Dmitrovsky Monastery in Kashin, Orthodox monastery in Kashin, Russia
Dmitrovsky Monastery in Kashin is an Orthodox men's monastery on the Kashinka River, founded presumably in the late 14th century. Of its two pre-1917 stone churches, the Trinity Church (1682) survives in rebuilt form, as does the Passion Cathedral (1890–1903), a brick four-pillar church in the Russian style whose five wooden decorative tents on drums have been dismantled. Only a small fragment of the monastery wall remains.
Founded probably at the end of the 14th century on the Kashinka River, the monastery was burned and plundered by Poles in 1609 and rebuilt. In the 17th and 18th centuries it became the largest and wealthiest in the area, owning villages, fields and forests. Closed by the Soviet authorities in 1929, it was revived in 2021, when the first liturgy after decades was celebrated in the Passion Cathedral on 26 August.
The monastery takes its name from a church dedicated to Saint Demetrius of Thessalonica. Its main relic was a venerated copy of the Passion Icon of the Mother of God, painted in the 13th century in the homeland of Princess Anna of Kashin. The Passion Cathedral was built as a reliquary for this icon, and a cross procession from the Resurrection Cathedral took place here annually on 26 October.
The monastery stands on the bank of the Kashinka River in Kashin. Only a small fragment of the perimeter wall survives; the bell tower, refectory, cells and garden are gone. The site is a tentative cultural heritage site of Russia. Visits focus on the two surviving brick churches, the Trinity Church (1682) and the Cathedral of the Passion Icon (1890–1903).
In 1609 the monastery was burned and plundered by Poles, and its walled grounds later held the deposed Swedish prince Gustav, son of King Eric XIV, who according to the Ber chronicle was buried here. The future jurist Alexander Kunitsyn, Pushkin's teacher at the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, studied at the monastery's school.
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