LA TEBAIDA DE CRIMEA

 

Cave Monasteries of Crimea

PHOTO GALLERY

Dmitry Kiryukhin

We present here a photo tour of the cave monasteries of Shuldan and Chelter-Marmara and the cave city of Eski-Kermen in Crimea.

The Shuldan Monastery of Christ the Savior is located near the modern village of Ternovka in Sevastopol. The name “Shuldan” means “resounding echo” or “inaccessible place.” It consists of two cave churches and twenty rooms for religious and economic purposes, located in two tiers.

The monastery was founded in the eighth century by monastic iconodule refugees from Byzantium during the period of the battle against the icons by emperors from the Isaurian Dynasty of Leo and Constantine Copronymus. The monks who lived in Shuldan worked in viticulture and winemaking.

The cave monastery of Chelter-Marmara is located on a cliff of Chelter-Kaya Mountain, not far from the Shuldan Monastery, a mile northwest of the village of Ternovka on the territory of the city of Sevastopol. It is an object of cultural heritage of the peoples of Russia of Federal significance.

Translated from Crimean Tatar, “Chelter” means “lattice” or “grid.” Marmara is the name of a medieval village at the foot of the mountain. There are more than fifty caves there located in four tiers. There are four churches, cells, a trapeza, and household and storage rooms. In antiquity, they were connected by wooden stairs, balconies, and galleries that resembled openwork lattice.

Not far from these monasteries is the medieval city-fortress of Eski-Kermen. Translated from Crimean Tatar, the name means “old fortress.” The city is built on a table-like mountain plateau, bounded by cliffs up to 100 feet deep. It is one of the most visited cave cities of Crimea and is part of the Bakhchisaray Historical and Cultural Reserve. Several cave churches existed in this city, carved into the rocks in the twelfth to thirteenth centuries, with a multitude of frescoes.

Dawn on the Black Sea

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Along the road to Shuldan Monastery

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Tower-chapel above Shuldan Monastery

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

View from the tower-chapel

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

View of Sevastopol from the tower-chapel

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Panorama view from the monastery

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Entrance to the monastery

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

In the monastery

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Painting of the tower-chapel

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Entrance to the church

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Church bell

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

In the main church of the monastery

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

In the main church of the monastery

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

A cell

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

In the monastery

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Cliffs along the road to the Chelter-Marmara monastery

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Along the road to the Chelter-Marmara monastery

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Cliffs along the road to the Chelter-Marmara monastery

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

In the Chelter-Marmara monastery

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Panorama view from the Chelter-Marmara monastery

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Church of St. Sabbas the Sanctified in the Chelter-Marmara monastery

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

View through a window in the St. Sabbas Church

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Icon of St. Nicholas

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Church of St. Nicholas

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Gift of the St. Andrew the First-Called Fund to the Monastery of St. Sabbas the Sanctified in Chelter–Marmara in memory of the bringing of the relics of St. Andrew from the Epiphany Cathedral in Moscow to the Crimea on July 30-August 30, 2016.

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

The Chelter-Marmara monastery

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Ancient city of Eski-Kermen

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Ancient city of Eski-Kermen

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

In the church of the cave city of Eski-Kermen

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Cave city of Eski-Kermen

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Cave city of Eski-Kermen

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

In one of the Eski-Kermen caves, with the remains of frescoes

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

In one of the Eski-Kermen caves

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

In one of the Eski-Kermen caves

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

View from an Eski-Kermen cave

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Panorama view from the city of Eski-Kermen

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Evening on the southern coast of Crimea

Photo: Dmitry Kiryukhin / Pravoslavie.ru

Comments

Orthodox10/21/2020 9:59 am

Невероятные фотографии! ????????????

Ярослав Ерофеев10/20/2020 6:04 pm

Отличный фоторепортаж! Спасибо!!!

Amwolf10/19/2020 3:43 pm

Wow, what interesting and beautiful pictures. Places like this is yet another reason why I'm drawn to the Eastern Orthodox Church. Thanks for sharing!

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PROFECÍAS DE SAN JUAN DE KRONSTAD TOMADO DE ORTODOX CHRISTIANITY

 

PROPHECIES OF ST. JOHN OF KRONSTADT

The holy righteous pastor and the Russian Revolution

Matthew Slavko

    

Today is the celebration of the canonization of Holy Righteous Fr. John of Kronstadt by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad in 1964. St. John would be canonized later by the Moscow Patriarchate on June 8, 1990, and they celebrate his memory on that date.

These notes on Fr. John's observations and prophecies concerning Russia show us how terrible it is to abandon God, what consequences it has on a whole nation, and how all are held accountable. It is a stern warning to all of us.

Reading over the works, journals, and sermons of Holy Righteous John of Kronstadt (1829–1908), Archpriest Vladimir Vigilyansky made a note on Facebook about how an uneasy presentiment of Russia’s bloody future tormented the saint, who continually searched for the causes of the future catastrophes that await the people of Russia and the collapse of its statehood. His thoughts and prophecies hit many—the government, thinkers, liberals, the intelligentsia, journalists, and mainly, the clergy. Fr. John’s speeches were always combined with very high and inexorable demands first of all upon himself, and this is why his words can be trusted.

“Russia has forgotten the saving God; it has lost faith in Him, abandoned the Law of God, enslaved itself to all sorts of passions, deified blind human reason. It has replaced God’s all-wise, holy and righteous will with the phantom of sinful freedom, opened wide the doors to all manner of outrage, and therefore it will become immeasurably impoverished, and be shamed before the whole world—the worthy reward for its pride, for its slumber, inaction, venality, and coldness toward God’s Church. God will punish us for our sins; the Sovereign Lady will not stretch forth her hand to help us. Russia can be called a kingdom of the Lord. This is of course on the one hand. On the other, because of their godlessness and impiety many Russians, the so-called intelligentsia who have strayed from the right path, apostatized from the faith and mock it in every way, having trampled upon all the Gospel commandments and allow all kinds of depravity into our life—the Russian kingdom is not the Lord’s kingdom but a broad and far-flung kingdom of satan…

“You pastors who rule, what have you done with your flock? The Lord will seek His sheep from your hands!.. The Lord most of all watches the behavior of the bishops and priests, their enlightenment activities, performance of sacred rites, pastoring… The current terrible degradation of faith and morals depends greatly upon the coldness towards their flock of many bishops and the clerical ranks in general.

“Our ancestors sinned, but they called a sin a sin; today’s liberals however sin and try to justify the sin, as if it were a lawful deed. Take the sins of the flesh—all of this according to their opinion is not only simple weakness of human nature, but also the laws of nature and its demands.

“Russia is floundering, suffering, tormented by its bloody inner struggle, from bad harvests and famine, from terrifyingly high prices, from godlessness, from extreme moral degradation. Evil times—people have turned into animals, even into evil spirits. The government has become weak. It itself has falsely understood the freedom it has given to the people. Evil has increased in Russia to monstrous proportions and it has become almost impossible to set it right.

“When the consequences of all-around non-submission to the authorities and the inaction of the subordinate members of society, and with this inaction the action of the government ceases, as if the blood were to cease circulating in an organic body, then everything in society dies, descends, falls apart; social safety disappears and members of one society attack each other—a total rampage of thievery, plunder, enmity, and murder.”

And here are a few more of the saint’s remarks:

“What evils haven’t the Russian people and people living in Russia committed? What sins haven’t they corrupted themselves with? Everything! They’ve done and do everything, which is bringing God’s wrath upon us: open unbelief, blasphemy, rejecting all true principles of faith, depravity, drunkenness, all sorts of entertainments instead of donning the mourning garb of community repentance over the sins that anger God, non-submission to authority... In the demonic kingdom there is order and submission of some evil spirits to others, the lower to the higher, the weaker to the stronger; but in this Christian nation all submission, all authority has disappeared—children do not recognize the authority of their parents, subordinates do not recognize the authority of their superiors, students do not recognize the authority of their teachers … divine services are disdained, sermons are powerless, Christian morality is falling more and more, anarchy is growing…”

In some reminiscences by Righteous Father John’s contemporaries we find two characteristic examples—both of St. John and of the spiritual state of the students at the time of the 1905 revolution, which Fr. John lived through and which was the terrible herald of the “terrible year of Russia”, 1917.

Colonel M. D. Timofeyev recalls how he and his friends had decided to “expose the famous priest’s false holiness”. One of them pretended to be sick, and his comrades called Fr. John to ask him to pray for his recovery. When he came to the apartment, Fr. John saw the faker in bed and said, “You don’t need me now, but you soon will.”

He prayed, took no money, and left.

The man who participated in this ruse recalled, “The fake patient wanted to get up from the bed but he couldn’t. He was nailed to it by some unknown power. At first we didn’t believe him, we thought he was pretending and joking, but then we ourselves got seriously scared.”

The students went to Fr. John and repented with tears in their eyes over their foolishness. The saint consoled them and said that their friend is healthy, then bade them go in peace. When they returned they saw that he really had recovered. “This lesson made me a religious and believing man for the rest of my life,” concluded the “joker”.

There was another incident no less well known told by A. A. Ankirova:

“When we started talking with Fr. John, he said to me, “Speak louder, because my hearing has been poor since the time a student struck me on the cheek in the St. Andrew Cathedral.”

Continuing his talk, Fr. John related the details of this incident:

“One day, when I was serving the Liturgy in the St. Andrew Cathedral and was coming out of the royal doors with the chalice, I saw a student lighting his cigarette from an oil lamp burning before an icon of the Savior. I said to him, “What are you doing?” Without answering, the student struck me on the cheek so hard that the Gifts splashed onto the stone dais. I crossed myself, turned the other cheek to him, and said, “Hit me again.” But the people seized the student. The stones from the dais were taken out and thrown into the sea.”

One of the notes in Fr. John’s diaries relating to those times becomes understandable: “O Lord, bring the students to reason; bring the government to reason; give them Thy truth and Thy strength, Thy power. O Lord, may the sleeping tsar arise and act with his authority; give him courage and foresight. O Lord, the world is in confusion, the devil is triumphing, truth is mocked. Arise, O Lord, and help the Holy Church. Amen.”

In a publication from 1980, in the second volume of a book by I. K. Sursky, “Fr. John of Kronstadt”, we read: “On one Sunday in autumn of 1916, in the St. John Convent in Petersburg, where venerators of Fr. John had gathered, Metropolitan Makary of Moscow was celebrating the Liturgy. After lunch in Abbess Angelina’s quarters, several clergymen gathered, along with some military men. Metropolitan Makary to read those gathered an excerpt from the diary of Fr. John of Kronstadt, in which his vision and prophecy concerning Russia were written…

“It turns out that many years before the First World War, Fr. John had absolutely precisely entered into his diary the participants in the war and its conclusion. Fr. John also foretold tsarist Russia’s military misfortune and the revolution that would be bound up with it.

“He showed the lengthiness of the reign of revolutionary ideas, the innumerable victims of the revolution, the rivers of blood, the woes and wretchedness of the entire population.”

Holy Righteous John truly—not foresaw but knew; he was the bearer of experiential knowledge from the Holy Spirit. “During the life of St. Seraphim [of Sarov], for his prayers, the Lord preserved Russia; after him there was another pillar that reached from earth to heaven—Fr. John of Kronstadt”, said St. Silhouan of Mt. Athos.

LA IGLESIA RUSA CONDENA EL EXORCISMO QUE SE PRACTICABA EN LA IGLESIA PRIMITIVA Y SE DENOMINABA AUTODODOXIA. OIDO AL PARCHE PADRE FORTEA Y LOS SICARIOS DEL ALMA QUE SON ALGUNOS CLERIGOS AVISPADOS EXPERIMENTADOS EN LA IMPOSTURA Y EN SACAR DINERO APROVECHANDOSE DE LA PANDEMIA COMO EL PADRE ÁNGEL

 

La Iglesia rusa declaró la inadmisibilidad del "exilio de demonios"

3 DE NOVIEMBRE DE 2020. SERVICIO DE NOTICIAS

"Hoy en día, a menudo hay una falsa noción de que la expulsión de demonios es una panacea para todos los problemas de la vida"

3 de noviembre. EL MUNDO DERECHO. Vladimir Legoida, jefe del departamento sinodal de relaciones entre la Iglesia Ortodoxa Rusa y la sociedad y los medios de comunicación, dijo que la autododoxia era inaceptable. Así que comentó en un video publicado en las redes sociales en el que los padres tratan de "expulsar demonios" de un niño de 10 años.

"Es peligroso y dañino hacer un juicio de que una persona, especialmente un niño, está poseída por un espíritu maligno, y mucho menos para tratar de expulsar demonios de él", escribió en su canal de telegramas.

Legoida recordó que en la tradición de la antigua Iglesia había de hecho una práctica de expulsión de demonios (exorcismo, en el lenguaje común - una recomendación). Fue conducido por un sacerdote experimentado en casos excepcionales y con la bendición del obispo gobernante.

"Desafortunadamente, hoy en día a menudo hay una idea falsa de que la expulsión de demonios es una panacea para todos los problemas de la vida. Bebidas - el crédito, no hace lecciones - el crédito. Esto, por desgracia, no está exento de éxito utilizado por todo tipo de ancianos falsos, satisfaciendo la necesidad no en la alimentación espiritual, sino en un ritual mágico virtual para "resolver" todos los problemas a la vez", dijo el representante de la Iglesia rusa.

Según él, la familia que filmó el video necesita ayuda calificada de los médicos para determinar el estado de salud mental de su hijo, así como el consejo de un pastor experimentado. Legoida también subrayó que es extremadamente poco ético hacer un espectáculo de sufrimiento humano, y mucho menos un niño, sin importar si está enfermo con una enfermedad mental o espiritual.

Anteriormente, un video fue publicado en las redes sociales que mostraba a los padres "desterrar a los espíritus malignos" de su hijo usando ajo, iconos y agua bendita. El niño se resiste, así que la mujer tiene que torcer a su hijo. La familia vive en la aldea de Gusevka, en la región de Volgogrado.

Después de que el video causó una resonancia, el niño fue enviado a una consulta con un psiquiatra. La Inspección de Menores ha iniciado una investigación sobre el abuso de un niño.