Description of the attraction
The Iono-Yashezersky Monastery is one of the oldest monasteries located on the territory of the Republic of Karelia. The founding of the monastery took place during the reign of Ivan the Terrible. In 2002, the Annunciation Monastery celebrated the 440th anniversary of its founding. The male monastery is closer than other monasteries to the capital of Karelia, in addition, it is the only surviving monastery of this kind. The monastery is located 80 km from the famous city of Petrozavodsk, on the shore of Lake Yashezero, 17 km from the village of Shoksha.
The Annunciation Monastery is included in the list of the most significant and popular monuments of history and architecture. It is the second most important in the territory of the Karelian Republic, after Valaam, a monument of monastic monumental architecture.
Ancient traditions preserved the memory of two universally famous Vepsian saints, who were especially revered and venerated by the Orthodox Church in Russia. One of the saints was the Valaam monk Alexander Svirsky, and the other was his disciple, Ion Yashezersky. These people were the founders of monastic cloisters so famous throughout Russia, which were named after them.
The Monk Jonah was a Vepsian by nationality and lived in the nearby village of Shokshi near the calm Yashezer. This place of residence was not chosen by him by chance, because it was here that an ancient pagan temple was located. On the site of the former temple, a monastery was built in memory of the victory of the Orthodox faith over ancient paganism.
For many years the monk carried on a difficult apostolic ministry among the strata of the Veps people. The fate of northern desert dwellers was not easy: long cold winters, eternal winds and fogs, monotonous nutrition, represented by roots, berries, moss, herbs and mushrooms. The Monk Jonah was visited by people longing for solitude, in order to spend their lives in labor, prayer and fasting.
The Lord God informed Jonah about the coming of his death. He retired to a small separate cave a couple of kilometers from the monastery and spent the last years of his earthly life in this place, constantly fasting and reading prayers. According to ancient sources, Jonah died at the age of more than a hundred years in 1629.
The cave of Ion Yashezersky was especially revered by all members of the monastery, as well as by local residents. Old residents of these places still say that a stone table and a stone bed were preserved in the cave for a long time. Since ancient times, people have come to this place to pray for healing from serious ailments and diseases. In the cave, without extinguishing, a lamp burned, the flame of which was constantly watched by the pilgrims. Not far from the cave of the monk, a chapel was built, which was completely destroyed during the years of Soviet power.
In 1675, a cathedral church was built at the monastery, named in the name of the Annunciation of the Most Holy Theotokos, Nicholas the Wonderworker became the limit of the saint. The decoration of the monastery was the stone church of the Transfiguration of the Lord, which was erected in 1853 over the grave of the monk.
During the existence of the Yashezerskaya Desert, noble royal persons helped her a lot. Land contributions from tsars Vasily Shuisky, Fyodor Ivanovich, nun Martha and abbots of the Solovetsky temple Irinarch and Jacob passed into the possession of the brethren.
At the beginning of the 20th century, about two hundred brethren were tied up in the Yashezerskaya desert. Several times a week, steamers with a large number of pilgrims on board sailed from the Voskresenskaya embankment of the city of St. Petersburg. Mooring to the pier was carried out the next day; the pier was 26 versts from the desert itself.
In modern times, very little has come down to us from the ancient monastery, which was especially revered in the entire northwest: some part of the monastery fence made of crimson quartzite, the Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord, two modest monastery buildings, as well as four corner towers made of stone. The Annunciation Cathedral Church, the refectory and the abbot's chambers were subject to complete destruction. The few buildings that have remained from those times continue to collapse under the influence of frequent bad weather in these places.
