Everyday life of the Solovetsky monastery in the pre-revolutionary period of its history

Abstract

The Spaso-Preobrazhensky Solovetsky monastery, founded in the second quarter of the XV century, made a great contribution to the colonization of the Russian North. The article is devoted to the analysis of everyday life of this Northern monastery in the pre-revolutionary period of its history. The founder of the Solovetsky monastery, the monk Zosima, was its Abbot for 26 years (1452-1478). During this period, he drew up the Charter of the monastery and established a hostel in it, which provided for undivided property and a common household, the same food and clothing for all monks, as well as the distribution of monastic works among the entire brotherhood. The manuscript of the monastery’s Charter, compiled by Zosima, was kept in the monastery until the beginning of the last century. Being brief in its content, this Charter was essentially reduced to the following regulations: all priests and ordinary monks do not have their own special income, but receive clothes and shoes from the Treasury of the monastery, gather for a common meal and eat a common meal. In addition to these rules, oral covenants were preserved, established, according to legend, by the founder of the monastery: Zosima bequeathed not to keep cattle in the monastery itself. The main occupation of novices and ordinary monks in addition to participation in worship was hard physical labor in the vast economy of the monastery. The monastic authorities, represented by the Abbot and the “Cathedral elders”, tried to keep and strictly follow the Statute of the monk Zosima, as the most important condition of the” spiritual fortress [[CHECK_DOUBLEQUOT_ENT]] of novices and monks. Revived in 1990 after a 70-year hiatus, the monastery, which is under the direct supervision of the Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia, bases its internal order of life on the community Charter reserved by its founder.