Moscow’s oldest monastery rebuilt

Press, 1 July 1985, Page 32

Moscow’s oldest monastery rebuilt

By

IRENA CZEKIERSKA,

Through NZPA-Reuter Moscow The Russian Orthodox Church is looking forward to celebrating 1000 years of Christianity with the reopening of Moscow’s oldest monastery for the first time since the Russian Revolution.

Work to restore the 700-year-old Danilovsky Monastery has been in progress for two years and looks set to be completed by Easter 1988, said Archimandrite Vevlogy, the community’s superior. Ten monks are already installed, some of them taking hammer and chisel to hand and others painstakingly restoring icons and frescoes decorating the two churches on the site. They work beside specialist craftsmen, builders and volunteers.

To the sound of clinking and hammering, Father Boris, a young monk who has just completed two years at a religious academy and is keen to try out his English, stood in the low, vaulted sixteenth century church of the Intercession.

He pointed to an icon depicting the monastery’s founder, Danil, the first prince of Moscow, who became a monk shortly before his death in 1303 and was canonised in 1652. As Father Boris showed the collection of old books that will form the basis of the monastery’s library, another monk dressed in traditional black robes, his long hair tied back, read from the Bible and prayed before an icon to the Virgin. Outside, the gold domes and crosses, the sheet copper rooves of the towers that punctuate the crenellated walls, and a row of five bells waiting to be hung f

in the entrance belfry, shone in the bright sunshine. Many of the buildings, including a former hospital, refectory and the superior’s residence, are still in ruins or under scaffolding as monks scurry among piles of planks. Orthodox believers across the land are raising most of the 30 million roubles (35 million dollars) for the project, which will establish the monastery as the Russian Orthodox Church’s religious and administrative centre, Father Yevlogy said. Patriarch Pimen, the head of the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union, currently has his headquarters at the Saint Sergius Monastery at Zagorsk, about 90km north of Moscow.

Because of. changes in church administration introduced by Peter the Great in 1703, the patriarchate has not had its centre in Moscow for more than 280 years. But the Danilovsky, south of the Moscow River, lies less than three km from the Kremlin. The Soviet Government’s decision two years ago to restore it, after it had stood crumbling and occupied by a nearby umbrella factory for years, reflects increasingly warm relations between the authorities and the church. Senior churchmen have won the Kremlin’s approval by actively supporting Soviet foreign policy goals and campaigning for its proposals on nuclear disarmament.

Father Boris said the Danilovsky would become a centre from which the Russian Orthodox Church would co-ordinate its efforts in the struggle for peace and its relations with foreign churches.

It will accommodate some 60 monks, whose main activity is prayer. Father Boris said he had special responsibility for visitors, but also organised the bellringing and worked on the manuscripts which the monastery produces as its chronicles.

Archimandrite Yevlogy, beaming under his “skufya” (the black hat worn by orthodox monks), an ivory cross hanging around his neck and his greying beard stretching to his chest, outlined the brothers’ daily programme.

The monks gather at 6 a.m. to pray for two hours, then go about their work before a midday lunch. The afternoon is spent in work before an early supper, and after a second mass they return to their rooms.

They eat “only things which grow, and dairy products,” Father Yevlogy said. Although they will produce some food on small plots of land which the church owns, they will not be able to achieve self-sufficiency in the traditional image of a monastery.

The image of hermits living in spartan white cells is also dispelled by a recent TASS news agency report that said the monastery would be completely refurbished, with “all modern conveniences.”

Unlike other religions, Orthodoxy does not have monastic orders and the monks tend to live in seclusion rather than undertake community work, Father Yevlogy explained.

He said that there were only a handful of Russian Orthodox monasteries in the Soviet Union, and some 15 convents.