Holy Trinity Anthony-Dymsky Monastery is located in the village of Red Bronevik, which is located in the Boksitogorsk district of the Leningrad region. This Orthodox monastery belongs to the St. Petersburg Metropolitanate of the Russian Orthodox Church. Twenty kilometers from it is the city of Boksitogorsk, and seventeen - Tikhvin. The Anthony-Dymsky monastery has a rich history of foundation and existence - this will be discussed later.
Traditions
The monastery, according to legend, was founded in 1242 on the lands of the Novgorod Republic by the Monk Anthony, who was a student of Varlaam Khutynsky. The establishment took place officially when a letter was granted by Prince Alexander Nevsky.
June 24, 1273 (according to other sources - 1224), the Monk Anthony died, his body was placed at the choir in the church he had built. The relics of the saint in 1370 were found incorrupt, they were laid openly in cancer in the same Antonievsky church.
In 1409, the monastery was allegedly completely destroyed during the invasion of Novgorod Khan Edigei (in fact, Edigei did not reach Novgorod land). Seeing the approach of the enemy, the inhabitants of the monastery sang a moleben at the crayfish with the relics of Anthony and hid them under the cover, sprinkling them with earth and laying a stone slab. Church utensils, chains, an iron hat and the bells of the saint were lowered to the very bottom of Lake Smoky.
XVI-XVII centuries
Since 1585, after the Swedes ruined the Valaam monastery in 1578, its monks moved to the Anthony-Dymsky monastery. Communicative Valaam traditions have been preserved here. In 1618, the monks were transferred to the Vasilievsky monastery on Volkhov.
In 1611 the monastery was ruined by the Swedes. The troops of Jacob Delagardi, in siege, could not take the Tikhvin Assumption Monastery and brought their blow to Dymskaya. The brotherhood of the un fortified monastery could not resist and dispersed into the surrounding forests. Cells and temples were burned.
With the blessing of Patriarch Filaret in 1626, Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich ordered the renewal of the Anthony-Dymsky Monastery. And during the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich, in 1655, the first stone temple was built in the monastery with the efforts of Father Superior Filaret.
In 1687 the Dymsky monastery burned down, and then was rebuilt anew.
In the letter of Tsars Peter Alekseevich and John Alekseevich of June 21, 1692, the monastery was listed ascribed to the Sofia House.
Sources of the early history of the monastery
Information about the foundation of the monastery is contained in the life of Anthony Dymsky, the earliest edition of which has survived is dated to the end of the seventeenth century. Most likely, in the Dymsky monastery, the life was compiled using local traditions.
The second, later edition dates from the end of the XVIII - the beginning of the XIX century, and is, according to researchers, a revision of the first edition based on the life of St. Theodosius of Totemsky.
What are the reasons for the scarcity of information about the early history of the Smoke monastery? In the first edition, it is reported that the information was not preserved "from the dictates of oblivion and neglect ... and from all sorts of military people finds, and buest, and from former fires."
About the letter granted in 1243 by Alexander Nevsky for the creation of a monastery is mentioned in the late edition of the life of Anthony. It also reports on the events of 1409, 1611, 1626, although many consider them legendary, since other sources do not indicate them.
1700-1919 years
In 1764, during the period of secularization of the monastic lands, the monastery was again abolished, and the cathedral church was made a parish. Ignatius, archimandrite of the Tikhvin Monastery, in 1794 turned to Metropolitan Gabriel of Novgorod and St. Petersburg and petitioned for the resumption of the monastery. By decree of September 1, 1794, the Anthony-Dymsky Monastery was reopened with a communal charter, which the Metropolitan composed and sent on his own on October 11, 1795.
On April 9, 1799, Emperor Paul the First of the treasury donated two thousand pine trees to repair the monastery.
In the nineteenth century, the monastery was again renovated. Most of the wooden buildings were replaced by stone ones. By the efforts of the abbot Amphilochius in 1839, a stone fence was built around the monastery with the Holy Gates and four towers in the corners. Under Mother Superior Hilaria, a one-story fraternal building was erected in 1840, and in 1846 a two-story abbot building was built, where the kitchen, fraternal refectory and prosphora are located. In 1849, a two-story pilgrimage building was erected, and in 1850, glaciers, farm buildings and a brewery.
A parish school functioned at the monastery, where children from neighboring villages studied.
Income
The monastery was a three-year class and received annually maintenance in the amount of 85.71 rubles. His annual income in total did not exceed 110 rubles. Gardens, meadow land, arable land, and woodland were used by the Anthony-Dymsky Monastery. And the lake, on the banks of which the Monk Anthony had once come in search of prayerful solitude, also belonged to him. The income was contributed by the four-day Anthony Fair held every year in celebration of the memory of John the Baptist.
The number of inhabitants, starting with thirty monks of the Tikhvin monastery, who settled here in 1794, increased to fifty-five by 1917. In the report of Archimandrite Anthony (Demyansky) of 1913, it was reported that all the brethren, with the exception of a few people, behaved badly. Most of the hieromonks had families, and the abbot turned the surrounding population against himself, and people threatened with arson.
The last abbot of the monastery, who urgently replaced Father Methodius, indicated in the report, was Abbot Feoktist.
Closing period
In 1919 the monastery was abolished. As the locals told, in order to disperse the monks, an armored car was driven. The village on the site of the monastery was renamed the Red Armored Car in memory of that event.
In the premises of the monastery in 1921 was a shelter for the elderly and disabled. In 1929, a brick-making commune was formed here, the activity of which was to disassemble the monastery towers and walls into bricks for sale.
Until the end of the 1930s. Trinity Cathedral acted as a parish church. In the same period, the monastery cemetery was destroyed.
At the end of the Second World War, a tractor school was organized in the hotel and in the preserved cell building, and then a psychiatric hospital was located in these buildings.
In the last decades of the twentieth century, the remnants of the monastery were transferred to the bauxite plant Alumina. A sanatorium-dispensary of the plant was placed in a monastic country-house. The main cathedral was used as a warehouse, and in 1956-1961. it was completely dismantled.
By the early 1990s only the two-story cell building, the skeleton of the four-tier bell tower of the cathedral, the building of the parish school, several household wooden buildings, the building of the strange house were preserved from the complex.
Resumption of the cloister
On Dymsky Lake, near a stone, where, according to tradition, St. Anthony prayed, in 1994 a wooden four-meter cross was installed. Such an event was timed to coincide with the 770th anniversary of the repose of Anthony and the bicentennial of the second renewal of the monastery in 1794.
On October 30, 1997, the Anthony-Dymsky Monastery was transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church and assigned to the Tikhvin Monastery as a monastery.
In 2000, they began to rebuild the main cathedral, work continues to this day. Through the efforts of Abbot Euthymius, rector of the Tikhvin Monastery, in 2001, the second acquisition of the relics of Anthony took place in the monastery. Until 2008, they were in the Assumption Cathedral of the Tikhvin monastery, and then were returned to the Trinity Anthony-Dymsky Monastery.
At the end of the nineties of the twentieth century, a wooden chapel of the Monk Anthony was erected on Dymsky Lake; in 2011 it was replaced by a stone chapel. In addition, a swimming pool was built and the beach was arranged.
On October 6, 2008, the Anthony-Dymsky Monastery received the status of an independent monastery, and Abbot Ignatius was appointed its rector.
Compound in St. Petersburg
In 1893, according to the project of architect N. Nikonov, the Church of the Protection of the Holy Virgin was erected for the St. Petersburg Diocesan Brotherhood. It has two thrones: below is the martyr Boniface, and above is the Protection of the Most Holy Theotokos. On June 19, 2012, the church received the status of a courtyard of the Smoke monastery. The first service in the temple of the martyr Bonifatius was held on August 11, 2012.
Anthony-Dymsky monastery: how to get there
The monastery is located in the Boksitogorsky district of the Leningrad region, in the village of Red Bronevik, p / o Galichno. You can get to it from the bus station of St. Petersburg on the Obvodny Canal. It is necessary to catch a shuttle bus going to Pikalevo or Boksitogorsk, get off at the Galichno stop, and then walk three kilometers on foot.