Goritsky Resurrection Monastery

The Goritsky monastery stands on the bank of the Sheksna, seven kilometres from the Kirillo-Belozersky, in the village of Goritsy. It was founded in the mid-sixteenth century by princess Yefrosinya Staritskaya — widow of prince Andrei Staritsky, first cousin of Ivan the Terrible: by then Goritsy already had a wooden Resurrection obrok church and a Vvedeniye church, and in 1544 the princess replaced the first with a stone one bearing a chapel to Kirill of Beloozero — that date is taken as the birth of the community. The founder's fate became the stuff of tragedy. In 1563, after a denunciation, Yefrosinya was forcibly veiled as a nun under the name Yevdokia and sent to live in the monastery she had created — the chronicle records that the sovereign 'ordered her provisions and drink according to her wish', but set guards over her, among them Mikhail Ivanovich Kolychev. With her, under the name Alexandra, was kept Yuliania Dmitrievna Paletskaya — wife of prince Yuri Vasilyevich, the tsar's own brother. In 1569, following the massacre of the Staritskys, Yefrosinya was killed together with the nuns and servants accompanying her; the versions of her death still diverge. The names of the abbesses of the first years are known — Anisia, Anastasia, Sofia, Mariamia, Anna (died in October 1569). After those events the Goritsky monastery long kept its reputation as a place of confinement for noblewomen — disgraced wives and widows of the Moscow court were exiled here, and the memory of these prisoners is the community's chief story. Today it is an active women's monastery and a federal architectural monument: walls and churches look over the Sheksna, along which cruise vessels pass. A tour is intimate, an hour and a half: the cathedral, the walls with towers, a lookout over the river where the place's history is most audible. The best angle on the community is from the water: boats pass literally under the walls, and the white silhouettes on the knoll read best from there.