Photo: architectural monuments, temples and places of worship, abbeys and monasteries, other places, Spaso-Prilutsky Monastery, Vologda

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Spaso-Prilutsky Monastery – the Main Monastery of the Russian North

Architectural Monuments • Temples and places of worship • Abbeys and Monasteries • Other places

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The Spaso-Prilutsky Monastery sprang up on the Vologda River, where there passed the trade route from Moscow to Arkhangelsk. It was founded in 1371 by the Monk Dmitry Prilutsky, a disciple of Sergius of Radonezh, the founder of the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, the spiritual center of Russia. Thanks to the reputation of the Holy Father-founder and the strategic position, the monastery enjoyed the patronage of Russian tsars, including Ivan IV the Terrible.

The oldest surviving building of the Spaso-Prilutsky Monastery is a five-domed stone Saint Saviour Cathedral with a two-tiered gallery. It came to replace the wooden Church of the Savior in 1542. After the raids of the Poles and Lithuanians, Tatars and Cossacks in the XVII century, walls and towers were built in the monastery for protection. The monastery began to flourish thanks to the earnings from salt making. Even an orphanage and a school were opened here. However, the year 1811 turned out to be sad for the monastery: here there was a fire which destroyed all the interior decoration of the Saint Saviour Cathedral. It took a long time to restore it. In 1918 the monastery was closed. In the 1920s the Vvedensky Church housed a film club, a buffet and a theater, and in the 1930s the prisoners, heading for the Gulag, were kept here. In the 1990s monks returned to the monastery and services resumed. The wooden tent Assumption Church of the early 16th century was transferred to the Spaso-Prilutsky Monastery. Today the monastery keeps the copy of the icon of Dmitry Prilutsky, which Tsar Ivan III took to the campaign against Kazan. The original is kept in the Vologda Museum Reserve. Saint Dmitry Prilutsky and the Russian poet Konstantin Batyushkov are buried in the monastery.

Spaso-Prilutsky Monastery – the Main Monastery of the Russian North

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