Description of the attraction
According to legend, the name "Misharina Gora" comes from a certain clerk Munekhin Misuri, who lived in the first half of the 16th century and who was famous for his charitable work in relation to God's churches. Authoritative local historian Okulich-Kazarin N. Sh. preferred the most plausible version of the origin of the name of the temple from small swamps, which were called mshara, because it was with such swamps that the mountain was once surrounded in antiquity.
The construction of the stone church took place in 1547. Initially, the temple was a monastery. In the records of the Scripture Book of 1623, the Kotelnikov monastery from Misharina Gora is mentioned. It is about this monastery that it is written in the Chetyah Menaion of the All-Russian Metropolitan Macarius. There is an assumption that the abbot of the Kotelnikov monastery during the 60s of the 16th century was Vasily-Varlaam, who is the author of the lives of Alexander Nevsky, Euphrosynus of Pskov.
In 1808, the temple was intended to be demolished as it was very dilapidated, but still the Holy Synod did not agree to this action. In 1882, a merchant from Pskov, Peter Mikhailovich Stekhnovsky, built a stone annex in front of the entrance door. During 1892-1896, repair and restoration work was carried out at the expense of the church headman - Ivan Mikhailovich Kafelnikov - an honorary citizen of the city of Pskov. The church has two thrones, the main of which is the throne of the Evangelist and Apostle John the Theologian, and the second is named in the name of the Holy Martyr John the Warrior. During 1786-1808, the church of St. George from Vzvoz was assigned to the church, and in 1934 the church of Equal-to-the-Apostles Saints of Tsar Constantine and his mother, Queen Helena, was attributed.
The church bell tower was built at the same time as the construction of the Church of St. John the Baptist. There were six bells on the bell tower. In the parish there were three chapels built of wood: the Wonderworker and St. Nicholas not far from the village of Khryastolovo, the Holy Martyr Anastasia and the Venerable Martyr Anastasia.
At the Church of John the Baptist, there was an almshouse, parish guardianship, a hospital, but the parish school was never built. At the end of the 19th century, a parish school was built in a village called Koziy Brod, but soon in 1895, due to its proximity to other city schools, it was closed.
Around the perimeter of the entire church there is a cemetery, where historian and local historian Tsvylyov S. A., restorer V. P. Smirnov, as well as soldiers who died while fulfilling their military duty, were buried.
Since 1913, priest Fyodor Vasilyevich Kolobov served in the church. In 1927, after being arrested several times, Fyodor Vasilyevich was exiled to the Urals. Kolobov's wife followed him, after which no information was received about them. The psalm-deacon was Mikhail Lebedev, but nothing is known about his later life.
On December 23, 1936, it was decided to close the church, but according to other sources, services continued until the Great Patriotic War. During the war, the temple received some damage to the walls, roof, interior and exterior decoration. During 1970-1989, under the leadership of the architect Lebedev V. A. was carrying out a complete restoration of the church. On March 3, 1965, the church cemetery was closed for burials.
The first services began in 1992 at the very entrance to the temple. The revival of the Church of St. John the Baptist is closely intertwined with the name of the famous abbot Jonah. The director of the Pskov cable plant Viktor Petrovich Kukushkin also contributed to the restoration of the church.
In 2001, the Pskov Archbishop Eusebius performed the rite of consecration of eight bells, which were cast in the city of Voronezh according to the ancient method. Today, the church has a Sunday school and a pilgrimage service, which has received the status of a diocesan.
