The history of the Sedmiozernaya Hermitage began in the same way as the history of most monasteries in Russia. In 1615, Schemamonk Evfimy, a native of Veliky Ustyug, settled in a deserted place where only pagan Cheremis frequented. Soon, having learned about the ascetic life of the blessed elder Euthymius, monks and novices began to settle next to him, and in 1627 the monastery was officially opened. Initially it was called Voznesensky. Schemamonk Euthymius himself was soon summoned by the Kazan Archbishop to the Kazan Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery of the Kazan Kremlin, where he died. For a long time the monastery was small and not rich. So in 1646, 27 brethren lived here and made their living by gardening.

The hermitage became a communal monastery in 1816, and in 1884 it was given personal control to the Kazan ruling bishops, who from now on became the abbots of the Sedmiozernaya hermitage.

Its main shrine was the Smolensk-Sedmiozernaya Icon of the Mother of God. Founder

monastery, Schemamonk Evfimy brought this icon, which had long been kept in the family of his parents, from Veliky Ustyug. With the blessing of the ruling bishop, Schemamonk Evfimy donated this miraculous image to the monastery. In 1654, when the plague was raging in Kazan, from which up to a third of the inhabitants died, the Mother of God appeared to the pious nun Martha in a dream and commanded that her miraculous Sedmiozerny image be brought from the monastery to Kazan, and the governors and clergy solemnly greeted it with a procession of the cross. All this was accomplished and the plague in the city stopped. From that time on, on the orders of Metropolitan Lawrence of Kazan, every year on June 26 a religious procession with the miraculous icon was held from the monastery, and the Sedmiozernaya icon was solemnly greeted at the very place where the Kizichesky Monastery was later built. Over the course of a month, the icon was transferred from one Kazan church to another. In addition, another religious procession to Kazan with the icon took place annually from September 9 to October 1. The miracles of the Smozhko-Sedmiozernaya Icon of the Mother of God glorified the monastery, where thousands of monks came every year. Currently, this miraculous icon is in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Kazan. Another glorious page in the history of the monastery is associated with the stay of the Venerable Elder Gabriel (Zyryanov) (1844-1915).

The Monk Gabriel came from the peasants of the Perm province. For 10 years he was a novice in the famous Optina Hermitage, and was the spiritual child of St. Ambrose of Optina. In Moscow, he took monastic vows with the name Tikhon, then, at the direction of the Optina elders, he left Moscow and headed to Raifa, and then to the Sedmiozernaya Hermitage, where he lived from 1883 to 1908. In 1894 he accepted the schema; in 1900, at the insistence of the ruling bishop, he was appointed vicar of the desert. Through the diligence of Elder Gabriel it was rebuilt in 1898-1899. a new two-story church in the name of St. Euthymius the Great and St. Tikhon of Zadonsk for the vigilant reading of the Psalter for the dead. At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. The Monk Gabriel was one of the most authoritative Russian elders. In 1908-1915 He lived in retirement in the Spaso-Eleazar Monastery near Pskov, in 1915 he returned to Kazan, but did not reach the Sedmiozernaya Hermitage, dying in the apartment of his spiritual son at the Kazan Theological Academy. At the same time, the elder was buried in the Sedmiozernaya Hermitage in the temple of St. Euthymius the Great, which he built. In 1997, Schema-Archimandrite Gabriel was canonized. By the beginning of the 20th century, Sedmiozernaya Hermitage was a large and beautiful monastery. Here were the Ascension Cathedral and the Church of the Smolensk Mother of God - both temples of the second half of the 17th century, the monastery was surrounded by walls of the same time. Inside there were five stone buildings built mainly in the 19th century. In 1881, a high bell tower was built. The history of its foundation and appearance of the Sedmiozernaya Hermitage was similar to the Raifa Monastery. But, unlike Raifa, Sedmiozernaya Hermitage

after closing in 1926 it was largely destroyed. By the time the monastery was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church (in 1997), only the fraternal building, built in 1893, part of the walls with a hospice house and a two-story church in the name of St. Euthymius the Great and St. Tikhon of Zadonsk were preserved. It was in this temple that Elder Gabriel was buried (his relics were partially saved from desecration in Soviet times and now part of them rests in the Sedmiozernaya Hermitage, and the rest in the Church of St. Righteous John of Kronstadt in Kazan). In addition, the monastery has a miraculous copy of the Sedmiozernaya Icon of the Mother of God, which enjoys special veneration. Not far from the monastery there are two holy springs.

Currently, restoration work is underway in the monastery, the church and the monastery building have already been restored, the monastery economy is being established, preparations are underway for the restoration of other monastery buildings, and the construction of the monastery fence.

The Mother of God Sedmiezernaya Hermitage is an Orthodox male monastery of the Kazan diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church north of Kazan, in the suburban village of Semiozerka. Until 1918 it was a 3rd class cenobitic monastery.

Founded in 1615 by the monk Euthymius, who moved from Veliky Ustyug and brought here the icon of the Mother of God, which later received the name Smolensk Sedmiezernaya (famous in 1654 for its salvation from a pestilence). In memory of the events of 1654, an annual religious procession was established on June 25 (old style) from the Sedmiozernaya Hermitage to Kazan.

Thanks to the veneration of the icon, generous donations began to flow into the monastery. In 1668, they managed to build the stone Smolensk Cathedral, the main church of the monastery, in which the icon was located (now only the ruins of the ground floor remain). Even earlier, in 1640, the first stone church appeared - Ascension.

In the 19th century, 3 more churches were added to them, as well as a multi-tiered gate bell tower. Another church, the sixth in a row, in the name of the icon of the Mother of God “Joy of All Who Sorrow”, was erected above the holy spring, 1 km from the desert.

The brethren of the monastery, both in the 18th and 19th centuries, numbered several dozen people; in some years the number of monastics and novices reached 100.

From 1883 to May 1908, Elder Gabriel (Zyryanov) lived in the monastery (glorified as a locally revered saint in 1996).

The last, before its closure, rector of the monastery (1922-1928), Archimandrite Alexander (Urodov) (August 14, 1961, O.S.), was also canonized as Saint Alexander of Sedmiezerny (Sanaksarsky).

In 1928, the monastery was closed and destroyed, almost its entire ensemble, including the main cathedral and bell tower, was destroyed. Some surviving buildings were used for the economic needs of the local state farm.

In 1996, the territory of the monastery was returned to the Russian Orthodox Church. The brothers of the desert are now few in number.

Of all the churches of the monastery, only one small church of Sts. has survived and been restored. Euthymius the Great and Tikhon of Zadonsk (1899). It contains the relics of St. Gabriel of Sedmiozernaya, as well as the revered copy of the Smolensk Sedmiozernaya Icon of the Mother of God (the icon itself is now in the Peter and Paul Cathedral of Kazan).

The history of the Sedmiozernaya Hermitage began in the same way as the history of most monasteries in Russia. In 1615, Schemamonk Evfimy, a native of Veliky Ustyug, settled in a deserted place where only pagan Cheremis frequented. Soon, having learned about the ascetic life of the blessed elder Euthymius, monks and novices began to settle next to him, and in 1627 the monastery was officially opened.

Initially it was called Voznesensky. Schemamonk Euthymius himself was soon summoned by the Kazan Archbishop to the Kazan Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery of the Kazan Kremlin, where he died. For a long time the monastery was small and not rich. So in 1646, 27 brethren lived here and made their living by gardening.

The hermitage became a communal monastery in 1816, and in 1884 it was given personal control to the Kazan ruling bishops, who from now on became the abbots of the Sedmiozernaya hermitage.

Its main shrine was the Smolensk-Sedmiozernaya Icon of the Mother of God. The founder of the monastery, Schemamonk Evfimy, brought this icon, which had long been kept in the family of his parents, from Veliky Ustyug. With the blessing of the ruling bishop, Schemamonk Evfimy donated this miraculous image to the monastery. In 1654, when the plague was raging in Kazan, from which up to a third of the inhabitants died, the Mother of God appeared to the pious nun Martha in a dream and commanded that her miraculous Sedmiozerny image be brought from the monastery to Kazan, and the governors and clergy solemnly greeted it with a procession of the cross. All this was accomplished and the plague in the city stopped.

From afar, another kilometer before Semiozerka, its sky-blue dome is visible against the background of a forest wall. Like a spark, the holy cross flickers in the sun. The temple itself, Easter red, from a distance turns slightly pink in the haze: the only living candle that festively illuminated the wide valley.

This whole landscape is very similar to the vicinity of the Seraphim of Sarov spring on the Satis River, half an hour’s drive from Diveevo. It seems: the same wonderful, Diveyevo places! The same dark green wall of forest rising above the field: a forest that seems even higher because of the slope on which it grows.

In the same way, the main shrine huddles modestly at the very edge: the chapel of St. Seraphim and the bathhouse are there, Euthymius Church is here. The road also leads to the shrine through a fast river: Satis is there, Solonka is here. And the very spirit of the two great saints is apparently very similar: Seraphim of Sarov and Gabriel of Sedmiozerny.

You can’t help but compare these places, of course, with the Raifa desert - although they, admittedly, are very different. The natural environment of the Sedmiozerny Monastery is the same miraculous miracle. Only here the forest is predominantly deciduous and not pine (however, even here there are single pines of several girths).

On the road to the Near Holy Spring - 1 km from the monastery - you come across poplars of some extraordinary height and width. Poplars, still miraculously preserved in some old corners of Kazan, are simply dwarfs in comparison: they are two times shorter...

Here, seeing all this, you easily believe in the legend about an ancient, completely immense oak tree, where the pagan Mari sacrificed horses and oxen, and all its branches were hung with the raw skins of animals slaughtered here. This was before the founding of the monastery. Monk Euthymius then witnessed a miracle for which he thanked God: “One day, when they came to celebrate their nasty holiday, suddenly the sky darkened, a storm arose, thunder was heard, a terrible lightning struck a tree and, crushing it, burned it to the very root..." The sacrifices have since stopped.

The holy spring itself is located in a ravine with a winding fast river at the bottom. A picturesque slope rises like a wall above the stream - not clayey, but white limestone... very similar to the steep Volga cliffs. From this steep slope, approximately from the middle of its height, water gushes out of the cracks. Along a special inclined chute above the river - a “Roman aqueduct” in miniature - it flows into the chapel (before the revolution, on the site of the chapel there was a stone Church of the Sorrowful Mother of God built in 1884). The purest ice water even surpasses Raifa water in taste. It contains increased amounts of silver and has healing properties, even from the point of view of impartial science. By the grace of God, miraculous healings here have not been interrupted for centuries. People constantly went to the source even in Soviet times, when the monastery itself was closed and destroyed.

Another 40 minutes walk up the same river - and we are at the Far Holy Spring. Or, as it is also called, the source of Mother Anisia, an ascetic mentioned in the “Legend...” of the 17th century: she settled here in solitude 20 years before the monk Euthymius. When he arrived, she testified that she had long heard angelic singing and the ringing of bells in this place - this is what finally confirmed the new hermit in the idea that God wanted to establish a monastery here.

Nun Anisia is buried near the spring and her “beds”, which, as the people believe, also bring healing to everyone who comes to them in prayer - a prophecy about this very thing is passed on.

Shrines: 1) Reliquary with the relics of St. Gabriel of Sedmiozerno. 2) A revered copy of the Smolensk Sedmiozernaya Icon of the Mother of God. 3) Holy springs in the vicinity of the monastery: Near and Far. a) The history of the monastery and the miraculous Smolensk icon. The history of the emergence of the Sedmiozernaya desert is strikingly similar to the history of the Raifa desert. Hieromonk Philaret founded the latter in 1613, and in 1615 another hieromonk, Euthymius, settled in the same wilderness on the Solonka River, in the region of the Seven Lakes - 17 kilometers north of Kazan. Unfortunately, we know very little about both ascetics. We only know that the hermit Euthymius was originally from Veliky Ustyug. That he came to Kazan together with his brother, a worldly man, who came here for a new residence “to arrange his household affairs.” Place of asceticism of Fr. Evfimy was suggested by the residents of Kazan in response to his questions. And this place very quickly turned into a large men’s monastery: a pillar of light from earth to heaven foreshadowed this to Euthymius at the beginning of his stay here, on one of the nights. Already in 1640-46. the stone Ascension Church was built here: a rare example of stone construction not half a century or even a century after the formation of the monastic community, but only 25-30 years later. That is, within the life of just one generation, by the middle of the 17th century, the monastery became rich and famous. In 1668, a large cathedral church in the name of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God was erected in it, to the north of Ascension (in 1710 it was renewed and consecrated anew). The miraculous icon to which the temple was dedicated will receive special attention. Its second name is Sedmiozernaya. This icon was already mentioned in our guidebook in the chapter “Kizicheskiy Monastery”: it was founded at the place where it was met by the inhabitants of Kazan in 1654, when it was brought to protect the city from a pestilence. Hundreds of thousands of people have already died in the central cities of Russia. “Meanwhile, the infection from Moscow spread to the Volga,” writes the author of the famous “Tale of the Sedmiozernaya Theotokos Hermitage...” (XVII century), “to the cities of Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Nizhny Novgorod and to many other places. And in these cities and villages so many people died that only God knows. Some villages were completely deserted, so that not a single person remained in them... I want to tell your love no less terrible things about the glorious city of Kazan. For the Creator was angry with this city for our sins... and if the Mother of God had not stood praying for us to Her Son, then it would have been desolate...” How did the icon of the Mother of God that saved our city appear in the Sedmiozernaya Hermitage? The founder of the desert, monk Euthymius, was transferred by Metropolitan Matthew to the Kazan Annunciation Cathedral in 1627. But even while serving in the cathedral, the “venerable one,” as the same “Tale” calls him, did not forget about the brethren. As a consolation and blessing, he decided to transfer to the desert the image of the Mother of God Hodegetria, taken from Ustyug, “from his father’s house.” That is, the miraculous image was once an ordinary home icon of the monk Euthymius. For a quarter of a century after that, the icon remained in the desert until it was remembered during the epidemic of 1654: the nun Mavra from the Kazan Mother of God Monastery had a prophetic dream that it was through this shrine that help and deliverance would come. The religious procession from Sedmiozerka to Kazan saved the city from an epidemic. It began to decline, and 2 years later, after the icon was brought back to Kazan, it completely stopped. The miracle forever glorified the Smolensk Sedmiozernaya Icon, making it the second shrine of our region after the Kazan Icon. Since then, for 350 years, this image has been covering both Kazan and the entire diocese with the cover of the Mother of God. A sign visible to everyone appeared at the same time: “When they walked around the city with the icon, then there became, as it were, some kind of barrier from the wrath of God. For dark clouds gathered outside the city, and the rays of the sun shone brightly above the city.” In memory of this event, until the revolution itself, every year on June 25, the icon was brought from the desert to Kazan and remained there for a month. With all the dates of the transfer from church to church, that first procession of the cross seemed to be repeated each time. On July 27 (August 9 according to the present style) the icon returned to the Sedmiozernaya Hermitage - for the main celebration of the monastery, for on August 10 all of Russia celebrates the day of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God. The 18 most memorable miracles (and it is, of course, impossible to count all of them) are called “The Legend” - supplemented from the 17th century and brought by a new narrator up to 1804 inclusive. Among them are the most amazing: - the epiphany of a girl born blind from Simbirsk; the epiphany of another 5-year-old girl from Kazan who was born blind; healing of the paralyzed and withered hand of Priest Philip and the dislocated leg of a 4-year-old boy Vasily from Sviyazhsk; healing from demonic possession of a Sviyazhsk resident who took a vow of monasticism after her deliverance. But the most amazing historical evidence was the following record of healing (1804): “that this meaning is true, I testify to this - the Kazan commandant, major general and cavalier Castellius.” Four people carried Stefan Nikolayevich Castellius to the prayer service in front of the icon - due to a long-standing illness in his legs, he could not move independently. A few days later he was walking freely. For a pilgrimage to the desert, requiring temporary abandonment of his duties, such a high-ranking official even needed a special Highest permission. No less famous in the 19th century was the case of the healing of the abbess of the Kazan Mother of God Monastery Dosithea from severe rheumatism of the back and right arm. The functions of the hand were restored through prayer before the Sedmiozernaya icon in 1855, and the next year the abbess was able to make her first prostration before the Lady: the terrible pain in the spine disappeared. During religious processions, the icon was received in their homes by residents of Kazan and many surrounding villages, through which it was solemnly carried. Another amazing healing of a paralyzed girl on the patronal holiday was witnessed not by anyone, but by the “proletarian” writer A.M. Gorky, known to all of us from school as a convinced atheist... but once, in his youth, he was a sincere seeker of God. How fate doesn't change people! “The Russian people are great, and life is indescribably wonderful! In the Kazan province I experienced the last blow to my heart, the blow that completes the construction of the temple. It was in the Sedmiezernaya Hermitage, during the religious procession with the miraculous icon of the Mother of God: on that day they were waiting for the icon to return to the monastery from the city - a solemn day. I stood on a hill above the lake and looked: everything around was flooded with people, and the body of the people was flowing in dark waves towards the gates of the monastery, beating, splashing against its walls - the sun was descending and its autumn rays were bright red. The bells tremble like birds ready to fly after their song, and everywhere the naked heads of people turn red in the rays of the sun, like double poppies. At the gates of the monastery they are waiting for a miracle: in a small cart a young girl lies motionless; her face is frozen like white wax, her gray eyes are half-open, and her whole life is in the quiet flutter of her long eyelashes. People come up, look the sick woman in the face, and the father says in a measured voice, shaking his beard: - Have pity, Orthodox, pray for the unfortunate woman, she has been lying without arms, without legs for four years; ask the Mother of God for help, the Lord will reward you for your holy prayers, help your father and mother overcome grief. Apparently, he has been taking his daughter to monasteries for a long time and has already lost hope of a cure;..." And here is a description of the miracle itself: "Then everything around gasped, - as if the earth were a copper bell and a certain Svyatogor hit it with all his strength - he shuddered, The people staggered and shouted in confusion: “On your feet!” Help her! Get up, girl, on your feet! Pick her up! We grabbed the girl, lifted her, put her on the ground and held her lightly, and she bent like an ear of corn in the wind and screamed: “Darlings!” God! Oh, Lady! Darlings! “Go,” the people shout, “go!” I remember a dusty face covered in sweat and tears, and through the moisture of tears the miraculous power sparkles imperiously - faith in His power to work miracles. The healed woman walks quietly among us, trustingly presses her revived body against the body of the people, smiles, all white as a flower, and says: “Let me go, I’m alone!” She stopped, swayed - she was coming... At the gates of the monastery I stopped seeing her and came to my senses a little, I looked around - there was a holiday and a festive hum everywhere... the dawn was burning brightly in the sky, and the lake was dressed in the crimson of her reflections. A certain person walks past me, smiles and asks: “Did you see that?” I hugged him and kissed him, like a brother after a long separation, and we couldn’t find a word to say to each other; smiling, they silently parted.” It is not surprising that the desert, overshadowed by such a gracious power of the Most Holy Theotokos, grew, expanded and prospered. Unlike other monasteries of the diocese, in the 300 years from its foundation to the revolution it experienced almost no periods of serious decline. Her brethren numbered several dozen people both before the reform of 1764 and in the 19th century, when the number of ascetics, together with novices, even reached a hundred. For a long time it was the largest monastery in the diocese in terms of the number of brothers - and only at the very end of the 19th century did it give way to the young Archangel Michael Monastery of the Kozmodemyansk district (now the territory of Mari El). By the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. The architectural ensemble of the Sedmiozernaya Hermitage was not inferior in magnificence to Raifa. An even higher bell tower rose here above the gate: its lower tiers in shape and size practically coincided with those of Raifa, but it had one more tier. And the Sedmiozernaya bell tower was a little older - 1879. She was also crowned with a watch. There were 11 bells. In the very center of the monastery rectangle, the cathedral in the name of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God, the custodian of the main shrine of the monastery, stood majestically in white. Its pitcher-shaped dome, in the Ukrainian Baroque style, was successfully combined with the small dome of the Ascension Church standing to the south, which was about half as low. Both the cathedral and the church have hardly changed in appearance since the 17th century, when they were built. To the north of the cathedral - all on the same line - in 1899 a temple was erected in the name of St. Euthymius the Great and St. Tikhon of Zadonsky (architect - F. Malinovsky). Rev. initiated this construction and collected all the funds for it. Gabriel of Sedmiozerny - in fulfillment of his vow of eternal remembrance of the departed. This was preceded by his miraculous vision during his illness - this is how the elder himself later spoke about it: “I see our Sedmiozernaya desert, that it is on all sides and throughout the entire space, as far as I could see in length, width and height, throughout air, starting from the ground, surrounded by rows of the dead. It seemed to me that the dead were standing with their heads bowed towards me, as if asking me for something. The righteous also stood in rows above them, and, frankly speaking, the entire airspace was filled with them. Here are the venerables and monastics, higher up are the martyrs and martyrs, also in rows: and even higher are the holy monks, saints, apostles, prophets... At the very height is a fiery, light-ethereal, caressing Flame. And everyone’s eyes are turned to Him. One of the saints asked: “What, do we need to take Hieroschemamonk Gabriel to us?” Then a voice was heard from the ranks of the saints, and it was St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, whose voice I heard clearly and saw him himself: “No, it’s too early, he promised to pray for the dead. Let him pray...” And I was sorry to part with the great multitude of saints, but I also felt unworthy of it. I recognized many of the dead people who presented themselves to me: here were my long-dead relatives, whom I had already forgotten about. After this vision, I immediately wrote down the names of them all and began to remember and pray according to my strength as much as I could.” It is noteworthy that only this memorial church has survived to this day out of the six churches of the monastery. The revolution terribly devastated Sedmiozerka - much more than Raifa. From the magnificent Smolensk Cathedral, only the ground floor remained, which turned into a kind of mound. Only in the east do former altar ledges emerge from massive stones, and here and there details of the beautiful brick “pattern” of the 17th century are visible. Even from the ruins one can judge how majestic the main temple was... but it was just that... There was nothing left at all - not even the foundations - of the Ascension Church and the great bell tower. The lakes that once washed the monastery rectangle on three sides, like a small peninsula, have dried up - there is no longer a need for that picturesque bridge that we see in ancient lithographs of the desert in front of its bell tower with a gate. And the gate itself is now on the opposite side: from the north, not from the south. But the revival of even one church of God is the key to the future restoration of the entire monastery... Several years ago, the ruins of the monastery, plundered in 1918. and finally closed in 1927, were finally returned to the Church. The new brethren of the monastery, led by the abbot, Hegumen Herman, first gathered for services in a temporary church, which was set up in a two-story residential building. By 2000, the Church of St. Euthymius the Great and Tikhon of Zadonsk - the same one who was memorialized. From afar, another kilometer before Semiozerka, its sky-blue dome is visible against the background of a forest wall. Like a spark, the holy cross flickers in the sun. The temple itself, Easter red, from a distance turns slightly pink in the haze: the only living candle that festively illuminated the wide valley. This landscape is very similar to the vicinity of the Seraphim of Sarov spring on the Satis River, which is half an hour’s drive from Diveevo. It seems: the same wonderful, Diveyevo places! The same dark green wall of forest rising above the field, which seems even higher due to the slope on which it grows. In exactly the same way, the main shrine huddles at the very edge: the chapel of St. Seraphim with the bath is there, Euthymius Church is here. The road also leads to the shrine through a fast river: Satis - there, Solonka - here. And the very spirit of the great saints is apparently very similar: Seraphim of Sarov and Gabriel of Sedmiozerny. You can’t help but compare these places, of course, with the Raifa desert - although they, admittedly, are very different. The natural environment of the Sedmiozerny Monastery is an equally miraculous miracle. Only here the forest is predominantly deciduous and not pine (however, even here there are single pines of several girths). On the road to the Near Holy Spring - 1 km from the monastery - you come across poplars of some extraordinary height and width. Poplars, still miraculously preserved in some old corners of Kazan, are simply dwarfs compared to these: they are two times smaller... Here you can easily believe in the legend about an ancient, immense oak tree, from which the pagan Mari sacrificed horses and oxen, so that everything its branches were hung with raw skins of animals slaughtered here. This was before the founding of the monastery. The monk Euthymius then witnessed a miracle for which he thanked God: “One day, when they came to celebrate their nasty holiday, suddenly the sky darkened, a storm arose, thunder was heard, a terrible lightning struck the tree and, crushing it, burned it to the very roots...” have since stopped. The holy spring itself is located in a ravine with a winding fast river at the bottom. A picturesque slope rises like a wall above the stream - not clayey, but white limestone... very similar to the steep Volga cliffs. From this steep slope, approximately from the middle of its height, water gushes out of the cracks. Along a special inclined chute above the river - a “Roman aqueduct” in miniature - it flows into the chapel (before the revolution, on the site of the chapel there was a stone Church of the Sorrowful Mother of God built in 1884). The purest ice water seems even tastier than Raifa water. It contains increased amounts of silver and has healing properties, even from the point of view of impartial science. By the grace of God, miraculous healings here have not been interrupted for centuries. People constantly went to the source even in Soviet times, when the monastery itself was closed and destroyed. Recently a bathhouse was built near the spring. Another 40 minutes of walking up the same river - and we are at the Far Holy Spring or, as it is also called, the spring of Mother Anisia, an ascetic mentioned in the “Legend...” of the 17th century. She settled here in solitude 20 years before the monk Euthymius. When he arrived, it was she who testified that she had long heard angelic singing and the ringing of bells here - this finally confirmed the new hermit in the idea that God wanted to establish a monastery here. Nun Anisia is buried near the spring and her “beds”, which, as the people believe, also bring healing to everyone who comes to them in prayer. People take a dip in a special small bathhouse built at the Far Spring. In our time, cases of healing have been recorded here, even from cancer in the later stages... Truly, according to our faith, miracles are given by God! (An article from the “Guide to the Shrines of the Kazan Diocese” by Andrei Roshchektaev, fully available in the “Samizdat” project at http://zhurnal.lib.ru/r/roshektaew_a_w/indexdate.shtml. In the full version of the article about the Sedmiozernaya Hermitage there is also a section “Holy Elders S.P.”, which briefly tells about the Venerable Gabriel and Alexander of Sedmiozerny).

From the book by S.V. Bulgakov "Russian monasteries in 1913".

The history of the Sedmiozernaya Hermitage began in the same way as the history of most monasteries in Russia. In 1615, Schemamonk Evfimy, a native of Veliky Ustyug, settled in a deserted place where only pagan Cheremis frequented. Soon, having learned about the ascetic life of the blessed elder Euthymius, monks and novices began to settle next to him, and in 1627 the monastery was officially opened. Initially it was called Voznesensky. Schemamonk Euthymius himself was soon summoned by the Kazan Archbishop to the Kazan Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery of the Kazan Kremlin, where he died. For a long time the monastery was small and not rich. So in 1646, 27 brethren lived here and made their living by gardening.
The hermitage became a communal monastery in 1816, and in 1884 it was given personal control to the Kazan ruling bishops, who from now on became the abbots of the Sedmiozernaya hermitage.

Its main shrine was the Smolensk-Sedmiozernaya Icon of the Mother of God. The founder of the monastery, Schemamonk Evfimy, brought this icon, which had long been kept in the family of his parents, from Veliky Ustyug. With the blessing of the ruling bishop, Schemamonk Evfimy donated this miraculous image to the monastery. In 1654, when the plague was raging in Kazan, from which up to a third of the inhabitants died, the Mother of God appeared to the pious nun Martha in a dream and commanded that her miraculous Sedmiozerny image be brought from the monastery to Kazan, and the governors and clergy solemnly greeted it with a procession of the cross. All this was accomplished and the plague in the city stopped. From that time on, on the orders of Metropolitan Lawrence of Kazan, every year on June 26 a religious procession with the miraculous icon was held from the monastery, and the Sedmiozernaya icon was solemnly greeted at the very place where the Kizichesky Monastery was later built. Over the course of a month, the icon was transferred from one Kazan church to another. In addition, another religious procession to Kazan with the icon took place annually from September 9 to October 1. The miracles of the Smozhko-Sedmiozernaya Icon of the Mother of God glorified the monastery, where thousands of monks came every year. Currently, this miraculous icon is in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Kazan. Another glorious page in the history of the monastery is associated with the stay of the Venerable Elder Gabriel (Zyryanov) (1844-1915).

The Monk Gabriel came from the peasants of the Perm province. For 10 years he was a novice in the famous Optina Hermitage, and was the spiritual child of St. Ambrose of Optina. In Moscow, he took monastic vows with the name Tikhon, then, at the direction of the Optina elders, he left Moscow and headed to Raifa, and then to the Sedmiozernaya Hermitage, where he lived from 1883 to 1908. In 1894 he accepted the schema; in 1900, at the insistence of the ruling bishop, he was appointed vicar of the desert. Through the diligence of Elder Gabriel it was rebuilt in 1898-1899. a new two-story church in the name of St. Euthymius the Great and St. Tikhon of Zadonsk for the vigilant reading of the Psalter for the dead. At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. The Monk Gabriel was one of the most authoritative Russian elders. In 1908-1915 He lived in retirement in the Spaso-Eleazar Monastery near Pskov, in 1915 he returned to Kazan, but did not reach the Sedmiozernaya Hermitage, dying in the apartment of his spiritual son at the Kazan Theological Academy. At the same time, the elder was buried in the Sedmiozernaya Hermitage in the temple of St. Euthymius the Great, which he built. In 1997, Schema-Archimandrite Gabriel was canonized. By the beginning of the 20th century, Sedmiozernaya Hermitage was a large and beautiful monastery. Here were the Ascension Cathedral and the Church of the Smolensk Mother of God - both temples of the second half of the 17th century, the monastery was surrounded by walls of the same time. Inside there were five stone buildings built mainly in the 19th century. In 1881, a high bell tower was built. The history of its foundation and appearance of the Sedmiozernaya Hermitage was similar to the Raifa Monastery. But, unlike Raifa, the Sedmiozernaya Hermitage was largely destroyed after its closure in 1926. By the time the monastery was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church (in 1997), only the fraternal building, built in 1893, part of the walls with a hospice house and a two-story church in the name of St. Euthymius the Great and St. Tikhon of Zadonsk were preserved. It was in this temple that Elder Gabriel was buried (his relics were partially saved from desecration in Soviet times and now part of them rests in the Sedmiozernaya Hermitage, and the rest in the Church of St. Righteous John of Kronstadt in Kazan). In addition, the monastery has a miraculous copy of the Sedmiozernaya Icon of the Mother of God, which enjoys special veneration. Not far from the monastery there are two holy springs.
Currently, restoration work is underway in the monastery, the church and the monastery building have already been restored, the monastery economy is being established, preparations are underway for the restoration of other monastery buildings, and the construction of the monastery fence.

Brothers of the monastery:
Hegumen - Archimandrite German (Kuzmin). Treasurer - Hierodeacon Agapit (Fighters). Hieromonk Abraham (Bobrov), Hieromonk Varlaam (Strelnikov), Hieromonk Onuphry (Artyushkin), Hierodeacon Nil (Komlev), Hierodeacon Spiridon (Belosludtsev).

The history of the Sedmiozernaya Hermitage began in the same way as the history of most monasteries in Russia. In 1615, Schemamonk Evfimy, a native of Veliky Ustyug, settled in a deserted place where only pagan Cheremis frequented. Soon, having learned about the ascetic life of the blessed elder Euthymius, monks and novices began to settle next to him, and in 1627 the monastery was officially opened. Initially it was called Voznesensky. Schemamonk Euthymius himself was soon summoned by the Kazan Archbishop to the Kazan Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery of the Kazan Kremlin, where he died. For a long time the monastery was small and not rich. So in 1646, 27 brethren lived here and made their living by gardening.

The hermitage became a communal monastery in 1816, and in 1884 it was given personal control to the Kazan ruling bishops, who from now on became the abbots of the Sedmiozernaya hermitage.

Its main shrine was the Smolensk-Sedmiozernaya Icon of the Mother of God. Founder

monastery, Schemamonk Evfimy brought this icon, which had long been kept in the family of his parents, from Veliky Ustyug. With the blessing of the ruling bishop, Schemamonk Evfimy donated this miraculous image to the monastery. In 1654, when the plague was raging in Kazan, from which up to a third of the inhabitants died, the Mother of God appeared to the pious nun Martha in a dream and commanded that her miraculous Sedmiozerny image be brought from the monastery to Kazan, and the governors and clergy solemnly greeted it with a procession of the cross. All this was accomplished and the plague in the city stopped. From that time on, on the orders of Metropolitan Lawrence of Kazan, every year on June 26 a religious procession with the miraculous icon was held from the monastery, and the Sedmiozernaya icon was solemnly greeted at the very place where the Kizichesky Monastery was later built. Over the course of a month, the icon was transferred from one Kazan church to another. In addition, another religious procession to Kazan with the icon took place annually from September 9 to October 1. The miracles of the Smozhko-Sedmiozernaya Icon of the Mother of God glorified the monastery, where thousands of monks came every year. Currently, this miraculous icon is in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Kazan. Another glorious page in the history of the monastery is associated with the stay of the Venerable Elder Gabriel (Zyryanov) (1844-1915).

The Monk Gabriel came from the peasants of the Perm province. For 10 years he was a novice in the famous Optina Hermitage, and was the spiritual child of St. Ambrose of Optina. In Moscow, he took monastic vows with the name Tikhon, then, at the direction of the Optina elders, he left Moscow and headed to Raifa, and then to the Sedmiozernaya Hermitage, where he lived from 1883 to 1908. In 1894 he accepted the schema; in 1900, at the insistence of the ruling bishop, he was appointed vicar of the desert. Through the diligence of Elder Gabriel it was rebuilt in 1898-1899. a new two-story church in the name of St. Euthymius the Great and St. Tikhon of Zadonsk for the vigilant reading of the Psalter for the dead. At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. The Monk Gabriel was one of the most authoritative Russian elders. In 1908-1915 He lived in retirement in the Spaso-Eleazar Monastery near Pskov, in 1915 he returned to Kazan, but did not reach the Sedmiozernaya Hermitage, dying in the apartment of his spiritual son at the Kazan Theological Academy. At the same time, the elder was buried in the Sedmiozernaya Hermitage in the temple of St. Euthymius the Great, which he built. In 1997, Schema-Archimandrite Gabriel was canonized. By the beginning of the 20th century, Sedmiozernaya Hermitage was a large and beautiful monastery. Here were the Ascension Cathedral and the Church of the Smolensk Mother of God - both temples of the second half of the 17th century, the monastery was surrounded by walls of the same time. Inside there were five stone buildings built mainly in the 19th century. In 1881, a high bell tower was built. The history of its foundation and appearance of the Sedmiozernaya Hermitage was similar to the Raifa Monastery. But, unlike Raifa, Sedmiozernaya Hermitage

after closing in 1926 it was largely destroyed. By the time the monastery was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church (in 1997), only the fraternal building, built in 1893, part of the walls with a hospice house and a two-story church in the name of St. Euthymius the Great and St. Tikhon of Zadonsk were preserved. It was in this temple that Elder Gabriel was buried (his relics were partially saved from desecration in Soviet times and now part of them rests in the Sedmiozernaya Hermitage, and the rest in the Church of St. Righteous John of Kronstadt in Kazan). In addition, the monastery has a miraculous copy of the Sedmiozernaya Icon of the Mother of God, which enjoys special veneration. Not far from the monastery there are two holy springs.

Currently, restoration work is underway in the monastery, the church and the monastery building have already been restored, the monastery economy is being established, preparations are underway for the restoration of other monastery buildings, and the construction of the monastery fence.

In 1678, the monastery already owned land of 459 dessiatinas 219 quarters, 19 peasant households, hay fields worth 2100 kopecks, forest land 18 miles long, 4 mills, 12 shops in Kazan, fishing grounds on rivers and lakes.

From the second half of the 17th century, monastic life gradually weakened. The state and church reforms of Peter I completed a crushing blow that broke the former strength of Russian monasticism and the church itself. A new, Synodal, period in its history began. Monasteries found themselves subject to various taxes, and monastic vows began to be limited to very cramped conditions. Thus, by the time the monastic states were established (1764), many monasteries were assigned to other, richer monasteries, and some were abolished. This fate did not befall the Sedmiezernaya Hermitage. According to the states in 1764, she was assigned to class III. After the dramatic events that followed in the first quarter of the 20th century, Sedmiezernaya Hermitage shared the fate of all 26 monasteries of the Kazan diocese. When it was abolished, the buildings were transferred to house a colony for criminals. Only service buildings and the only temple - the tomb of Elder Gabriel - built by him himself have survived to this day.

The Orthodox Church has entered an era of atheism. And no wonder. For the leader of the revolution, Lenin, Orthodoxy was a kind of “spiritual booze in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demands for a life somewhat worthy of a human being,” and there could be no talk of reconciliation. The fight against religion was declared a party-wide cause and went on on all fronts. On January 20 (February 2), 1918, the decree “On the separation of church from state and school from church” was adopted and published on January 23 (February 5), according to which the Russian Orthodox Church was deprived of the right of a legal entity. She was forbidden to have any property. All the property of the religious societies that existed in Russia was declared by decree to be national property, that is, it was nationalized by the state. After the decree was issued, about 6 thousand churches and monasteries were immediately confiscated from the church, and all bank accounts were closed. Kazan province was no exception. Already February 15, 1918 The Kazan Council of People's Commissars removed the Spiritual Consistory from business and confiscated its building. The appeal of the Church Union of the Kazan Diocese said: “the sanctity of churches is being desecrated; Church treasures, collected through the sacrifices of believers, are plundered; worship services are stopped; the clergy are expelled." The hostages primarily included white clergy and monastics, and executions became regular. Only in 1918 33 clergy of the Kazan diocese were tortured. The situation was even more difficult at the monasteries, where detachments were sent to inventory property and grain products, collect taxes, and alienate lands from the monasteries.

1918 became the beginning of the Way of the Cross for the Sedmiezernaya Mother of God Hermitage. The remoteness of the monastery did not save it from raids; on the contrary, it provoked them. And there was plenty to rob. Under the abbess of Schema-Archimandrite Gabriel, the Sedmiezernaya Hermitage of the Mother of God acquired a strong economy. Agriculture became the main source of desert maintenance. With the help of the monastics, they began to cultivate lands that had previously been rented out, agricultural equipment was purchased, a grain dryer was built according to the priest’s own design, a barnyard and a butter churner with a separator, three large beekeepers were built, for which Caucasian and even Italian and American bees were ordered. The monastery's farm included a forge, a cooperage for oak barrels and a tub, a carpentry, a shoemaker's, and a tailor's workshop. March 8, 1918 The Kaimar volost committee requisitioned all the horse and cattle of the monastery, and the courtyard of the monastery in Kazan was occupied by the chief of police on a private basis as a building for the Red Guards.

Sedmiozernaya Bogoroditskaya hermitage.

Heavily armed bandits and deserters often visited the monastery in search of easy prey. In April, the abbot of the Sedmiezernaya Mother of God Hermitage, Archimandrite Andronik, wrote about another attack: “...at 12 o’clock at night, unknown people who had arrived began knocking on the monastery gates so that the monastery gates would immediately be opened for them to conduct a search in the monastery, as if three officers were hiding in the monastery, which the monastery never had. But while the guards were waking up the administration of the monastery and, by order of it, the alarm bell was sounded, to which the people of both Sedmiozernaya Slobodka and the village of Shigaley immediately gathered, with the help of which it was necessary to find out that all the armed people who arrived were 27 people for whom the monastery gates were not opened , they entered our horse yard before the alarm rang, woke up the workers and, under the threat of a revolver, forced us to harness our horses to carts, in the hope, probably, of collecting everything that came to hand in the monastery and leaving to hide. However, as soon as the bells started ringing, the robbers from the horse yard disappeared.”

September 9, 1918 Armed people again arrived at the monastery under the guise of government representatives to requisition weapons, and in the absence of any, they grabbed all the cash, as well as the archimandrite’s pocket watch. The situation was saved by residents of Sedmiozernaya Sloboda, who demanded a search warrant from the robbers. The presented paper stated that the bearer was a soldier of the Ufa Regiment. Seeing that the matter was taking an undesirable turn, the bandits hastened to escape.

The Russian Orthodox Church emerged from the civil war, despite persecution, fundamentally unbroken. But soon after the end of hostilities, plans began to be developed for a radical attack on the church, the reason for which was a terrible famine, which captured up to a quarter of the grain-producing provinces in its orbit. The Church began to look for ways to save the starving in the summer of 1921. Patriarch Tikhon turned to the Russian flock, to the peoples of the world, to the heads of Christian churches abroad with a request to help starving Russia.

The clergy, in turn, began to create diocesan committees to help the hungry. However, the Russian Orthodox Church's initiative to collect donations for the hungry was rejected. The basis was found. The Church, as an institution separated from the state, could not engage in charity. Lenin decided to use the famine for political purposes, giving the instruction: “The more representatives of the reactionary bourgeoisie and the reactionary clergy we manage to shoot on this occasion, the better. It is now necessary to teach this public a lesson so that for several decades they will not dare to think about any resistance.”

On February 16, 1922, the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee adopted the Resolution “On the confiscation of church valuables for sale to help the starving.” Local authorities took the stand. In the Tatar Republic, a commission for accounting, confiscation and concentration of valuables was created at the end of January 1922. On March 4 of the same year, by a resolution of the bureau of the Tatar regional party committee, the commission was asked to begin implementing the decree on the confiscation of church valuables, “carrying out an appropriate campaign.” The chairman of the Kazan commission for the confiscation of church valuables, Schwartz, set the task “If possible, leave nothing in churches and monasteries.”

The campaign to confiscate church valuables that unfolded throughout the country was accompanied almost everywhere by outbreaks of anti-government protests. A total of 1,414 bloody incidents were recorded. The reason was not only the confiscation of sacred objects, but also the blasphemous behavior of commission members, who smoked and cursed in churches, and mocked the priests. In general, for the period 1921-1922. The Bolsheviks confiscated sacred objects and jewelry worth over 4.5 million gold rubles from the Church. Silver - up to 182 poods, gold - more than 21 spools, pearls - more than 4 pounds, all precious stones were requisitioned from Orthodox churches and monasteries in Kazan.

The campaign to confiscate church valuables began an open confrontation between the authorities and the Sedmiezernaya Kazan Mother of God Hermitage, which was headed by the new abbot of the monastery, Archimandrite Alexander (in the world Georgy Urodov). This was not the first clash with Soviet power. He received the label “ardent counter-revolutionary”, who promised Archimandrite Alexander a martyrdom under the new regime, while being the rector of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary Sanaksar Monastery. In this monastery on August 30, 1911. novice George was tonsured a monk and received the name Alexander in honor of the blessed prince Alexander Nevsky. Less than a month later, on the patronal feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos Monastery, Father Alexander was ordained to the rank of hierodeacon, and on July 22, 1913. - into a hieromonk. Despite his youth, Father Alexander was appointed to the position of treasurer of the monastery, and from 1914. due to the illness of the abbot, he carried out his affairs in managing the monastery. After the repose of the rector, Hieromonk Alexander was elevated to the rank of abbot. After the establishment of Soviet power in the city of Temnikov, Abbot Alexander remained firm both in the faith and in defending the Church from its enemies. He countered the general unbridledness with fierce prayer, and, as before, worked to spiritually strengthen the brethren and the laity who turned to him for instructions. However, part of the brethren found themselves drawn into the orbit of godless destructive influence. Having secured the support of the Bolsheviks, the illegally elected abbot Benedict ordered the isolation of Archimandrite Alexander, who was kept in an unheated cell without hot food. At the same time, based on the denunciation of part of the brethren, the Military Revolutionary Tribunal opened the “Case of the abbot of the Sanaksar Monastery, Abbot Alexander, in agitation against the Soviet regime.” The rector was accused of monarchism and criticism of Soviet power. The accusation was more than serious at that time. And for lesser guilt they were allowed to spend money without trial or investigation. Father Alexander had just been expelled from the monastery. March 21, 1922 Abbot Alexander was appointed governor of the Sedmiezernaya Hermitage and almost immediately elevated to the rank of archimandrite. Hegumen Alexander took on a lot of work, anxiety and worries, trying to preserve the monastery and elevate the spiritual life of its monks. And this was not easy to do. Under his leadership, the monastery became a stronghold of firm standing in the Orthodox faith, an example of uncompromisingness in protecting shrines from the encroachments of the new government, a center of spiritual and moral resistance of the Orthodox people to militant atheism. Understanding the cynicism of the ongoing policy of confiscating church valuables, Archimandrite Alexander demanded that all valuables be transferred to the church reserved for religious services and, as a result, he would be held accountable “for concealing valuables.” Many years later, one of the priest’s spiritual children recalled: “He did not give up the icons when the monastery was destroyed. There was a miracle worker there too. They wanted to take away the icons, but I, he says, didn’t give them back, so they took me first - then they took the icons.”

Meanwhile, the struggle of the Soviet government against the Russian Orthodox Church was gaining momentum. The Orthodox Church was defined as the only legally “existing counter-revolutionary force that has influence on the masses.” Temples and monasteries were closed en masse. This fate could not be avoided by the Sedmiezernaya Hermitage. In 1926 a decision was made to close the monastery. The believers were left with a “one-person parish in one church, called Voznesenskoye.” The petitions of the peasants to leave the churches at the disposal of the believers remained unheeded. But the residents of Sedmiezernaya Sloboda were not going to give up the shrine for plunder. During the first visit of government officials, believers locked themselves in the cathedral and were not allowed to seal it. The second attempt was also unsuccessful. The head of the RAO and the police of the Kazan region, Makarov, wrote in a report: “I ... managed to seal the cathedral, but was unable to leave back, since a crowd instantly gathered around the apartment of senior policeman Vshivtsev, numbering at least three hundred people, who persistently began to demand with threats that I opened the cathedral... Seeing this situation, we wanted to leave for the city, but had absolutely no opportunity... I returned the keys, but after only an hour the crowd dispersed, shouting: “Even if you come in a detachment, we won’t let anyone be arrested, and the church You won’t close it.”

Fearing a serious rebellion among the residents of the settlement, government officials appeared within the walls of the monastery only two months later, accompanied by a detachment of five mounted policemen. The goal remained the same, but the believers did not allow the property of the former monastery to be described and the cathedral to be sealed. The authorities made a conclusion for themselves: for the success of the enterprise it is necessary to isolate the monks and the most active laity. By this time, of the 87 monks remaining in the monastery, Archimandrite Alexander and Hieromonks Martyry and Benjamin remained. All three were arrested on October 31, 1928. Punitive authorities rightly associated with their names the opposition of believers to the confiscation of church valuables, the sealing of monastery churches, and the atrocities of those in power.. March 22, 1929 A special Meeting at the OGPU Collegium passed a verdict: Archimandrite Alexander and Hieromonk Veniamin should be “imprisoned in a concentration camp for a period of three years,” and Hieromonk Martyrius should be sent to Siberia for the same period. After his stay in the concentration camp, Father Alexander spent another three years in exile in the Urals and then moved to the Vyatka region. The catacomb period of the abbot's life began, which ended only with the election of Alexy (Simansky) as patriarch.

After the destruction of the Sedmiezernaya Mother of God Hermitage, some of the monks retired to the forest, where they built a wooden church in honor of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos. The monastery existed until 1937, the year of execution. 1930s were marked by a new wave of repression, which affected all segments of the population, but the clergy and believers especially suffered. In fact, the question arose about the very existence of the Russian Orthodox Church and religion in the Soviet Union.

Under these conditions, the authorities could not allow monks to be present even in the dense forest. They were arrested. The prisoners felt all the hatred of the regime upon arrival in Kazan. One of them, Scherodeacon Anthony (in the world Alexander Dmitrievich Semenov) recalled: “They lit a fire in the middle of the city. Our hands are tied. Then they threw not only what we had prepared into the fire, but even tore off our last shirts. We were kept naked and barefoot on the street. They burned everything, even the crosses. They laid us with our backs up, like a bridge, and began to beat us with whips. Our skin was torn. Then the commander ordered everyone to be driven into the barn. They kept us there for a week. Then the order came to send us from the city to the taiga.” Laishev, Druzhina station near Sverdlovsk, Naryan-Mar, and finally, a camp near Igarka. This stage was terrible and bloody. But the prisoners performed divine services, despite bullying and torture. Firmness in faith only inflamed the tormentors. The beatings were daily, and after the torture, bound prisoners were kept in lattice cages where they could only stand. It seemed that human beings were unable to withstand this torture even for a day. Father Anthony was put in a cage for two days, and then beaten with sticks until he was half to death. Finally, the camp authorities tried to execute Father Anthony in a homemade electric chair. This is what the priest himself said: “It was on my angel day... The communists came. They tied me by my feet to a sleigh and started driving the horses across the frozen ground. There wasn't even a forest there. We drove for two hours. Nothing works out for them, I don’t die. They dragged me on my back, although at that time it didn’t matter to me whether they dragged me face up or down. Then they hung me upside down, with my back to a tree or pole. They beat me in the stomach with a stick and swore all sorts of blasphemous words until the boss came. He gave the order: “Comrades, stop this business. We recently invented a machine, let's test it. If it works, we will destroy a lot of them.” They brought me to a cell and sat me in a hard chair. They connected wires to my eyes, turned on the current, and my eyes were gone. It was like something hit me in the head. Then I, along with the chair, fell into the basement, which was called a “stone bag.” There I lay on the floor for a week, no one came to see me. I had a bad headache, but I didn't die. The chair remained in the basement when they took me out.” Father Anthony remained blind for the rest of his life. They decided to expend the monk, hated by the authorities, in the usual way. The execution was timed to coincide with the Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. All the crippled and emaciated were taken away for execution - those who could no longer work. A severe snowstorm ruined the plans. The guards threw the sufferers into the snow and retreated to the camp. After all, it was impossible for emaciated people to survive according to human laws. But God judged differently. Father Anthony was rescued from snow captivity by hunters and eventually transported to the mainland, where the father, being blind, became God's wanderer. The priest received a blessing for his pilgrimage from the perspicacious elder, the Greek Archimandrite Anthimus, with whom Father Anthony made a pilgrimage to Mount Ararat to the holy Noah’s Ark. A blind wanderer traveled all over Russia, and his entire journey was guided by God’s hidden guidance through prayer. Only war will make adjustments to the priest’s life.

Scherodeacon Anthony will live a long life, finding shelter among his spiritual children, of whom there were many. For the last six years, the elder lived in Zhukovsky near Moscow with Mother Paraskeva. His days and nights were filled with prayer and the creation of a library of Orthodox literature and liturgical books for the blind. December 19, 1994 Father's earthly journey has ended. St. Catherine's Monastery became the final resting place of Elder Anthony.

Gradually, the authorities took control of the situation. The churches of the Ascension of the Lord, the Smolensk Mother of God, and St. Apostle Andrew the First-Called, a six-tiered bell tower, and inside it a temple in the name of All Saints. The healing springs of the Mother of God and St. Anisia were not spared, where thousands of pilgrims flocked, receiving miraculous healings through deep faith and prayer. They blew up the temple in honor of the icon of the Mother of God “Joy of All Who Sorrow,” and the source itself was clogged with rubble. True, the life-giving moisture came out again and again. Only the temple in honor of St. Euthymius the Great and St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, built with the blessing of Schema-Archimandrite Gabriel for the commemoration of the departed. Here the venerable elder Gabriel of Sedmiezerny served funeral liturgies, and here he was honored with a miraculous vision of the mystery of Christ’s Sacrifice for the sins of people. The remaining premises were given over first to a state farm, then to an orphanage, and have not been used at all since the 1980s. The abomination of desolation reigned in the holy place.

In 1997 The Sedmiezernaya Hermitage was returned to the Russian Orthodox Church. The current abbot of the monastery, Herman, accepted a difficult inheritance. But the restoration work is bearing fruit: the St. Euthymius Church and the fraternal building have been restored and are functioning, and the monastic economy has been established. The traditions of the desert established by Elder Gabriel are unshakably observed - the Indestructible Psalter is read, social service is carried out - the monastery feeds the homeless and pilgrims, collects clothes and distributes them to the poor. With the restoration of the monastery, the springs also came to life. The tradition of crowded religious processions and prayer services was resumed, and bathhouses were built. Moreover, the font at the source of the Mother of God was first built by a Muslim family in gratitude for God’s mercy. In 1997 a childless family with the hope of having a son took a bath in the spring. And this faith in the miraculous effect of holy water gave the parents a son, who was named Seraphim. And soon the child’s parents were baptized. Monastic life comes to life and, as of old, the good news of the Sedmiezernaya Mother of God Hermitage floats over the Kazan land, giving hope and consolation to the suffering.

Based on materials from Leonidova O.