From the history of Tambov monasteries of the 16th-17th centuries

Abstract

The first written mention of the Tambov monastery dates back to 1573, when on the bank of the Tsna River near the village of St. Cherneyevo in the Shatsky District (now the Ryazan Region) the black priest Matthew built a new Nikolskaya Church on the site of the old, dilapidated one, which had stood without service for a long time on Mamysheva Polyana. By 1583, in addition to the church, there were cells for five monks, and the entire territory of the hermitage was fenced in. This is how the Cherneevskaya Nikolskaya Pustyn appeared. It can be called the first center of monastic activity in Tambov region. The Purdyshevskaya Nativity of the Virgin Mary Hermitage for men was founded by the end of the 16th century. It was located in Temnikovsky district not far from the Mordvin village of Malye Purdyshki. It was first mentioned in 1596, and at that time the hermitage owned an patrimony and bee-hive forests. The sources indicate the elder Irinarkh as the founder. These are probably all the monasteries of the 16th century that we know anything about. As we can see, they were located in the north in places that were actively developed by Russian people at that time. The tsars encouraged their appearance here and tried to protect them from the hostile actions of the surrounding foreigners. In the 17th century, several more monasteries were founded in the north of the diocese, and the first women's monasteries appeared. In the small town of Elatma there were as many as three monasteries: two for women - Spassky and Uspensky, and a men's - Preobrazhensky. At the same time, the Sergievskaya Prolomskaya Hermitage in the Shatsky District, the Starokadomsky Trinity Monastery (first mentioned in 1652), the Vyshenskaya Assumption Hermitage (1620), and at the end of the century, the Sarov Assumption Hermitage and the Sanaksar Monastery, etc. were founded. The author comes to the conclusion that in the 16th-17th centuries, monasteries in the Tambov region participated in the colonization of new lands. An equally important mission that lay with the monks of that time was that they acted as Christian enlighteners of this wild land, and the monasteries themselves became spiritual centers of vast areas.