasises with frameworks of craved wood were set up in the nave and in the southern chapel in the 1740s. The project of decorating implied the columns in the nave to be decorated with craved compositions of wood as well, and the interiors to be provided with sculptures of wood. According to the project, statues of Gabriel and Michael were supposed to be placed at sides of the royal doors in the nave; 6 statues of cherubs – to decorate the main iconostasis.

Culturologically, the cathedral is to be aligned with the Zmanensky cathedral in Novgorod, and (to a certain extent) with the Cathedral of Our Lady of Smolensk of the Novodevichy convent in Moscow. The same as those, the cathedral reconciles different cultural flows, affecting the Russian society in the 18th century. The cathedral represents an architectural compromise between:


 * centuries-old canons of Russian church architecture;
 * the traditions of moderation and minimalism inherent to the architecture of Novgorod; the Novgorodian decorative elements;
 * the Muscovite style of architecture (functional elements, including galleries, and decorative elements);
 * the style of Baroque (decorative elements in the exterior and the interior).

The Church of the Assumtion of Our Lady


Although retained sources diverge in the regard of the date when the Church of the Assumption has been erected, complemented with some cultorological analysis they allow to consider the beginning of the 18th century as the period of erection. The church jointed with the refectory and the bell tower are likely to be erected in 1725, in the same time with the aisles of the catholicon. In 1853 the church was sanctified in honour of the Our Lady of Konevitsy, the holy artifact stored in the monastery during the Livonian War.

A consistence of three volumes of different height underpins the architectural idea of the church: a cubic-shaped church is jointed with a long rectangular refectory and finished with a high bell tower.

The same as the catholicon, the Church of the Assumption appears to be an architectural compromise between old Russian traditions and the Western architectural stiles come into the Russian culture in the epoch of Peter the Great. The bell tower is evident to be oriented on the Western-European ideals in power during the Peter’s age, readable in the rusticated slopes of the spire and in the stylistics of the window frames. Simultaneously, the church in the self as well as the refectory are performed in the Old Novgorodian traditions. The archaic stylistics is reflected in the massive white stone walls deprived of decorations and highlighted with small deep windows

Female Semainaria


The Female School for Orphans had been established in Novgorod by order of the Holy Synod in 1875. The school had 2 campuses: at the Znamensky Monastery for lower classes, and at the Derevianitsky Monastery for higher classes. It was a private institution patronised by metropolitans of Novgorod (since the 20th century – by the empress) and funded from private sources.

The school used the same learning programme with diocesan schools, but had not been providing a theological degree, as it was a private school. The further disciplines were taught:


 * The Law of the God;
 * Russian;
 * Church Slavic;
 * Arithmetic;
 * Geography;
 * Geometry;
 * Church History;
 * Civil History;
 * Physics;
 * Pedagogies;
 * Church Singing;
 * Needlework;
 * Housekeeping.

There were sixty four students in the school in 1892. The studying was free of charge for orphans, and implied some charge for those who were not an orphan. The programme implied 6 years of studying. The schedules were to be approved by metropolitans of Novgorod. The academic year lasted from 15th of August to the 15th of June. The students usually had 3 lessons per day. All stationery was provided by the school for free. The most of the alumni used to become teachers after graduation. The school taught them to be guided by the principle:

According to the prescription by the Central Executive Committee “On transferring of educational affairs under the competency of the People’s Commissariat of Education” of the December 11, 1917, the church had lost its educational institutions. The monastery school was closed.