The history of the creation and spiritual significance of the Mother of God Canal of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery

Church-wide postgraduate and doctoral studies named after. Saints Equal to the Apostles Cyril and Methodius Bartholomew, monk (Chernyshev Sergey Nikolaevich) Dissertation for the degree of candidate of theology D.O. Shvidkovsky Doctor of Art History, Professor, Academician of the Russian Academy of Arts and RAASN D.V. Shmonin, Doctor of Philosophy, Professor The largest in Russia, the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Convent of the Nizhny Novgorod Metropolis, among its many shrines, has a unique structure - the Mother of God Kanavka. From several hundred to several thousand believers pray there every day. It is popular among Orthodox Christians throughout Russia, near and far abroad. Its history goes back almost 200 years, during which there has been a struggle to confirm the spiritual significance of the Mother of God Canal for the Church, on the one hand, and to refute it, on the other. This struggle died down at times and flared up at times. Therefore, people who believe in the significance of this place began to build its earthen structure three times over these years. After the first stage of work under the Venerable Seraphim of Sarov, the Kanavka was destroyed, then recreated, destroyed again during the atheistic Soviet period, and finally completed construction in our time with active administrative and material support from the state. However, some doubt not so much the origin of the Mother of God Canal, which goes back to the divine revelations of St. Seraphim, but rather the correctness of its creation by the monastery. This question forms the basis of this work. The purpose of the study is, based on studying the history of the Mother of God Canal, to create a scientific basis for recreating a unique earthen structure revered by the Russian Orthodox Church, as well as to show its spiritual significance both in past times and at the present time. The relevance of the topic of scientific work in the chosen direction is determined by three circumstances. Firstly, the popularity of the object among believers. Secondly, the high hierarchical level at which the Mother of God Canal is revered and at which the issue of its reconstruction as soon as possible is resolved. Thirdly, the lack of scientific discussion of the problem. Let's explain what was said. Today, the Mother of God Kanavka is a school of prayer for many thousands of believers, including unchurched pilgrims who come to Diveevo to the relics of St. Seraphim and always walk along the Mother of God Kanavka with the simple prayer rule of St. Seraphim. That is why the Mother of God Canal is in demand by the Church. At the same time, there is a group of people in the Church who doubt the correctness of its restoration. Therefore, it is important to consider on a scientific basis the question of whether the Mother of God Canal was really created in accordance with the covenant of St. Seraphim and is a blessed holy place. This is also due to the fact that the reconstruction of this object took place with the active support of church and state leadership. In 2003, Bishop of Nizhny Novgorod and Arzamas (now Metropolitan) Georgy (Danilov) took a weekly interest in the reconstruction of the Mother of God Kanavka. At that time, a major role in the case was played by the plenipotentiary representative of the President of the Russian Federation for the Volga Federal District S.V. Kiriyenko, who had a personal assignment from V.V. Putin regarding Diveev 1. The relevance of the work is also due to the fact that at the moment a master plan for the development of the Diveyevo Monastery is being officially developed, and for its preparation it is necessary, firstly, to confirm the correct position on the ground of the Theotokos Kanavka completed in 1997–2004 and, secondly, to justify the absence of a ditch and rampart on one of the seven sides of the border polygon and the need to build a cathedral on this site between the existing beginning and end of the Theotokos Kanavka in accordance with the blessing of St. Seraphim. The preparation of the master plan and special attention to the Diveevo monastery is also due to the fact that today Diveevo is becoming one of the peaks in the state-planned triangle cluster Arzamas - Sarov - Diveevo 2, the concept of which was developed under the leadership of D.O. Shvidkovsky. Archimandrite Kirill (Pavlov) attached great importance to the restoration of the Diveyevo monastery, who was interested in the reconstruction of the Mother of God Kanavka and the oldest church of Diveyevo - the cathedral in the name of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God - as the most important spiritual objects of the reconstructed monastery 3. The degree of development of the scientific topic is characterized by the fact that in the modern scientific and information field the problem of the Virgin Canal has practically not been discussed with the exception of several reports by the dissertation author and his collaborators and a report by V.V. Dmitrieva 4 (2018) at scientific conferences. The most complete information about the Mother of God Kanavka is contained in the “Chronicle of the Seraphim-Diveyevo Monastery” by the Hieromartyr Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov), published in 1897, republished 5 in 1903 and again republished in our time with the restoration of the author’s text in places removed or distorted by pre-revolutionary censorship 6 . But this fundamental work, for obvious reasons, does not cover the history of the Virgin Canal over the past more than 100 years, that is, it does not contain information about 2/3 of the historical period we are studying. The latest research into the history of the Diveyevo Monastery, carried out by V.A. Stepashkin 7, priest Georgy Pavlovich, S.S. Bychkov, A.M. Pentkovsky 8, N.A. Strizhev 9, O.V. Bukovaya 10 and others do not consider our topic. In the above-mentioned and other works, the activities of the successors of St. Seraphim in the period from 1833 to 1862, described in detail by the Hieromartyr Seraphim (Chichagov), are sharply debated. But within the framework of the dissertation, there is no need to enter into this discussion, since both debating sides recognize two facts that are significant for us: 1) the grace of the blessings of St. Seraphim of Sarov and 2) the primacy of novice Ivan Tolstyshev in the Diveyevo community in 1833–1862. Everyone also recognizes that 1862 was a turning point in the history of the Diveyevo community. In the dissertation, 1862 is accepted as one of the milestone years in the history of the Kanavka. Until 1862, the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka was filled up, after 1862 they began to restore it. Let us immediately note that our independent research has shown the correctness of the information in the Chronicle regarding the primary history of the Mother of God Canal and the associated Mill-Feeder, created with the blessing and labor participation of St. Seraphim. Despite the general great scientific theological interest in the life and work of St. Seraphim, his work on the creation of the Theotokos Canal, to which he attached great importance, was not discussed in the scientific literature. Only A.M. Pentkovsky, regarding the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the glorification of St. Seraphim in Diveevo, briefly notes: “Almost along the entire perimeter, the groove along which, according to the Diveevo nuns, the Mother of God passed, has been restored. In Soviet times, it was destroyed and in many places it was filled up, and the rampart was leveled” 11. A.M. Pentkovsky provides a photograph of the place where the buried Mother of God Canal 12 passed. Also, a pilgrim (probably N.A. Strizhev), not named in the publication, describes from life our exploration work on the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka 13. The shortage of scientific information about the Theotokos Kanavka was filled in 2018 with the dissertation author’s book “The Holy Theotokos Kanavka”, recommended for publication as a scientific monograph by the Publishing Council of the Russian Orthodox Church (IS R18-809-0327) with a closed review by the Publishing Council and two reviews by doctors of science, in particular - by the deputy dean for science of one of the faculties of PSTGU. Speaking about the state of the issue, it should be noted that by the time our research began, on the site of the ditch and rampart there was a completely flat surface of the ground, on which there were roads, sheds, garbage dumps, outhouses and vegetable gardens, as well as park areas of two schools. The buildings of one of them stand on the site of the monastery cemetery, destroyed during the digging of pits 14. The sources for compiling the dissertation, in accordance with what was said about the state of the issue, were predominantly of an archival nature: textual, graphic and photographic materials were drawn from the modern archives of the Holy Trinity Monastery, the archives of the Moscow State University of Civil Engineering and from the personal archive of the dissertation author, who since the 1970s has been a witness, and since 1997 an active participant in the events and technical supervisor of work on the Virgin Canal. At that time, the main place of work of the dissertation candidate was the Department of Engineering Geology and Geoecology of the Moscow State University of Civil Engineering (MGSU), which had a charitable agreement on scientific assistance in the restoration of the Diveyevo Monastery. The participation of the dissertation author in the events discussed in the second chapter of the dissertation left an imprint on the dissertation that was original for a work on history: many facts about the history of the reconstruction of the Virgin Canal in the period from 1997 to 2004 are presented based on their own materials. All the facts presented in the dissertation were published in the dissertation author's monograph 15. The monograph was edited at the publishing house of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Monastery, that is, at the place where the events described took place and their participants were alive. Therefore, the description of the events of the 20th and 21st centuries was verified with information from the nuns of the monastery and is based on their memoirs 16, 17, cited below in the dissertation. The sources for compiling the section of the work on the first and second historical periods (XIX century to 1862) were the surviving plan of the monastery, drawn by St. Seraphim himself 18, a topographical plan of part of the village of Diveevo in 1846, where the territory of the Mill Monastery is indicated, as well as numerous memoirs of participants in the events of 1825–1833, which were only partially preserved in the lengthy quotations given Hieromartyr Seraphim (Chichagov) in monograph 19. The sources for compiling the section of the work on the third historical period (1862–1927) were the surviving “Plan of the area occupied by churches and buildings of the former Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery” 20, compiled in 1925, and the memories of participants in the events of 1862–1880, which were preserved in quotations given by Hieromartyr Seraphim (Chichagov) in monograph “Chronicle of the Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery.” Also in the dissertation the author's parts of the text of the named monograph of the holy martyr are used. Valuable material is provided by the memoirs of the nun Seraphima (Bulgakova) 21 about the end of the third historical period. To collect material, the dissertation author conducted conversations with old-timers 22 who remembered the Mother of God Canal from the 30s and 40s of the 20th century, when traces of its first reconstruction were still preserved in the area. The dissertation also used my own observations 23 made during a visit to Diveevo in the 1970–1980s, long before the start of this study. Old photographs of the Mother of God Canal and the monastery were also used. The first photograph that has reached us is a panorama of the monastery, taken around 1880 24 . Significant information about the Virgin Canal of the third period was provided by special exploratory excavations carried out in 1997–2004 as part of this study. There were 61 of them made. They were assigned and documented by the dissertation author 25. Of these, in 53 excavations it was possible to discover the filled-in ditch of the Virgin Canal 26. Traces of the first and above them the second Theotokos Canal remained underground, since the Theotokos Canal of the third historical period was smaller than the first. In 8 excavations the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka was not found. They missed the target to the side of the ditch, indicating the inaccuracy of the old-timers' memories and the 1925 plan. The sources for the description of the fourth historical period were records of a survey of witnesses who lived in Diveevo during Soviet times, records of a dissertation author about a visit to Diveevo in 1980, a publication by Archpriest Stefan Lyashevsky about the Seraphim-Diveevo Monastery of the 1920s 27 , photographs 28 , a plan of the village of Diveevo on a scale of 1:10,000, located in the district administration as an official document, photographs of the territory through which the Mother of God Kanavka passed, taken in Soviet times, from the photo archive of the monastery 29. The sources for compiling Chapter 2 on the creation of the Mother of God Kanavka by a modern monastery in 1997–2004 were: reports from the Moscow State University of Civil Engineering on prospecting and exploration work on the territory of the Mill Monastery in the indicated years; topographic plans of the monastery territory made by V.P. Volkovsky in 1998–2005 30, memoirs of nuns 31 Rafaila (Prokopieva) and Ekaterina (Chernysheva) about the work to recreate the Mother of God Canal, diary entries of the head of design, survey and research work at the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka site 32. The sources for compiling Chapter 3 on the spiritual significance of the Theotokos Kanavka for the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Monastery were the publications of the Theotokos rule, read on the Theotokos Kanavka with the blessing of the Venerable Seraphim of Sarov and the Hieromartyr Bishop Seraphim Zvezdinsky, in a modern edition made at the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Monastery 33, written testimonies of pilgrims 34, etc. The objectives of the study on the topic “The history of the creation and spiritual significance of the Virgin Canal” were two. Firstly, based on the study of the history of the Theotokos Canal, it was necessary to recreate the image of the Theotokos Canal, given from above to St. Seraphim, as an intellectual and spiritual reality that can be expressed verbally, presented to the court of the spiritual leadership of the monastery and diocese and, with the blessing, formed the basis for the project of creating a unique structure in the material, and, secondly, to show the spiritual significance of the Theotokos Canal in a historical context. To achieve these goals, the following tasks were set and solved: 1) identify and characterize the historical stages of the creation of the Mother of God Canal since 1825; 2) consider the historical fact of the long-term incompleteness of the work on the creation of the Holy Mother of God Canal in the 19th century and find the reasons for the incompleteness; 3) to recreate the image of the Theotokos Canal, once known to St. Seraphim, namely, to establish the exact planned position of the Theotokos Canal on the ground, its profile, the method of its creation and materials; 4) find the places where the Monk Seraphim of Sarov began to dig the Mother of God Canal and where his Mill-Feeder stood, and thereby contribute to his life; 5) justify the spiritual significance of the Mother of God Canal. The named tasks should be considered theological, since the subject of theology is, among other things, “the study of the history of the Church and various aspects of its life” 35, and in this case, the 200-year history of the Diveyevo Monastery is studied in the aspect of the creation of the Mother of God Kanavka. The interaction and opposition of various groups of believers and atheists around the Virgin Canal is considered as a historical process. In this struggle, a material reality was created - an unusual church building on earth. At the same time, a “spiritual reality” 36 associated with Kanavka was built in the hearts, in which the Monk Seraphim of Sarov lived, his novices and the modern monastery live. This spiritual reality is the Christian faith of the saint and all generations of builders in the holiness of the Kanavka, which is expressed in their works and prayers. And the Christian faith, its change from generation to generation of people, is the subject of theology, according to D.V. Shmonin, 37 referring to Metropolitan Macarius (Bulgakov) on this fundamental issue. This can be understood if we turn to the events of the period of the Ecumenical Councils, the Russian schism of the 17th century, as well as to any other time. The history of the Church is inseparable from the history of faith, and the history of faith is inseparable from theology. We are not given the opportunity to hear the prayers of the departed generations of builders of the Mother of God Canal. Even the prayers of our contemporaries - the sisters of the monastery, who invariably read prayers during the creation of the Mother of God Canal - were heard for us only as the sparkling surface of the sea is visible. This surface does not speak about the depth of the sea, nor about the population contained in it, but “there are vermin there, they are innumerable, the small animals with the great” (Ps. 103:25). From the ear, few can sense the depth and content of their prayer. We do not hear the prayers of past generations. But the traces of labor left in the ground by the creators of the Mother of God Canal testify to their faith. The traces left by the destroyers speak of their unbelief. They allow us to trace how unbelief at the second historical stage (1833–1862) differs from malicious unbelief at the fourth stage (1927–1990). They also allow one to judge the differences in faith at the first, third and fifth historical stages. Faith, and not any material interest, moved people at all historical stages of the history of the Mother of God Canal. Therefore, the history of Kanavka is a history of faith. Scientific novelty of the results: 1. The historical chain of events for the construction and destruction of the Mother of God Kanavka from 1825, when St. Seraphim of Sarov received the blessing for construction, to the present day has been revealed; The history of the creation of the Virgin Canal is divided into five stages. 2. An accurate description of the Virgin Canal has been recreated; its position on the ground and its shape were determined according to the blessing of St. Seraphim, in order to fulfill the behest of St. Seraphim in the reconstruction of the Mother of God Canal in our time. 3. As part of the reconstruction of an accurate description, a scientific justification was given for the refusal to create structures of the Mother of God Canal on the seventh straight line, enclosing the territory of the Mill Monastery, and justification for the need to build a cathedral in this place for the Tenderness icon of Seraphim-Diveevskaya. 4. For the first time, the facts show the great spiritual significance of the Mother of God Kanavka, which in the current century is a place of fruitful prayer, a grace-filled decoration of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveyevo Monastery. The theoretical significance of research locally according to Diveevo lies in the fact that: 1) a periodization of the history of the Virgin Canal has been developed; 2) two research methods were created, according to which: a) for the first time, the personal plan of St. Seraphim with the image of the Mother of God Canal was scientifically processed and b) its position was determined on the ground. The dissertation author sees its significance in general scientific terms in the fact that, in relation to the objects of the Church, the main theoretical principles of the scientific direction of cultural ecology, proposed by D.S., have been developed. Likhachev, and also identified a holy miraculous object of a new type - the Holy Mother of God Canal. The practical significance of the research results is determined by the fact of their implementation during the creation of the Theotokos Canal in the previous place, where there were no reliable signs of it, but there were unreliable traces of a ditch, which twice led to mistakes by those who tried to restore the Theotokos Canal without the scientific justification defended in this work. Twice, in 1997 and 2002, errors were corrected based on the materials of this work. For 17 years after its creation, according to the testament of St. Seraphim of Sarov, revealed in this work, the Mother of God Kanavka has been a place of pilgrimage from Russia and abroad. From several hundred to 10 thousand people pray there every day. With the creation of the Arzamas – Diveevo – Sarov pilgrimage and tourism cluster by Order of the Government of the Russian Federation dated March 28, 2019 No. 552-r, the attendance and missionary significance of the Virgin Canal will greatly increase due to its uniqueness, popularity, accessibility and readiness to receive a massive flow of visitors. The methodology and research methods used in the dissertation are traditional for the history of the Church and non-traditional. Traditional methods used: – study of the historical, archaeological and religious-cultural context of texts and graphic diagrams of the 19th and early 20th centuries and their interpretation in this context 38 ; – a survey of old-timers and collection of archival information about the grace-filled fruits of prayer on the Mother of God Kanavka; – exploratory excavations to search for the ditch of the Virgin Canal based on a specially developed methodology; – generalization of results obtained by different methods. The non-traditional methods of this research are borrowed from the natural sciences - geology, botany, ecology and climatology. The possibility, even the necessity, of using the methods and results of other sciences in some theological research fundamentally follows from consideration of the general classification of sciences by D.V. Shmonina 39. In the classification, the total volume of human knowledge is divided into two parts. In the first part, knowledge is obtained from the experience of studying the world around us and through the logical analysis of this experience. Natural sciences operate with such knowledge, as well as mathematics, philology, etc. The second part contains knowledge obtained from divine revelation through the Holy Scriptures and Holy Tradition. This knowledge is based on faith. Theology operates with them. Between the two named parts, according to D.V. Shmonin, for the benefit of both, there must be an exchange of information. There are significant examples of this. Thus, theology, starting with Basil the Great 40, when studying the first chapters of the Book of Genesis, relies on natural science knowledge and forms the science of the Sixth Day. To study the Shroud of Turin in the twentieth century, methods of various sciences were used 41. They made it possible to solve the most important theological task - to show that in Turin the same cloth is kept, about which it is said that the righteous Joseph of Arimathea, “bought a shroud, and took Him off, wrapped him in a shroud, and laid him in a tomb” (Mark 15:46). In particular, when working with the Shroud, the paleobotanical method of spore-pollen analysis was used. This method is also used in this dissertation. So, theology develops using the methods of the natural sciences. On the other hand, the natural sciences and humanities are successfully developing on the basis of theological truths. They are built securely when at the foundation is the “rock” (Matthew 7:24–25), which is Christ. An example of this is modern non-classical ecology. In our country, it was born in the mid-1980s during the struggle of the scientific community against the transfer of the flow of northern rivers to the Caspian and Aral. Then the USSR Academy of Sciences, represented by Vice President A.L. Yanshin, academicians L.S. Pontryagina, D.S. Likhacheva, I.R. Shafarevich, G.S. Golitsyn and others rejected the prevailing hypothesis in the USSR about the independence of events in nature. Instead, an alternative hypothesis about the systemic nature of the universe was adopted 42. According to this hypothesis, the world is a megasystem consisting of complex interacting subsystems, which in turn are repeatedly subdivided into systems. The Earth system worked perfectly before human intervention. The new fundamental hypothesis required the recognition that Someone controls the megasystem, that Someone created it. Having recognized the Creator, scientists quickly began to discover connections in His creation and created a non-classical ecology. The new science, based on the theological concept of the universe, was fruitful. It immediately became the basis for lawmaking and fundamental administrative decisions at the state level. An environmental ministry, examinations, specialties, departments, journals and books were created. Non-classical modern ecology does not contradict theological truths and is supported in the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church 43. So, the theoretical provisions of D.V. Shmonin and the given examples of their implementation are the basis for using the methods of natural sciences to solve the theological problem of this dissertation. Thus, the theoretical position of D.V. Shmonin served as the basis for justifying the methodology adopted in the study as a theological methodology. Provisions for defense: 1. In the history of the Mother of God Canal there are 5 historical stages: three creative and two destructive, which alternate. 2. The exact description of the Mother of God Kanavka, which was given by St. Seraphim to the sisters of the Mill Convent as a covenant for the construction of the Mother of God Kanavka, which was not implemented either at the first or third historical stage and was not preserved in text form, has been recreated. The revealed covenant was fully realized in the material at the fifth historical stage in 1997–2004. 3. The Mother of God Kanavka is a spiritually significant sacred miraculous object of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Monastery, therefore it is correct to call it after the Holy Mother of God Kanavka, as the people call it after its restoration. The degree of reliability of the research results, according to the dissertation author, is high, which is confirmed by the correspondence of data from archival and published sources with the results of reconnaissance excavations in those parts where their information fields overlap, as well as the coincidence of the area contoured by the Mother of God Canal in 2004 with the area of the land allotment of 1829 with an accuracy of 0.005 tithes, which is equal to 0.17% of the area of the land allotment, clear detection of the starting points and end of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka ditch. Publications of the dissertation author on the topic of the dissertation. The results of the study were published in the monograph “Holy Theotokos Kanavka”, four articles in a peer-reviewed journal included in the list of the All-Church Postgraduate and Doctoral Studies named after Saints Cyril and Methodius, as well as in a number of articles in other publications 44 . The results of the study were reported at the Christmas Readings (Moscow, 2014, section “Science and Faith”), at the “Kadashev Readings” conference (Moscow, 2010), at the meetings of the International Symposium on the Natural Conditions of Orthodox Churches held by the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius (Sergiev Posad, 2004; ibid., 2006; ibid. same, 2018; Nizhny Novgorod, 2012), at the International Conference “Missionary Work” (Kostroma, 2019). The structure of the work is determined by its purpose, objectives and research logic. The dissertation consists of an introduction, three chapters, a conclusion, a list of sources and literature. The chapters correspond to the keywords of the dissertation title and the three positions defended. “The History of Creation” is presented in two chapters, the first - the history of the past 19th and 20th centuries, the second - the latest history of the 21st century. “Spiritual meaning” is described in the third chapter of the dissertation. The dissertation author expresses gratitude for consultations to his supervisors Dmitry Viktorovich Shmonin and Dmitry Olegovich Shvidkovsky, as well as Hieromonk Afanasy Mikryukov, Priest Alexander Shchelkachev, Andrey Aleksandrovich Kostryukov and Irina Vladimirovna Shchelkacheva. Chapter 1. History of the Mother of God Kanavka from the beginning to the renewal of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery (1825–1991) 1.1. Periodization of the history of the creation of the Virgin Canal The Bogorodichnaya Kanavka is a 775-meter-long ditch and a rampart with a path along it (Fig. 1.1). They limit along a broken line the territory of the once existing maiden monastery of the Mill, built by the Monk Seraphim. The border of the monastery has a complex shape of a closed polygon, which consists of seven straight segments. Six of them are marked by Kanavka (Fig. 1.2). According to legend, the Mother of God, blessing St. Seraphim for the creation of the monastery, precisely indicated the border of the monastery, ordered to receive this land from the owners and demarcate it, as usual, with a ditch with a shaft from the excavated earth. That’s why the Kanavka is called the Mother of God. However, the dimensions of the boundary ditch were indicated to be unusually large, such that the Mother of God Ditch became a reliable fence for the maidens of the Mill Convent: the width and depth of the ditch was three arshins and the height of the shaft was also three arshins (2.13 m). The history of the Mother of God Kanavka begins on November 25, 1825, when the Monk Seraphim received the blessing of the Mother of God to create the Mill Convent in Diveevo and fence it with a ditch and rampart instead of the monastery wall 45. The almost 200-year period of time is divided in the dissertation into five historical periods, of which three were constructive, when the Theotokos Canal was created and maintained, and two destructive, when opponents of the activities of St. Seraphim and the Theotokos Canal bequeathed to him destroyed it. However, the prayerful veneration of the Mother of God Canal has not been interrupted throughout the years. Rice. 1.1. General view of the moat and rampart of the Virgin Canal (fifth straight line, 2016, photo by dissertation author) 46 Fig.1.2. Polygon of the Mother of God Canal on the “Plan of the former Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery” of 1925 47 The first stage lasted from November 25, 1825, when, according to legend, the Mother of God blessed St. Seraphim for the construction of the Kanavka, until his death on January 2, 1833. Since 1825, the Monk Seraphim and his spiritual children were busy for a number of years obtaining land and building the Mill-Feeder. An ambiguous attitude towards Hieromonk Seraphim (Moshnin) in the Sarov Monastery, indifference to the fate of the poor Diveyevo Christian women's community on the part of the sovereign and noble (in the style of the Russian 18th century) Batashev family restrained the execution of work on the construction of the Mill Monastery and its fence - the Mother of God Canal. Only in the summer of 1929 did the sisters begin excavation work on the Mother of God Kanavka, which soon stopped with the death of the saint. Section 1.2 of the dissertation describes the work on creating the ditch and rampart of the Theotokos Canal, the difficulties faced by the novices of St. Seraphim, his participation in the work and his leadership until his death. The story of the construction of the Mill-Feeder, created with the blessing of St. Seraphim and with his labor participation, is also discussed there. With the death of St. Seraphim, the first stage stopped and the second began. It lasted from 1833 to 1862 and is associated with the time when the affairs of the Mill Monastery were strongly influenced by the Sarov novice, painter Ivan Tolstosheev, later Hieromonk Joasaph, and later Hieroschemamonk Seraphim. His painting activity allowed him to come into contact and receive patronage in the reigning Romanov family, and to arrange for a number of sisters to study icon painting in St. Petersburg. However, the “servant” of St. Seraphim N.A. Motovilov, despite his compromising illness, managed to organize opposition to Ivan Tikhonovich Tolstosheev with the help of Archimandrite Anthony of the Holy Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius and Metropolitan Philaret (Drozdov). They treated with great respect the memory of Elder Seraphim, with whom Archimandrite Anthony in his youth simultaneously labored in the Sarov desert. At the request of Metropolitan Philaret (Drozdov) to Emperor Alexander II, the activities of Ivan Tolstosheev in Diveevo were stopped. With this, the second period in the history of the Virgin Canal ended. Its events are discussed in section 1.3 of the dissertation. The third stage in the history of the Mother of God Kanavka occurs during the first heyday of the monastery, 1862–1927. In 1862, by decree of the Holy Synod, the Holy Trinity Convent was created in the village of Diveevo, Nizhny Novgorod diocese. The management of the monastery was taken over by Abbess Maria (Ushakova) (1862–1904). In the first years, she concentrated the efforts of the sisters on the urgently needed work to establish the monastery. The restoration of the Mother of God Canal was probably started after the consecration of the Trinity Cathedral, which took place on July 28, 1875 48 . At the same time, judging by photographic documents and excavations, Abbess Maria set the task of restoring the first Kanavka, and not completing its construction to its full depth according to the behest of St. Seraphim. Technical difficulties in implementing the covenant of St. Seraphim continued to exist and could be one of the reasons for making a decision on restoration, and not on completing the construction of the Theotokos Canal. During the revolutionary times of 1917 and subsequent years, under Abbess Alexandra (Trakovskaya) (1904–1944), the life of the monastery became more complicated, but continued in Diveevo until 1927, when the authorities closed the monastery on the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary on September 8 (21). Until 1927, the nuns of the monastery maintained the Mother of God Kanavka in the form in which it was restored in the late 1870s 49 . The time of Abbess Alexandra was marked by the construction of the warm, now Transfiguration Cathedral, near the beginning of the Mother of God Canal. It was founded as a cathedral in the name of the Seraphim-Diveevskaya Icon of the Mother of God “Tenderness”. A cathedral of this name, according to legend coming from St. Seraphim, should be built before the Second Coming between the beginning and end of the Theotokos Kanavka. Therefore, the question of the construction of this cathedral is integral to the consideration of the history of the Mother of God Canal. The history of the third period is discussed in detail in section 1.4. The fourth historical period began in 1927. The Soviet government transferred the established economy of the sister “agricultural artel” into the hands of new owners - the rural poor, who were poor because they did not know how to farm. During the reform according to the Tsar's manifesto of 1861, all peasants were endowed with equal rights and equal plots of land. After decades, most of them, through hard work and ingenuity, managed to set up their own households and live prosperously, some even made capital and entered the merchant class. Others, due to laziness and lack of understanding, remained in poverty. Such “owners” destroyed the well-established profitable monastery economy within 2–3 years. The fourth historical period lasted from 1927 to 1991 under the atheistic government. At this time, they tried not only to destroy the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka by tearing down the shaft and filling up the ditch, but also to desecrate it by arranging garbage dumps and cesspools on it, which were not cleaned, and laying fecal sewage pipes from the bathhouse in the moat of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka. They tried to desecrate it not only physically, but also spiritually, organizing rural holidays with an accordion, drinking, swearing and fighting. At the same time, several sisters of the monastery, who huddled in Diveyevo and nearby, as well as a few pilgrims, did not stop praying on the Mother of God Kanavka. They no longer walked along the rampart, which had been demolished, but side by side, bypassing the properties of two schools located on the territory of the former Mill Convent, as well as private properties, walking where they could pass. At the same time, the path of the fourth period deviated from the path along the rampart by tens of meters in places and passed under a memorial larch tree planted in the year of birth of the holy passion-bearer Tsarevich Alexy. These prayer books were persecuted by the police, as the dissertation author testifies with his experience. The fifth historical period of the Mother of God Kanavka opened shortly after the fall of Soviet power. It began in 1991 with the renewal of the monastery under the name of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Convent of the Nizhny Novgorod diocese (now the metropolis). As with Abbess Maria (Ushakova), this time work on recreating the Mother of God Kanavka began only a few years after the re-establishment of the monastery. The reasons for the delay are the same - urgent matters related to organizing worship services and arranging everyday life. However, we consider the beginning of the period not the beginning of excavation work to restore the ditch and rampart, which happened much later, but the moment of the restoration of the monastery, since from that moment regular monastic prayer walks along the Virgin Canal began. Monastic prayer, congregational prayer is qualitatively different before God from the prayers of individuals according to the word of the Gospel: “For there are two or three congregations in My name, and I am in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20). The events of the fifth historical period are the most important for revealing the topic of the dissertation. The second chapter of the dissertation is devoted to them. The fifth historical period of the Mother of God Kanavka ended in 2004 with the completion of the ditch and rampart along the line marked on the ground in 1829–1832 by the sisters of the Mill Convent. The modern period began. The modern period, which began in 2004, is characterized by constant prayer on the Kanavka, which is visited daily by hundreds and thousands of pilgrims and local residents, including the nuns of the monastery. The structure and its green cover are preserved, maintained, repaired and improved. To conclude this section, we present a periodization of the history of the Mother of God Canal in the form of a brief table (Table 1.1). Table 1.1. Periodization of the history of the Holy Mother of God Kanavka 1.2. First historical period 1.2.1. Blessing for the creation of the Mill Monastery and the Mother of God Canal The material for compiling the section of the work on the first historical period was: the surviving plan of the monastery, drawn by St. Seraphim himself, the topographic plan of part of the village of Diveevo in 1846, where the territory of the Mill Monastery is indicated, as well as numerous memories of participants in the events of 1825–1833, which were only partially preserved in lengthy quotations given by the Hieromartyr Seraphim (Chichagov) in the monograph "Chronicle of the Seraphim-Diveevo Monastery." According to N.A. Motovilova 50, November 25, 1825, the Monk Seraphim, making his way through the thicket of the forest to his distant desert, saw the Mother of God. It should be noted that the founder of Diveyevo, Reverend Alexandra Diveevskaya (Melgunova), when dying, bequeathed to the young hierodeacon Seraphim to take care of the sisters she had gathered into the community and to spiritually nourish them. But at the moment he felt freed from this obedience, since the then head of the Diveyevo community, the successor of the Venerable Alexandra, Ksenia Mikhailovna Kocheulova, refused to accept his instructions on easing the monastic rules for the sisters. The Mother of God stopped such thoughts of the Monk Seraphim and ordered the creation of a new community, independent of Ksenia Mikhailovna. She indicated the site for the new community to the east of the altar of the Kazan Church, where the Mother of God Kanavka is now located. The Mother of God then explained how to fence the territory of the new monastery with a ditch and rampart. She ordered the beginning of a new abode for Her fourth lot on earth with eight sisters. She ordered a windmill to be built for them, where they could work for the surrounding peasants, thereby earning a living. Then she ordered to build cells for the sisters. These small huts stretched out in two rows to the south of the mill, forming the street shown on the plan of 1846 (Fig. 1.3). Cells were added as the maiden community grew. The new community at the mill among the Diveyevo villagers immediately received the name Mill Monastery or Community. Later in 1842 it was united with the original congregation of Mother Alexandra. The name Mill Convent remained with that primary formation, which existed from 1826 to 1842. Rice. 1.3. Part of the plan of the village of Diveevo with the territory of the Mill Monastery, named on the plan “Community Monastery”. 1846 51 The task of creating a prayer stronghold was entrusted to a 75-year-old elder and seven peasant girls and one noblewoman. The names of these peasant girls, most of them illiterate, are as follows: Praskovya Stepanovna from the village of Vertyanovo (nun Pelageya), Evdokia Efremovna from the village of Alamasova (nun Eupraxia), Ksenia Ilyinichna from the village of Vileika (nun Claudia, later dean of the Diveyevo monastery), Ksenia Pavlovna, Praskovya Ivanovna (nun Seraphima), Daria Zinovievna and Anna Alekseevna. Later, their number was increased to 12. According to Evdokia Efremovna Alamasovskaya, Father Seraphim said: “I asked the young ladies, but they refused, because the food was rough and the community was poor! I begged the Queen of Heaven, and she blessed me to take ordinary girls." 52 The Monk Seraphim appointed the “verbal”, as he put it, the head of the Mill community, Elena Vasilyevna Manturova, an educated girl from the nobility, as the head of the seven peasant girls. But out of modesty, she refused to take over leadership, saying that she herself could not save her soul, and therefore could not take responsibility for saving other souls, the sisters of the Mill Convent. She never moved to the territory fenced off by the Virgin's Canal. Despite her refusal, the Monk Seraphim considered Elena Vasilyevna to be the boss and sent his sisters to her for blessings for certain works. Elena Vasilievna worked on the creation of the Mother of God Kanavka along with all the sisters of the Mill Convent, was a churchwoman and sacristan in the Nativity churches, was tonsured into the ryassophore, read the indefatigable Psalter in the Church of the Nativity of the Mother of God, since besides her, apparently, only two more of the sisters knew how to read. The first task of the community was the construction of the Mill-Feeder. During 1826, the reverend prepared logs for the mill. On December 9, 1826, logs began to be transported along the sleigh route from the Sarov Forest to Diveevo. The Sarov monks were dissatisfied with the removal of commercial timber from their forest. St. Seraphim had to pay for logs for the mill. The remains of these logs were discovered by us in 2004, as we will discuss below (see subsection 1.2.2). The place intended by the Queen of Heaven for the mill was in the possession of the Batashev family, the heirs of Andrei Rodionovich Batashev (1740–1799), who owned many estates and a group of ironworks 53. The management of the huge farm, scattered throughout the area, was carried out by a special office. The Batashevs used the site of the Virgin Canal for underground mining of iron ore. There were pipes here - circular shafts from which brown iron ore was lifted and immediately smelted. Father Seraphim sent Praskovya Stepanovna to the Batashevskaya office, located at the Ilevsky factories, for permission to build a mill. She, together with Maria Semyonovna (Reverend Schema-Nun Martha), traveled 15 times and was refused 15 times. However, permission was eventually obtained. Among the thousands of visitors, the widow-general Vera Andreevna Postnikova, née Batasheva, daughter of Andrei Rodionovich, came to St. Seraphim. The Monk Seraphim asked for her help. She promised to take the plot required for the mill, one tithe, into her inheritance share and donate it to St. Seraphim 54. But she did not convey this decision to the management of the office, and the sisters were still refused. When, at the request of Father Seraphim, the office turned to Mrs. Postnikova, she did not refuse, and the land was received in the amount of one tithe. Now it was possible to build a mill. But you can’t dig a ditch. The line of the Theotokos Canal was shown to St. Seraphim by the Most Holy Theotokos. As he said, She Herself measured it with Her belt, accurately determining the beginning of the Groove, the length of the sides, and the turning points. The ditch was supposed to cover not one, but exactly three acres, including the first. Later, during the Great Lent of 1829, Postnikova increased her donation to three dessiatines 55. Then it became possible to start digging the Ditch. We will talk about this below, but for now let us dwell on the creation of the first building in the Fourth Domain of the Most Holy Theotokos. 1.2.2. Mill-Feeder The foundation of the mill took place on December 9 (22), 1826, the day of the conception of the Most Holy Theotokos by Righteous Anna. “At the Conception of Mother Anna and I want to conceive a monastery!” - Rev. Seraphim announced solemnly and enthusiastically 56. He attached great importance to calendar days. To Sister Ksenia Vasilievna Prutkova, one of the first twelve sisters of the Mill Convent, the priest gave a thread as a measure for laying out a construction site for a building. The layout was made, but then there was a delay, apparently due to land acquisition. The laying was made on the then foreign land of the Batashevs. The mill was founded on December 9, 1826 57 where the Virgin Canal now ends and there is a chapel that preserves the site of the first structure built on the site of the new monastery. The construction was carried out by carpenters under the guidance of the master miller, Likhachev peasant Yegor Vasilyevich. They built conscientiously and quickly. The construction was completed by July 7, and the mill began grinding and received the 1827 harvest. The mill was large and powerful. The Most Holy Virgin herself ordered it to be made, as they said then, about two posts. This means that with a good wind it was possible to grind flour on two millstones located nearby. Just add some grain. Two sisters had to work at the mill at the same time. They were helped in difficult operations by a laborer. For us, this message is important because sisters and men were allowed to work together during difficult operations. This served as the basis for organizing excavation work in our time on the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka with the participation of male workers and pilgrims. In the summer and autumn of 1827, the sisters lived at the mill. They were already separated from the community of the original Reverend Mother Alexandra, which was led at that time by Ksenia Mikhailovna Kocheulova, but the Mill community did not yet have its own housing. In the fall they lived at the mill and warmed themselves on the millstones, which retained the warmth from the day's work 58 . We only moved into our house in October. It was placed not far from the mill, somewhere where the granite steps to the Annunciation Cathedral are now. Soon, through the efforts of St. Seraphim, other cell huts were built, which stretched out in two lines (see Fig. 1.3), starting almost from the mill to the south to the place where the two-story cell building of the modern sisters of the monastery is now. Modern sisters live in the place where the first nuns of the Mill Convent lived. There were several houses, because the number of girls in the monastery was rapidly increasing towards the end of St. Seraphim’s life. The Feeding Mill did not stand for long in its original location. After the death of the monk, it was moved to where the outbuildings were, considering it a purely economic production facility. But the foundation of the mill remained. In 2004, we discovered it during the vertical planning of the monastery territory. Above it, a chapel built in 1895 was restored in 2004. It was restored using a postcard and an insurance certificate, which precisely indicated the height, dimensions of the log house 5´5 arshins and the insurance value of 50 rubles 59 . The foundation of the Feeding Mill was discovered and documented during construction work in 2004. An excavator removed a layer of soil of approximately 0.5 m. At the same time, the remains of an ancient foundation were discovered (Fig. 1.4, Fig. 1.5) made of small blocks of dolomite and fragments of brick, spilled with lime mortar. The brick is very similar to the one from which the Nativity chapels of the Kazan Church are made. They were built a little later than the mill. The foundation is strip. The plan has an octagonal shape. From its outer edge to the outer edge on the opposite side is 9 meters. This was the size we established of that really large mill. The rubble foundation contained pillars with a diameter of about 0.25–0.30 meters. The tree has hardly survived. These are the trees that St. Seraphim personally felled in the Sarov pine forest in 1826. Consequently, in his eighth decade he still retained his strength, and even after his injury he was not a feeble old man. According to his life and the size of his surviving belongings, stored in the Trinity Cathedral in Diveevo, he was tall and had great physical strength. The site of the Mill-Feeder and the remains of the logs prepared by the Monk Seraphim were discovered and documented with the participation of the priest-archaeologist Georgy Pavlovich. Rice. 1.4. Remains of a wooden pillar in the foundation of the mill (dissertation photo) 60 Fig. 1.5. Plan-sketch of the mill foundation (compiled by S. N. Chernyshev) 61. 2004 1.2.3. The Mother of God Canal on the plan of the women's Lavra of St. Seraphim 1.2.3.1. Diveyevo shrine The Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Convent houses a remarkable document dating back almost two hundred years. On a yellowed sheet of paper, a diagram is drawn in pencil, under which it is written in Church Slavonic letters: “Plan of the Seraphim-Diveyevo Lavra! Compiled and Written by the Elder Himself, Seraphim” 62. There is a mention of him in the Chronicle of the Hieromartyr Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov) 63. The document has not been examined before. The plan depicts the Mother of God Kanavka, cathedrals, cell buildings, refectory and other structures of the monastery, which did not yet exist at that time, with the exception of one Kazan church, using conventional topographical signs. St. Seraphim, as is known, was a hieromonk, but also a highly qualified carpenter, possessed of a strong hand and an excellent eye. This is evidenced by a stool made by him, preserved in the Diveyevo Monastery. With this strong hand, he drew the plan in question “by eye” and thereby proved himself to be an architect. But he was an unusual architect. He gave instructions on the development and creation of the Mother of God Canal on the completely free territory of the future monastery. Speaking about Diveyevo, he testifies: “I didn’t place a single pebble of my own free will below a single word from myself, I didn’t tell them, I didn’t accept a single one of them at my own will against the will of the Queen of Heaven!” 64. “The plan of the Seraphim-Diveyevo Lavra, compiled and written by the Elder, Seraphim himself,” was executed in 1828 or 1929 during the construction of the Nativity churches. Hieromartyr Seraphim (Chichagov) reports: “The priest wrote this plan in his cell on a stump that served him as a chair; wrote with Mikhail Vasilyevich Manturov, on his knees” 65. It is reproduced in the Chronicle (P. 263), but without details (Fig. 1.6). The original plan was drawn in pencil on thin paper. The pencil has worn off in places or crumbled over time. The sheet was folded in half and then pasted onto a cardboard base, which is why the paper was warped. It has become very yellow over time. In many places there are traces of dampness and other spots and dots that hide the primary, often barely noticeable image. In ancient years, someone made a bold attempt to draw an image along existing lines. Rice. 1.6. A copy of the “Plan of the Seraphim-Diveyevo Lavra, compiled and written by the Elder himself, Seraphim” from Chronicle 66 It is possible that the large circle of the mill was added later. At the corners of the rotation of the Mother of God Canal, dots are made with a pencil and pressed into the paper. There are similar points in some other places. To analyze the plan, the monastery provided us with 5 scanned copies, made in different colors in full size, as well as with magnification of 1.7 and 2.0 times. There was also the opportunity to work for several hours with the original plan in Trinity Cathedral after studying the computer copies. Work with the original showed that enlarged color copies accurately and completely reproduce the original. Moreover, color enlargements reveal details that are almost indistinguishable on the original. Working with the original, thanks to its volume, made it possible to more reliably filter out secondary strokes and spots. The sheet with the plan is pasted onto cardboard with a thickness of 0.5 to 0.8 millimeters and an area of ​​16´19 centimeters. The Reverend's original is framed with narrow strips of tissue paper. On the bottom strip-sticker there is an inscription in Church Slavonic letters: “Plan of the Seraphim-Diveyevo Lavra! Compiled and Written by the Elder Himself, Seraphim.” The size of the original, visible in the frame, is 100´156 millimeters. Framing stickers are placed on the plan sheet. It cannot be ruled out that under them there are some parts of the drawing of St. Seraphim. So, it is possible that under the right sticker there is an image of the second angle of rotation and the beginning of the third straight of the Virgin Canal. This idea is also confirmed by examining the layout made using a ruler on the sheet before it was used by the Monk Seraphim to draw up the plan. The marking lines leave the visible field of the document and should logically intersect under the frame superimposed on the document, forming a triangle. The monk drew a plan for Mikhail Vasilyevich in a conversation with him. During the conversation, he probably took a piece of paper that had fallen under the cancer, where there were already some signs. The material presented by the monastery allowed us, as a result of our research, to create a generalized image of the plan with decoding of the existing signs (Fig. 1.7). The identified strokes and dots are indicated by numbers. Rice. 1.7. A deciphered computer copy of the “Plan of the Seraphim-Diveyevo Lavra, compiled and written by the Elder himself, Seraphim.” Arranged by S. N. Chernyshev 67 On the plan of St. Seraphim there are three types of signs. First, the lines drawn by St. Seraphim (figures 1–20); secondly, straight lines drawn along a ruler with a sharp, relatively hard pencil (figure 21); thirdly, various paper defects that have accumulated over almost 200 years (figures 22–25), which make it difficult to perceive the plan. The numbers in Figure 1.7 indicate: 1 – Church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God; 2 – Holy Trinity Cathedral; 3 – refectory church of St. Prince Alexander Nevsky; 4 – Abbess building with the house church of Equal-to-the-Apostles Mary Magdalene; 5 – Mill-Feeder; 6 – straight sections of the Virgin Canal from the first to the sixth, respectively 6.1, 6.2 and so on until 6.6; 6,7 – strokes at the beginning of the seventh straight, undug section of the Virgin Canal; 7 – western row of cells of the Mill Community of St. Seraphim; 8 – eastern row of cells of the Mill Community of St. Seraphim; 9 – a stroke presumably showing the northern wall of the monastery; 10 – southern wall of the monastery; 11 – corner of the cell of the pre-revolutionary nursing building “On the Cellars”, which was wooden and recreated after a fire in brick in the modern monastery; 12 – edge of the coastal ledge of the Vichkinza River; 13 – area in front of the Holy Gate of the future Lavra; 14 – Holy gate of the monastery (not realized) with a bell tower; 15 – east-west axis drawn on the plan through the Holy Gate of the monastery, the church in the name of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God and the eastern point of the Mother of God Kanavka; 16 – cell building “verb” (not implemented); 17 – cell building above the Vichkinza River (not implemented); 18 – residential complex to the west of the Refectory Church (not implemented); 19 – service building east of Igumensky (not implemented); 20 – an axis of unclear significance in the west (probably the western fence of the monastery), as well as other strokes and individual primary points placed by the monk; 21 – direct, not related to the plan and drawn on a sheet of paper before the plan was applied to it by the Monk Seraphim; 22 – dry spots from dampness; 23 – a fold in the paper that formed when the sheet was folded in half; 24 – waves of sheet warping that occurred when gluing to the base; 25 – similarity of strokes – ripples from shrinkage and cracking of paper. Let us take a closer look at the signs made by St. Seraphim. Among them there are non-scale ones: the Kazan Church and the Trinity Cathedral (figures 1 and 2) are depicted with crosses. There are generalized signs, such as groups of cells of the Mill Monastery (figures 7 and 8), shown by two rectangles, each of which has several huts. There are individual signs that do not generally depict individual buildings, for example the Refectory Church (figure 3). Finally, there are dotted lines showing axes, such as the axis of the ditch of the Virgin's Canal (figures 6.1–6.6). All images are linear, pencil. Straight lines are drawn by hand without a ruler. They are slightly sinuous and intermittent. The copy of the plan published in Chronicle 68 (p. 263) was printed from a graphic hand copy of the original, not from a photograph. It is likely that tracing paper was applied to the plan and a copy was made. The copy (Fig. 1.6) does not contain all the details that are now visible on the plan. Compared to the original, the copy made more than 120 years ago has two significant differences: 1) The Mill-Feeder is shown by two circles with a dot in the center. The small circle seems to depict a mill on the scale of the structure, and the large circle outlines it to draw attention to a small but significant object. There is a possibility that the large circle was drawn by someone later to draw attention to the small circle, which at the end of the 19th century was already disappearing from the drawing, erased by time. At the time of our research in 2005, the small circle and the dot in the center were missing. 2) The coastal ledge of the Vichkinza River valley in the left (western) part of the plan in the Chronicle is shown with a continuation to the west, where a bend is indicated, identical to the bend of the horizontal 145 m on the modern topographic plan at a scale of 1:1000. Probably, the author of the copy had the opportunity to see what is now hidden under the paper frame. Thus, the hypothesis is confirmed that part of the plan is hidden under the paper frame pasted on it. 1.2.3.3. Scale and accuracy of the plan It seems that a schematic depiction of an area made by someone without going on location cannot have a scale. The compiler of the scheme, the Monk Seraphim, was in Diveevo twice, and both times he was passing through, briefly. However, the plan has scale. We measured 27 segments on the plan, such as the distance between the Trinity Cathedral and the Kazan Church, the lengths of straight segments of the Theotokos Kanavka, and the distance between the Abbot's building and the refectory church of St. Prince Alexander Nevsky. At the same time, their length was determined with an accuracy of 0.5 m using a modern accurate topographic plan of 1:500. From here the scale in which these segments are depicted on the plan of the monk is calculated. The scales for different segments turned out to be somewhat different. The drawing of St. Seraphim is inferior in accuracy to the modern instrumentally constructed topographical plan. However, the difference in scales for different segments is not very large. On average, a segment on a plan is 4575 times smaller than on the ground. Therefore, the scale is 1:4575, or 1 centimeter on the plan is 45.75 meters. This strange metric scale is close to the scale of 1 vershok 100 fathoms. The ratio of one inch to 100 fathoms is 1:4794.61. The discrepancy between the scale we established and the scale of one top of 100 fathoms is 4.6%. It could have arisen due to deformation of the paper during storage, when it was moistened and dried. The discrepancy can also be explained by the small size of our statistical sample, which has 27 measurements. But it is impossible to make more independent measurements on the available material. For reference: 1 fathom is equal to 213.36 centimeters, 1 vershok is equal to 4.45 centimeters. We also measured the angles of rotation of the Virgin Canal. The differences are surprisingly small - from 0 to 3 degrees. The high accuracy of Rev. Seraphim’s vision of the Diveyevo land amazed Mikhail Vasilyevich Manturov when he laid out the construction site for the Mill-Feeder 69. Returning to the plan, we can summarize what has been said: the plan is drawn, although schematically, but on a certain scale, however, not the same in all parts of the plan. Apparently, when drawing the western part of the plan, the Monk Seraphim had to slightly reduce the size of the image so as not to go beyond the border of the sheet. The eastern part turned out to be somewhat stretched. In general, the plan of the area of ​​the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveyevo Monastery, the future women's Lavra, created, in the words of the Hieromartyr Seraphim (Chichagov), “behind the eyes,” represents one of the miracles revealed through the Monk Seraphim. 1.2.3.4. The Mother of God Canal on the plan of St. Seraphim By the time St. Seraphim drew up his plan, there was a Mill community; the Mother of God Canal had not yet been dug, but the Mill-Feeder was built and log cells were cut down in two rows so that the Mill was opposite the passage between the cell huts, as can be seen on the plan (see Fig. 1.6 and 1.7). The mill was a tall wooden rotating tower with a diameter of about 9 meters at the base, as established by excavations in 2004. Currently, on the original plan, stored in the Holy Trinity Cathedral, the Feeding Mill is shown as a thick circle with a “tail”. The thick line of the circle with a “tail” has a diameter of 5 millimeters, which corresponds to 23 meters on the ground. In the Chronicle, inside a large circle, another small circle is drawn, which, when converted to a scale of 1:4575, gives a diameter of 9.15 meters on the ground, which coincides with high accuracy with the diameter of the mill based on the measurement of the foundation. Apparently, during the period of the work of the Hieromartyr Seraphim (Chichagov) on the compilation of the Chronicle, there was still a sign of the Mill on the plan, drawn by the Monk Seraphim in the form of a circle with a dot in the middle. The sign was lost and restored by someone without referring to the copy preserved in the Chronicle; it was not restored entirely accurately. The vertical axis of the Mill was, according to excavations, 8 meters from the end of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka ditch. According to the reverend's plan - 12 meters. The log cells made up the street in the western part of the territory of the Mill Monastery. Housing was principally located in the western part of this holy territory. The line of the Theotokos Canal is drawn by St. Seraphim on his plan with a broken running line, sometimes sparsely, sometimes often dotted. Individual strokes left by a quick hand are curved, but overall the sides of the heptagon depicting the Virgin's Canal are straight. The fourth, fifth and sixth straight sections of the Virgin Canal are clearly visible on the plan. The first straight section is less clearly shown. At the beginning it coincides with the contour of the cell street. However, a close look at the original reveals a double line. The huts were moved close to the rampart along the first 40 meters of the Virgin Canal. The same 40 meters at the beginning of the Virgin Canal is occupied by a modern cell building. The first straight of the Virgin Canal is clearly shown with two strokes before turning onto the second straight section. The second straight section on the plan is indicated only by three thin strokes. Two of them are at the beginning and one at the end. Perhaps some strokes are lost - the pencil has crumbled. This was probably the case 120 years ago. Therefore, the second straight section of the Theotokos Canal is not on the copy of the plan in the Chronicle. It was not noticed during copying. The second turn turned out to be beyond the border of the part of the plan visible to us. Accordingly, most of the third straight section is not visible. But its end is clearly drawn. The intersection of two straight sections marks the turn from the third straight section to the fourth straight section. It is very significant that on the plan of St. Seraphim the beginning of the seventh straight line, enclosing the territory, is drawn. On the ground, exploration pit No. 55 showed the end of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka without turning onto the seventh straight. This contradiction between the plan and the execution by his sisters of the Mill Convent during the life of St. Seraphim, when designing the reconstruction of the Mother of God Canal, was resolved by us in favor of the actual position of the primary ditch on the ground. In the future, this decision may be revised in favor of information from the plan of St. Seraphim. Then the Virgin Canal should be continued after turning a few meters in accordance with the length of the strokes that depict the seventh segment on the plan, and in accordance with the scale of the plan 1:4575. It should be noted that the topographic plan of 1846 (see Fig. 1.3) also shows the initial segment of the seventh straight line, but there it is not a segment of Kanavka, but the border of the community’s territory (not yet a monastery at that time). Further to the south, the seventh boundary of the “Community Monastery” (as the territory we are studying is named on the 1846 plan) coincides with a field painted in dark blue and is not visible or not drawn. The accuracy of the image of the Mother of God Canal on the plan of St. Seraphim is high. The angles between the sides of the heptagon on the plan and on the ground after the reconstruction of the Virgin Canal have a discrepancy of no more than 3°. Also, the lengths of the sides of the heptagon on the plan and on the ground coincide with an accuracy of up to 5%. For comparison, Table 1.2 shows the angles between the sides of the polygon according to the plan of the monk and according to the modern topographic plan. Table 1.3 also shows the dimensions of the sides of the polygon. The Mother of God Kanavka fenced off the site of the Mill Monastery by the end of 1832, when the plan we are considering had already been kept by M.V. Manturov for several years. By this time, six of the seven straight parts of the Virgin Canal had been dug. Now the Mother of God Canal has been opened for the third time, and we can compare the modern executive drawing with the original plan of St. Seraphim. In Figure 1.8, wide bold lines show the contours of St. Seraphim. A thin solid line shows buildings and structures about which there are prophecies on the plan or in the text of the Chronicle, a thin dotted line shows existing modern buildings about which there are no prophecies or the prophecies are not known to us. Table 1.2. Comparison of angles between straight lines on the plan of St. Seraphim and on the ground after the reconstruction of the Theotokos Canal Table 1.3. Comparison of the lengths of straight segments on the plan of the monk and on the ground after the reconstruction of the Theotokos Canal Fig. 1.8. Overlay of the “Plan of the Seraphim-Diveevo Lavra, compiled and written by the Elder, Seraphim himself” on the modern plan of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Monastery with reduction to the same scale 70 1 – Church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God; 2 – cathedral in the name of the Holy Trinity; 3 – refectory church in the name of Holy Prince Alexander Nevsky; 4 – Igumensky building; 5 – Mill-Feeder on the plan of the monk; 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 6.5, 6.6 – straight sections of the Virgin Canal; 7 and 8 – rows of primary cells of the Mill Monastery; 9 – uninterpreted lines on the plan of St. Seraphim; 10 – southern wall of the monastery; 11 – cell building “On the cellars”; 12 – coastal ledge of the valley of the Wichkenza River on the plan of St. Seraphim and the corresponding horizontal relief contours of 145 m and 150 m on the modern plan; 13 – area in front of the future Holy Gate of the Lavra on the plan of the Venerable; 14 – Holy gates of the future Lavra with a bell tower above them; 15 – the architectural axis of the Lavra on the plan of St. Seraphim, passing along the axis of the Holy Gate, along the axis of the Kazan Church and through the eastern point of the Mother of God Kanavka, where the marble Crucifix is ​​installed; 16 – a group of buildings on the plan of the monk, including a number of modern buildings from the Bishop’s building to the Pilgrimage center; 17 and 18 – buildings on the plan of the monk, which were not built; 19 – Sacristy building; 20 – strokes on the plan are not interpreted; 21 – Transfiguration Cathedral; 22 – existing bell tower; 23 – cell of the holy blessed Paraskeva of Diveyevo; 24 – the church in the name of the Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God and other buildings of the pre-revolutionary monastery, not indicated on the plan of the monk; 25 – chapel on the site of the Mill-Feeder; 26 – Riga; 27 – Overhead chapel; 28 – cell building at the beginning of the Virgin Canal; 29 – monastery hospital “Nadezhda” with a hospital church in the name of the icon of the Mother of God “Healer”; 30 – almshouse with a house church; 31 – monastery clinic; 32 – extensions to the Igumensky building; 33 – Bread building; 34 – house of the council of the monastery artel, now residential; 35 – the northern wall of the monastery on the plan of the monk and the existing wall; 36 – priestly hotel of the monastery; 37 – a boarding school building being reconstructed with house churches in the name of the Sovereign Icon of the Mother of God and All Saints who shone in the Russian land. Note: A detailed analysis of the correspondence between the modern map of the monastery and the plan of St. Seraphim is available in the article: Chernyshev S.N., Chernyshev N.S., Koval V.V. Reconstruction of the first plan of the village of Diveevo, indicated by St. Seraphim // Collection of works of the 3rd International Scientific and Practical Symposium “Natural conditions for the construction and preservation of churches of Orthodox Rus'”. Trinity-Sergius Lavra. Sergiev Posad, 2008. pp. 297–323. This section of the dissertation provides only material relating to the Mother of God Canal and general information about the plan necessary for the perception of this material. 1.2.3.5. Analogy 71 between the development plan for the territory inside the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka and the internal layout of the hut The development of the area bordered by the Mother of God Canal began under St. Seraphim and continues to this day. Its first elements are shown on the plan, where a mill and two rows of potassiums are drawn. The Mill-Feeder was built to the left of the entrance to the site in its northwestern part. The log cells under St. Seraphim formed a street in the western part of the territory of the Mill Monastery. Housing and work premises were principally located in the western part of the area outlined by the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka. Let us remember how the interior space of a peasant hut was traditionally divided. Its internal layout expressed the value system of an Orthodox person. Images were placed in the front corner opposite the entrance to the hut. Below them is a table where the whole family gathered for meals or handicrafts. On holidays they sang and danced here. To the left of the door, near the western wall, a stove was placed - the breadwinner of the family. To the right of the door, also near the western wall, the hosts' bed was placed. Children or old people slept on the stove or on benches near the walls. So, in accordance with the value system, the Spirit was assigned the eastern part, the soul - the middle. The western part of the hut was left for the body to rest and prepare food. Between the western wall of the hut and the Russian stove, in the westernmost part of the dwelling, a narrow space was arranged - a nook 72, where the cattle's offspring were placed for the first days of life, since during frosts in the stable, cowshed, sheepfold, respectively, a foal, calf, or lamb could catch a cold. So, the extreme western part of the hut was allotted to the animals. Dogs were not allowed into the hut. Cats, which are not prohibited from entering the altar, ran all over the hut. Following the analogy “hut - mill monastery”, we will find inside the Mother of God Kanavka in the eastern part the Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord, which existed in the 19th century. Now in the eastern part of the territory the Hospital Church at the monastery hospital has been consecrated. In the extreme eastern part, where the shrine was located in the hut, a large marble Crucifixion cross was installed on the shaft of the Virgin Canal. In the northwestern corner, where there was a feeding stove in the hut, there was a Mill-Feeder. Now in its place there is a chapel where you can get crackers (also bread-food), consecrated in the cast iron pot of St. Seraphim, and take clay from the Mother of God Canal to heal bodily ailments. In the extreme west of the territory, inside the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka, there is the Nadkladeznaya Chapel, the well in which was destroyed during Soviet times. But a modern monastery nearby installed water wells, also to nourish the body. On the plan of the monk along the western border of the site there are two rows of residential huts for the sisters. They are where the owner's bed is in the hut. And now, in the extreme western part of the territory, fenced by the Mother of God Kanavka, near the rampart there is a cell building - a residential building for sisters. In the northwestern part of the territory, fenced by the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka, an educational building of a boarding school for orphans was built in Soviet times. It was converted by the monastery into a cell building, which turned out to be not far from the place where there was a Russian stove in the hut, which was a bed for some family members. In the middle part of the territory, fenced by the Mother of God Canal, there is now a large free space, part of which formerly was a monastery cemetery. This middle part is similar to the middle part of the hut, which is free. So, there is much in common in the basic planning scheme of a peasant (Christian) cage dwelling and the territory of the Mill Monastery, which is fenced by the Mother of God Canal. The described distribution of objects along the east-west axis is typical not only for a hut, but also for an Orthodox church, where there is an altar in the east, and a candle box with money in the west. In the northwestern part of the church, where there is a stove in the hut, an eve table is usually placed for food donations for clergy and clergy. Also in monasteries: they tried to place the coenobium in the eastern part of the territory, and the service premises in the western part. For example, in the Optina Hermitage the monastery is located to the east of the monastery, and the service premises are to the west of the churches under the descent to the Zhizdra River. In the Solovetsky Monastery, to the east of the altars there is only the Holy Lake, to the west of the monastery there are piers, a hotel, a dock and other practical structures. 1.2.4. Creation of the Mother of God Canal in 1829–1832 In 1828, the Mill-Feeder ground grain for more than a year, which was transported by surrounding peasants. Mikhail Vasilyevich Manturov built the Church of the Nativity of Christ out of brick, cells were built and occupied by girls sent by St. Seraphim. The fourth inheritance of the Most Holy Theotokos, under the spiritual guidance and economic guardianship of St. Seraphim, flourished in the Russian wilderness. However, the Mother of God Canal, the location of which was precisely indicated by the Mother of God, could not be dug. Its heptagon passed through Batashevsky land. Only in the third year after the blessing of the Mother of God, Father Seraphim and the Diveyevo sisters managed to obtain complete land allotment of the territory indicated by the Most Holy Theotokos. This is how the Lord does not violate the will of people, in this case the Batashev landowners, the Lord recognizes the right to own the land. But finally, the land allotment was formalized 73. The outline of the allotted plot of 3 acres has a strange shape: not a rectangle, not a trapezoid, like ordinary properties, but a heptagon. The site, judging by the plan of 1846 (see Fig. 1.3), is separated from a large land holding, shown in yellow-gray on the plan. From the yellow-gray field on the plan, an area is highlighted, shaded in gray. “Stars” are scattered along it in the drawing. They mean dumps of soil removed from the pipes by miners. This is the 74th part of the deposit that has been worked out. This territory is limited by a complex winding contour, spoiled by dumps and sinkholes, unsuitable for sowing agricultural crops. The land along the line of the Virgin Canal still contains traces of their activity in the form of colored glassy slag formed during the smelting of ore, bulk sandy soils on top of the soil, black carbonaceous deposits and traces of sinkholes in the surface of the earth, undermined during ore mining 75 . The children of Diveevo call the colored slag stones the tears of the Virgin Mary. Perhaps not without reason, since the site of the Mill Monastery was, at least partially, damaged. We need what has been said about the shape of the plot and the deposit in order to make a statement: from the large property, the Batashevskaya office allocated to the Monk Seraphim a plot in the place and shape given by him. The Monk Seraphim asked not just three tithes, but a specific place indicated to him from above. This place was dear to the owners, the Batashevs, as it was located on an iron ore deposit that was being developed. Maybe that’s why the brothers-breeders did not want to give this plot to their sister Vera Andreevna, or at least delayed the transfer in order to develop ore reserves. “In the post of 1829, the official order of the Batashevsky office finally came about the sacrifice of three acres of land at the request of Father Seraphim and the promise of General Postnikova of the Diveyevo monastery. Father Vasily testifies that Fr. Seraphim was in such admiration and in such joy that it is impossible to say. He gave Mikhail Vasilyevich Manturov, who was then in Sarov, a tub of honey and ordered all the sisters to gather, and when they walked around that land, they would eat honey with soft bread. When they begin to walk around this land, then, in view of the deep snow, stock up on pebbles and place them between the pegs placed by the surveyor. Father Seraphim said that when the snow melts, the pegs will fall and some will get lost or the water will carry them to another place. And the pebbles will remain in their place. His order, of course, was carried out exactly. The celebration was attended by the head of the Kazan Church monastery Ksenia Mikhailovna, M.V. Manturov, Fr. Vasily and Sarov novice Ivan Tikhonov" 76. The latter later passed himself off as a disciple of the Monk Seraphim, and if he was such, then after the death of the elder he betrayed his teacher, which the reverend foresaw, judging by the Chronicle of the Hieromartyr Seraphim (Chichagov). Ivan Tikhonovich Tolstosheev, during his activities in Diveyevo, consistently erased the traces of the activities of the Monk Seraphim in order to establish himself for the future in the image of a pioneer builder. Under his leadership, the sisters' cells and the mill were moved, and the Mother of God Canal was filled in. Much has been written about his detrimental influence on the affairs of the Diveyevo women’s communities, not yet a monastery, in the Chronicle of Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov). However, we can agree with O.V. Bukova that in Sarov and Diveyevo the novice John was seen as a man prepared by the Monk Seraphim to be his successor. It is his noted presence at the celebration of land allotment that portrays him to the residents of the village of Diveevo as a confidant of the monk. Given the shallow understanding of the personality of Hieromonk Seraphim, which for the most part not only the laity of Diveevo, but also the monks of Sarov, had, rumor did not distinguish the true successors of the work of St. Seraphim, namely priest Vasily Sadovsky, M.V. Manturova, N.A. Motovilov, from the false successor I.T. Tolstosheeva. The latter was a resident of the monastery where the monk labored, and therefore in the eyes of people he had the advantage of being considered the successor of Hieromonk Seraphim. This superficial assessment of events is restored and wants to be transferred to the modern teaching about St. Seraphim by O.V. Bukova in her publications 77. Hieromartyr Seraphim (Chichagov) 125 years ago immediately removed the falseness of such a view and revealed the depth of the spiritual relationship between the sisters of the Mill community and the disciples of the monk. After receiving the land "about. Seraphim ordered the sister of the monastery, Elena Vasilievna Manturova, on behalf of him and the Diveyevo community to write a letter to General Postnikova and thank her. Father sent her some crackers as a blessing.”78 In the spring, the Monk Seraphim ordered to plow this land with a plow, one furrow three times, and Mikhail Vasilyevich (Manturov. - S.Ch.), Father Vasily (Sadovsky. - S.Ch.) and older sisters were to be present. Let us note that, in an imperative form, the named persons are obliged to attend the second holiday and at the same time form a control commission in the implementation of a matter of exceptional importance, in which it was impossible to make a mistake. The Monk Seraphim did not bind novice I.T. with such a duty. Tolstosheeva. The ground was plowed using the prescribed pebbles, since many pegs actually got lost or ended up in other places. When the earth was completely dry, the Monk Seraphim ordered it to be dug into a ditch three arshins deep, three arshins wide at the top, and to throw the removed earth inside the monastery so that a shaft also three arshins wide would be formed 79 . To strengthen the shaft, he ordered gooseberries to be planted on it. Further, Father Vasily Sadovsky says in his notes: “Fr. Seraphim about this groove. So this groove is the piles of the Mother of God! Here the Queen of Heaven herself walked around her! This groove is sky high! The Most Pure Mother of God herself took this land as her inheritance! Here, father, I have Athos, Kyiv, and Jerusalem! And when the Antichrist comes, he will pass everywhere and will not jump over this ditch! The sisters dug this ditch until the father’s death; towards the end of his life, on his orders, they did not stop digging even in winter; fire splashed from the ground when they chopped it with axes, but Father Seraphim did not order to stop. When things weren’t going well, he ordered to dig at least one arshin, or at least half an arshin, just to get the job done, and then they’ll dig it up!” 80. As it turned out, they “dug” only now, around Trinity Day 2004, exactly on the 175th anniversary of the start of work. And to be very strict, the last meters of the Virgin Canal were dug even in 2006, when the passage to the rural secondary school was eliminated due to the transfer of the school to an excellent new building, built by benefactors and the state with the transfer of the old building to the monastery, which was reconstructed and included in the architectural ensemble of the monastery by the monastery architect O.V. Listopadova. They began to dig the Mother of God Canal like this: Elder Anna Alekseevna, one of the first twelve sisters, says: “For six years I lived in a mill, where Father Seraphim chose the seven of us, where he placed us to live, here I witnessed the next miracle. This very place, where there is now a ditch, was a flat and good place, and it was on it that the priest ordered to dig a ditch, so that the path through which the Mother of God, the Queen of Heaven, took Diveevo as her inheritance, would be unforgettable for all eternity! Look, the sisters listened to all this, but they all put off fulfilling Father’s order and didn’t bury (didn’t start digging. - S.Ch.) the ditch. One day, one of us, named Maria, the sister of the late Akulina Ivanovna Malysheva, at night, while cleaning, went out of her cell for something and saw: Father Seraphim in his white robe himself began to dig a ditch. In fear, and at the same time joy, without remembering herself, she runs into her cell and tells us all this. All of us, who were wearing anything, rushed to that place in indescribable joy and, seeing the priest, fell straight at his feet, but, having risen, we no longer found him: only a shovel and a hoe lay in front of us on the dug up ground. It was already dug the size of an arshin in that very place; That’s why he himself calls it the beginning of the ditch, since the priest himself, seeing our negligence and negligence in fulfilling his commandments, began and buried it. Here everyone made an effort, and since the priest was in a great hurry with this matter, even in the fierce winter, chopping the earth with axes, all with their own hands, as he ordered, the sisters dug out this holy (emphasis added by me - M.V.) ditch reserved for us; and as soon as they finished, our dear father died immediately, as if he had been waiting for this.” 81 This figurative and meaningful story gives the modern builders of the Theotokos Canal two fundamental principles that were used during the years of construction of the modern Theotokos Canal. Firstly, it is indicated that the sisters themselves had to do all the hard work of digging the Virgin Canal with their own hands, while they were allowed to use male labor not only in the construction of the mill and housing, but also in grinding flour every day. Secondly, Anna Alekseevna reports that the Holy, as she puts it, Kanavka is finished. But she is not closed! The fencing of the monastery territory is not complete. One could understand the elder’s words “afterwards they will dig it” as an indication to subsequently connect the beginning and end of the ditch. But the divinely inspired story of the old woman, as the holy martyr Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov) calls her, gives reason to understand “they are digging” this way: they will deepen to the required depth and expand to the required width. Based on our study, Mother Abbess Sergia included the last two provisions in the task of recreating the Mother of God Canal when she gave her blessing to begin the excavation work. But what about the fact that an open ditch does not enclose the territory it covers? According to legend coming from St. Seraphim, between the beginning and the end of the Theotokos Kanavka, a beautiful large cathedral will be built in recent times. Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov) knew this tradition at the time of the foundation of the current Transfiguration Cathedral, which was built as a cathedral in the name of the Seraphim-Diveyevo Icon of the Mother of God “Tenderness”. We will dwell on this important issue below when considering the third historical period (see section 1.4.3). The story about the beginning of work on the Mother of God Kanavka and the appearance of the Monk Seraphim, given above, is confirmed in a document now lost, but quoted by Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov) by the Diveyevo nun Serafima (Praskovya Ivanovna): “Among the seven transferred from the old monastery of Mother Alexandra, that at the Kazan Church, to the mill of the sisters,” the old woman narrates, “was Father Seraphim translated me, a sinner, too. We all lived in a small cell built by the priest next to the mill. Early in the morning, sister Maria Ivanovna Malysheva, who was left behind to prepare food, went into the cellar and, seeing a candle standing and burning behind our cell, she woke us up sleeping with fear. We soon left and went to the place where the fire was seen. We come closer, yes, to our greatest joy, and we see Father Seraphim; he stands by a burning candle with a spatula in his hands and hoees the ground. Beside ourselves with delight, thinking that the priest himself had come to visit us, we all threw ourselves with a cry at his feet to receive the blessing, but having risen, to our surprise, the priest became invisible, and only the dug up earth confirmed his vision to us! This was the very day on which he blessed us to start digging a ditch, just before the day of the Holy Trinity, and he himself, thus, sanctified the beginning of this work” 82. The same old woman tells us the dimensions of the Mother of God Canal. In her manuscript, priest Leonid Chichagov, the future metropolitan and hieromartyr, found a recording of a conversation with the Monk Seraphim: “You need to dig a ditch,” Father Seraphim somehow carefully tells me, “three arshins so that there is depth and three arshins in width and three arshins in height, the thieves won’t be able to climb over!” “What for,” I say, “Father?” A fence would be better for us! “Stupid,” he says. - What is the groove for? When the century ends, first the Antichrist will begin to remove crosses from churches and destroy monasteries and will destroy all monasteries! And it will come up to yours, it will come up, and the groove will become from the ground to the sky; He can’t even come in to you, the groove won’t allow him anywhere, so he’ll just go away!” 83. St. Seraphim spoke to many about the protection of the Mother of God Canal from the Antichrist. Elder Feodosia Vasilyevna reported the following: “Suffering from epilepsy, I came to Father Seraphim, and he said to me: “Go, my joy, to dig a ditch in Diveevo; the Queen of Heaven herself measured this ditch with Her belt, so that when the Antichrist comes, this ditch will not let him in!” “Father,” I tell him, “I’m sick, so and so!” Having listened, he took me by the shoulders and, bending my head, read a prayer. Immediately feeling completely healthy, I entered the monastery, and the disease never returned to me again” 84. The sisters, with the blessing of St. Seraphim, considered Elena Vasilievna Manturova to be the head of the new monastery, although she refused. She, along with others, dug the Mother of God Canal. “Father Seraphim said to the sisters who came to him, pointing out her efforts and labors: “Oh, mother, your boss, your mistress, how she works, and you are my joy, build her a hut, a tent made of canvas, so that your mistress can rest in it from her labors!” 85. In memory of this refuge for the Venerable Elena Diveyevo (now glorified as a saint, she is venerated in her relics in Diveyevo), the sisters, while working on the Mother of God Kanavka at the end of the twentieth century, built a hut at the beginning of the Mother of God Kanavka under a poplar tree. When the Mother of God Canal was almost ready, the Monk Seraphim said to everyone: “Because it is dug in such a way that this is the very path where the Queen of Heaven passed, taking the monastery as her inheritance. Here the feet of the Queen of Heaven passed! The feet of the Queen of Heaven, mother!” - so, it happened, and the whole body would tremble, as they say. "She, the Mother of God, went around this whole place, mother! When you dig, don’t throw the earth and don’t give it to anyone, but put it in your monastery, in the ditch! And I’ll tell you, mother: whoever goes through the ditch with prayer and reads one and a half hundred Mother of God, everything is here - Athos, Jerusalem and Kiev! " 86 . We saw how the Mother of God Canal turned out for the sisters of the Mill Convent in the excavations made as part of this study in 1997–2004, which we will discuss below. 1.2.5. What was the Mother of God Canal of the Mill Monastery Excavations were able to accurately establish the profile of the primary Mother of God Canal in 52 cross sections. In the first meters of its length, the moat of the Mother of God Kanavka had a width of three arshins at the top, which is equal to 2.15 m, the same depth in full accordance with the blessing of St. Seraphim, which is named above from a literary source. During the excavations, in the first meters, another dimension of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka ditch was discovered, which did not reach us in text documents. Excavations showed that the ditch here had a bottom width of about 1.5 arshins. In this case, the slopes of the ditch turned out to be almost vertical, with an inclination to the horizon of about 80°. Rice. 1.9. Reconstruction of the primary ditch of the Mother of God Canal of the Mill Monastery at a distance of 1–3 m from the beginning of the ditch, August 1998. The length of the tape measure is 1 m. Photo of dissertation author 87 Such steep slopes in clay can be dug at a excavation depth of up to 2–3 meters, but they cannot be stable for a long time. The ditch soon turned out to be filled with sandy-clayey soils that had fallen off the sides and washed away from the shaft, with lenses of soil and lumps of the same soils, which are clearly visible at the end of the ditch. The heterogeneity of composition and variegated color distinguishes the filling of the ditch from natural soils. At the very bottom of the ditch, where the roulette lies, yellow natural sands are clearly visible, into which the flat horizontal bottom of the Kanavka ditch is cut. The primary bottom in the image is read as a boundary between yellow sand and the heterogeneous black, gray, brown clay soil of the ditch filling. Black - pieces of black soil that fell from above, brown and gray - lumps of clay, which in its natural occurrence is located above the sands and collapsed into the ditch. In the middle part of the end, at a height of about 0.5 m above the bottom, an arcuate line is visible, concave downward. This is the secondary bottom, which the sisters of the Mill Convent dug while repairing the moat. Above this arcuate boundary lies a lens of relatively homogeneous gray-yellow soils. They were washed with water and filled the repaired ditch again. Above them, on the left side of the image, another small radius arc is clearly visible. This third bottom of the ditch is a trace of the second renovation of the sisters of the Mill Convent. The fill soil above this arc is the same as what we see at the bottom of the section. The filling of this ditch is characterized by a slope of the boundaries from left to right. The slope helps identify the third ditch. In the upper half of the end section in its middle, the nature of the filling is different. There are many inclusions of brick fragments. These are fill soils in a ditch restored in the third historical period, around 1870. Let's not touch it for now. A neatly made horizontal bottom and a flat, steep slope of the ditch are visible in one of the exploration sections at the beginning of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka (Fig. 1.10). Below and on the right in the photo are natural yellow sands with black streaks of plant roots. Above them, on the left side of the photo, are the brightly sunlit yellowish-greenish-gray soils of the filling of the Virgin Canal, dug in the summer of 1829. Rice. 1.10. The angle of the primary ditch of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka in the exploration section at the beginning of its first straight line (photo by the dissertation author) 88 The shaft of the sisters of the Mill Monastery was poured, as Father Seraphim blessed, to the left of the ditch along the Virgin Canal. The shaft has hardly survived anywhere. One of the best sections of the shaft was discovered during research at the very beginning of work in 1997 (Fig. 1.11) in section No. 2. The height of the preserved embankment is about 0.5 meters. Below under the shaft, at the level of the crossbar on which the tape measure stands, there are natural brown homogeneous lumpy clays. Above them is a gray layer of soil that has long lost its fertility, and with it the dark color of black soil. The soil was buried under the mound in 1829. The soil thickness is about 25 cm. Above the soil there is brown loam with white crushed stone - the dump of a mine of miners who mined iron ore here. Above is a layer of homogeneous loam, which lies under the soil and was raised by the sisters from the ditch onto the rampart. Its thickness is 35–40 cm. The loam is covered with a thin modern soil layer of ash-gray color. The slope of the shaft is steep, about 45°. The sisters were not able to make stable, sloping slopes of the shaft, since there was not enough soil from the ditch to reach the height of 1 fathom (2.13 m) specified by the priest, even with such a steep slope. The shaft in the places where it was found had a different slope, mainly from 30 to 45 degrees. Rice. 1.11. Layers of the shaft in a section at a distance of 10 m from the beginning of the Virgin Canal. The length of the tape measure is 1 m (photo of the dissertation author) 89 At a distance of 85 m from the beginning, at the first turn, a more stable profile of the Virgin Canal was found. The depth is 3 arshins and the width at the top is 3 arshins. The width along the bottom is twice as narrow as at the beginning, only 0.5–0.6 m. The slope of the slope to the horizon is about 60°. This profile can be traced up to 165 m from the beginning of the Kanavka. No further exploration sections were made for 65 m. At the 230th meter, the profile of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka ditch is completely different. We'll talk about it later. So, on the first 160–200 m of the Mother of God Canal, the sisters of the Mill Convent fulfilled the behest of St. Seraphim and dug a ditch exactly 3 arshins in width and depth. Excavations confirmed written evidence of the size of the ditch. As they gained experience in excavation work, the sisters reduced the width along the bottom, achieving a more stable profile of the ditch, and at the same time reduced the volume of excavation work, for which they were obviously blessed by the Monk Seraphim. In terms of plan, this section of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka is winding. It seems that before gaining experience, the sisters deviated from the given direction and returned to it. The tortuosity is clearly documented in the 1998 topographic survey. In subsequent years, renovation work smoothed out minor twists and turns. But large bends remained. The path along the shaft straightens these bends even more, but within the first 150 meters it is not straight. The sisters of the Mill Convent in the area 120–140 m from the beginning of the Mother of God Kanavka encountered great trouble. A landslide occurred from the left side of the ditch, capturing part of the rampart. The slid soil filled the ditch. This event was revealed by our excavations. There is no written evidence of this event. It was difficult to combat soil sliding without modern technical means. A similar landslide occurred at the fifth historical stage in the fall of 1998 on the first straight line. The modern sisters, led by the nun Rimma (Prokopieva), collapsed into the ditch about 100 m³ of soil, about 170 tons of high-plastic viscous clay. Our contemporaries, sisters, with the participation of pilgrims, lifted and secured this soil so that now it has been held in the slope of the rampart and ditch for more than 20 years. Renovations took several months in 1998. Probably the landslide of 1829 or 1830 became the reason for the transition to an incomplete ditch profile with gentle slopes. Figure 1.12 schematically shows the area (1) where the sisters of the Mill Convent tried to dig the Mother of God Canal to its full depth, fighting landslides 90, landslides 91 of the sides of the ditch and the wash of soil to the bottom of the ditch by streams from the rains. They tried to fulfill the blessing of St. Seraphim to create the Mother of God Canal, 1 fathom deep and 1 fathom wide. However, they were unable to create a moat of the required size. Further on at site (2) they used the blessing of St. Seraphim to dig to an incomplete depth. Rice. 1.12. Schematic plan of the Mother of God Canal indicating the area (1), where the nuns of the Mill Convent tried to dig a ditch to the full depth of 3 arshins and area (2), where, with the blessing of St. Seraphim, they only outlined the ditch to a depth of 1–2 arshins; 3 – mill; 4 – cells of the Mill Monastery according to the plan of 1846 92. The shape of the ditch after the transition to an incomplete profile is different, but its full depth has not been achieved everywhere. Most often, the ditch at the top had a width of 1 fathom and gentle slopes that converge at an angle downwards. There is no flat bottom, which initially had a width of up to 1.5 arshins. The slope angle of the ditch decreased to 45°. This was done to further increase the stability of the sides, as well as to further reduce the excavation volume. The axis of the ditch after 230 m is not entirely straight, but the bends are insignificant: we have gained experience in following a straight line. In some places, the primary ditch has the shape of a shallow trench with a rounded bottom. In some places the bottom of the ditch is acute-angled (Fig. 1.13). The depth of the ditch from the surface of the earth during the time of St. Seraphim was mainly 1–2 arshins, that is, from 70 to 140 cm, at least 60 cm. The primary ditch is characterized by flat slopes and an acute angle at the bottom. Also in plan, the primary Theotokos Canal is characterized by angles of rotation without arc joints of straight segments. When it was recreated in 1997–2004, many pits very carefully, at the insistence of the sisters who were digging the ditch, monitored the position of the primary ditch at the first, second, and fifth turns. No roundings were found here. Rice. 1.13. Sketches of exploration pits at a distance of 618 m and 631 m from the beginning. The numbers indicate: 2 – natural clay in natural occurrence; 3 – ancient and modern soils; 4 – embankment of an ancient rampart; 5 – bulk soil filling the first ditch of the Virgin Canal; 6 – bulk soil filling the second most ancient ditch of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka. Dashed-dotted lines: with one dot – the axis of the primary ditch, with two dots – the estimated position of the earth’s surface in 1830, the time of creation of the first ditch 93. The same nature of the connection of straight lines is shown on the topographic plan of 1846 (see Fig. 1.3). The most important thing that the sisters of the Mill Convent did for us was that they marked on the ground the plan of the Mother of God Canal, which could later be deepened. This form, like the place, is strictly determined by the Most Holy Theotokos. A plot of the required size and shape is allocated from the Batashevs' property. Behind the special and unusual shape of the site, there is undoubtedly hidden great content laid down by the Mother of God. 1.2.6. About the end of the Mother of God Canal The end of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka was discovered in pit No. 55 in June 2004 after a long search by several pits in 2003 and 2004. At the same time, pits were also made in the area where the seventh line could have been located, but no traces of a ditch were found there. In pit No. 55, the end of the Virgin Canal is clearly expressed. At the bottom of the pit (Fig. 1.14) you can see the arched end of the ditch. Here the ditch is filled with black soil, which stands out against the background of brown natural loam. The bottom of the ditch within the narrow pit rises sharply in the direction from east to west, in accordance with the direction of the sixth straight of the Virgin Canal. The rise of the ditch axis in the photograph is shown with a folding meter. It is very significant that the pit showed the absence of a turn to the left, to the seventh straight boundary of the Mill Monastery. One can draw a significant conclusion that a ditch was not dug along the seventh boundary during the life of the monk. The question arises: why is it not dug? There are three arguments that the sixth straight line was completed in accordance with the blessing of St. Seraphim and that there was no blessing for the construction of a ditch along the seventh straight line. The first argument is the written testimony of Elder Anna Alekseevna, one of the first nuns of the Mill Convent, preserved in the Chronicle. She writes: “For six years I lived in the mill, where Father Seraphim chose the seven of us,” 94 and further reports that they “all made an effort to dig the Mother of God Canal, and since the priest was in a great hurry with this task, even in the fierce winter, chopping the earth with axes, all with their own hands, as he ordered, the sisters dug out this holy, reserved for us, canal; As soon as we finished, our dear father died immediately, as if he had been waiting for this” 95 . Two verbs in the quoted text, which are underlined, indicate that the Theotokos Canal was completed to the length commanded by St. Seraphim. The end of the Theotokos Kanavka, found by pit No. 55, according to this written message, is the commanded end, and not the place where the sisters stopped at the death of St. Seraphim, without completing the work. Rice. 1.14. The end of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka ditch in pit No. 55 in the photograph and sketch (photo and drawing by the dissertation author) 96. 1 – black soil in the ditch of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka; 2 – natural brown loam, in which a ditch has been dug; 3 – folding meter with a 20 cm link; 4 – fill soil of the 20th century; 5 – brick; 6 – loosened soil of the pit dump; 7 – concrete foundation of a fence post, demolished before our work. To consider the second argument, let us turn to the plan of the Mother of God Canal, drawn by the Monk Seraphim himself (see Fig. 1.8). As we were able to show, it was made on a certain scale. The plan clearly shows the entire sixth line. Its beginning and its end are indicated by dots. The length of the sixth straight line on the plan is 6 meters shorter than it is now on the ground (see Table 1.2). The discrepancy is 5%. It can be explained by the inaccuracy of the plan 97. It is important that on the plan the length of the segment is less than on the ground. Therefore, it is impossible to say that the sisters did not finish the sixth line. So, analysis of the plan gives grounds to assert that the sisters dug the Mother of God Canal to the end of the sixth straight line. The third argument for recognizing the found end of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka in pit No. 55 as its reserved end lies in the correspondence of the area outlined by the axis of the modern ditch of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka and the area of ​​the land allotment in 1829. On a modern plan, connecting the seventh straight line between the beginning and the end of the ditch, the dissertation student measured the area of ​​the Mill Monastery. It turned out to be 2,995 dessiatines, which differs from the 3,000 dessiatines of land allotment in 1829 by an insignificant amount of 0.17%. Consequently, the area bounded by the Bogorodichnaya Canal corresponds with high accuracy to the area of ​​the 1829 land allotment. So, three controls showed that the sixth straight line was dug during the life of St. Seraphim to the end, which corresponds to the turning point to the seventh straight line. However, the sisters did not turn and dig the seventh straight line. According to the quoted message from Elder Anna Alekseevna, there was no blessing from St. Seraphim to dig a ditch along the seventh boundary of the Mill Monastery. How the seventh straight border differs from others and why the “flat and good” 98 place should not have been disturbed by a deep ditch, we will consider in section 1.3, since there will be material to explain this historical fact. 1.3. Second historical period The second historical period of the Virgin Canal began in January 1833. On January 2, according to the Julian calendar, St. Seraphim, the spiritual father and ktitor of the Mill Monastery, died. During his lifetime, he not only led the spiritual life of the sisters, whom he himself gathered into the monastery, but also supported them financially through wealthy people and donations that he received from those who came to him. On January 2, 1833, the girls he collected were orphaned in the full sense of the word. The priest of the village of Diveevo, Vasily Sadovsky, who was close to St. Seraphim, began to provide spiritual care for them, and he left memories reflected in the Chronicle. With the blessing of the elder, M.V. was to provide various assistance to the sisters. Manturov and N.A. Motovilov. At this time, Sarov novice Ivan Tikhonovich Tolstosheev, or Ivan Tikhonov, as he is called in the Chronicle, actively intervened in the affairs of the community at this time. Subsequently, he took monastic vows with the name Joasaph and the schema with the name Seraphim. At the beginning of the period under review, he was a novice Ioann (Tolstoshev). Below we will call him novice John. In the current century, after 2003, a heated discussion arose around the negative assessment of the personality of the novice John in the Chronicle of the Hieromartyr Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov) and about the reliability of the characteristics of other participants in the historical process that took place around the Mother of God Kanavka of interest to us in its second historical period. Let us briefly touch upon this discussion without entering into it. This is allowed by the fact that there is no mention in the discussion of the object of our study - the Virgin Canal. The discussion was sparked by the book by O.V. Bukova 99, published in a secular publishing house, and her article in the magazine “Blessed Fire” 100. Her point of view was supported by S.S. Bychkov 101, M. Sitnikov 102 and others. The disputing parties do not question the decisions of the Holy Synod on the canonization of St. Seraphim and the grace of his testaments, but O.V. Bukova and her like-minded people reconsider the characteristics and role in the history of Diveev of many personalities from the elder’s circle, given in the Chronicle, with which Abbot Kirill (Semyonov) 103, priest Georgy Pavlovich, A.P. categorically disagree. Artsibushev 104 and others. This discussion does not touch upon the topic of the Mother of God Canal, so let’s leave it aside. It is important for us that neither one nor the other of the disputing parties denies that 1833 was a landmark year in the history of the Diveyevo communities in connection with the blessed death of St. Seraphim. They do not deny that 1862 was also a landmark year in the history of Diveyevo, when the community received the status of a monastery and Hieromonk Joasaph (Tolstosheyev) was removed by the hierarchy from the Diveyevo monastery. We accepted the years 1833 and 1862 as the boundary years for the second period in the history of the Mother of God Canal. It is also important for us that both sides do not deny the decisive influence on the affairs of the Diveyevo women’s communities of the novice John (Tolstosheyev), later Hieromonk Joasaph. Only in assessing his activities in Diveyevo they are in opposite positions. O.V. Bukova sees his role as positive, and her opponents take the position of Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov), who showed that the mentioned novice broke what was commanded by the Monk Seraphim until 1862, until the matter came to the emperor and, through the efforts of Metropolitan Philaret (Drozdov), his activities in Diveevo were stopped. It is important for us that novice Ivan Tikhonov, later Hieromonk Joasaph, actually determined the development plan for the territory of the future Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery during the second historical period we have identified. This will be essential when discussing the issue of a cathedral between the beginning and end of the Virgin Canal, which is discussed in the next section of the dissertation. Our factual material from the excavations confirms the fact of the liquidation of the Virgin Canal in the period from 1833 to 1862, which was covered with soil from the shaft. However, it cannot be denied that one useful thing was done for the Mother of God Canal in the second period. A trap in the form of a dam 105 was placed in the path of the storm water flow in the ravine. Over time, this trap turned into a monastery pond due to silting of the bottom. The painter John (Tolstoshev) also left a positive mark that does not concern the Mother of God Canal. On his initiative and his agreement in St. Petersburg, a group of sisters studied painting. They successfully mastered icon painting in the academic style and left a number of works that have come down to us, among which, first of all, we will mention the frescoes of 1899 in the Church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, the spiritual depth of which was somewhat lost after the restoration of 2004, but good color photographs have been preserved, as well as icons, for example, the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, now located in the church of the same name. It is necessary to agree that John (Tolstosheyev) could not have taken the position of mentor of the Diveevo community if he had not been a disciple of the monk in the eyes of the leadership of the Sarov monastery and influential people in Diveevo. From the facts of his visit to the Monk Seraphim and the above-mentioned participation in the designation of the Mother of God Kanavka in the area, it follows that he was successfully portrayed as the successor of Hieromonk Seraphim according to Diveevo. But this was a falsehood, which the compiler of the Chronicle, priest Leonid Chichagov, later metropolitan and martyr, saw through. The proactive hieromonk Joasaph, who gained the trust of the reigning Romanov family, was expelled from Diveyevo and did not sink into obscurity. A small group of sisters led by Glikeria (Zanyatova) left Diveevo behind him. After some time, they found wealthy patrons (landowner E.A. Kopieva and others). Emperor Alexander II donated 600 acres of land to them. They managed to create a monastery in the name of the icon of the Mother of God “Joy of All Who Sorrow,” which received the name Seraphim-Ponitaevsky. Thus, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, two women’s Seraphim monasteries operated in Russia. Currently, the Seraphim-Diveevsky monastery with the relics of St. Seraphim is in its heyday, and the Seraphim-Ponitaevsky monastery was not restored after the Bolshevik turmoil. Its capital buildings are in a state of disrepair, occupied by a medical institution and partially transferred to the Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery for restoration and development. The line of Ivan Tikhonovich Tolstosheev (monk Joasaph, schema-abbot Seraphim) has no continuation in the Church today. On the contrary, the line of Abbess Maria (Ushakova) clearly manifested itself immediately after the removal of Hieromonk Joasaph (Tolstosheyev) from the affairs of the Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery and continues successfully now. The Monk Seraphim repeatedly predicted the coming of the future Abbess Mary to the monastery, calling her by name and even surname, and spoke about her chosenness and purpose - to preserve and revive the chosen destiny of the Mother of God 106. She did this and left her successor Abbess Alexandra (Trakovskaya) a monastery in full bloom with about 1000 nuns and novices, with established rules of spiritual life and an established complex and varied economy, which allowed the sisters to exist without noticeable external donations. There were educational institutions at the monastery. The economy turned out to be especially necessary in the revolutionary and post-revolutionary years, when the monastery, despite the persecution of the Church, existed until 1927 in the form of an artel. Currently, under the third abbess of the monastery, Sergius (Konkova), spiritual life has been recreated according to the old charter, extensive farming and educational institutions have been restored - schools for girls and boys separately. The monastery continues to develop. With the active support of the Patriarchate and the state, it has already become the largest center of Orthodoxy in the Russian province. Today, Diveevo is becoming one of the peaks in the state-planned triangle cluster Arzamas - Sarov - Diveevo 107 . He takes on the burden of missionary work not only with pilgrims, of whom there are up to 10,000 a day on holidays, but also with future tourists - visitors to the historical and cultural cluster being created. Such a different fate of the two Seraphim monasteries is a historical fact, testifying to the correctness of the church-political line prescribed in the Chronicle by the Hieromartyr Seraphim (Chichagov). The line was carried out with the active participation of the now glorified Metropolitan of Moscow Philaret (Drozdov) and Bishop of Tambov and Shatsk Feofan (Govorov), who retired shortly after 1862 and was known under the name Feofan, the Recluse of Vyshensky. At the end of section 1.3, we provide a quote about the results of what happened in 1833–1862. According to the official description of the monastery of those years, “Ivan Tikhonov (later Hieromonk Joasaph) pressed and persecuted the Seraphim [sisters] with everything possible. - M. V. (Ch.) ], gradually trying, under the most plausible pretexts, to destroy everything that Seraphim had established by the holy Elder, on the orders of the Mother of God, replacing it personally with his own, new one. So, he moved the Mill-Feeder almost a mile into the field from the place previously designated by Father Seraphim; then he begged the diocesan authorities to lock and seal both Nativity churches, and instead of the strictly commanded reading of the inextinguishable Psalter, he forced the reading of the Gospel in the Tikhvin church that he had rebuilt. After that, he demolished all the cell buildings that had been erected on the orders of Father Seraphim, placing his new ones and all with the back facade facing the holy Canal of Heaven, commanded by the Queen of Heaven, with the firmly expressed intention of gradually filling it with all sorts of rubbish and subsequently completely leveling it” 108. The hiding of the Mother of God Canal was also facilitated by the natural process of sediment deposition in the ditch by streams of rain and snow water. As a result, for almost 30 years by 1862, the Mother of God Canal in relief ceased to exist, but remained in the hearts of the still living novices of St. Seraphim. We will return to this idea about the parallel existence of the object of the Orthodox Church in material and spiritual space in the last chapter of the dissertation with consideration of the ecology of culture by D. S. Likhachev and the idea of ​​priest Pavel Florensky about the “soul” of the cultural center of Abramtsevo. 1.4. Third historical period 1.4.1. The first reconstruction of the Mother of God Canal In 1861, by decree of the Holy Synod No. 473 of February 10, the community of Diveyevo sisters received the status of a monastery 109. In 1862, the faithful follower of the commandments of St. Seraphim, Elizaveta Alekseevna Ushakova, took monasticism with the name Maria, was ordained as abbess and put in charge of the monastery. Only by 1864 was she able to arrange the life of the sisters and provide them with food. To do this, it was necessary to increase the acreage, purchase wood for heating existing premises and building new ones. The task was to build the Trinity Cathedral, founded in 1849 and soon abandoned. The monk in conversations with the Diveyevo sisters, priest Vasily Sadovsky, N.A. Motovilov, M.V. Manturov called it “my cathedral.” The Father's Cathedral for the orphan sisters had to be built. Now the relics of the saint rest in it. This is his home. Is it not because St. Seraphim called Trinity his cathedral that now his relics are here? There were no large donations, but from 1865 the sisters began to gradually build up the brick walls of the cathedral. Within ten years, by 1875, the main work on its construction was completed. It was consecrated before the interior decoration, which continued for many more years until the 2010s. Due to the many labors of the sisters in field work, with livestock, in other household needs and in needlework, Abbess Maria could not quickly restore the Mother of God Canal, much less dig it to its full depth. However, under Abbess Maria, a shallow ditch was dug and a shaft was added. The structures of the Mother of God Canal were recreated approximately in the form in which they existed under St. Seraphim. They existed like this for several decades and were razed to the ground during the atheistic Soviet era. The Mother of God Kanavka, recreated under the first abbess of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery Maria (Ushakova), in contrast to the primary one, is characterized as “round”. There were arc curves at its turns. This can be seen when comparing the plans of 1846 and 1925, shown in Figures 1.2 and 1.3. On the 1846 plan there are no roundings at the turns. Note that there are no curves on the plan of St. Seraphim (see Fig. 1.8). They are shown on the 1925 plan. All the few eyewitnesses who saw the Virgin Canal in the first half of the 20th century at the end of the 20th century spoke about the rounded shape of the turns of the pre-revolutionary Theotokos Canal 110. Influenced by this information, in our designs for the third ditch we designed curves with small turning radii. These radii further decreased during construction work when excavating along the actual axis of the ditch. During renovation work in 2013–2016, the corners were rounded. A.V. Platonov, who carried out the repairs with his company "Galeon" under an agreement with the monastery, said that it was more beautiful this way 111. In fact, one should not have deviated from the image of the Mother of God Canal, created under St. Seraphim, drawn on his plan (see Fig. 1.8). Why, under the abbess of Mary, did they make a moat without sharp corners? The answer may be this. At that time, the Mother of God Kanavka was already inside the monastery’s possessions. It lost its function as a border and became only a prayer path, which naturally rounded at turns, like any path. The bottom of the ditch of the second Mother of God Canal was also rounded (see Fig. 1.13). The art of the 20th century taught us to understand the symbolism of the angle and oval. This is partly due to the fact that at the beginning of the century ancient icons and frescoes were discovered and the artistic techniques of ancient icon painters, which had previously been treated with some disdain, being within the framework of the aesthetics of realistic painting, were understood. This symbolism was perfectly understood and used by the French artist A. Matisse. The language of the ancient icon uses the oval and angle as a means of conveying the mood and content of the icon. For example, on the icon of St. George the Victorious with the serpent, there are sharp corners of the towers and walls of the city, angular mountain peaks and the serpent itself, consisting of many sharp corners - teeth, claws, plumage, wings. Everything creates an alarming background and tells us about the mournful situation in which the Great Martyr George appeared. He himself, with the circle of his halo, the smooth curves of his cloak, and the swan neck of his horse, brings peace and firm confidence in the victory of good over evil. Hardness is expressed by an extended straight line of a punishing spear. It crosses the entire icon in the foreground. The Trinity of St. Andrei Rublev consists entirely of rounded lines, visible and imaginable; in It there is only Peace and Light, depicted by a rounded line. The composition of the Last Judgment on the western wall of the Assumption Cathedral in the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, on the contrary, is built from the intersections of lines with the formation of corners. Returning to the Theotokos Kanavka, let’s say that the roundness of the second Theotokos Kanavka expresses the tranquility of the reign of Abbess Maria (Ushakova), when the monastery grew in labor. Then flowers instead of stones appeared in the hands of the holy blessed Pelageya. Earlier, during the period of the activity of novice John (Tolstosheyev), holy blessed Pelageya threw stones into the water of the pond, pulled them out and threw them again, showing the vanity and uselessness of the works of Ivan Tikhonov, as he was called in Diveyevo. The corners of the first Mother of God Canal, which had a ditch bottom pointed downwards and sharp turns of the path, convey the mood of that difficult time, when the few sisters of Elder Seraphim, poor mill workers, in the sweat of their brows chopped down the frozen earth, striking sparks that were visible in the dark, since the day was not enough to fulfill all the obediences. The Monk Seraphim hurried them. The darkness was thickening, the approach of a thunderstorm was felt, which struck shortly after his death. In the years following his death, the Seraphim maiden community ceased to exist, having been merged with the Church-Kazan one, from which, with the blessing of the Mother of God, the Monk Seraphim separated it. At the same time, the Bogorodichnaya Canal was washed out by rains and filled up with people so that people drove through it in carts. The construction of the second most recent ditch and rampart dates back, apparently, to the 70s of the 19th century. We were unable to find written evidence about the time of excavation work on the Mother of God Kanavka under Abbess Maria (Ushakova). The profile of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka ditch does not repeat the first one. Also, its plan does not quite correspond to the plan of the first Mother of God Canal. During the period of reconstruction of the Theotokos Canal in our time, there was no task of researching the second Theotokos Canal, discussed in this section, since Abbess Sergius at the beginning of the work blessed the restoration of the first, dug Theotokos Canal under St. Seraphim. However, during the study of the first Mother of God Canal, information about the second also accumulated. It did not begin where the current one begins. The beginning of it was indicated to us by eyewitnesses. One of them was Alexey Petrovich Artsibushev (monk Seraphim), who was born in 1919 in Diveyevo, spent his childhood years here, and in a surplice, as a child, walked with Bishop Hieromartyr Seraphim (Zvezdinsky) along the Theotokos Kanavka. He went through the Bolshevik camps, then became a nun in the Church of the Holy Prophet Elijah the Ordinary in Moscow. With the blessing of the archpriest of this church, Alexander Egorova, took up his pen and wrote several wonderful books of memoirs about the time of persecution of the Church 112, 113. In his books, a lot of space is devoted to Diveev of the 20s of the twentieth century, to people who preserved Orthodoxy in the cruel conditions of Soviet times. One day A.P. Artsibushev invited the dissertation candidate to his hospital because he had heard a rumor that what was happening on the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka was not what was happening. When meeting A.P. Artsibushev sternly said: “You are not doing the same Kanavka that I walked along in the 20s.” The visitor’s answer was direct, not for a hospital ward: “We are not going to restore what you saw.” I had volumes of research with me. He showed what the first Mother of God Canal was like at its beginning, and spoke about the blessing from the abbess to dig according to the dimensions of St. Seraphim. With the technical means of securing the slopes that had developed by the end of the twentieth century, it was now possible to fulfill the behest of St. Seraphim and the blessing of Abbess Sergius. The sisters of the Mill Convent did not have such an opportunity under St. Seraphim. The sisters of Mother Maria (Ushakova) also did not have the technical capabilities. Alexey Petrovich agreed that the third Mother of God Kanavka should be made according to the behest of the Venerable Seraphim, whom he revered, whose name he later received when he was tonsured a monk. On the plan of 1925 (see Fig. 1.3), the beginning of the Virgin Canal is shown behind the Transfiguration Cathedral, east of its southern apse. At that time there was also a cross at the beginning. The beginning is also visible in the photograph taken from the bell tower before the foundation of the Transfiguration Cathedral 114. Now this place is not visible from the bell tower. It is blocked by the southern part of the Transfiguration Cathedral. The old-timers showed the beginning there. The beginning of the second Mother of God Canal, according to the plan of 1925 and the testimony of old-timers, was approximately 15 m from the beginning of the modern ditch. This position of the beginning of the second ditch is confirmed by our sections No. 5 and 6, on which one can read the shallow and rounded trench of the second ditch in the segment between the Transfiguration Cathedral and the modern beginning of the Virgin Canal. When the road near the cathedral was widened in 2003, part of the traces of the second ditch were destroyed. In the exploration section of MGSU No. 6 there is no deep first ditch. The deep ditch of the first Bogorodichnaya Kanavka in the first historical period began at exploration section No. 5. It begins there now. The end of the Theotokos Canal, dug under Abbess Maria (Ushakova), also does not coincide with the end of the primary Theotokos Canal. The 1925 plan (see Figure 1.3) clearly shows it next to the chapel where the millstones were kept. This end at the beginning of the twentieth century was marked by a poplar. During the years of research at MGSU, the poplar, large and old, about 1 m in diameter, stood along the road running from the Transfiguration Cathedral to the Bread Building. The road, apparently built in the middle of the 19th century, then crossed the Mother of God Canal, which was filled up in the second historical period. During the restoration of the Mother of God Canal in the third historical period under Abbess Maria, the road was not moved. The ditch was stopped in front of the road, a few meters short of its primary end. Transport convenience was placed above the fulfillment of the covenant of St. Seraphim. The road was an insurmountable obstacle for a long time and during the restoration work of 2003. It was only possible to eliminate it and cross it with a ditch in 2004. During the liquidation of the road in July 2004, the remains of the foundation of the Mill-Feeder were discovered, which stood before the end of the Virgin Canal, according to the plan of St. Seraphim and also the plan of 1846. The modern end of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka is 5 m further than shown on the 1925 plan. The modern ending was made based on data from exploration pit No. 55, where the end of the first ditch was found. The discrepancy between the beginning and the end of the second Mother of God Canal was, apparently, done for the convenience of the population, to please people. Along the entire remaining length of the Virgin Canal, the axes of the primary ditch and the second ditch usually coincide. In some places they diverge by 10–50 cm. Doubt may be raised by the coincidence of two ditches on the fourth straight line, at the modern monastery clinic, located in a pre-revolutionary one-story house, where there were auxiliary premises for the almshouse. The Bogorodichnaya Kanavka, shown on the 1925 plan, is 8–12 m south of the primary axis discovered by exploration pits. In these pits traces of both the first and second Virgin Canals were revealed. Therefore, we believe that there was an error in the 1925 plan. According to the testimony of Alexander Konstantinovich Ermakov, who lived as a child in the almshouse during the Great Patriotic War, the ditch ran close to the wall of the current clinic, where it was restored according to the design of engineer A.K. Ermakova in 1999. It was restored not only on the basis of memories, but also from the pits laid according to him, A.K. Ermakova, instructions. He recalled how they, the boys, jumped from the shaft onto the horizontal bar, the crossbar of which was fixed on the poplars that grew along the edge of the shaft. The poplars were preserved during the research period. According to his recollection, the almshouse had a street staircase from the west to the second floor. It is shown in Figure 1.3. It was narrow between the beginning of the stairs and the ditch. A horse carrying logs passed easily, but a sledge-sledge passed with difficulty. The 1925 plan shows this convergence of the stairs and the ditch correctly. We discovered the shaft of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka in only 12 pit-sections. It is poorly preserved in comparison with the traces of the ditch, since it was torn down when the area was leveled. The shaft was washed away by rains. Characteristic traces of erosion 115 are visible in the old photograph (Fig. 1.15). In the photo on the right, where people are standing on the rampart, the surface of the rampart is uneven and hummocky. The grass grows in bunches, between which the soil is washed away. The modern builders of the Virgin Canal encountered such erosion 2 years after the start of work. The measure to combat it is modern materials and technologies. Rice. 1.15. Procession along the Virgin Canal. Photography, before 1910 The photograph (see Fig. 1.15) shows that the religious procession did not go along the rampart, where the soldiers of Christ were supposed to go and where they passed at that time with individual prayer, but along the outer side of the ditch of the Mother of God Canal. The shaft was too narrow. We have a good image of it in another photograph (Fig. 1.16). Rice. 1.16. The shaft and ditch of the Virgin Canal in the early 1920s There you can see a wide thorn path along the shaft and a ditch covered with grass. This is further proof that the procession with prayer along the Theotokos Kanavka was along a rampart, and not along a ditch or behind a ditch. Some pilgrims now take the blessing “to walk along the Mother of God Canal” literally and are surprised that there is no path along the bottom of the ditch. There has never been such a move. The soldiers of Christ must walk along the rampart, just as the royal soldiers walked in past centuries. Some believers do not accept the restored Mother of God Kanavka, consider its position on the ground incorrect and walk not along the rampart, but behind the ditch in the places where they walked in Soviet times, walked next to the Mother of God Kanavka, bypassing the properties under which the trace of the Mother of God Kanavka was located. The shaft at its base in the photograph is 2 times wider than the top of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka ditch. If the diameter of the trees is about 40 cm, then the width of the ditch is 2.3 m. The width of the shaft is 4.5 m, the width of the path is 1.2–1.4 m. This is enough for two sisters to walk side by side, according to the charter. But not enough to carry relics or large icons in the procession. Therefore, in pre-revolutionary times, religious processions with banners and icons, as shown in the photograph (see Fig. 1.15), did not go along the rampart, but next to the ditch to the right of it on the outer territory in relation to the Mother of God Kanavka. In our time, the width of the path in the snow left by the sisters' religious procession along the Virgin Canal before the construction of the modern rampart passage was consistently 1.4 m 116. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka was providentially lined with poplars and linden trees. Trees in two rows bordered it. One row went along the outer edge of the ditch, the second along the inner edge of the rampart (see Fig. 1.16). By the end of the century, few trees remained. However, in Soviet times, they helped secret pilgrims find the place where the Mother of God Kanavka passed. The trees were cut down in 2003–2004 to create a path along the shaft. The age of the trees according to the growth rings turned out to be about 90 years. They were planted under Abbess Alexandra during the construction of the Transfiguration Cathedral. The distance from the poplars growing behind the rampart to the inner edge of the ditch, discovered in the pits, was about 5 m. On the last straight line of the Theotokos Canal, where two trees were preserved, this distance was 4 m and 4.5 m. Consequently, the width of the rampart at the bottom was 4–5 m and decreased towards the end of the Theotokos Canal, as the Monk Seraphim hurried the sisters and they dug the ditch smaller and smaller smaller. The decrease in the depth and width of the ditch as it approaches its end can also be traced from the excavations. The data from excavations and old photographs (see Fig. 1.15, 1.16) coincide. The excess of the path above the bottom of the ditch at the beginning of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka was up to 1.5 m. They say 117 that the path along the shaft was sprinkled with white sand. During the exploration of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka, light gray sand was found here and there at the bottom of the ditch. Apparently, it was washed there from the shaft by rains. The clay path in wet weather was unsuitable for walking: slippery, soggy and therefore crushed by many feet. The depth of the ditch of the second Virgin Canal, judging by the exploration sections, is less than the depth of the first, it is usually 50–90 cm. Its width in the places shown in Figure 1.13 is 1.0–1.5 meters. Under Abbess Maria, the sisters of the monastery followed the image of the previously created Mother of God Canal. In the 1870s, there were still many sisters who dug the first Mother of God Canal. They undoubtedly shared memories of their work and talked about the appearance of the Kanavka in the happy years when they dug it under the guidance of the priest. The photograph (see Fig. 1.14) was taken on the second straight line, where the ditch was initially dug to its full depth and a fairly high shaft was poured. In the 1870s, a relatively high rampart and a deep ditch were also built here. This was the appearance of the second Mother of God Canal, which was passed by the holy martyrs Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov), Archbishop Seraphim (Zvezdinsky), the venerable confessor Matrona Diveyevo, whose relics are in the Church of the Kazan Icon, and many not glorified holy martyrs and confessors. This Mother of God Canal was visited by the Royal Passion-Bearers Emperor Nicholas and Empress Alexandra in 1903. Old-timers, who were surveyed at the end of the 20th century, remembered this Mother of God Canal. Hieromartyrs Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov), organizer of the glorification of St. Seraphim on behalf of Emperor Nicholas II, has long been closely associated with Diveev. While still a priest, having become a widow, he buried his wife Natalya Nikolaevna in the cemetery inside the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka 118 in the crypt, in which he himself hoped to eventually lie down. The site of the crypt is located somewhere in the middle between the south-eastern corner of the Riga and the north-western corner of the modern hospital church. The long life of Metropolitan Seraphim was interrupted by execution at the Butovo training ground of the NKVD 119. His relics lie in a mass grave-ditch at the site of the execution. A chapel from among those attached to the Church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God is dedicated to him. During the historical period in question, the cemetery in which he wanted to be buried was located in the southeastern part of the territory covered by the Virgin's Canal. It adjoined the second and third straight parts. At the cemetery there was a church in the name of the Transfiguration of the Lord. During Soviet times, a secondary school was built on the site of the cemetery, in which, after it was transferred to the monastery, a hospital for sisters was located. In memory of the sisters and benefactors of the monastery buried in the abolished cemetery, a cross was erected in the extreme eastern part of the territory and tombstones found during various works or preserved by Diveyevo villagers in their homes were placed. All the sisters of the monastery walked along the shaft of the Mother of God Kanavka every evening; those who could not walk with everyone because they were busy with obedience, they walked independently at their own time. At the same time, they read the Theotokos rule of St. Seraphim (see section 3.1 “Prayer on the Theotokos Canal”) and commemorated the living and the dead. Hundreds of pilgrims also walked along the Theotokos Kanavka, the number of which increased greatly after 1903, after the glorification of St. Seraphim. Although his relics rested in Sarov, many came to Diveevo. Everything changed dramatically in the revolutionary year 1917. The flow of pilgrims began to dwindle, but did not dry up completely. 1.4.2. About the seventh side of the outline of the Mill Monastery The mill monastery, created by the Monk Seraphim, was located on three acres of land. It has a heptagon-shaped border (see Fig. 1.2, 1.3 and 1.8). In the first historical period, the Virgin Canal was dug along its six sides. The Monk Seraphim died when the sisters were working on the sixth side of the heptagon and dug it to the end (see subsection 1.2.8). They did not start digging on the seventh side. In the third historical period, under Abbess Maria (Ushakova), a new generation of Diveyevo nuns restored the ditch and rampart as they had been done by their predecessors. They did not fulfill the will of St. Seraphim, expressed in the words: “Later they will grow.” They did not deepen the ditch to three arshins (2.13 m), leaving this to future generations. It is clear that the profile of the ditch and rampart must be made in the dimensions indicated by St. Seraphim. It was suggested above that this covenant was not fulfilled under the abbess of Mary due to technical difficulties. But the question arises: does the expression “after they build it” include the task of constructing a ditch and rampart along the seventh straight line? Or was the ditch not made here because it wasn’t needed? Let's try to logically understand these questions. To the question why the Mother of God Canal was not dug along the seventh, closing border of the monastery, there can be two answers. The first answer: the sisters of the Mill Convent did not have time to do this during the life of St. Seraphim, and then they were not allowed to do this in connection with the new policy of novice John (Tolstosheyev), who sought to arrange everything in the Diveyevo women’s communities in his own way. If they really didn’t have time, then as part of the fulfillment of the covenant “later they will dig up” they need to dig the Mother of God Canal along the seventh straight line between the beginning and the end. Second answer: The Mother of God Canal was not dug along the seventh closing line, since there was no blessing from St. Seraphim to dig here, since this place has a different purpose 120. Let us immediately note that the second answer is correct. The main argument in defense of this statement is that the place between the end and the beginning of the Theotokos Canal will in the future be occupied by the Cathedral of the Tenderness Icon of Seraphim-Diveevskaya. The rationale for this statement will be given below. The cathedral will become like a fortress tower at the entrance to the territory of the Mill Monastery, fenced with a moat and rampart. Attempts have already been made several times to build a cathedral for the Tenderness icon, but neither the time nor the place corresponded to God’s providence, which was revealed to St. Seraphim. However, a clearly stated prophecy about this from St. Seraphim has not reached us. Let's try to prove that there was such a prophecy. The time of Abbess Alexandra (Trakovskaya), dating back to the third historical period of the Mother of God Kanavka, was marked by the construction of the now warm Transfiguration Cathedral on the territory of the monastery. It was founded as a cathedral in the name of the Seraphim-Diveevskaya Icon of the Mother of God “Tenderness”. The Transfiguration Cathedral stands in the southeastern part of the monastery at the beginning of the Mother of God Kanavka. It was built outside the main architectural and planning axis of the monastery. The plan of the Lavra of St. Seraphim (see Fig. 1.8) does not provide for a cathedral on this site. The greatest expert on the history of Diveevo, the Hieromartyr Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov), insisted on the foundation of the cathedral between the beginning and end of the Theotokos Kanavka on the axis of the Trinity Cathedral, but his opinion was not taken into account by Abbess Alexandra with the motivation that there stood the warm church of the Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God, which was built immediately after the blessed death of the Venerable Seraphim of Sarov on the initiative novice Ivan Tikhonovich Tolstosheev. At the beginning of the twentieth century it was the only warm monastery church. The Kazan Church and its Nativity chapels, built for the sisters of the Mill Convent, were the parish churches of a large village. The area of ​​the Tikhvin Church was not sufficient to accommodate half of the sisters of the monastery. Therefore, the construction of a large heated cathedral was undertaken. During the construction of the cathedral, Abbess Alexandra did not want to be left without the winter church, so she refused to demolish it for the construction of the cathedral, guided, as in determining the end of the Virgin Canal, by pragmatic considerations. The prophecy about the construction of the third cathedral between the beginning and the end of the Theotokos Canal is closely related to the question of the need to dig a ditch and pour a shaft on the seventh, closing straight line of the seven-sided contour of the Theotokos Canal. Therefore, restoring the historical truth about prophecy is necessary for the future. This has enduring spiritual significance, since the prophecies of St. Seraphim come from the Mother of God. According to the testimony of Archpriest Vasily Sadovsky, St. Seraphim’s interlocutor, St. Seraphim said: “I didn’t place a single stone with them of my own free will, and I didn’t even say a single word to them against the will of the Queen of Heaven, fulfilling only Her Most Holy commands!” 121. In the Chronicle, the prophecy about the cathedral is mentioned with reference to Ivan Tolstosheev and the dream of the nun of the Mill Monastery, Paraskeva 122. Such evidence, following the assessment of the personality of Ivan Tolstosheev by the Hieromartyr Seraphim (Chichagov), cannot be considered reliable. A significant contradiction to this message is the absence of the Tenderness Church between the beginning and end of the Theotokos Kanavka on the plan of the Lavra drawn by St. Seraphim. This sets before us the research task of establishing the historical fact of the prophecy of St. Seraphim about the place of construction of the cathedral for the Tenderness icon of Seraphim-Diveevskaya. The problem of finding a place for the cathedral in 2007 was posed independently by the priest Georgy Pavlovich and the dissertation candidate, as well as experts, by the Seraphim of Sarov Foundation in connection with the planned construction of a high-rise cathedral according to the visions of N.A. Motovilova 123. Then none of the named experts gave a substantiated answer about the prophecy of St. Seraphim at the site of the skyscraper cathedral. To solve the problem of the fact of prophecy, the dissertation contains direct and indirect instructions. They show that such a prophecy came from St. Seraphim and was known to his contemporaries. The existence of the prophecy and the fact that it was known to the holy martyr Seraphim (Chichagov) is evidenced by the nun Seraphim (Bulgakova), one of the last nuns of the pre-revolutionary Seraphim-Diveevo monastery, who did not live long enough to see its revival 124 . This later testimony, recorded by the memoirist in the 1980s in old age, can be supported by a number of indirect indications of his correctness. The first is the mentioned event of Ivan Tolstosheev’s construction of a small church in the name of the Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God on the site of the future cathedral. It is known that he did everything to prevent the fulfillment of the blessings of St. Seraphim, and destroyed what had already been fulfilled, just as he destroyed the Mother of God Canal, moved the Mill and the cells for the sisters, placing them side by side, but in a fundamentally different way. Next, he set about preventing the construction of the still unfulfilled behests of St. Seraphim regarding the arrangement of the monastery. For this purpose, he built the Church of the Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God. In this case, materials were used that were prepared under St. Seraphim for the construction of the Trinity Cathedral. Novice Ivan (Tolstoshev) achieved two goals in one thing: with a small church he took the place of the magnificent, according to St. Seraphim, cathedral of “last times” and, using brick, disrupted the construction of the Trinity Cathedral, which St. Seraphim planned for the near future. The elder clearly, with a bold line, marked the Trinity Cathedral on his plan of the Lavra and precisely indicated its location to M.V. Manturov. Subsequently, the testimony of M.V. Manturov was accepted at the foundation stone of the Trinity Cathedral 125. An indirect trace of the dispute between the Metropolitan and the abbess about the place for the cathedral can be seen in the fact that the abbess denied Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov) asylum in the 1920s, and he settled in Shuya. This fact is noted in the life of the holy martyr: “At this time, the saint had to endure a new test that befell him, this time not from the persecutors of the Church, but from the abbess of the Diveyevo Monastery, so dear to his heart, Alexandra (Trakovskaya), whose election as abbess more than 20 years ago was facilitated by Saint Seraphim himself. Expelled by the authorities from Moscow, the bishop turned to Abbess Alexandra with a request to give him refuge in the Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery, but the Abbess refused the persecuted confessor. The reason for such a harsh refusal, in all likelihood, was the conflict that occurred many years ago between Abbess Alexandra and Bishop Seraphim, connected with the fact that the Abbess, contrary to the blessing of the Venerable Elder Seraphim to lay the foundation of a new church in the indicated place, which the Bishop repeatedly reminded her of, built a church in another place. Subsequently, this church was never consecrated (until 1998), and from that time Saint Seraphim no longer visited the Diveyevo Monastery” 126. These words in the life are written based on the memories of Abbess Seraphima (Chichagova Chernaya) 127. Subsequently, this text was used by the 20th century Church historian Abbot Damascene (Orlovsky). Therefore, it should be assumed that Bishop Seraphim (Chichagov) knew the place indicated by the Monk Seraphim for the cathedral, since this fact was recognized by the high authorities of our Church. The delay in consecrating the church, built under Abbess Alexandra (Trakovskaya), with the main altar in the name of the Tenderness icon of Seraphim-Diveevskaya, lasted exactly until the moment when the decision was made to consecrate the church in the name of the Transfiguration of the Lord. From here it is clear that the Church of Tenderness should be located in a different place. The very fact of the foundation of a cathedral in the name of the Tenderness icon at the beginning of the 20th century indicates that there was a prophecy about the construction of a cathedral of this name, and its placement near the beginning of the Virgin Canal indicates that the place of construction of the cathedral was known, but, continuing the line of Ivan Tolstyshev, Abbess Alexandra, for pragmatic reasons, moved the cathedral. Blessed Pasha of Sarov did not approve of the foundation of a new cathedral away from the Mother of God Kanavka. On the day of the consecration of the foundation stone of the cathedral, when everything was organized for that purpose, Abbess Alexandra sent to her for a blessing. The blessed one predicted, according to a written message from a contemporary of those events, nun Seraphima (Bulgakova), 128 that the new cathedral would be in an abandoned state, that birch trees would grow on the roof and that the issue of its liquidation by explosion would be discussed. This happened under Soviet rule - both the birch trees and the intention to blow them up. The cathedral, completed in 1917, could not be consecrated until 1927 under the atheistic government. When the monastery was dispersed, no one could raise the issue of consecrating the cathedral. The cathedral was returned to the monastery in 1991, but was not consecrated until 1998, despite the blessing of Patriarch Alexy II to consecrate it and the good technical condition of the cathedral, which since the 1920s began to be called the “New Cathedral”. Everything went wrong with the restoration until Metropolitan Nikolai (Kutepov) of Nizhny Novgorod decided to consecrate the new cathedral not in honor of the Tenderness icon, but in honor of the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord. Funds and materials for restoration were immediately found. During the period of long preparation for the restoration of the cathedral, Abbess Seraphima (Chichagova-Chernaya) turned to Nizhny Novgorod Metropolitan Nikolai (Kutepov) with a request to consider the option of moving the cathedral to the place where her grandfather-martyr wanted to see it. Together with Abbess Seraphim, letter 129 was signed by two specialists, architect, professor of the Moscow Architectural Institute A.S. Shchenkov and engineer, professor of MGSU S.N. Chernyshev, testifying to the architectural feasibility of moving it to the main architectural and planning axis of the monastery and the technical feasibility of such a move. The letter remained without consequences. Apparently, the time had not yet come for the construction of a cathedral on the site indicated by St. Seraphim. The need to build a cathedral in the uncertain future between the end and the beginning of the existing Mother of God Canal is further evidenced by the following. The main shrine of the future cathedral, the cell icon of St. Seraphim “Tenderness” of Seraphim-Diveevskaya, was preserved along with the personal belongings of St. Seraphim by the now deceased Archpriest Viktor Shapovalenko 130 . The things were transferred to them to the monastery, and the icon to the Patriarchate. She is brought annually to the Moscow Epiphany Cathedral on July 28 (August 10) on the day of her special veneration 131. So, the icon has been preserved, but has not yet been transferred to Diveevo. Apparently, the time has not come, the place has not been prepared for her. In the current century, with the blessing of Metropolitan George, a new cathedral was built on the Mother of God Kanavka. According to the master’s plan, it is not intended for the “Tenderness” icon, but in the name of the Annunciation. The Bishop explained that the “Tenderness” icon is part of the “Annunciation” composition, therefore the cathedral that is being built to this day is, as it were, a harbinger of the “Tenderness” Cathedral. Initially, the architects planned to build it on the very spot where, according to legend, there should be a cathedral in the name of the Tenderness icon, but formally, in order to ensure access for fire engines and other equipment to the hospital buildings and other buildings inside the Mother of God Kanavka, with the blessing of the Mother Superior, it was moved to the east along the main architectural and planning axis of the monastery, which runs along the line “holy gates - Trinity Cathedral.” Then he was additionally shifted in the same direction with the blessing of Metropolitan George (Danilov). Formally, the relocation of the cathedral on the monastery plan was done according to the requirements of regulatory documents. But behind it one can see providential concern for the place for the future cathedral of the “Tenderness” icon. As a result, the site for the Tenderness Cathedral on the seventh closing straight of the Virgin Canal again remained vacant. For our topic, the following fact related to the Annunciation Cathedral is significant. In the summer of 2013, the dissertation author had the opportunity to be present in Diveyevo in the hall of the Priestly Hotel at a meeting where the architects reported the design of the cathedral with estimates to Metropolitan George and S.V. Kiriyenko. The project provided for the passage of the moat of the Mother of God Canal under the stairs leading to the porch of the church on the western side, for which an arch was provided under the landing. From the very beginning, with the blessing of Metropolitan George, the cathedral was planned to be located inside the Mother of God Canal. Only the staircase to the porch of the 2nd floor left the outline of the Mill Convent. Under the platform, in the middle of the rise of the stairs, a moat was provided in the arch. While the meeting had not yet begun, the designers turned to Abbess Sergius for her blessing to implement a moat on the cathedral site, but they did not receive the blessing. When Metropolitan George came, they turned to him with the same request, but he also refused to bless the construction of the Mother of God Canal on the seventh straight. However, in the project the platform on the stairs and the opening under it remained. Instead of a moat, there is now a glazed utility room with a beamed rather than arched ceiling. This “mark” in the structure allows you to determine how much it is shifted to the northeast relative to the original design position. It remained evidence of the refusal of the clergy to dig a ditch on the seventh straight line. So, there is no reliable direct written indication that would confirm the legend about the upcoming construction of the Tenderness Cathedral in the “last times” between the beginning and the end of the Theotokos Kanavka. But this is indirectly evidenced by a number of facts: Abbess Alexandra’s refusal to accept Metropolitan Seraphim as a resident, with whom she disagreed when laying the foundation for the cathedral for the Tenderness icon; testimony of nun Seraphima (Bulgakova) about the negative attitude of the great Diveyevo blessed Paraskeva to the foundation of the Cathedral of the Tenderness Icon (now Transfiguration) outside its intended place; an appeal from the granddaughter of Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov) with a proposal to move the New Cathedral (now the Transfiguration Cathedral) to the site intended for it, according to legend, between the end and the beginning of the Theotokos Canal; keeping the main shrine of the future cathedral in Moscow until it is even in sight; a failed attempt by architects to occupy the site intended for the cathedral with a cathedral with a different name; finally, the refusal of Metropolitan Nikolai (Kutepov) of Nizhny Novgorod and Arzamas, according to a letter from Abbess Seraphima (Chichagova-Chernaya), to move the New Cathedral (now the Transfiguration Cathedral) to the site intended for the Tenderness Cathedral. Everything indicates that the time has not yet come to build a cathedral with such a name, but also that the place intended for it is located between the end and the beginning of the Theotokos Kanavka and that it should not be occupied, as the Sarov novice Ivan (Tolstosheyev) occupied it in the 1830s with the construction of a small warm church. The church burned down when it was turned into a steam mill after the monastery was dispersed. The above testifies that the Monk Seraphim died when the ditch of the Mother of God Canal was dug to its full length, although not to its full depth. He did not give his blessing to dig a ditch along the seventh side of the polygon that bounds the territory of the Mill Monastery, namely, between the end and the beginning of the Theotokos Canal. On his plan, the seventh straight line is outlined only at its beginning with two short strokes. 1.5. Fourth historical period The fourth period in the history of the Mother of God Canal falls during the atheistic Soviet regime. Theomachists tried to close the monastery already in 1919 132. But for another eight years it existed under the guise of a labor artel. When the artel was registered in the Soviet authorities, nothing changed in the internal routine of the monastery. All the lands, equipment, and buildings were common to the sisters of the monastery before. The sisters and their property had already been united before the revolution in accordance with the charter of the cenobitic monastery. A council of the artel was elected from among the monastics. It was placed in a house near the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka, standing next to the memorial larch tree and the last turn of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka in a row of houses that runs along the sixth straight line of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka. This row of houses then became known as Sovetskaya Street. In this case, we are talking about a unique name, so stereotypical for the Soviet period, but paradoxically associated not with the workers' and peasants' councils, but with the council of the monastery-artel. In the monastery-artel, the sisters still cultivated the land, harvested crops and paid an exorbitant tax, walked in prayer along the Mother of God Canal, prayed at church services, and did not stop reading the incessant Psalter. Until the closure of the monastery on the Mother of God Kanavka, the previous prayer life continued. The order to close the monastery came on the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary 133. About a thousand sisters dispersed to cities and villages, maintaining contact with Abbess Alexandra, who left with a group of nuns for Murom. Most continued the monastic life. Many settled in the villages surrounding Diveevo, some remained in Diveevo and Vertyanov. Arrests began. The future schema-nun Margarita (Lakhtina) settled in Vertyanov after prison. Reverend Matrona, with permission from the authorities requested by her brother, is with him in the neighboring village of Suvorovo. For my brother, this was a Christian feat, since at that time people fenced themselves off from relatives associated with the Church, changed their surnames, and stopped all communication under the threat of arrest. The sisters who lived in Diveyevo and its environs came to the Mother of God Kanavka and practiced the rule of St. Seraphim on it. The monastery buildings were occupied for housing and offices by the agricultural artel, which in a few years brought the well-established monastery economy into complete decline. Some of the buildings were dismantled and removed 134. They began to fill up the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka, first horse-drawn roads were laid through it, and over the years - automobile roads. The transformation of the monastery territory especially intensified after the end of the Great Patriotic War. The authorities began laying telephone and electrical cables, water supply and sewerage pipes, gas and heating mains across the territory of the Mill Monastery, crossing the Mother of God Canal. The mechanization of excavation work made it possible to finally level most of the ditch and rampart of the Virgin Canal. Here are the impressions of this area, which had not yet been changed after the Soviet “transformation,” that a pilgrim made in 1998, at the time of the beginning of the reconstruction of the Virgin Canal: “On the section adjacent to the restored one, there are hatches every 15–20 meters. There is a gurgling of foul-smelling liquid inside. Here, sewage sewer pipes were laid in Kanavka. They are called part of the life support system. In the next area there are toilets. They were built here specifically for the purpose of anti-religious propaganda. Pilgrims walk past all this in prayer. Some of the locals look askance. A drunken disabled person sitting in a wheelchair is mumbling something unclear. Here is an aunt in a red jacket, for no reason at all, starts shouting angrily: “They walk and walk past my house.” I approach another local resident: “Do you go to church?” - “I went several times... it was stuffy there...”. Not long ago there was an idol next to Kanavka. Ilyich pointed somewhere at the crosses of churches. Thank God, there was a man who, under the cover of darkness, knocked down the idol. They never put him in his place. In general, the fourth destiny of the Mother of God is this: a school with a disco that thunders in the evenings, ramshackle barns, residential slums into which former monastery buildings have turned... And the Mother of God Herself silently passes nearby. Passes every day" 135. The VOOPIK expert, being in Arzamas with the blessing of Archbishop Nikolai (Kutepov) of Nizhny Novgorod and Arzamas on a short business trip to defend the Resurrection Cathedral, visited Diveevo and shared his impressions 136 . Below is this testimony about the state of the monastery and the Mother of God Kanavka at that time and about the social situation around it. Arriving in the village, he saw a large bell tower and large cathedrals. All these are new buildings built in the 19th century, which were not interesting to him as architectural monuments. From the layout of the building, he realized that there was some kind of monastery here. The churches are abandoned and no one needs them. But their technical condition was good. I remembered that there was some kind of Kanavka, some springs. I couldn’t remember anything else about this village. I tried to ask passers-by about the springs and the Kanavka, but no one “could” answer anything meaningful. I decided to look for it myself. As a geologist, reading the relief, he soon discovered an artificial ditch behind one of the cathedrals, stretching along a pedestrian path. Then the ditch turned left along the school fence. These, as we now know for sure, were the remains of the Mother of God Canal. Rovik was traced to a large, village-scale street, which, in full accordance with that time, was called Pervomaiskaya. It is still called that way. Further, no matter how much I wandered, except for the road ditches, I did not find any excavations. Questions to local residents remained unanswered. People looked somehow unfriendly when I asked about Kanavka and the sources, and did not want to talk. Obviously, they were afraid to talk about the topic of the Mother of God Canal and holy springs. It was August 3, and August 1, the day of the glorification of the saint. Seraphim, the police caught “parasite” pilgrims and local residents who contributed in any way to the “parasites.” Now this word seems to have disappeared from the language, but under Soviet rule it was used in anti-religious propaganda and anti-religious administrative activities. At that time, people went to Kanavka alone and mainly at night, fearing the authorities. We walked along the Bogorodichnaya Canal as close to it as possible, avoiding the fences of school grounds and private properties. We walked where we could go 137. The beginning of the Mother of God Canal in pre-Soviet times lay at the southern apse of the New Cathedral. From here, knowledgeable people began the prayer process. On the first straight line, the path coincided with the road that went from Arzamasskaya Street to the center of the village past the New Cathedral to the former Lithographic building of the former monastery. The road ran along poplars planted to the left of the shaft (Fig. 1.17). Along the prayer path to the right of the poplars, where pilgrims walk correctly, there was a low slope and behind it the ditch of the Virgin Canal. The row of poplars ended at the intersection of the road with Shkolnaya Street (Fig. 1.18). Here the prayer path turned left strictly in accordance with the turn of the Virgin Canal onto its second straight. At the turn, neither the ditch nor the rampart were visible in the relief (Fig. 1.18 and 1.20). Rice. 1.17. Pilgrims at the beginning of the Theotokos Kanavka in the spring of 1990 before the resumption of the monastery. In place of the ditch is the fence of the hockey rink 138 But in the photograph (see Fig. 1.18) the trunk of a thick poplar is visible on the right. He begins a row of trees planted along the second straight of the Virgin Canal. At the time described, many of these trees were still standing, indicating the direction of the Virgin Canal. Turning onto School Street, the path ran along the outside of the ditch. The ditch along Shkolnaya Street is partially preserved, but the shaft has been demolished or buried under 20th-century embankments. Further, the pilgrimage path went along the territory of the Diveyevo secondary school (Fig. 1.20), exactly along the site of the shaft of the Virgin Canal to a row of poplars stretching along the building of the military registration and enlistment office, a former monastery house. The building was immediately returned to the monastery by the military. The monastery clinic has been operating there since 1992. Rice. 1.18. Place of the first turn of the Virgin Canal at the end of the Soviet historical period. There are no signs of a ditch or rampart 139 The poplars were planted, as mentioned in the previous section, along the inner side at the base of the shaft. Therefore, the path visible in the photograph (see Fig. 1.20) ran parallel to the old path along the shaft about 2 meters from it. From the southwest corner of the almshouse, the Soviet-era path turned right, as did the Virgin Canal, hidden underground. Here, at the corner of the almshouse, the hidden true ditch and the active path diverged at an acute angle. The path left the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka. Rice. 1.19. The same location as in the previous figure 1.18, in 2015. In both drawings, the bell tower is on the left, in the center and on the right is the Transfiguration Cathedral (photo by the dissertation author) 140 Fig. 1.20. With prayer along the Mother of God Kanavka in the early 1990s on the territory of Diveyevo Secondary School 141 The Bogorodichnaya Kanavka went into private lands, and the prayer path was forced to deviate from it to the right. The path went straight to the memorable larch 142 and a two-story white house, which housed the council of the monastery-artel in the 20s of the twentieth century. It passed through a narrow space between the dam of the pond and the fence of the private property of the director of the boarding school. It was more convenient to walk along the dam, but we didn’t go, not wanting to deviate an additional 3-5 meters from the inaccessible Virgin Canal. Behind the larch tree in front of the entrance to the council house, the path turned left along the narrow asphalt surface of Sovetskaya Street. At the point where the path turns behind the larch, it is 40 meters away from its true position. Along Sovetskaya Street the path went to the last turn of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka. It, as now, was located 2 meters from the asphalt of Sovetskaya Street. From the turn, the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka, forming its sixth straight, was located tens of meters to the left from Sovetskaya Street. The path ran along the roadway along the Bread Building. At the western end of the building, it turned left along the road that ran from Arzamasskaya Street past the end of the Bread Building to the New (now Transfiguration) Cathedral. The road crossed the hidden underground moat of the Virgin Canal at its end. So, the path along the Virgin Canal in Soviet times began at its historical beginning and ended at its historical end. At the end of the pilgrims' path there grew a giant poplar planted under Abbess Alexandra. Prayer books and prayer books of the Soviet era faithfully ended the traditional prayer along the Theotokos Kanavka near this poplar. In the history of the Mother of God Canal, five historical periods are identified, of which three are creative and two are destructive. The periodization of history is associated with a change in the attitude of the authorities in the village of Diveevo towards the Mother of God Kanavka. In the first historical period (1825–1833), during the life of St. Seraphim of Sarov, the blessing was received to enclose with the Mother of God Canal a plot of land donated by Vera Andreevna Postnikova for the establishment of the Mill Convent. The sisters of the monastery built a ditch and rampart along six of the seven sides of the contour of their site. They tried, but were unable to dig a ditch to the depth of three arshins specified by the Monk Seraphim. They only outlined the ditch along its entire length, where it should exist in accordance with the blessing of St. Seraphim. This period was marked by the long persistence of the richest heirs of the tycoon A.R. Batashev, who did not want to give 3 acres of land for the Mill Monastery. It was hosted by the well-known elder Hieromonk Seraphim in the area, glorified in 1903 as the Venerable Seraphim of Sarov. In the second historical period (1833–1862), the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka was not maintained, it was washed away by sediment from streams and filled up by people to create passages and passages, but its veneration by the sisters of the Diveyevo communities did not stop. This period was marked by the strong influence on the affairs of the Mill Convent of the Sarov novice John (Tolstosheyev), who, being at that time a recognized disciple and follower of Elder Seraphim, sought to arrange everything in Diveyevo in his own way and therefore destroyed what was created by the Monk Seraphim, as often happens when there is a change of leadership. He also liquidated the Mill Monastery itself, merging it with the previously existing community of St. Alexandra Diveyevo. In the third historical period (1862–1927), under Abbess Maria (Ushakova), the Mother of God Kanavka was restored to its original form, but its beginning and end were not clearly marked, which indicates significant damage to its appearance by the beginning of the period. During this period, the activity of opponents of the veneration of the Mother of God Canal did not manifest itself. Inaccurate reproduction and the shallow depth of the ditch, in our opinion, indicate the people-pleasing nature of the builders of the Mother of God Canal during this period. They did it so that it would be easier for them, to dig less, and so that the ditch and rampart would, if possible, not interfere with driving on existing roads. Thus, we note the difference in the faith of the Diveyevo sisters in the first and third historical periods. The fourth historical period (1927–1991) falls on the Soviet era, when monastic residence in Diveevo was prohibited by the authorities, prayer on the Mother of God Kanavka was persecuted and performed secretly. The shaft of the Virgin Canal was razed along its entire length, and traces of a shallow ditch remained only in places. These fragments of the ditch are not reliable as an indicator of the position of the Mother of God Canal in the first historical period, under St. Seraphim. They were made in the third historical period and could be changed in the fourth historical period when pipelines were laid. In the fourth historical period, the Mother of God Canal was purposefully desecrated using various methods, which did not happen in the second historical period. This allows us to conclude about the difference in the spiritual and moral level of the opponents of the Mother of God Canal in the second and fourth periods. In the second period, the opponents were Orthodox Christians who did not believe in the grace of the Mother of God Canal and pursued their own grounded goals. In the fourth period, the opponents of the Theotokos Kanavka were ardent atheists who hated the Church and her Theotokos Kanavka and tried to crudely express this, believing that such anti-religious propaganda would turn believers away from worshiping the Mother of God on the Theotokos Kanavka and generally destroy the people’s faith in God. Chapter 2. History of the creation of the Mother of God Kanavka by the modern Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveyevo Monastery 2.1. Theotokos Kanavka in the first years after the restoration of the monastery The position of the Church in the country began to change before the end of Soviet power. In 1988, the communists allowed the celebration of the 1000th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus' as a major national holiday with wide international participation. The authorities handed over to the Church several of the largest monasteries in the past. At this time, they allowed the church to be consecrated in Diveyevo. Believers built a small wooden church in a former priest's house at the Kazan spring of the Mother of God on the outskirts of a large village. It was consecrated in honor of her Kazan Icon. Apparently, they did not hope for the return of the ancient Kazan Church, located in the center of the village. Some visiting girls who settled in Diveyevo dreamed of a monastery, but it did not exist. Will there be? Nobody knew. A year later, the believers of Diveev were unexpectedly offered to take the Trinity Cathedral. It was in a state of disrepair, but was quickly repaired by the rector, Archpriest Igor Pokrovsky, and consecrated by Archbishop Nikolai (Kutepov) of Nizhny Novgorod and Arzamas on March 31, 1990, Saturday of the Akathist of the Most Holy Theotokos 143. In the church at the time of consecration there were no candle boxes, no icon cases, and, of course, there was no saint’s shrine. Only in front of the main altar was a plywood altar barrier placed. From under the main dome, water dripped from the vault. The vault was saturated with moisture when it was left unattended, it was frozen and condensation accumulated on it. Repairs to the choir have not yet begun. There, during the service, the Diveyevo boys ran and made noise, for whom the empty cathedral had previously been a place for various games, but no one paid attention to them. The free cathedral was filled to capacity with worshipers who had come from different places. It was impossible to walk through the cathedral during the all-night vigil and the liturgy. Everyone confessed and received communion. About 5,000 people gathered for the consecration celebration. This is known because nun Maria (Savostina), who died in the schema in May 2020, with the blessing of the bishop, gave a paper icon “It is worthy to eat” to everyone who left the cross after the Liturgy and distributed five thousand icons. A bus arrived from the Trinity Sergius Lavra with hieromonks, who confessed, standing in a row along the entire salt. In the fall of 1991, three nuns came from the Riga desert to Diveevo with the blessing of the clergy. Nun Sergia was elevated by Metropolitan Nicholas to the rank of abbess and put in charge of the revived monastery. Monastic life resumed in Diveyevo. Several novices were accepted. Like Abbess Maria (Ushakova), the new, third Abbess of the monastery did not reach the Mother of God Canal in the first years. It was necessary to arrange the life of the sisters, receive the increasing flow of pilgrims, complete the restoration of the cathedral, and all this against the backdrop of a wary attitude on the part of some and hostility on the part of others towards the monastery from the population of the ten thousandth village and its district administration. The locals, as always, as hundreds or more years ago, did not like the appearance of a new land user, who, perhaps, would lay claim to the buildings occupied as apartments and institutions, which previously belonged to the monastery. In the first years, the sisters of the monastery walked along the Mother of God Kanavka, just like pilgrims of the Soviet era, where it was possible to pass. Their path was slippery in places and cramped in others. The passage between the dam of the pond and the fence of the house, which now houses the monastery hotel “Under the Larch,” was very narrow. In rainy weather, water accumulated here and ridges were laid. Here the sisters walked alone, pairing up again after passing the bottleneck. Pilgrims walked along the same path with prayer. Near the house of the former almshouse, where even in the altar of the house church there were living rooms, moonshine was distilled for sale 144. Next to the Bread Building, the religious procession took place in open garbage dumps and latrines with cesspools. During the wet season, slush and dirt created on the dirt path, especially in the narrow passage between the pond and the fence of the house. The monastery did not own this territory at that time and did not have the strength to improve it. Out of love for Diveevo, Anna Filippovna Gorbatova 145 took upon herself to improve the path along the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka in 1995. She was an energetic and non-monastically independent Muscovite woman, a journalist by profession. After retiring, she bought a house in Diveyevo, at the lower end of Zarechnaya Street. She rebuilt it so that pilgrims could be accommodated. She gathered groups of people who wanted to work for the improvement of Orthodox Diveyevo, settled them in her home and came to work with them. First of all, she thoroughly studied, using archival materials and interviewing residents, where the Kanavka ran. Then she decorated accessible places along the Virgin Canal line with flower plantings. The next year, she marked all the corners of the Virgin Canal with wooden blue eight-pointed crosses, which she placed quite accurately. For example, at the second turn of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka, at the intersection of Pervomaiskaya and Shkolnaya streets (Fig. 2.1), a cross was installed near the turn of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka, which was opened under the side of the road with a pit visible in the photograph. In 2004, in place of the wooden cross, which was removed during the construction of the shaft, a marble Crucifix was installed (Fig. 2.2). In 2003, the road in this section was moved 3 meters away from the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka. The fifth and final turn of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka on Sovetskaya Street was also marked with a blue cross. Here the moat of the Mother of God Kanavka exited from private property onto the public territory of Sovetskaya Street, only to immediately disappear again into the territory of the boarding school, inaccessible to monastics and pilgrims. Rice. 2.1. Blue wooden cross installed by A.F. Gorbatova at the second turn of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka at the intersection of Pervomaiskaya and Shkolnaya streets (dissertation photo) 146 Fig. 2.2. Marble Crucifixion, installed in 2004 on the site of a wooden blue cross, 7 years after the installation of the cross by A. F. Gorbatova 147 At the beginning of the summer of 1997, Anna Gorbatova’s team began constructing a ditch and rampart. By July, the length of the ditch reached several tens of meters (Fig. 2.3). Rice. 2.3. A ditch on the first straight of the Virgin Canal, dug by pilgrims from Anna Gorbatova’s brigade in July 1997 (dissertation photo) 148 It started under the poplar standing at the beginning of the Virgin Canal, and went towards the first turn in generally the right direction. In the photograph, the thick trunk of the poplar, which still stands today, 23 years later, is visible behind the stump on the right. Amateur builders faced many problems: with a ditch depth of only 0.5 meters, the slopes are unstable, they need to be secured somehow (attempts to secure them are visible in the photograph); It is not known exactly where exactly to dig a ditch so that it goes through the old place; Permits from local authorities are required to deepen the ditch. A warrant for excavation work from the district administration can only be obtained upon submission of a project drawn up by a licensed organization or an engineer who has a personal license for the design of earthworks. Work can only be carried out under the supervision of the professionals who developed the project. Anna, for all her self-confidence, was confused. The work she had begun to dig a ditch at the beginning of the Virgin Canal south of the altar of the Transfiguration Cathedral stopped. From that moment on, in July 1997, Abbess Sergius (Konkova) took the matter of restoring the Mother of God Canal into her own hands. The work was put on the official path: research - design - construction. At the head of the work for the initial period, Mother Abbess put the young (about 25 years old) nun Maria (Guley), who at that time supervised all the construction and restoration work of the monastery, without having a construction education. The Moscow State Civil Engineering University (MGSU) was chosen as the design and survey organization, which at that time had licenses for a full list of survey and design work, since its departments employed specialists in all existing construction and survey specialties. Abbess Sergia wrote a letter to Vice-Rector for Scientific Affairs Valery Ivanovich Telichenko asking for charitable help in the revival of the monastery. This appeal found a response from Assistant Vice-Rector Mikhail Vladimirovich Korolev and the Vice-Rector himself. In the university staff there were people who were ready to do charitable work for the Orthodox Church - a native of Diveevo, Alexander Mikhailovich Kornilov, Sergei Nikolaevich Chernyshev, Elena Vitalievna Shcherbina, Elena Nikolaevna Pokrovskaya, Lyudmila Igorevna Cherkasova, Marina Igorevna Afonina. Later they were joined by other specialists from MGSU and other organizations: Natalia Georgievna Tazina, Irina Mikhailovna Senyushchenkova, Nikolai Sergeevich Chernyshev, Vladimir Yuryevich Timofeev, who carried out research and design for the monastery not only of the Virgin Canal, but also of the Kazan Church and other objects. 2.2. History of the search for the Virgin Canal Before work on recreating the Mother of God Canal was carried out, it was necessary to find its route underground, since it was not expressed on the surface. During Soviet times, it was filled up and the ditch was razed. Only in some places could depressions of the ditch be traced, but these depressions could not be confidently interpreted as the remains of the Mother of God Canal. The shaft was not visible anywhere. There was a search phase ahead. The search for the Mother of God Canal hidden underground was carried out at the stage of work called exploration 149. In this case, the main questions of the research included the search for traces of the Virgin Canal, as well as the identification of all underground and above-ground structures along the line of the Virgin Canal. They had to be removed before the construction of the ditch and rampart. In July 1997, at the moment when the abbess decided to bring the matter of recreating the Mother of God Canal to a modern professional level, the dissertation candidate was in Diveyevo. He was invited to the beginning of the Virgin Canal. Here the old ditch was clearly visible on the surface of the earth. 2–3 m from it, on the site of the former rampart, there was a wide dirt path along which pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists often passed. Anna Gorbatova's pilgrims here began to dig a ditch and stopped, restrained by the collapse of the sides of the still shallow ditch, like their predecessors in the early and mid-19th century (see Fig. 2.3). The exact position of the primary ditch was also unknown. Accordingly, it was not clear how accurately it was reproduced on the ground. The selection of workers from visiting men was incorrect. According to St. Seraphim, only the sisters of the monastery should dig the Mother of God Canal. The dissertation candidate, as a professor at a civil engineering university, was asked the question: was the location chosen correctly for the excavation of the ditch? It was clear to everyone that, in principle, the direction of the ditch was chosen correctly. The specialist, unexpectedly for everyone, indicated to dig across that visible ditch, which coincides with the ditch on the old plans of 1846 and 1925, which the old-timers indicated as the ditch of the Virgin Canal. He explained that in a transverse trench under the soil, under sediments, one can find a trace of the first Mother of God Canal buried in the ground, and the visible trace is not reliable, since it shows the position of the ditch of the third historical period. The proposal to make an exploratory trench was approved by Abbess Sergius. The male pilgrims immediately began digging the first exploratory section across the axis of the Virgin Canal visible here. There was no ban on such work from St. Seraphim. Thus began the search, or in construction terminology, the exploration of the Mother of God Canal buried under the embankments of the 19th and 20th centuries. Cross sections, or pits, became the main method of exploration for 7 years. A total of 61 were made, or passed, as the explorers say. Of these, the Virgin Canal was discovered in 51 sections. In ten, it was not discovered, because in these places the soil was deeply dug up and traces of the ditch were destroyed. There were cases when the search section was mistakenly set far from the desired Kanavka due to the great uncertainty of its location. Therefore, individual exploration trenches had a length of up to 18 m with a depth in places of more than 3 m. Their excavation was hard work, but in those 1990s many people came who wanted to work hard to find the Mother of God Canal and experience the joy of meeting it underground. The abbess did not give everyone, but only those worthy, the blessing to work on the Mother of God Canal. In the first cuts, the buried Mother of God Canal, by the grace of God, was so clearly expressed that its underground contour was visible to everyone. The first exploration section is visible in the foreground of the image (see Fig. 2.3). The bottom of the second most ancient ditch of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka here has an arched shape. Beneath it lies dark brown dense loam with inclusions of brick fragments. Above it is yellow-brown lumpy loam. The brown, lumpy loam was dumped into the ditch in 1970 when the site for a hockey rink was being leveled nearby. The success of the first section convinced that the method of exploratory cross-sections would make it possible to find the Virgin's Canal along its entire length. From that moment on, the dissertation candidate, with the blessing of the abbess, became the technical director of work on the Theotokos Canal, primarily the work to search for buried traces of the Theotokos Canal. It should be noted here that technical decisions for the construction of the Virgin Canal could not be made regardless of the spiritual side of the matter. For example, there was a problem of insufficient soil to create a shaft embankment. The volume of the embankment with a planted path along the top is four times the volume of the ditch excavation. It was necessary to bring soil of the required technical quality from somewhere, which is worthy of being used in a holy building. A way out was found. During the construction of Kanavka, vertical planning was carried out at the Kazan Church. The excess soil that had accumulated there over centuries was removed and placed in the shaft. To make such a decision, it was necessary to know that the Monk Seraphim bought land near the Kazan Church with his own money, 150 that miraculous events were associated with this purchase, that he spoke about the holiness of the land around the Kazan Church and therefore forbade giving grass from the Kazan Church to livestock. Also, the choice of the method of performing work, the selection of tools and materials, and other things required from the technical manager not only an understanding of technical issues and spiritual knowledge. The dissertation candidate already had not only a technical, but also a higher spiritual education (PSTGU), and therefore was put in charge of the work. Subsequently, there were few such clear cuts as the first. Note that the photograph does not show the lower part of the cut, dug to a depth of 3 meters. Below we managed to find the bottom of the primary ditch of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka, which in this place was buried to a depth of 2.8 meters. Here is an eyewitness account of those survey works: “We are standing over a pit. It was discovered by pilgrims in an area where exploration is still underway. At the bottom of the excavation there are yellow loams. In the last century 151 they were called deposits of Noah's Flood. Darker soil is cut into this layer in a semicircle from above. The Kanavka was filled with it. Its outline is visible unusually clearly. It is obvious that at the end of the last century, when restoration was underway, the reserved dimensions were not observed. There are no three arshins wide and three deep (more than two meters). The Seraphim's blessing was not fully fulfilled. Maybe that’s why the Antichrist’s servants were able to cross the sacred line (emphasis added by me – M. V.). Crosses from churches were removed. This permission of the Lord is a lesson to all of us” 152. In addition to finding the axis of the ditch, the research faced the difficult task of finding the beginning and end of the Virgin Canal. It was possible to cross the axis at any place where the cut was made, but it was difficult to get to the beginning or end point. There were also tasks of geodetic survey of the territory. It was necessary to obtain soil strength characteristics in order to calculate the stability of steep slopes, determine the position of groundwater in different seasons of the year, and determine the permeability of soils to design drainage from the closed, drainless ditch of the Virgin Canal. Later, after clarifying the complexity of the task of landscaping slopes, agrotechnical problems arose. Soil composition analyzes and phytological surveys were carried out to determine the composition of the plant community that forms independently on the slopes of the ditch and rampart. The agrotechnical tasks included the task of assessing the microclimate on slopes of different exposures for designing landscaping with different varieties of grass in different microclimatic conditions 153. Due to the large total volume of work ahead, the first stage was allocated. This was the first straight part of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka, from the beginning to the first turn. On this section, about 80 m long, according to the 1:2000 plan, which was available to the district architect Vladimir Stepanovich Kuznetsov, the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka was not crossed by existing utility lines. Based on his plan without the red tape of coordination with the owners of underground utility networks, V.S. Kuznetsov issued a warrant to the monastery, in the person of the nun Maria (Guley), to carry out exploration work from the road behind the altar of the Transfiguration Cathedral (then New, not consecrated) to Shkolnaya Street. Already the first cuts, by the grace of God, gave a clear idea of ​​the location and shape of the ditch of the Mother of God Canal of two periods: under St. Seraphim and at the time of the closure of the monastery. The first sections showed the trapezium of the first ditch of 1829, the sediment that filled it, and the subsequent shallow cuts of the ditch made by the sisters during repair work in the 19th century (see Fig. 1.9 and 1.10). Based on these first works, Mother Abbess Sergia decided on the form of restoration of the Mother of God Canal. MGSU proposed 154 two options for recreating the Kanavka: 1) restoration of the ditch of the first or second Mother of God Kanavka by excavating the soil that filled the once dug ditch; 2) the creation of an earthen structure in the dimensions that St. Seraphim blessed. The abbess refused to restore the Mother of God Canal in the forms of the 19th century and blessed the digging in the same way as the Monk Seraphim blessed. His covenant was not fulfilled either in the first or in the third historical period. At the same time, the abbess said: “The monk said: “They will dig it later” 155. This “after” has come.” With this decision, she abandoned the restoration of the old and decided to create a new one, which the Monk Seraphim wanted to create, but which his contemporaries could not master, because they did not have the strength and reliable methods for ensuring the stability of the slopes. In our time, the decision to construct a ditch 2.15 m deep was technically feasible, but it was very difficult to implement at intersections with numerous utility lines. Therefore, for several years in a row, work was carried out in isolated areas - where there were no water supply lines, gas pipelines, electrical, telephone or heating mains. It seemed difficult to connect the sections until the state agreed to broad and unconditional support for the project of recreating the Mother of God Canal. This happened in 2003, and we will talk about it below. Initially, working on the first straight section, they intended to clear the ancient structure of sediment, that is, to restore in plan, height and shape what had been done by the sisters of the Mill Convent. The shape and dimensions of the ditch on the first straight line corresponded to those specified by the Monk Seraphim. Then they didn’t know that further on, in most of the Bogorodichnaya Canal there was no such correspondence. However, this method turned out to be too technically complex, since the historical ditch was in some places deep underground. To restore it, it was necessary to remove up to a meter of land in a strip along the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka route. And only then, on the strip freed from the embankment of the 20th century, dig the Mother of God Canal. This was labor-intensive and architecturally ineffective. The ditch and even the rampart would appear underground when viewed from the outside. They would not look like they do now, like a tall defensive structure. Therefore, with the blessing of the abbess, they began to deepen the ditch to 2.15 meters from the existing surface without removing bulk soils. The profile of the original ditch remains under the modern ditch in the area where it was dug to its full depth in 1829–1830. Future researchers, if necessary, will be able to make transverse sections here and see the primary ditch. As it turned out in 1999 156, the full depth of the ditch was dug within no more than 200 m of the 777 m length of the Virgin Canal. At the beginning of work on recreating the Mother of God Canal in 1997, the sisters of the modern monastery began to make the bottom about 1 meter wide. They repeated the steep slopes of the ditch of the original Kanavka, which was seen in exploration sections (see Fig. 1.8). The second most important research method was a topographic survey on a scale of 1:500, which was carried out in the area of ​​the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka structures in 1998, and was later supplemented, up to the as-built survey of the finished structures of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka in October 2003. The filming was conducted by engineer Vladimir Petrovich Volkovsky, a monastery worker who had previously worked in Optina Pustyn, and when the volume of construction work there began to decline, he moved to Diveevo. A professional land reclamation worker, born in Western Ukraine, who worked in Crimea, he gave the last decades of his life and work experience to the Church, serving in the restoration of two famous monasteries in Russia, and died in Diveyevo on Easter 2020. In order to determine the composition of modern flora, a phytosurvey 157 was carried out in 2012 with the involvement of a specialist from the Department of Meadow Growing of the Timiryazev Agricultural Academy, Natalia Georgievna Tazina. To identify plant communities on the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka of the first historical period at the Geological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences A.V. Gomankov and M.M. Brattseva performed a spore-pollen analysis of 158 ditch deposits dating back to 1829. The names of plants that grew in the area of ​​the Virgin Canal in the first and fifth historical periods are given in monograph 159. One of the main objectives of the research was to record on the topoplan the utility networks crossing the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka. Information about networks was provided by regional communications services, public utilities (housing and communal services), electricity supply, and gas services. The heads of these services kindly and quickly agreed on permits for excavation work for surveys, and after the surveys, for the construction of the Virgin Canal. When work was carried out in close proximity to roads, the state traffic inspectorate (now the traffic police) also gave approval. When working on the territory of the Diveevo secondary school and the Diveevo boarding school, the possibility of carrying out our work was determined by the director of the secondary school, Vera Ivanovna Kostyunina, and the director of the boarding school, Mikhail Nikolaevich Nikolaev. They tried to promote the formation of the monastery, signed documents, ceding land plots for the construction of a ditch and rampart inside the school territory. Often this was done against the wishes of senior management, for which school directors got into trouble. The headmistress of the school came to Mother Abbess to ask for protection from the Monk Seraphim, and protection was granted: despite the threats, she was not removed from her post for helping the monastery. Mikhail Nikolaevich, during the period of our work on the territory of the boarding school, eliminated the bust of the leader that stood in front of the entrance to the school building, for which he received a reproach from the district leadership and was in disgrace for a long time. Exploration work was carried out in queues in areas planned in agreement by the monastery and the district administration (Fig. 2.4). Rice. 2.4. Stages of reconstruction of the Mother of God Canal by year 160 At the end of the story about the exploration stage of recreating the Mother of God Canal, it is necessary to talk about some events, successes and failures during the search and exploration of the Mother of God Canal. The district architect’s information about underground utility networks in the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka area turned out to be inaccurate. Due to inaccuracy of information at the beginning of exploration work, around June 15, 1998, the monastery suffered great trouble. A pilgrim working in an exploratory excavation cut a telephone cable with a shovel, which was channeled in asbestos-cement pipes. He was told that there were no operating utility lines on the site. Therefore, to achieve the specified depth, he broke the asbestos-cement pipe and cut the cable. About 70 telephones in the village fell silent, having lost contact with the telephone exchange. The monastery was threatened with an exorbitant fine and work stoppage, but Metropolitan Nikolai (Kutepov) settled this matter in Nizhny Novgorod. The hoods of the nuns who participated in the work were removed. The engineering staff from MGSU, as external people, did not receive punishment, although the technical director of the research was to blame, since this ill-fated pit was assigned to them in the territory that Abbess Sergius did not bless to dig. But according to his ideas, intelligence interests extended there, and he acted in his own way, pursuing the goal of finding the beginning of the Virgin Canal. It was not found, but the pit brought trouble. From this event, which happened at the beginning of the work, the technical workers at the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka made two conclusions: 1) monastic obedience is necessary, despite their own reasons; 2) you need your own accurate topographic plan with drawing of utility networks on a scale of 1:500. This is V.P.’s plan. Volkovsky did it in the same 1998. It was agreed upon with regional engineering services. The search for the beginning of the Theotokos Canal was carried out blindly, until one of the Diveyevo old-timers brought a photograph of the beginning of the Theotokos Canal, taken from the bell tower around 1904, before the construction of the Transfiguration Cathedral began. Now, when viewed from the bell tower, this place of origin is blocked by the Transfiguration Cathedral. Therefore, it is impossible to identify the place of beginning from the bell tower. He is not visible. In the photo behind the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka there is a row of log houses, fences, and gates along it. If we had these fences and gates, we could find the beginning at one of them. But no fences, not even houses - over the past less than 100 years, everything has been demolished. In the photograph near the Bogorodichnaya Canal, a lonely small tree can be seen close to its beginning. Now at the beginning of the Virgin Canal there is also one tree - a poplar. We decided that the photograph showed a modern poplar in its first years of growth. We estimated from the photograph how many meters from the tree to the beginning of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka, measured these meters from the poplar and began to dig a cut, hoping to find in it the beginning of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka ditch. The men who were digging the cut had already gone deep into the soil when they brought the second copy of the photograph. It was a much clearer image. It was clear that the tree was a birch, not a poplar. The search logic based on the old photograph collapsed. But the pilgrims continued to dig, no longer relying on the logic of the search, but on God. And they were not deceived. The cut, it was the fifth from the start of work, fell exactly at the beginning of the Virgin Canal. In its southern wall there was a trapezoidal incision of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka ditch (Fig. 2.5). There was no such cut in the northern wall from the side of the Transfiguration Cathedral. The depth of the cut is 2.4 meters. Its length at the top is about 1.9 meters. In both walls there is an arched incision of the bottom of the shallow ditch of the Virgin Canal of the third historical period, which existed at the beginning of the twentieth century. We see the same arc in the photograph (see Fig. 2.3) in the adjacent section. The arc is the bottom of the second most ancient ditch of the Mother of God Canal, dug under Abbess Maria (Ushakova). The ditch of the second Bogorodichnaya Kanavka crosses the site of cut No. 5. The second ditch began closer to the Transfiguration Cathedral. Abbess Maria's sisters made a mistake in the beginning. They started the ditch 10–15 meters north of the modern beginning, behind the right, southern apse of the Transfiguration Cathedral. This is what the old-timers showed, and it was also drawn on the 1925 plan. This is confirmed by exploration sections No. 4 and 6. In the southern wall of section No. 5, a trapezoidal incision of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka ditch descends to the entire depth of the excavation. There is no such cut in the northern wall of the cut, from the side of the Transfiguration Cathedral. This is the outline of the ditch of the first Mother of God Canal. Judging by the fact that there is one in one wall of the cut, but not in the other wall, the ditch began between these walls. The distance between them is 0.8 meters. This is the width of the exploration trench. The first ditch is filled with clay soils, washed in by rainwater and pieces of collapsed soil, which are visible in the photograph (see Fig. 1.9), taken a few meters south of section No. 5. So, the first ditch began here. Rice. 2.5. Sketches of the southern (left) and northern walls of section No. 5. 1 – natural yellow quartz sand; 2 – natural covering brown clay; 3 – ancient buried soil; 5 – fill soil of the 19th century; 6 – the same of the 20th century 161 It was precisely in this place in 1829 that the sisters of the Mill Convent, at the end of a short June night in the early morning twilight, noticed the Monk Seraphim, who took a yard out of the ditch by the light of a candle 162 . The surface of the earth from which he dug was not preserved. It was located approximately 0.4 meters below the modern surface, was once razed, and then loams with various fragments of buildings were poured onto this place in the 20th century. The approximate surface of the earth on which the Monk Seraphim stood is shown with a dotted line. He dug a ditch to the same depth as the sisters of the monastery under Abbess Maria 40 years after him. Now in this place the third ditch of the Virgin Canal begins. At the end of the modern moat, the sisters of the monastery planted two blue spruce trees and planted a flower garden, especially honoring this place where the monk himself was and began to dig the Mother of God Canal. The picture in section No. 5 is very clear (see Fig. 2.5 and Fig. 1.9). The abbess and sisters of the monastery came and were convinced that the Lord had revealed to us the place where the monk “himself began to dig” 163, or “buried” 164, or “buried” 165, as it is written in the Chronicle, that is, he laid the Theotokos Canal. The beginning was found in the summer of 1998. This discovery is worthy of being included as a line in the life of St. Seraphim. 2.3. The history of the design of the reconstructed Virgin Canal 2.3.1. Design tasks The design of the Virgin Canal was carried out in stages, as is customary in the practice of designing structures. For the first time, the idea of ​​​​restoring Kanavka appeared on the General Plan of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery, compiled in Nizhny Novgorod by a team of architects, in which V.V. actively worked. Koval (1992). On the general plan of the Nizhny Novgorod residents, the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka is shown inaccurately based on archival materials, with deviations in a number of places up to 20 m from its actual position. These are the errors on the 1925 topoplan of the monastery. The recommended profile of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka included a shaft 0.5 m high and a ditch 2.13 m deep from the surface of the path (Fig. 2.6) 166, which is similar to the dimensions of the Virgin Canal of the third historical period. It was proposed to restore the unfinished Theotokos Canal for a second time. The general plan was not approved and was not taken into account in further work. In 1997, when the monastery wanted to begin recreating the Mother of God Kanavka, the need to design and coordinate projects was pointed out by the chief architect of the Diveyevo district, Vladimir Stepanovich Kuznetsov. Until 2003, he kindly but demandingly coordinated projects for the monastery to reconstruct individual parts of the Mother of God Canal. Sometimes he issued a warrant for excavation work against the wishes of the head of the district administration. Then the issue of issuing a warrant was delayed, various obstacles arose that had to be overcome for weeks or more. Rice. 2.6. V.V. Koval. Design profile of the Mother of God Canal in the monastery’s geoplan in 1992 (a gift from the architect V.V. Koval to the dissertation author) 167 The situation changed dramatically at the beginning of 2003. The young, energetic Bishop Georgy (Danilov) was consecrated to the Nizhny Novgorod See. Intensive preparations have begun for the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the glorification of St. Seraphim. The holiday was officially recognized as a church-state holiday. Under the personal control of President V.V. Putin created an organizing committee with two co-chairs. From the Church, the organizing committee was headed by Metropolitan Filaret (Vakhromeev), Patriarchal Exarch of All Belarus, from the state - Plenipotentiary Representative of the President for the Volga Federal District S.V. Kiriyenko. The members of the organizing committee were Bishop of Nizhny Novgorod and Arzamas Georgy (Danilov) and Minister of the Government of the Nizhny Novgorod Region for Construction V.I. Limorenko and other regional administrators. The celebrations took place on August 1, 2003. The hierarchs of the Russian Church gathered for the holiday. The heads of the Local Churches arrived: His Holiness the Serbian Patriarch Paul, the head of the Orthodox Church in America, Metropolitan Herman, representatives of other Local Churches: from Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, Bulgarian, Romanian, Polish, Hellenic, Cyprus. In connection with this turn of events, in the spring of 2003, at MGSU, under a subcontract under an agreement with Nizhny NovgorodNIIgrazhdanproekt, a project was developed for the reconstruction of the Virgin Canal as a whole. It was agreed upon at the regional level as part of the project for the restoration of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery, developed by Nizhny NovgorodNIIgrazhdanproekt under government orders (chief engineer of the project Natalya Georgievna Finnikova). At the previous stages, the design of the Virgin Canal was carried out by employees of the Moscow State University of Civil Engineering (MGSU), which took over these works in 1998 charitable, according to a letter from Abbess Sergius and by decision of the then vice-rector, and soon rector V.I. Telichenko, with the constant support of Vice-Rector for Scientific Affairs M.V. Korolev and the head of the Department of Engineering Geology and Geoecology A.D. Potapova. Responded from the Department of Soil Mechanics were Diveevo native Associate Professor Alexander Mikhailovich Kornilov, whose parental home still stands next to the Kazan Church, where his mother took him to communion as a child, Professor Elena Vitalievna Shcherbina, Professor Lyudmila Igorevna Cherkasova. Later, professor Elena Nikolaevna Pokrovskaya, senior lecturer Valentina Ivanovna Darchiya, from the department of engineering geology, professor Irina Mikhailovna Evgrafova, associate professor Vladimir Yuryevich Timofeev, and associate professors brothers Andrei Viktorovich and Sergei Viktorovich Kofanov from the humanities departments joined. In those years, state licenses for the design and construction of earthen structures such as the moat and rampart of the Virgin Canal were available not only to the university, but also to the dissertation candidate personally, the supervisor of the work. Based on these licenses, the monastery received warrants for excavation work for surveys and for the construction of the Virgin Canal under the supervision of the licensed organization MGSU. The structures of the Virgin Canal seem to be small and uncomplicated, but it turned out that designing them is not entirely simple. Nizhny NovgorodNIIgrazhdanproekt, having received state funding in February or March 2003 for urgent design of the restoration of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery, for a long time could not begin to design the Mother of God Kanavka as part of the overall project, because the construction is not standard, not traditional, and there are special spiritually determined requirements of the Church, which became obstacles to the usual design process, seemingly “out of the blue.” Finally, only at the very end of April, Natalya Georgievna Finnikova, the chief engineer of the complex project for the restoration of the monastery, with whom we later worked closely and fruitfully, turned to MGSU with a request to subcontract the design of the Mother of God Kanavka. The staff of MGSU then already had six years of experience in combining spiritual and technical requirements when designing the Virgin Canal and took upon themselves the preparation of a general working design. On April 30, an agreement was concluded with a deadline for submitting the project to the customer on June 15, 2003. Easter Bright Week that year ended on May 3. Work on the project was to begin on May 5, the Monday after Easter Sunday. The Bogorodichnaya Kanavka is a small structure, not full of various parts, but homogeneous throughout its entire length. What is the difficulty of designing such a structure? It is not standard, that is, there are no pre-developed standard structural elements and standards for their use. Its construction must fulfill a combination of spiritual and technical requirements. Our building is not traditional, like, say, an Orthodox church. The experience of constructing protective earthen ramparts (Fig. 2.7) with very steep slopes has long been lost. However, fragmentary memories of this experience have been preserved somewhere, for example in the Urals. Rice. 2.7. Ditch and rampart of the ancient city of Dmitrov 168 Carpenters from the Urals appeared among the pilgrims in 2002. From the experience of their fathers and grandfathers, they knew how to make logs in the swamp. They supplemented the MGSU project and placed wooden ridges at the base of the rampart, which our ancestors, the builders of the fortress ramparts, actually used (Fig. 2.8) to hold steep defensive slopes. Modern Urals laid the ridges incorrectly in relation to the task of combating slope sliding. They had longitudinal logs at the bottom, and transverse logs were placed on them, as is done on wooden bridges and swamp gullies. As a result, the rows under the second line do not work. But their proposal was used by MGSU with an amendment (Fig. 2.9). Some echoes of the old craftsmanship are still preserved among the people, but the understanding of how the structure works has been lost. The Urals confused the road in the swamp with the cantilever holding device necessary in this case. Such a console device can be seen in the Moscow Museum, where the remains of the first earthen rampart are shown from excavations in the Kremlin. There are exhibited authentic wooden structures from the 12th–13th centuries made of resinous pine, found by archaeologists during excavations. The tree is still strong, specially cut and prepared on the root for such work. Rice. 2.8. The design of a stone-earth rampart in a defensive structure of the 8th–11th centuries 169 Fig. 2.9. Laying rows at the base of the shaft of the Virgin Canal at its end. 2004 170 In the midst of construction work in 2003, an organizational idea arose to involve a railway construction organization to create a shaft. The idea was based on the fact that the shaft of the Virgin Canal is similar to a railway embankment. The railway workers offered their services. They were going to import old wooden tarred waste sleepers to lay on the shaft as the foundation of the fence, canceling the approved MGSU project and thereby violating the state construction system. But standard sleepers turned out to be short and inapplicable for the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka. The MGSU project was defended by Valery Vyacheslavovich Meshalkin, the head of the construction company “SKrest” (“Holy Kanavka Restoration”) that he created for Diveev. He financed the work, and his word meant a lot. Valery Vyacheslavovich sharply and steadfastly opposed the introduction of railway workers to the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka. In reality, the railway embankments are not at all similar to the shaft of the Virgin Canal. They have more gentle slopes, they are designed to withstand loads of different magnitudes, therefore they are not made of clay, from which the monk blessed to make the shaft. Just as great is the difference between a freight train led by a locomotive, on the one hand, and a religious procession along the Virgin Canal, on the other, so is the difference between the railway embankment and the embankment of the Virgin Canal shaft. 2.3.2. Design principles of the Virgin Canal In the spring of 2003, the fundamental points necessary for the design were formalized in the document “Basic provisions of the project for the reconstruction of the Mother of God Canal of the Holy Trinity-Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery of the Nizhny Novgorod Diocese” in accordance with the general principles of the revival of monastic complexes set out in Article 171. The document received the blessing of Bishop (now Metropolitan) of Nizhny Novgorod and Arzamas Georgy (Danilov), who made his own adjustments, and before that it was approved by the rector of MGSU V.I. Telichenko. The document was drawn up in connection with the bishop’s trip to the Patriarch with a report on the progress of preparations for the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the glorification of St. Seraphim. During the report, the principles received the patriarchal blessing. Here is the title page of the document (Fig. 2.10). The document is a schematic diagram of the project. You can call it canon 172 for the construction of the Mother of God Canal. The document was compiled based on historical data, namely, on the instructions of St. Seraphim to the sisters of the Mill Convent that have come down to us on how to make the Mother of God Canal, and on the results of excavations. We wrote about this data in the first chapter. Here we summarize in 7 brief points everything that was said above. Rice. 2.10. Title page of the official document “Basic provisions of the project for the reconstruction of the Holy Mother of God Canal of the Holy Trinity-Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery of the Nizhny Novgorod Diocese.” M.: MGSU, May 2003. Approved by the rector of MGSU, blessed for incarnation by the diocesan bishop of Nizhny Novgorod and Arzamas. 16 p. I. St. Seraphim gave a plan for the construction, as they say in design work, a general plan. As is customary in construction, it was drawn by St. Seraphim before work began in 1828 or 1829 on a sheet of paper, which is now kept in the Trinity Cathedral of the monastery (see Fig. 1.7). It was then taken to the area by a land surveyor in February or March 1829. Before digging the ditch, the line of the surveyor's pegs was plowed three times with a plow. They dug along the furrow from the plow. Consequently, the axis of the ditch of the Mother of God Canal, and not some other line, for example the axis of the rampart, is the boundary of the Mill Monastery, within which there should be 3 acres of land. The border of the territory is complex, heptagonal. On the plan of St. Seraphim (see Fig. 1.7) the earthen structure is not closed, the seventh side is not completely drawn, only two strokes are made from the last turn towards the beginning of the Theotokos Canal. Accordingly, the sisters of the Mill Convent did not dig the Mother of God Canal in this part. The sisters dug hastily in the winter of December 1832. We came to the end of the sixth straight and stopped. Excavations in 2004 at the end of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka established that in the first historical period it ended in a dead end on the sixth straight without a turn. II. The Monk Seraphim ordered the shaft to be placed on the inside of the ditch. III. The Monk Seraphim gave three dimensions for the ditch and rampart: 3 arshins for the width of the ditch, 3 arshins for the depth of the ditch, and 3 arshins for the height of the rampart. There are still three required dimensions for design - the width along the bottom of the ditch, the width of the shaft and the width of the path along the shaft. IV. The Monk Seraphim told the shaft to be made from clay raised from the ditch. V. The Monk Seraphim blessed to plant gooseberries on them to strengthen the slopes. VI. Reverend Seraphim, a wonderful gardener himself, sent the sisters many seeds, presumably many different plants for landscaping the slopes and surrounding area. VII. The Monk Seraphim did not allow the sisters to involve outside forces to dig a ditch, but only to dig the ditch themselves. An exception can now be made for clergy and monastics of other monasteries, since Hieromonk Seraphim himself began to dig the Mother of God Canal. Mother Abbess Sergia, in relation to the modern situation, specified that the depth of the ditch will be taken from the modern surface, and not from the surface that existed during the creation of the Mother of God Canal in 1829–1832. That surface has not been preserved everywhere. It's hidden somewhere. In other places it is located at a depth of more than a meter. Recreating a ditch now from that surface will greatly increase the volume of work and complicate the problem of slope stability, which is already quite complex. Mother Abbess also gave her blessing to include in the project the use of modern building materials, preferably domestically produced, but also foreign ones, if necessary. Vladyka George gave the dimensions of the shaft, which are not in the Chronicle. He indicated that the path along the shaft should be wide enough for a religious procession with a shrine of relics and a large icon on a stretcher. Using the measure of St. Seraphim, he blessed to make a path 3 arshins wide. He also approved the steepness of the slopes of the shaft of 45°, which was laid down in the first projects, which the sisters did not implement in the previous years of construction of individual sections of the Virgin Canal. By saving clay and reducing the amount of work, until 2002 they almost everywhere made slopes much steeper than designed. It must be admitted that such shaft slopes stood well. With these instructions from the ruler, the shaft acquired a width of 3 fathoms, or 6.4 meters, at its base. The width of the bottom of the ditch was taken based on the results of excavations as 0.2 m. This width of the bottom was made by the sisters of the Mill Convent, obviously, not without the blessing of their spiritual father, St. Seraphim of Sarov. 2.3.3. Review of design work In the summer of 1997, permission for excavation exploration and construction work was issued by the district architect V.S. Kuznetsov as an exception, without a project for the section from the beginning to 80 m, where according to his plan there were no existing communications. The sisters, with the blessing of the abbess, were guided by our still imperfect recommendations of July 24, 1997. Vladimir Stepanovich Kuznetsov issued all subsequent permits for construction excavation work only on the basis of projects drawn up at the Moscow State University of Civil Engineering, approved by the rector and sealed with the official seal. The first project for the structures of the Virgin Canal was developed by design engineer Alexander Konstantinovich Ermakov at the end of 1998 - the first half of 1999 with the participation of MGSU prospectors. In the fall of 1998, A.K. Ermakov on the spot indicated to the prospectors from memory the position of the fourth straight of the Virgin Canal. He then went out to the poplars that grew along the southern wall of the one-story building of the monastery clinic, stood between the trees, raised his hands to the imaginary crossbar of the horizontal bar, which was fixed in the trees in his childhood. Then he said: “We boys could only jump onto the horizontal bar from a low shaft. To jump onto the horizontal bar, you had to stand with your back to the house. This means that the shaft passed between the house and the trees, and even closer to the house there was a ditch.” The Bogorodichnaya Kanavka was discovered by pits where he showed, and not where it was drawn on the 1925 plan. Alexander Konstantinovich Ermakov spent his childhood in Diveyevo on the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka, living in an almshouse. During the Great Patriotic War, having fallen ill, as a boy he and his mother went to Sarov to bathe in the spring. I took a swim and recovered. Alexander Konstantinovich took part in drawing up the first project when he was already sick with cancer. During the winter of 1998/99, with his significant participation, MGSU employees completed and formalized the project. Alexander Konstantinovich traveled to Diveevo, had a long conversation with Mother Abbess Sergia, took communion and, having signed the project on his deathbed, left in the spring for another world. The first project 173 was drawn up for the third and fourth straight sections of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka in the distance range from its beginning of 310–470 m. It turned out to be typical. From it, the profile of the structures was transferred to subsequent projects: the width and depth of the ditch are 2.15 m, the width of the path along the shaft is 2.15 m (implemented only in 2003 with the blessing of Bishop George), ditch slopes 1:1 (45°, also implemented only in 2003 with the blessing of Bishop George) and structures for protecting utilities, which were preserved according to the project under the ditch or exposed themselves and crossed it in protective covers. The project was approved by the vice-rector of MGSU V.I. Telichenko and became the basis for issuing a warrant for earthworks. Alexander Konstantinovich Ermakov drew our attention to the fact that the Virgin Canal is a complex structure, it is convenient to see it as a group of structures that work together in engineering, and even more so in spiritual terms. Their purpose, design, methods of performing work, and performers are different. He proposed to identify parts of the Mother of God Canal and give them a name. They were allocated a ditch and a rampart. Subsequently, the individual elements of the group became a path along the rampart with a fence, an electric lighting line, green cover on the slopes of the ditch and rampart, a lawn watering system, fences, and service paths. These structures were separately designed and created by different teams. Thus, the green coating was carried out according to its own method without a design by the Nizhny Novgorod company "Galeon". Two or three necessary elements of the “Virgin Kanavka” group of structures are still awaiting their designers and contractors. These elements must be created to protect the entire complex from harmful external influences - transport along Pervomaiskaya Street, flows of storm and snow water, vegetation of gardens and vegetable gardens, which, due to watering, causes the soil in the slopes to become soaked and infects the plants of the Virgin Canal with diseases. These elements are: firstly, a drainage system for storm and melt water from the territory adjacent to the outside of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka, secondly, local anti-landslide structures in places of modern soil mobility, and in the future along the entire length of the ditch on both sides and, thirdly, a protective land strip on the outer side of the ditch at least 5 meters wide and the same strip on the inner side where the electric lighting cable runs. In 2000, 2001, following the example of the project by A.K. Ermakov drafts 174, 175 were drawn up for straight sections of the Virgin Canal No. 6 and No. 2. The projects became the basis for obtaining warrants for earthworks. Warrants were received and work was carried out. In May 2001, based on new survey data, the design for section No. 3 in the range of 310–350 m was finalized. Here the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka crosses a number of communications and goes out to the roadway along Pervomaiskaya Street (see Fig. 2.1). It was necessary to move the road away from the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka by several meters. In 2001, the project was not approved by the administration of the village of Diveeva, which refused to shift the road along Pervomaiskaya Street. Based on comments sent by the district administration to the monastery, the project was revised at MGSU. A new version of the design of the Virgin Canal at the second turn was drawn up and presented to the district architect V.S. Kuznetsov in 2002 176. The changes concerned the connection of the Virgin Canal with the road. The designers gave in to the administration’s demands formulated in a letter from V.S. Kuznetsov dated June 10, 2002, No. 8, and for the sake of preserving the road, they agreed to deviate from the God-given position of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka ditch, to temporarily cut off the sharp corner on which the marble crucifix on the rampart now stands (Fig. 2.2). The Bishop agreed with the sisters of the monastery, and the compromise project of MGSU was finally rejected. After this, in Nizhny Novgorod, not without the participation of the ruling bishop, the relocation of the road along Pervomaiskaya Street was agreed upon. However, now civil organizations did not take up the project. The road was actually rebuilt only on July 22, 2003. Only then did the possibility of constructing a ditch and rampart in the interval from 308 to 320 m open up. Work on moving the road began in those hours when in Diveevo, under the leadership of the co-chairman of the organizing committee, plenipotentiary representative of the President of the Russian Federation S.V. Kiriyenko met with the organizing committee for the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the glorification of St. Seraphim. It took a special order from the Presidential Plenipotentiary to shift the road and arrange the most important easternmost corner of the Mother of God Canal according to the plan of St. Seraphim. However, this happened later, in 2003. The whole of 2002 was marked by the administration’s disagreement with the issuance of warrants for new sections of the Virgin Canal. In 2003, due to a new working situation caused by the President’s intervention in the reconstruction of the Diveyevo Monastery, in March permission was given for additional exploration of the Mother of God Kanavka in the gardens of the owners who, being principled opponents of the reconstruction of the monastery, had previously not allowed even a geodetic rod to be placed on their territory. The monastery workers, since the ground hardly froze that winter, quickly made six pits in the gardens. This finally established the position of the fifth and sixth straight lines and the entire Mother of God Canal, with the exception of the point of its end. The end of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka could not be found, despite a thorough search with several pits. Only in the spring of 2004 was it possible to solve this problem. In March, a project was urgently released for the fifth and sixth straight lines 177. However, he did not go to work, since a comprehensive project was required with estimates for all unstarted sections and for the reconstruction of the earthworks of the Virgin Canal that had already been created over the past years. The design and construction of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka during this period was placed on a state basis and was financed through the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Communal Service. MGSU received notification of the order for the project of the Virgin Canal on Monday, Easter Week, April 28, 2003. They have been waiting for this appeal for a long time. The contract was signed during the holidays: Easter, May 1, Victory Day. They did something during civil holidays, but they started work in earnest only on May 10, with a contract deadline of June 15. Two volumes of Project 178 were developed, designed and delivered to the customer ahead of schedule on May 23, 2003. With God's help, using research materials that were ready at that time, including a topoplan at a scale of 1:500 V.P. Volkovsky with the connection of pits and underground communications, MGSU employees Elena Vitalievna Shcherbina, Marina Igorevna Afonina, Boris Valerievich Smutchuk, Anton Aleksandrovich Alekseev, Sergei Nikolaevich Chernyshev compiled the project. It was based on the general plan drawn by B.V. Smutchuk on the topographic basis of V.P. Volkovsky using the then new GEOCAD program. This expensive and complex program was donated to the monastery. V.P. worked with her. Volkovsky. At the end of May or beginning of June, while walking around the Mother of God Canal, Bishop George, as always, briefly posed the question: “Where is the project?” The answer was also brief: “Transferred to the customer for approval by the regional authorities.” At this point the design was completed. Construction work on the project before its appearance began to unfold in May and gained momentum in June. At this time, MGSU carried out field supervision at the work site. 2.4. History of construction work 1997–2004 2.4.1. Construction work 1997–2002 The Mother of God Kanavka was restored by the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Monastery over 7 years from August 1997 to July 2004. The main volume was completed in 2003 (see Fig. 2.4). The works of 1997–2002 and the works of 2003–2004 differ significantly in style, spiritual content and technical results, so below we will consider them separately. The monastery began excavation work to reconstruct the Mother of God Canal on August 23, 1997. After the early Liturgy, a prayer service was served for the start of work. It was Saturday, the Dormition Fast, one of the days after the celebration of the Transfiguration of the Lord. A small but blessed piece of land had to be transformed. The prayer service was led by Archpriest Andrei Toropov, senior priest of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery, and a guest from St. Petersburg, Archpriest Nikolai Belyaev, senior priest of the St. John's Stauropegic Women's Monastery in St. Petersburg 179 on the Karpovka River. The lectern, as we learned a year later, was installed at the place where the Mother of God Canal was laid by the Monk Seraphim 180. The following year, exploration pit No. 5 was dug at this site, in which the beginning of the Virgin Canal was discovered (see Fig. 2.5). About forty sisters and the same number of lay people gathered to pray. The weather was good - a warm August day. Immediately after the prayer service, the sisters unanimously and joyfully began to dig a ditch from the first pit to the second. One of the sisters continuously read prayers loudly. By that time, the axis of the Virgin Canal had been discovered in the first and second pits. The starting position was not yet known. The axis was discovered only in the range from the third to the eleventh meter, counting from the later found beginning of the Virgin Canal: seven and a half meters, a hundredth of the full length of the ditch. All those gathered clearly saw a ditch in two pits. There was great joy. It was clear how to look for the Mother of God Canal underground. There was a lot of work ahead. One of many large works to recreate the monastery and not the most urgent. Mother Sergia gave her blessing to dig forward along the course of the Virgin Canal from the first pit to the second, in order to then finish the beginning when it opens. The ditch was dug along the underground profile of the primary ditch (see Fig. 1.9). The task was seen as removing fill soil from the ditch and reconstructing the original ditch. Then this restoration approach had to be abandoned for two reasons. The main and fundamental thing is that the sisters of the Mill Convent were unable to fulfill the blessing of St. Seraphim and create the Mother of God Groove of the required depth and the shaft of the required height. Now Mother Abbess blessed her spiritual daughters to make the Mother of God Canal according to the dimensions of St. Seraphim: 3 arshins in width, 3 arshins in depth and 3 arshins in height of the shaft 181. This means that we should do it not as we did under the monk, but better. It is written in the Chronicle that St. Seraphim, blessing the sisters of the Mill Convent to dig the Mother of God Canal not in full profile, said: “They will dig it later” 182. The monk at one time went to such an imperfection of the Mother of God Canal, condescending to the small number of sisters of the Mill Convent. In 1998, there were already about a hundred nuns and nuns in the monastery, and many more with novices and candidates. In August 1997, the sisters first threw the soil from the ditch with shovels to the left inside the territory of the kenobia, as blessed by the Monk Seraphim 183, and when the ditch got deeper, they began to pour the clay into buckets and lift it up. Everything was done by hand using the simplest techniques and tools in accordance with the principles blessed by the Metropolitan (see subsection 2.3.2). Anyone who has dealt with earth and a shovel knows that the verb pour is not suitable for working with clay. This sticky material can sometimes be difficult to separate from a steel shovel. But on the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka, especially at the beginning, the clay is crumbly. It is dry, because at a shallow depth it is very convenient for builders to be covered with dry sand. The clay is broken into cubes by small cracks, into which it disintegrates. The Lord created such conditions here that the girls could work the clay, but not easily, with a pick and shovel. In the first days of work, instead of a pickaxe, they used the hoe of St. Seraphim, which now lies in a display case in the Trinity Cathedral next to the shrine with his relics. The shaft was poured in layers with compaction using hand-held wooden tampers. The dry clay soil, crumbling into cubes, on the shaft was moderately moistened from garden watering cans to a hard-plastic state. Water was brought in buckets. There were no water pipes or hoses, just as there were none in the 19th century. Under the poplar tree, at the beginning of the Mother of God Canal, a tent was erected, in the likeness of the tent that the sisters had once erected with the blessing of St. Seraphim for their boss, Elena Vasilievna Manturova 184, now St. Elena Diveevskaya. In 1997, on the site of the old rampart of the Virgin Canal, there was a dirt path along which people walked, rode bicycles and motorcycles. Therefore, there was little space for the shaft. The slope was made very steep to save space. They placed and secured wooden shields to hold the soil of the shaft so that it did not fall on the road. The internal slope of the shaft in the first meters was also steep, about 60 degrees, but it held up for more than one year and did not collapse. They did this in order to get along with the village residents, who felt like masters of the territory of the monastery and its monastery, bounded by the Theotokos Kanavka. The search for the primary ditch continued. Volunteer pilgrims dug deep and long incision pits. It was not possible to find the beginning of the ditch in 1997. We went back from the explored section. They laid pit No. 6 closer to the Transfiguration Cathedral, where the old-timers indicated the beginning. But it did not produce results, but only brought great trouble, which was mentioned when talking about the research. The pits in the direction forward, which Abbess Sergius blessed to explore, yielded success. The profile of the ditch was clearly defined in pit No. 7 at a distance of 32 meters from the beginning and in pit No. 3 at a distance of 85 meters from the beginning of the Virgin Canal. In pit No. 3, the axis of the Virgin Canal had a different direction than in the others. He was around the first corner. The scope of work for the sisters of the monastery and their assistants was provided for the current year 1997 and the next year 1998. Based on the results of the surveys and the experience of construction work, it was necessary to make a project over the winter, coordinate it and obtain a warrant for excavation work from the district administration. By winter, the sisters had dug a full profile of about 20 linear meters of a ditch. At first, with the blessing of Mother Superior, the work was supervised by nun Maria (Guley), now nun Marionilla, a native of Western Ukraine. When things started, Mother blessed nun Rimma (Prokopieva), a native of Chuvashia, now nun Raphaila, to supervise the work, freeing nun Maria from work on the Mother of God Kanavka to carry out her main obedience - the general management of all construction work of the monastery, which she carried out in 2020. For nun Raphaila, obedience on the Mother of God Kanavka became a matter of life. She still bears this obedience. Here are her memories 185 about the beginning of work and her appointment to this obedience: “On August 23, 1997, after the early Liturgy, a prayer service was served for the beginning of work on the Mother of God Kanavka. From that day on, the sisters were blessed to dig the Kanavka. The weather was sunny and warm. The sisters went out and dug as much as they could. M. Maria (Guley), being the steward of the monastery, placed her workers on the Kanavka. They brought an iron gurney. They rolled the soil on the shaft, taken out from the ditch. Mother Abbess was leaving somewhere, and when she arrived on September 8, she asked Mother Maria about the current work. It turned out that nothing was being done anywhere, since M. Maria and the workers were on Kanavka. September 8 was the feast of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God and the day of the death of Blessed Maria Ivanovna. On this day we went to her grave in Bolshaya Cherevatovo. After the funeral service, Mother Abbess gets off the bus and announces to me that I will have to be the eldest on Kanavka and lead the work to restore it. I was so confused. I don't understand this. I'm not a builder. And in general I perceived this news as erroneous. And here we were just ready to leave for the Arkhangelsk monastery to harvest potatoes. I went with everyone. I had hope that Mother Abbess would find a more suitable sister to work on the Mother of God Canal. When we were driving across the field, I got so seasick that I began to repent that I had not stayed in Diveyevo. A week later, when we arrived from the field, we had to go to Kanavka. Mother Maria took all the workers to their previous sites. I was very upset that I was left alone and much was unclear. I looked through the Chronicle several times with a description of the Mother of God Canal. I had to slowly understand the essence of the matter. Sergei Nikolaevich came to conduct geological excavations to find the exact location of the Mother of God Canal, dug by the sisters during the life of St. Seraphim. To do this, we need to dig transverse holes, where the outlines of that blessed Ditch are revealed, along which we must dig a ditch and restore the shaft from the excavated earth from the ditch, as Father Seraphim commanded. But how to get a shaft 3 arshins in height when the excavated earth is not enough for half the shaft, since the earth must be compacted when laying it on the shaft. To do this, they put together wooden tampers for us. There is almost no one to dig the Ditch. Mostly the sisters were in the field, collecting potatoes. They gave two sisters to help. But digging and lifting the ground all day was physically impossible. There was even some bewilderment as to why they started this business if there was no one to dig. There were several sods with green grass on the shaft. And we liked it. We decided to decorate. For this purpose, turf was brought from the park. To prevent it from falling off, they pinned the turf with pegs. This beauty somehow inspired us. The pilgrims helped. Whoever could.” The slopes, practically unsecured, stood safely through the winter. In May 1998, work resumed. The beginning of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka ditch was discovered by pit No. 5. We completed the section from the first pit to the fifth in full profile, we also completed the full profile of the ditch up to the 60th meter from the beginning and to a partial depth of up to the 80th meter. This was 10% of the full length of the Virgin Canal. The slopes of the ditch and rampart were lined with turf, which was pinned down with wooden pegs. Subsequently, this technology was rejected because the turf did not hold on steep slopes and did not grow. The turf looked green, strong, and seemed like it should be accepted, but was not accepted. They took him at the bottom of the pond. There, moisture-loving herbs grew on a horizontal surface. On a steep slope where there was not enough water, they were not accepted. There was no running water. It is interesting that they returned to this primary technology for turfing slopes 15 years later, having tried a number of different landscaping technologies. But in 2014, the monastery ordered landscaping from professionals. It was carried out by the Nizhny Novgorod company "Galeon". This is how an eyewitness describes the work on the Bogorodichnaya Canal in the summer of 1998: “The canal is covered with fresh green turf. It is only missing at the top of the shaft. 80 meters have already been restored, and gooseberries have been planted on the shaft, as blessed by St. Seraphim. Several mothers (all maidens, as St. Seraphim commanded) use heavy wooden pushers to tamp down the earth so that it does not crumble when the rains begin. The fragile figures move, seemingly tirelessly. It was along the top of the rampart that the Elder of Sarov blessed to prayerfully walk around the Fourth Lot of the Mother of God. In the meantime, people walk along the trodden path nearby. Most with rosary beads in their hands. They move slowly with a detached look” 186. In the fall of 1998, the weather was unfavorable for the slopes. In October, snow fell in a layer of about 10 cm on soils damp from drizzling rains and melted within a few hours. Snow water was completely absorbed into the clayey soil of the slopes. The clay soil is soaked. After this, the left side of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka ditch slid throughout the entire period of work in 1998. It's an accident. The landslide filled the ditch. Last year's site did not slide. There, the work on compacting the shaft was done more thoroughly, and the settlement of the embankment over the year compacted the soil and played a positive role in increasing the stability of the shaft. This was the second landslide in the history of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka after 1830 and the only one until 2016, when during the reconstruction of the slopes by the Galleon company, a number of landslides occurred from the shaft into the ditch at the end of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka. In the fall of 1998 and the spring of the following 1999, restoration work was carried out on the landslide site. The sisters, taught not only by the words of specialists from MGSU, but also by bitter experience, began to more carefully maintain the horizontality of the layers on the shaft and compact it more tightly. With that simple shaft design, compaction was the only means of ensuring slope stability. In 1999, work began under the windows of the monastery clinic according to the project of A.K. Ermakova in the area from 408 to 420 m, counting from the beginning of the Virgin Canal. At the new site, the clayey soil of the shaft was carefully compacted in horizontal layers. The shaft was made very narrow, only 3.5 m at the base. Old poplars and the presence of a path to the left of the shaft did not allow it to be expanded to the required size. However, it was brought to the designed height of 2.15 m. The trees ended up in the body of the shaft, the path along the shaft was compressed to a width of 1.4 m against the designed width of 2.15 m, and the slopes turned out to be very steep. Thanks to good compaction, the shaft stood for four years without collapse until 2003, when it was reconstructed. In 1999, only 24 m of the length of the Virgin Canal was remade. The main efforts were aimed at reconstructing the landslide section on the first straight line. An unprecedented volume of exploration work was completed: 17 exploration sections with a total length of 104 m and a depth of up to 2.7 m were completed. All construction and exploration work was carried out manually without minor mechanization. When lifting the soil from the ditch, they tried to build some kind of wooden lift with blocks and ropes, but this did not work out right away, and they did not fight. Exploration work was carried out by male pilgrims, sisters worked in the ditch, and pilgrims, less often male pilgrims, worked on the rampart. In the fall, winter and spring of 1998 and 1999, round timber spacers were installed in the ditch. In the summer they were removed so that they would not spoil the view and would not create a semblance of crossings across the moat of the Virgin Canal. There were no landslides. In subsequent years, the spacers were no longer removed for the summer. In 2000, work continued on the first line. Once again it was necessary to clean the ditch and line it with turf, since landslides and erosion, despite the turf covering and planted rows of gooseberries, quickly destroyed the slopes. Something happened because of which the sisters of the first monastery could not move forward, and the Monk Seraphim blessed them to dig not to the full extent. In the 19th century there were no technical means for long-term and reliable fastening of slopes. At the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries they were. The Mother Superior gave her blessing to use the German anti-erosion mesh Enkamat, recommended and brought by MGSU specialists in 1999, and steel reinforcing mesh. The net was laid in the fall of 2000 at the end of the first straight. This was the first, still imperfect experience. In 2000, work continued on the third straight line under the windows of the hospital. To the 24 meters of earthworks last year, another 24 meters were added to this site. For the first time, a steel reinforcing mesh was used, pressing the turf and pulled to the ground with anchor nails up to a meter long. In the same year, work began in the courtyard of the boarding school at the end of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka from the 70th to the 750th meters. These fifty meters will be completed in the next construction season. So, over three years, by the end of 2000, work was carried out on three sites that were most accessible under the conditions of use of the territory by the village of Diveevo at that time. The Virgin Canal was restored where there are no roads and paths, pipelines and cables, private properties and uncooperative tenants. In these areas, the ditch was dug into a full profile for 130 m out of 777 m of its total length and began at another 50 m. 411 m³ of soil was removed from the ditch, 825 m³ of soil was compacted into the shaft, and 280 m² of the ditch slope was covered with steel reinforcing mesh. During these years, from June to October, in dry weather, 1–3 sisters and several pilgrims worked with nun Raphaila, each with a blessing received personally. The abbess carefully blessed only those worthy to work on the Mother of God Canal. Abbess Sergia blessed the clergy from the monastery clergy and visitors to dig the ditch along with the Diveyevo nuns, and she also blessed the visiting monks. The camera recorded Archdeacon Job working with a shovel when he had just arrived for permanent service in Diveevo from the Pochaev Holy Dormition Lavra. The monks of the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Solovetsky Monastery also dug the Mother of God Canal, hegumen German (now the archimandrite and confessor of the monastery), hegumen Zosima and hegumen Eulogius, rector of the Golgotha-Crucifixion skete of the Solovetsky Spaso-Preobrazhensky monastery. In 2000, Mother Rafaila had reliable helpers - pilgrims from Izhevsk. They were organized and brought by Galina Iosifovna Lazutkina, a civil engineer by training, a specialist in quality control of construction work in the practice of engineering, a regent and an active Christian. In 2000, 90 people came with her on buses and were blessed to work on the Mother of God Kanavka. It was they who folded and compacted that high and strong shaft near the clinic. Among them were four priests who were digging a ditch. One of these priests is now Bishop of Glazov and Igrinsky Viktor (Sergeev). During these years, the sisters, busy with their obediences, could have little distraction to work with nun Raphaila. Therefore, the help of visitors was very necessary. The sisters and clergy used bayonet shovels and picks to dig out the clay soil and load it into buckets. The pilgrims took buckets, handed them upstairs, where others took them, brought them, scattered them, moistened them, and compacted them on the shaft. The men used wooden tampers to ram them. They also built fences from boards to hold the soil on the slopes, cut down ridges, now buried under the rampart. In 2001 and 2002, work was concentrated along the perimeter of the secondary school territory, in which the school director Vera Ivanovna Kostyunina was very helpful, firstly, by coordinating tasks for excavation in the school yard and, secondly, by coordinating construction projects, which caused criticism from her district leadership. During these years, on the initiative of the district electricity supply department (there were people in the area who cared about the restoration of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka), a new transformer substation (TS) was built for a high school on Pervomaiskaya Street and the brick tower of the former substation, which stood directly on the axis of the Bogorodichny Kanavka ditch, was demolished. In the fall of 2000, on the initiative of the monastery and under its agreement with the construction department of Sarov, a new fecal sewage line was laid from a public bathhouse, a school, and residential buildings. The line ran along the southern edge of School Street. This opened up the opportunity to remove from the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka the old line of fecal sewerage, which was laid in Soviet times along the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka ditch. The route was dismantled by the pilgrimage team of German Lvovich Sterligov during civil holidays in early May 2001. At the same time, the forces of the same brigade explored the position of the ditch in the area immediately after its first turn opposite the Lithography building (now a monastery secondary school for girls). In response to a request to approve the excavation project for the construction of a ditch and rampart along Shkolnaya Street, the monastery received a long letter from the district administration with comments and demands. Almost insurmountable obstacles were put forward in a short time and requiring a lot of money. In particular, it was required to create not a temporary, but a permanent fence between Shkolnaya Street and Bogorodichnaya Kanavka, to create a temporary fence between the work site and the school territory. The requirements are quite reasonable. The fences were created within a week, and the monastery received a warrant for construction work along the Virgin Canal. A major fencing was ordered for the plant in Vyksa, which, like all enterprises in those years, was out of work. He happily accepted the order to make the fence. About a week later, trucks arrived with finished steel gratings. A fence 220 meters long was installed in a few days. After a complex and protracted approval of the project and the rapid construction of a capital fence, an order was given for excavation work along the entire Shkolnaya Street. Two hundred meters of a ditch were dug here in 2001 and 2002. By the end of the 2002 construction season, the shaft and ditch, with short breaks for passages in three places, were brought to three hundred meters from the beginning of the Virgin Canal. The ditch was made according to the template (Fig. 2.11) exactly with the dimensions specified by the Monk Seraphim. The shaft had a design height of 215 cm, but its width at the bottom and top was insufficient, the slopes were too steep and the path was narrow. To continue the work, it was necessary to resurface the road along Pervomaiskaya Street. This did not work until the central government in the person of S.V. got involved in solving the problem. Kiriyenko – Plenipotentiary Representative of the President V.V. Putin in the Volga Federal District, which happened on July 22, 2003. This important and characteristic event for our time will be discussed in the next section of the dissertation, dedicated to the work of 2003. In 2002, the district administration approved a compromise project of MGSU 187, according to which the road was preserved, and the ditch retreated from it. For more than 10 meters, the ditch, dug according to the plan and blessing of St. Seraphim, remained in the road area and was not recreated. Instead, the project included a straightening section. But the sisters refused to dig it, deviating from the primary ditch made under St. Seraphim. Only in July of the following 2003, just before the end of work on the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka, they managed to dig a ditch as they wanted. Rice. 2.11. Patterns in the moat of the Mother of God Canal 188 The volume of work for the first two years of the new century was: excavation of soil from the ditch 490 m³, embankment of the shaft about 1200 m³. In total, from the end of August 1997 to the end of the 2002 season, 360 linear meters of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka structures were completed out of 777 m. 900 m³ of soil was removed from the ditch, and about 2,000 m³ were compacted into the shaft. It remained to dig out about 1050 m³ of soil from the ditch. To achieve the design dimensions, more than 5,000 m³ of soil had to be laid in the shaft. The work of 1997–2002 took place within the framework of interaction between the monastery and the local administration, which was reserved about the development of the monastery and sparingly allowed excavation work only where it did not interfere with the everyday life of the village. By 2003, such areas were almost exhausted. The creators of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka have already infiltrated schoolyards, which was viewed with hostility by the district administration. Work in the courtyards was possible only thanks to the goodwill of the directors of the two schools located on the territory of the Mill Convent. In this style of relationship with the authorities, it was difficult for the monastery to count on receiving the required scope of work for the upcoming 2003. But already the beginning of 2003 brought a radical change in the relations of power in the matter of recreating the Mother of God Canal, which is discussed below. Construction work in 1997–2002 took place in relatively small volumes and strictly according to the principles laid down by St. Seraphim. Selected Orthodox pilgrims, nuns and clergy worked. Grace was felt everywhere and always during these works, but their result was still such that in 2003 it was necessary to redo something. 2003 brought a change in work style and pace of work. 2.4.2.1. Organization of work The beginning of the anniversary year 2003 for Diveev was marked by the consecration of Bishop George, who was elevated to the Nizhny Novgorod see after many months of widowhood. The Bishop took over the affairs of the diocese in February. There were less than five months left before the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the glorification of St. Seraphim. During this short time, he organized and carried out enormous work on the preparation and celebration of August 1, 2003 as the world holiday of all Orthodox Churches. Among the many things to do in preparation for the holiday, one of the first things for the Bishop was the completion of the reconstruction of the Mother of God Canal. He organized mass participation in the work on it. If in past years from three to 30 monastics and Orthodox pilgrims worked on the Mother of God Kanavka on weekdays, in the spring of 2003 30–50 people worked, in June about 100, in July more than 300 people. Among the workers there were many unchurched people and, obviously, there were unbaptized people, including a few people of other faiths. Administrators and engineers of different views, numbering up to 15 people, took part in the work. The organization of work has also changed significantly, but nothing from the established rules has been canceled. Nun Raphaila still supervised the work, MGSU still carried out design and research, still only sisters, clergy and monks dug the ditch, pilgrims still, with blessing, worked on the shaft and auxiliary work. Hired workers were added to them. Work on the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka was still carried out only by hand. While maintaining the old construction teams, consisting of monastics and pilgrims, new hired teams were created on new principles, and construction professionals were placed at the head of these teams. Brigades of workers were also created who worked for Christ's sake. These teams also had professional management and were certified welders. Strictly in accordance with the principles approved by the Bishop, these teams were entrusted with a shaft, on which in 2003 in June-July they had to carry out only 2.2 times more earthwork than in all previous years. In addition, these teams laid a path along the shaft and installed its fence on a special foundation. In the ditch, they strengthened the slopes, which were created by the sisters with high precision using a stencil, and coated the slopes along the enkamat with fertile soil with grass seeds (Fig. 2.12). Rice. 2.12. The plastering of the ditch slope is carried out by a pilgrim from Ukraine, as when plastering huts 189 In May-June, hired teams were subordinate to the company "SKrest" ("Holy Kanavka Restoration"), which simultaneously carried out work on the Kazan Church. In July, when it became obvious that the company was not able to provide the necessary completion for two volumes, additional teams were created on the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka under the leadership of Alexei Gennadievich Baturin, who, in the last 3 weeks before the holiday, received the bishop’s blessing for the technical supervision of all work on the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka and headed the finishing touches after the holiday until the fall. An experienced organizer, he managed to complete the work in time for the holiday in the shortest possible time. Work was carried out simultaneously along the entire Bogorodichnaya Kanavka. The first and second straight, up to half (160 m from the beginning), were completed by the “SKrest” brigades, recruited from the city of Ardatov. The continuation of the second straight line and the third straight line were made under the leadership of A.G. Baturin people from the Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra with the help of multilingual Volga region youth. The fourth line was reconstructed by pilgrims from Izhevsk under the leadership of G.I. Lizutkina. They worked on the first and second straight lines, doing everything down to paving the path along the shaft and installing the fence. Among them were professionals, in particular certified welders. Izhevsk residents worked for Christ's sake. On the fifth and sixth straight lines in July, teams from Ardatov and Arzamas worked under the guidance of engineers from the regional road construction departments (Fig. 2.13). There were many professional builders here, many young people, including high school students. People came to Diveevo to work as if it were a holiday. They took their sons with them. They worked well. В целом основную массу работающих составляли жители ближних городов, поволжских республик и областей, но были также из Удмуртии, Москвы, из других областей России и Украины. Multilingual speech was heard on the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka. Воссоздание Богородичной Канавки превратилось во всенародную российскую стройку. Workers changed frequently and came for a week, a month, sometimes several days. Все время остро стояла проблема обучения правилам поведения и приемам работы на Богородичной Канавке. Rice. 2.13. Рабочие из Ардатова на последней прямой у церкви Державной иконы Божией Матери, в то время – здания школы-интерната, 14 июля 2003 года (фото диссертанта) 190 We worked manually. When digging a ditch, the division of labor and the methodology worked out in previous years were always preserved: the sisters developed the soil and poured it into buckets. The pilgrims carried them up and poured them onto the rampart. In Figure 2.14 you can see that two sisters are digging a ditch with shovels, the men are lifting buckets of soil up, the women are passing them along the chain to the dump and returning them empty. All the women are wearing headscarves and working with prayer. The sisters worked only in contact with volunteer helpers, Orthodox pilgrims. Neither a bulldozer nor an excavator has ever worked anywhere on the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka. There was a rumor that mechanization was used on the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka, contrary to the principles of St. Seraphim. In fact, this is not so; it was forbidden not only to dig, but even to perform other work using equipment. Rice. 2.14. The sisters of the monastery carry out excavation work in the ditch of the Mother of God Kanavka with the help of pilgrims in June 2003 (photo by the dissertation author) 191 2.4.2.2. Chronicle and composition of works В апреле 2003 года были снесены сараи у входа в богадельню с домовой церковью во имя иконы Божией Матери «Всех Скорбящих Радость», а также гараж у входа на территорию школы-интерната. There were still sheds near the barn and near Malyshev’s house, right next to the ditch. В 2016 году этот дом надстроили; в нем теперь монастырская гостиница. Монастырю каждый сарай приходилось выторговывать и компенсировать. Отселение жильцов из богадельни и храма при ней, снос их сараев и туалетов прошли на Страстной седмице, в конце апреля. Это позволило завершить разведку шурфами пятой прямой, проходящей рядом с богадельней, и в мае, после Пасхи, приступить к проектированию последних отрезков Богородичной Канавки. When, a few years later, for experiments with sowing lawns in one place, for about 10 m, it was cut along the fence along the shaft, then a landslide crack formed under the cut. Ten years after installation, enkamat retained 90% of its original strength, according to a special study 193. The drawing of the fence was made by the Lavra architect Sergei Vasilyevich Demidov. It was forged in the forge of Yuri Suchkov in Arzamas and transported by car to Diveevo. The fence links were lifted onto the shaft and installed manually. Unfortunately, the blacksmiths made a mistake: they welded the onion heads onto the posts from the bottom side. When installing in a hurry, they didn’t check and didn’t understand S.V.’s drawing. Demidov, where is his top and where is his bottom. The entire length of the fence was overturned. The pointed end of the forged lattice to the railing was reminiscent of the Gothic style. Why did the author of the project use a German motif? There was no time to answer this question during installation. They assembled it as the blacksmiths did. The only section was installed differently from the rest. It was “wrongly” turned upside down. The contents of the architect's drawing were clearly visible on it. He depicted a tree in a simplified manner, the trunk of which creates the main vertical rod of the fence. The trunk is crowned with an oval-shaped crown. Railings are laid on the crown of the oval. From the root there are two leaf-shaped narrow strong shoots that rise symmetrically with a slight deviation from the trunk (Fig. 2.15). The pattern shows life. There is no acute, restless, spear-like ending, but there is a calm oval ending, smoothing and reconciling. The lattice pattern is similar to the architectural forms of the Transfiguration Cathedral, with which the buildings of the Virgin Canal form a single architectural ensemble, since they begin from the altar of the cathedral. Rice. 2.15. Forged fence lattice and in the background a lantern lighting line in the style of Russian architecture of the 19th century 194 During renovation work in 2013–2016, the grille was turned upside down. The calm melody of the oval triumphed and merged with the frozen music of the magnificent Transfiguration Cathedral. In 2003, the shaft, created in 1997–2002, had to be reconstructed. Its slopes were too steep. The path had a width of 130 to 160 cm. It had to be widened to 213 cm, simultaneously moving inside the cinnamonium. At the same time, the problem of old poplars planted at the beginning of the twentieth century along the inner edge of the shaft became acute. When the trees were planted, the shaft was about 3.5 m wide at the base. They began to make the new shaft 3 fathoms wide at the base, that is, 6.5 m. Trees sometimes more than a meter thick ended up at the axis of the shaft. If they were left, they would occupy half of the designed path along the shaft. They would interfere with the daily prayer walk along the shaft, when the sisters walk in pairs. The trees completely excluded religious processions along the rampart with relics and large icons carried on stretchers. Meanwhile, the purpose of the shaft is not only to be a material barrier, but also to maintain a path for prayer guards. During the days of enemy attacks and siege of fortresses, our ancestors walked along the city walls with miraculous icons and received gracious help. Therefore, it was necessary to remove the obstacle to the religious procession. Unfortunately, for a long time I had to meet people who, out of habit of protecting green spaces, were dissatisfied with the removal of old poplars consecrated on the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka. These opponents of the modern builders of the Mother of God Canal understand the expression “Walk along the Kanavka with prayer” directly, namely, that you need to walk along the bottom of the ditch, which is a ditch. They are outraged that they are not allowed into the ditch. At the same time, some humble themselves, realizing their unworthiness, while others take away from the Virgin Canal a residue of resentment, which is washed away in subsequent explanations of knowledgeable people. Opponents asked the builders questions. There were several of them and their wording was standard, as if someone had formulated them on the side. These “tricky” questions, as the builders called them, and the answers to them are given at the end of the chapter in subsection 2.4.2.3. With the blessing of Bishop George, the trees were cut down in mid-May 2003 on the first, second, third and fourth straight, and later on the sixth straight. There were no trees left on the fifth straight. They were probably removed during the construction of the boarding school. However, someone's caring hands around 1970 restored a row of poplars along the inner edge of the then defunct shaft. During the period of our work, only a row of stumps from this planting remained. In the spring of 2004, a poplar and two linden trees were cut down at the end of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka (Fig. 2.16). Some trees fell on the shaft and lay on it for some time, creating a dynamic load from the impact and a static load from the weight (about 5 tons) on the shaft. This became an unplanned test of his strength. Val survived. In May, work proceeded without a project and almost without supervision. MGSU specialists came from Moscow many times this month, but there was no constant duty, since in Moscow they were urgently working on a project and taking tests before the spring examination session. Sisters and pilgrims were busy with earthworks in May. At this time, a new style of work was officially adopted. A new customer appeared near the monastery - the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Communal Service, which could pay for work on the Virgin Canal from the state budget. But for a long time there was no contractor. Heads of various companies came who wanted to receive financing. But after inspecting the site, finding out the scope of work, construction timeframes and the condition that the work was carried out manually, they refused. One road organization from Murom even started work, but its style of work, based on mechanization, did not suit the customer - the monastery. Having started work, they immediately stopped. Rice. 2.16. Professor E.V. Shcherbina near a poplar fallen onto a rampart. May 2003 (photo of the dissertation author) 195 In the middle or end of May, the contractor for the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka was determined to be SKrest LLC from Moscow (heads Valery Vyacheslavovich Meshalkin and Alexander Alekseevich Suvorov, foreman Nikolai Aleksandrovich Aksenov). They recruited about a hundred people in Ardatov, gave them shovels and assigned them to excavation work (see Fig. 2.13). There was no project yet. They did what they considered necessary, determining the composition of the work by hearsay. Designers from MGSU, taking time away from Moscow, where the project was being done and the test session was going on, periodically tried to direct the work. Even though the project team immediately had excellent business relations with the contractor, thanks to the goodwill and wisdom of Valery Vyacheslavovich Meshalkin, it was still not possible to completely avoid unnecessary work. Sometimes it was necessary to dismantle what was done incorrectly. So, on the second straight in May the shaft was widened. At the same time, its top was raised to a height of 426 cm above the bottom of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka ditch. At that time, a design decision on the construction of the fence along the shaft had not yet been made. A decision made later required lowering the already poured and compacted shaft by 50 cm. It was embarrassing for the workers. But there were also those who were happy, since it provided work, and both pilgrims and mercenaries craved it in June. In June, it became easier to work with the finished project. "SKrest" formed three teams that simultaneously worked at the first, second and sixth sections. On the fourth, a large team of up to 50 people from Udmurtia worked. On the fifth, direct work was not carried out, since organizational issues regarding the right of passage of the Virgin Canal through private property had not yet been resolved. A significant part of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka ran through a private garden, the owners of which, influential in the district administration, in principle did not accept the return of the monastery to Diveevo. The decision to eliminate the asphalt road from Sadovaya Street to the center of the village past the Transfiguration Cathedral was also delayed. The road crossed the fifth straight line of the Mother of God Kanavka and was incompatible with the holy structure, the construction of which was joined by state regional organizations before the approaching church and state holiday. There was no decision to shift the road from the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka to Pervomaiskaya Street. Work in June was carried out sluggishly. There were not enough managers and workers. Foreman N.A. Aksenov was busy almost all the time at the Kazan Church. I came to Bogorodichnaya Kanavka once or twice a day for an hour or half an hour. Around July 1, in Nizhny Novgorod, not without the participation of the ruling bishop, the relocation of the road along Pervomaiskaya Street was agreed upon. However, now civil organizations did not take up the project. The road was actually rebuilt only on July 22, 2003. Only then did it become possible to construct a ditch and rampart in the range from 308 to 320 m. To break the sabotage of local organizations, the power of the plenipotentiary representative of the President of the Russian Federation Sergei Vladilenovich Kiriyenko was required. In early July, Bishop George held a planning meeting with the work producers. There was less than a month left before the holiday, and there were many deficiencies (Table 2.1). Table 2.1 196 . Scope of work remaining unfulfilled as of July 1, 2003 As of July 1, of the work that should have been completed before August 1, the construction of a bridge crossing for the school had not begun, work on installing a fence on the shaft had not been started, preparations for paving the path had not been made, and, of course, its paving had not begun. Much work remained on filling the shaft and cleaning the ditch in areas mined in previous years. Another 1,000 cubic meters of soil had to be moved and compacted by hand. By July 1, work had not been completed on a single meter of the earthworks of the Virgin Canal. This made a bad impression on all the pilgrims working and visiting Diveevo. At the beginning of July there was a professor from PSTGU A.B. Efimov. He said that there was several months of work left on the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka 197. There were only 25 calendar days ahead, and excluding holidays - only 18. Some of the 18 working days became non-working days due to the weather: heavy and heavy rains soaked the clay. It was impossible to work with her for a long time after that. And during these days, the Lord blessed to do the main thing and prepare the Mother of God Canal for the anniversary so that about 20 thousand people walked along the rampart, along the path paved along its entire length, between forged fences sparkling with new dried paint on the days of the holiday. To make it in time, some people voluntarily worked almost the entire long summer daylight hours. The general working day began at eight o'clock in the morning and ended at eight in the evening. Before work we were fed breakfast, there were two breaks for meals at 12 and 16 o'clock. After work, we were fed dinner: four meals in total. The monastery took over feeding, providing tools, mittens and some special clothing. Welding units were supplied by contractors SKrest and A.G. Baturina. Those who worked were always provided with the simplest equipment: shovels of various sizes and shapes, crowbars, sledgehammers, buckets of various sizes (mostly small for lifting them with soil with a woman’s hand), wheelbarrows, mittens, rammers of various shapes. All sections of the fence were prepared in advance. The monastic supply service promptly replenished stocks of rolled metal, reinforcing steel, and electrodes for welding. When the enkamat began to run out, mother gave her blessing to order a new batch, and it arrived 10 days later from Holland after sending the application by fax (there was no e-mail at that “long ago” time). Clay soil for filling the shaft and sand for the cushion under the path were supplied without interruption. All this cost money, the shortage of which was not noticeable except for the case of a several-day delay in wages for mercenaries, which caused workers to protest. The negotiated daily wage for rural areas was quite high. With unemployment in a wide area, the influx of labor was large. True, some, unfortunately, could not hold down a job for long, not having the habit of working hard and systematically, and also doing without swearing, smoking and alcohol. However, few broke down and left. Work on the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka became, to some extent, a school of disciplined work and obedience for the youth surrounding Diveyevo. This is relevant in connection with the text of the last subsections of the dissertation on the missionary significance of the Virgin Canal. In July 2003, there was plenty of everything on the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka, except time. His lack was constantly felt. This was felt first of all by the leaders - Bishop George and Abbess Sergius, those close to them and responsible for the work: nun Raphaila, V.V. Meshalkin, A.G. Baturin, and secondly, embarrassment and anxiety gripped the sisters and pilgrims who were lovingly building the Mother of God Canal. Therefore, at one time in early July they organized work at night under the light of spotlights, but this did not take root. We worked for a few nights and didn't work at night anymore. Indeed, no one could work both day and night. The work front was very large, and all available workers had a place to work during the day. Almost along the entire length of the Virgin Canal, something urgently needed to be done. They worked in harmony, closely spaced on the work site (Fig. 2.17), but without interfering with each other. Only many sisters of the monastery, having urgent daily obediences, could not work during the day. They worked at dawn, which started early in the summer. This is how nun Ekaterina (Chernysheva) recalls it: “Several sisters began digging at four in the area near the larch tree. Passing pilgrims (then they walked along the Kanavka day and night) stopped and helped with buckets to pull the earth out of the ditch. We read “Theotokos”, as usual, out loud. At 5:30 they went to the early liturgy or midnight office, then a whole day of obedience: work, prayer until late in the evening. And already on this day they did not go to Kanavka, since in the morning while working they read 150 prayers to the Mother of God. The next day everything was repeated. 2-3 days after the start of such work, assistants arrived at dawn - and the work was in full swing. And it was so joyful, and I had enough strength for the whole day until late in the evening. Rice. 2.17. The sisters are digging a ditch at the almshouse in front of the road (the almshouse building is on the left). Around July 20, 2003 198 The highway, which had been in operation for many years from Pervomaiskaya Street to the Transfiguration Church, was closed at the end of July. She was crossing the Kanavka. How difficult it was to dig! I remember that they were digging centimeters into the compacted earth, hard as stone, and the work was going extremely slowly, and the holiday was very close, and therefore it seemed that they had been working on this site for a long time, but in reality they crossed the road in 1-2 days and 1-2 nights. They specially gathered the sisters, they came from the monasteries to work for a few hours - it was a common cause." 199 A photograph has survived illustrating the work on the site with the road from Pervomaiskaya Street to the Transfiguration Cathedral. The ditch is dug in two places, which are separated by an asphalt road (Fig. 2.17). There were also some sorrows. With the massive gathering of workers, not everyone had a good place to sleep for the night; most had nowhere to wash, wash, or dry their work clothes. Of great concern were frequent rains, which sometimes took 2 days in a row out of a meager number of working days. At the same time, work was not carried out on holidays, Sundays, including at the end of the day, when, according to church regulations, the next day was already underway. However, despite the lack of time, on the twentieth of July, namely 22–23, it gradually became clear that the work could be completed by the holiday. The work was completed on Friday 25 July 2003. On Sunday and Monday, July 27 and 28, there was a lull before the holiday, and on August 1, the building received a dense flow of worshipers (Fig. 2.18). Rice. 2.18. The religious procession first entered the path along the shaft of the Virgin Canal on August 1, 2003 200 From the ascent to the rampart the wide path was carefully paved with concrete bricks. The fence was painted and dried. Only the grass did not have time to grow on the slopes. In August-September, we were busy with finishing touches, finishing the enkamat, adding grass, concreting the bottom of the ditch (which was not included in the project), digging additional drainage wells under the leadership of A.G. Baturina. Concluding the story about the work of 2003, let us summarize: from April to July, the sisters dug a 390 m ditch, and pilgrims and teams of hired workers not only erected a shaft to the full design profile on these almost four hundred meters, but also reconstructed the shaft and ditch along the entire length worked out earlier. In total, together with ramps for entering the shaft and descending from it, 800 m of embankment was filled, compacted, covered with enkamat, and equipped with fences and a walking path along the shaft. At the same time, more than 7,200 cubic meters of soil was placed in the shaft. In August, September, October 2003, work on the design of the ditch and drainage was completed. In 2004 and subsequent years, 23 meters of the ditch and rampart remained at the end of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka and 4 meters under the passage from the high school, where a temporary bridge was built. 23 meters at the end of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka and a descent from the shaft were made in 2004. The last 4 meters were dug in 2006, only when all the school buildings were transferred to the monastery, and the school was completely housed in a new building, built according to a special project with funds from the state budget and donors. 2.4.2.3. "Tricky" questions and answers to them No business is complete without ill-wishers. The builders of the Mother of God Canal also had their opponents, who did not like what was being done and believed that it should be done differently. They criticized and asked questions that the builders called “tricky.” These questions were standard, as if they had been compiled somewhere to embarrass the builders. Here are these questions and their answers. 1. Why do we say “We are walking along the Kanavka” if we are walking along the shaft? Shouldn't we walk along the bottom of the ditch? Why are pilgrims not allowed there? The Bogorodichnaya Kanavka is a fortification structure consisting of a moat and a rampart. The ditch and rampart of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka are the fortress wall of the future Diveyevo cinnovia. The fortress guards, in general, walk along the wall, and not along the moat, which can be filled with water. The Monk Seraphim gave his blessing to walk along the rampart, and not along the ditch. Two facts speak about this. Firstly, it is known that N.A. When Motovilov was in Diveyevo, he walked along the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka every day in any weather. In the rain and ice, so as not to fall, he knelt down and, holding onto the ground, walked through the Mother of God Canal. Obviously, he was afraid of falling from the rampart into the ditch. The height was 1.5–2.0 m. Secondly, the discovered and documented traces of a ditch contemporary with St. Seraphim do not give reason to think that anyone walked along the bottom of the ditch, except when it was cleaned. The walls of the ditch come together in many places, like the leaves of a half-opened book meeting the spine. You can barely put one foot on the bottom. In an old photograph (see Fig. 1.16) of the Virgin Canal, the ditch and rampart are clearly visible. A wide path follows the rampart, and the ditch is evenly covered with grass. 2. Why were ancient trees cut down? The trees, according to the sections, were about 90 years old. These are poplars for which this age is the limit. That's why they had large hollows and rotten trunks. The trees were planted at the beginning of the twentieth century. They have no relation to St. Seraphim and his sisters. Therefore, when recreating the Mother of God Canal according to the behest of St. Seraphim, they turned out to be superfluous. Trees providentially appeared at the beginning of the twentieth century and grew by the 1930s to protect the Mother of God Canal during the period of the atheistic government. When the earthen structures were gone, the trees served as landmarks for prayer passage along the Virgin Canal. In particular, four trees were preserved on the territory of the boarding school and one at the end of the Virgin Canal. They marked the right path even when the sisters, led by the abbess, and pilgrims, out of necessity, walked past the pond, larch and Bread building. Why were the trees cut down? Firstly, they had to be cut down, since they could be knocked down by the wind due to old age. Secondly, they found themselves on the path along the Kanavka shaft. The presence of trees precluded the construction of a path in the place commanded by St. Seraphim. There was a dilemma: path or poplars? Bishop Georgy (Danilov) chose the path. The trees were blessed to be removed. Behind the ditch, in the summer of 2004, a poplar tree on Shkolnaya Street was cut down. It was tilted over the house and weighed about 5 tons. At the end of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka to the right of the ditch, two old linden trees were cut down at the same time; at least ¾ of their diameter was occupied by hollows. The trees were unstable. 3. Why is there something on the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka that did not exist and could not exist, namely: a forged fence, a path paved with blocks, metal and other meshes on the sides? New materials were indeed used in the constructions of the Virgin Canal. With the blessing of Abbess Sergius (Konkova), as well as with the blessing of His Grace Georgy (Danilov), it was given new architectural forms. About the materials: they are necessary to ensure the safety of the moat and rampart, which for the first time in 175 years were created according to the dimensions specified by St. Seraphim. Previously, such a ditch was made in the first 100 m and was filled with landslides and ground collapses. Landslides recurred both during the last reconstruction and after it. That's why we resorted to fastening. New materials do not interfere with the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, as was shown at the end of the twentieth century by numerous myrrh-streaming icons printed on paper in various colors and in various ways, photographs, photocopies 201, as well as miracles on the Virgin Canal (see section 3.2 of the dissertation). The grace felt by many on the Mother of God Kanavka, its beauty and preservation to date, 16 years after the completion of the work, also testify to this. The fence is necessary for safe movement along the shaft, especially in slippery weather. The paving stones protect the shaft from destruction when thousands of people walk along it every day. Better is the Mother of God Canal, which now anyone can walk in any weather and at any time of the day, than an earthen path to which entry would be limited due to weather conditions. 4. Why doesn’t the Mother of God Canal pass by the royal larch? The larch was planted 48 m from the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka in 1904 202. Today the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka is where it was in 1904 when the larch was planted. In the 20th century, we walked past larch trees because the right path was blocked by sheds, fences, and vegetable gardens. It is now open thanks to church-state cooperation. In 2004 they worked at the end of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka. Throughout the rest of the construction, no additions or repairs were required. Only a section of the ditch remained undug at 178 meters from the beginning, where there was a passage for schoolchildren, since the village’s secondary school was still partially located inside the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka. The year 2004 is a jubilee year for the Mother of God Canal. This spring marked 175 years since the start of work. It was marked on the area for Lent in 1829, which that year was from February 24 to April 14 according to the Julian calendar. This was done immediately after receiving official notification of the transfer of a plot of land donated by General Vera Andreevna Postnikova to the church community. They began digging when the soil dried out, before the Feast of the Holy Trinity. That year it fell on June 2, which corresponds to June 14 according to the modern civil Gregorian calendar. In 2004, the sisters began finishing work on the Mother of God Kanavka also before the day of the Most Holy Trinity, which was now 2 weeks earlier, falling on May 17 (30). It was one of the days after the Ascension of the Lord. A prayer service before the start of the final work was served on May 13 (26), the day of remembrance of the martyr Glyceria the Virgin. The Lord sanctified this moment by revealing a short summer rain and a double rainbow, which attracted the attention of all participants in the prayer service. From Vertyanov 203 it was clear that the rainbow rose from the end of the Mother of God Kanavka (Fig. 2.19), covered the monastery and all of southern Diveevo. Work on the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka in 2004 was organized and carried out as in previous initial years. The sisters dug the ditch, and the clergy helped them in this. Pilgrims, pilgrims and monastery workers worked on the shaft Fig. 2.19. The rainbow over the monastery begins to the left of the bell tower at the end of the Virgin Canal. On May 26, 2004, during a prayer service for the beginning of the final stage of the reconstruction of the Virgin Canal. Photo by E. V. Serdyuk 204 On July 30, after the Liturgy in the Trinity Cathedral, His Eminence George performed the last requiem service at the graves of blessed Pelageya, Paraskeva and Maria Diveevsky, and then consecrated three marble crosses on the Mother of God Kanavka. The next day, July 31, there was the first Liturgy in the Kazan Church and the glorification of the blessed saints Pelageya, Paraskeva and Maria. In his speech at the festive meal on August 1, 2004, the bishop spoke about the completion of the Mother of God Kanavka, the completion of the Kazan Church and, emphasizing that a lot of construction work had been completed in Diveevo, he called for the construction of churches of the soul. The weather in Diveyevo was excellent for excavation work. Pentecost passed, but the mood remained festive. By mid-June, when 175 years had passed since the start of work on the Virgin Canal, the ditch was completed, and by July 1, everything was completed except the passage for schoolchildren. The construction of the Virgin Canal was generally completed. There is a dot at the end in the form of a marble icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the shape of a cross. The length of the dug ditch along its axis was 775 m. Inside the Virgin Canal there were 2,995 acres of land. The area coincided with high accuracy with the size of the land gift of the landowner Vera Andreevna Postnikova to the Monk Seraphim, which once again confirmed that the modern third Mother of God Canal in the history of Diveevo was dug exactly in the wake of the first. A new life for the holy structure began: vigilant prayer on the rampart of the Virgin Canal, as well as completions and corrections, care for plantings and crops, development of green decoration with plantings of gooseberries and rare ornamental plants. According to the green decoration, the Mother of God Canal, through the care of the Diveyevo sisters with the help of friends, and former builders of the Mother of God Canal, turns into a garden where grapes ripen and slender thujas grow, similar to the cypresses of the Holy Land of Palestine. Fences and plantings of external gardens and vegetable gardens are gradually moving away from the moat of the Virgin Canal, giving way to a security strip designed to ensure the stability of steep soil slopes, where the planting and watering regime is subordinated to the main task: to maintain the moat of the Virgin Canal in the dimensions specified by St. Seraphim. To solve this problem, it is necessary to monitor geological processes in the soils of the rampart and ditch, protect against these processes and carry out repair work as necessary in connection with local damage to certain parts of the structures of the Virgin Canal. Below are pages from the diary of the dissertation candidate and participant in the events upon completion of the main work on the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka. They bring to modern times, after 16 years, the details of the events of the final period of work on the Virgin Canal. In March 2004, I went to Nizhny Novgorod twice to visit Natalia Georgievna Finnikova to help design the final section of the Kanavka. Nizhny Novgorod residents, in contrast to our 2003 project, made a descent from the shaft towards the Trinity Cathedral. We drew a descent towards the beginning of the Virgin Canal. This decision outlines the closing seventh boundary of the konoviya, separating the space of the konoviya from the other territory of the monastery. On the plan of the monk, several strokes are clearly visible, indicating the line of the Theotokos Canal on the closing segment from the last turn in the direction of the beginning. Our decision was easily accepted by the residents of Nizhny Novgorod and they gave it official approval. At the same time, they wrote down that before starting construction, it was necessary to clarify on the ground with pits the end point of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka ditch. Excavation work began on the eve of the Holy Trinity on the same days when 175 years ago the Monk Seraphim “buried” the Holy Canal at its beginning. On the day of remembrance of the martyr Glyceria the Virgin (May 13/26), Wednesday, a prayer service was served for the beginning of the final work. The Lord multiplied the joy of the sisters, who had been waiting for this moment for a long time, with wonderful signs. Everyone saw a rainbow, and more than one, rising in the sky during the prayer service. The day was cool and cloudy. The sun would appear and shine brightly, like spring, and then go behind the clouds. They told me that they saw it play, scattering colorful sparks, “like Easter.” At this time, it was raining throughout European Russia. In Moscow on Wednesday the rain almost did not stop. According to the forecast, Thursday was declared rainy everywhere, including Nizhny Novgorod. In Diveevo, clouds began to gather towards nightfall. It began to rain late in the day, but the Lord did not allow the bad weather to disrupt the start of work. At night a strong wind arose; some called it a hurricane; there was no damage. The wind dispersed the clouds, and Thursday morning was sunny, the day was moderately warm. The working conditions are excellent. The work was progressing. The sisters began to dig a ditch and marked it out for 15–20 m, having dug to a depth of a yard on Thursday and Friday. The monastery workers cut down the usual base for the shaft and laid it from soil previously taken from the Virgin Canal and brought from the Trinity Cathedral. In two days they raised the shaft by a meter with a width of 6.5 and over the same 15 m. They worked well. The sisters worked like girls: easily and joyfully. This was not possible for the worldly people on the shaft. They were tempted and irritated by various problems in our organization, the lack of a clear team and a lack of understanding of the technical problem that they encountered for the first time. At the same time, they were looking for the end point of the Virgin Canal using pits. There were temptations, but the Lord helped to overcome them. The electric cable crossing the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka at its end was not disconnected. This delayed excavation work. There were no pitmen. I had to start it myself. Then Alexander Stepanovich Belykh sent good workers (Ardatovskys), who dug four pits (Nos. 57, 58, 59 and 60) in two days, Thursday and Friday, May 27 and 28. A long-standing filled-up pothole was immediately discovered in them, which followed the direction of the closing section of the Virgin Canal. However, its shape is not typical for the Mother of God Canal, as we have seen it throughout. The width here is about an arshin. One side is vertical, the other is very steep, almost vertical. The depth is about 1.5 arshins. Pit No. 59 showed that the pothole extends beyond the boundaries of the area where the Virgin Canal could have been. After consulting with the sisters who worked on the Mother of God Kanavka for many years, nun Raphaila and novice Tatiana, we agreed that this is not the Mother of God Kanavka, but Pseudokanavka, as we called it. However, many of the newcomers who worked with us wanted immediate success in the search, they wanted to recognize the old pothole found as the Virgin Canal. As soon as they refused, they immediately found another trail, similar in every way to the Virgin Canal. A chernozem-filled excavation with flat sides about 0.5 m deep, which is typical for the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka ditch in the last section, had gentle sides and a rounded bottom in pit No. 58. Everyone agreed that this was a section of the Virgin Canal; joy and relief after the failure with Pseudogroove. However, clearing showed that the found form is closed and does not extend in the direction of the already recreated ditch, which was undoubtedly traversed by the sisters of the modern monastery in the footsteps of the first ditch. When digging, the sisters long ago learned to see the old ditch. In this case, its antiquity is emphasized by the discovery of a copper coin from 1840 on May 15/28. The coin was caught at a depth of about 1 meter under the asphalt path next to a large poplar that stood at the end of the Virgin Canal. So, with the pits there were only temptations: they found two traces similar to the Theotokos Canal, but neither of them was accepted as the Theotokos Canal. It can be assumed that at the end, where work was carried out at the time of the death of the Reverend in the winter of 1831–32, we are faced with an unfinished, unformed Theotokos Canal. With the departure of St. Seraphim, work was stopped. It can be assumed that in winter the sisters used axes to cut through the narrow one-yard-long Bogorodichnaya Canal, that they worked simultaneously in several areas and left us with unconnected fragments, which were immediately filled up. Then the potholes hidden in the last pits can be mistaken for these pieces of the ditch. Digging a ditch on the last day before Trinity showed that the axis I had outlined along holes 26 and 55 was not entirely straight. According to pit 55, it deviates to the right from the main direction of the sixth straight line. According to the sisters' excavation, they did not find such a deviation. Raphael's mother told me about this by phone on the morning of May 18/31. They decided that it was necessary to make exploratory advance holes every meter so as not to deviate from the trace of the primary Virgin Canal. Closed on Monday 18/31 May, Spiritual Day. On Tuesday and Wednesday they want to complete the excavation of the ditch, that is, on the third day of Pentecost to finish the ditch of the Virgin Canal. After Trinity Day, in my presence, last year’s pit No. 55 was repeated, in it the end of the Theotokos Canal was cleared, the appearance of which left no one in doubt that the Theotokos Canal ended here. The difficult search for the end was completed; the end was discovered under a linden tree, which now stands on the axis of the ditch beyond its end 205. In the midst of the search work, a few days before the end of the ditch was discovered, Raphael’s mother calmly told me: “The Virgin Canal ends under the linden tree.” But I wanted real proof. And I, like the Apostle Thomas, received it and have it in pit No. 55, forever and for everyone.” Until 2006, only a small section of the ditch remained undug at 178 meters from the beginning, where there was a passage for schoolchildren. It was impossible to dig it in 2004, since classes were being held at school inside the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka. They also walked in a separate building outside the territory of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka on Shkolnaya Street. In order to connect educational buildings located on different sides of the Virgin Canal, a piece of ditch was not dug and a passage was left in the body of the embankment of the shaft. A temporary bridge with an echoing wooden deck was built over the passage in 2003. The elimination of the passage was postponed until the school moved to a new building and all the buildings inside the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka were transferred to the monastery. This took place at the beginning of 2006. As soon as weather conditions allowed excavation work to begin, the passage was closed. In a letter to the monastery, Mother T., whose husband, a priest, and she herself and her children participated in the excavation work, told how they hastily dug the last meters of the Mother of God Canal in our time. Here are some lines from her letter. “In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. At the beginning of 2006, our family came to Diveevo from Kursk. Almost the entire Holy Kanavka had been landscaped by that time, only a small section of it opposite the Lithography building (now a monastery school - S. Ch.) was not dug. In the spring of 2006, the monastery decided to dig this section. Apparently, few people knew that the Kanavka would be dug that day. My priest husband was invited on the eve of this event by a nun. He, of course, agreed to participate, and the children and I followed him. Early in the morning, as soon as it was dawn, work began. There were several monastery sisters, several men, among them my husband, 2-3 people from the laity, including me and our girls of 4 and 5 years old. The sisters dug the earth, the men lifted and pulled out buckets of earth from the Kanavka, and everyone else carried the holy earth away from the Kanavka and poured it into a pile. They worked quickly, quietly, with a special reverence. And almost every 5-10 minutes more and more workers appeared here. By the end of the work, a whole line of volunteer workers had already lined up from Kanavka to the pile of earth. Everyone wanted to take part in the work of digging the Kanavka, commanded by the Monk Seraphim himself. And we no longer walked with a bucket from Kanavka to a pile, but passed the buckets from hand to hand to each other. An hour and a half later, all the work was completed, the pipe was removed, the walls were straightened. While working among people, I managed to meet pilgrim Irina from Irkutsk. From her I learned about her strong desire to move to Diveevo.” We know from other participants in the work that at that time news was flying around Diveevo that the last meters of the Virgin Canal were being dug. People, abandoning their work, ran to take advantage of the last opportunity to participate in this holy cause. They worked with full dedication, replacing each other, giving up their place in a cramped area of ​​work, so that everyone had a hand in completing the holy work. And yet it’s hard to believe that a “heap” of earth, as Mother T. affectionately calls it, with a volume of about 10 cubic meters, was poured in an hour and a half. Then it was thought that this was forever the last holy land, taken out of the moat of the Mother of God Canal, that the “kuchka” was the last golden fund of the holy canal land, which, according to the behest of St. Seraphim, was dismantled and taken away by pilgrims. But time has shown that the earth in the ditch of the Mother of God Canal is “growing” and this crop must be harvested periodically to maintain the size of the ditch set by St. Seraphim. The fact is that the earth seems to be trying to heal the hole made in it. The walls of the ditch are moving closer together at different rates in different places, up to a maximum of 2 cm per year. Therefore, several years after the completion of the excavation work, the width of the ditch no longer corresponds to the value specified by the Monk Seraphim. It becomes necessary to cut off a layer several centimeters thick from the sides. Thus, the supply of ditch clay is constantly replenished, about which the Monk Seraphim said that it would be for the sisters of the monastery instead of gold: “Visitors will come to us, they will take clay from you for healing, and it will be instead of gold” 206. The modern manifestation of the healing properties of “glinka” is known from the case of healing in the family of the architect V.V. Koval, who is described along with other miracles of the Virgin Canal in section 3.3. The history of the creation of the Mother of God Kanavka by the modern Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery is conveniently divided into three successive parts. 1. At first, in 1991–1997, the monastery was not able to deal with the Mother of God Kanavka. Energy and resources were absorbed in organizing divine services, the life of the sisters, and repairing premises for various purposes. At the end of this period of time, the abbess agreed and blessed the laity to take care of the Mother of God Canal. Anna Filippovna Gorbatova then, with teams of volunteers, marked the turning angles of the Virgin Canal on the ground with blue wooden crosses of the northern type, decorated the passage along the Virgin Canal with modest flowers, and in 1997 began restoring the ditch and rampart. But it turned out that this task was beyond her team’s strength, not physically, but spiritually and intellectually. 2. In August 1997, Abbess Sergia took charge of the construction of the Mother of God Canal for the monastery. The district administration reacted coolly to this, but clearly did not interfere with work on the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka. At the request of the administration, the work was organized according to the nationally accepted scheme: survey - design - project approval - construction. To implement this sequence, the abbess invited the Moscow State University of Civil Engineering, which had specialists in all the necessary construction specialties, for technical guidance, research and design. Since technical issues at this facility were inextricably linked with spiritual ones, a specialist with a spiritual education (PSTGU), now presenting this dissertation, was appointed as the technical director. During 1997–2002, he made projects and coordinated them at the level of the district administration. The resistance of local authorities and individual landowners to the reconstruction of the Mother of God Canal gradually grew. In 6 years, less than half the length of the structure was restored. There remained insurmountable areas occupied by intractable tenants hostile to the Church and strong in the area, and areas occupied by underground utility lines and roads. What was done could not be used for its intended purpose. These were isolated fragments of a ditch and a rampart, technically imperfect. Neither the sisters of the monastery nor the pilgrims walked on them and could not walk on them. This was the case until the beginning of 2003. 3. At the beginning of 2003, the situation with work on the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka changed dramatically. At a high level, it was decided to hold the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the glorification of St. Seraphim as an all-Russian church and state celebration with foreign participation. Not only all the bishops of the Moscow Patriarchate, but also many heads of Orthodox Churches in other countries came to celebrate August 1st. Preparations for this holiday fell on the shoulders of Bishop Georgy (Danilov), who was consecrated in February 2003, and the Plenipotentiary Representative of the President of Russia in the Volga Federal District, S.V. Kiriyenko. From President V.V. Putin, the governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region was given instructions to facilitate preparations for the holiday with finances, specialists, and materials. In March, the Mother of God Kanavka was included in the three main objects of the monastery. Work on it was in full swing. The experience of MGSU in combining technical and spiritual requirements, accumulated over the years 1997–2002, was in demand and made it possible in the shortest possible time to create a comprehensive project for the Mother of God Canal, coordinate it at the regional level, and receive a blessing for it from Patriarch Kirill. Attempts by the Nizhny Novgorod organization to design the Mother of God Canal without a spiritual component in March-April 2003 turned out to be untenable. Nizhny Novgorod residents contacted us 2 months late. The silent resistance of the Diveyevo tenants and users of the liquidated roads continued, but was broken by the supreme state power. Along two roads that prevented the reconstruction of the ditch and rampart, this happened a few days before the holiday. The hard work of the monastery sisters, their volunteer assistants and hired teams led to success. On August 1, 2003, on the day of the 100th anniversary of the glorification of St. Seraphim, a religious procession of many thousands took place for the first time along the Mother of God Canal, followed by at least 10,000 worshipers within 24 hours. In 1997–2004, the Mother of God Canal was made for the first time in history according to the dimensions specified by St. Seraphim. Since then, it has successfully served the Church for 16 years, supported by daily care and periodic repairs, like any man-made structure. The above allows us to call the last stage of work in 2003–2004 the completion of the construction of the Holy Mother of God Canal, and not its reconstruction. The construction of the Holy Mother of God Canal continued intermittently from 1829 to 2004, that is, 175 years. Chapter 3. The spiritual significance of the Mother of God Canal for the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery 3.1. Prayer on the Mother of God Canal Prayer life on the Mother of God Kanavka did not stop for almost two hundred years of its existence, despite periods of visible physical desolation and neglect of the holy place from the authorities. Prayers from here reached the Queen of Heaven both in the middle of the 19th century during the years of persecution of the Seraphim novices, and in the middle of the 20th century during the Bolshevik persecution of the Church as a whole. Currently, the sisters of the monastery walk daily in prayer along the Mother of God Canal. Every time His Holiness Patriarch Kirill visits Diveevo, he walks along the Mother of God Canal. The words of the prayers that St. Seraphim blessed to be read on the Mother of God Canal are unusually simple. He did nothing without blessing from Above 207 . The Mother of God appeared to him many times to communicate the will of God about him, about the Diveyevo sisters he flocked and about his Orthodox followers in future centuries. Therefore, the words of the prayers that he was blessed to read on the Theotokos Kanavka were undoubtedly inspired in him by the Mother of God. The Monk Seraphim gave the blessing to read in repentance and sorrow, in joy and thanksgiving to God, in sickness and in health, the long-standing rule 208, dating back to the first Christian millennium, on the Mother of God Canal. First, read “Virgin Mother of God, rejoice...” ten times. Secondly, after this prayer to the Mother of God, read the prayer “Open the doors of mercy for us, Blessed Mother of God...” and, thirdly, “Our Father.” Then again ten times “Virgin Mother of God, rejoice...”. Repeat this 15 times, slowly walking from beginning to end along the shaft of the Virgin Canal. The sisters of the monastery, nuns, nuns, novices, and candidates for admission to novices walk daily, led by the abbess, along the Mother of God Canal in prayer, reading this rule. To these prayers they add hymn 9 of the Easter Canon: “Shine, shine, New Jerusalem...”, which is sung at the easternmost point of the path along the Mother of God Canal, excluding some days of great repentance. The place where the hymn of the Easter Canon is sung, marked by a marble crucifix, is located at the second turn of the path along the Virgin Canal, 312 m from its beginning. On the plan of St. Seraphim, in this place the Mother of God Kanavka is crossed by the architectural and planning axis, which is a continuation to the east of the longitudinal axis of the Church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God. The axis from the church also continues to the west. On it, to the west of the church, the Holy Gate of the future women's Lavra is drawn on the plan. With this, the axis and the point of its intersection with the Mother of God Canal acquire an unclear, but obviously great spiritual significance. The oldest church in Diveevo, the Kazan Church, according to the prophecy of the saint, should turn and is already turning into a church similar to the Jerusalem Church of the Resurrection of Christ. It has a semi-underground chapel of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, built under St. Seraphim with the care of M.V. Manturova. In the current 21st century, a number of chapels appeared in it, with which the total number of thrones increased to 13 and became equal to the number of Orthodox thrones in the Jerusalem temple. The monastic prayer procession passes along the shaft of the Virgin Canal every day, regardless of the weather. The abbess or one of the older sisters walks ahead with a small icon of the Mother of God “Tenderness” of Seraphim-Diveevskaya, or with a holiday icon. Behind her are nuns in pairs, after nuns are nuns, after nuns are novices and candidates for the monastic family, behind them, dressed in black, are lay people in colorful clothes - pilgrims and workers of the monastery, residents of Diveevo and surrounding villages. If a bishop participates in the prayer procession along the Mother of God Canal, he leads the procession, walking next to the icon of the Mother of God. The clergy serving in the monastery and visiting clergy and clergy, visiting monks and nuns are integrated into the ranks of the nuns of the monastery in different places. Rarely does a religious procession along the Virgin Canal unite only a few dozen; more often hundreds of people take part in it. On holidays it happens that all the worshipers following the nuns do not fit on the 775 m long shaft. In this case, when the head of the prayer procession descends from the shaft and stops at the cross after descending, the last participants only climb the shaft to the beginning of the Theotokos Canal. The prayer procession begins from the porch of the Trinity Cathedral, passes through the Holy Gate under the bell tower, goes around the Kazan Cathedral from the west and south, the refectory church and the Transfiguration Cathedral from the south, passes along the rampart of the Mother of God Kanavka and returns to the porch of the Trinity Cathedral along the northern side of the monastery, passing between the abbot's building and the bell tower and through the Holy Gate. Thus, every day the sisters walk around the main part of the monastery with the cathedrals in prayer. The sisters, engaged in obedience during the common prayer process, walk along the Mother of God Canal individually. During an independent prayer walk along the Theotokos Canal, many read the Theotokos rule, in which, after a dozen prayers “To the Virgin Mary...”, troparia are added in remembrance of the most important events in the earthly life of the Blessed Virgin. Many add their petitions and prayers to the above mentioned prayers, complicating the Theotokos rule to the best of their spiritual strength, moving from the rule of St. Seraphim to the rule of the hieromartyr Bishop Seraphim (Zvezdinsky) 209 . The Hieromartyr Bishop Seraphim (Zvezdinsky) of Dmitrov found refuge in Diveyevo in the middle of the summer of 1926. Then it was a remote, difficult-to-reach place, where from the Arzamas station you had to travel 50 miles on foot or on horseback along a dirt road, which usually took 1-2 days. Mother Abbess Alexandra (Trakovskaya) settled Vladyka inside the Mother of God Kanavka not far from the Tikhvin Church, which stood where the rise to the Annunciation Cathedral is now. The church was two-story. The lower floor is brick, the upper floor is wooden. In the lower semi-basement church in the name of the icon of the Mother of God “Quench My Sorrows,” the bishop celebrated the early Liturgy every day. Having finished the Liturgy, he walked along the Kanavka with prayer. I read not only 150 times “O Virgin Mary, Rejoice...” and “Our Father,” but also troparia. After every 10 Mother of God prayers, he read various prayers addressed to the Mother of God. In the troparia, he successively recalled the most important events of Her earthly life: Her Nativity from the Godfather Joachim and Anna, Entry into the Church, Annunciation and unmarried conception of the Son, journey to the “Highest” to the righteous Elizabeth, Nativity of Christ, Presentation, Flight into Egypt, finding the Child Jesus in the Church among the Jewish teachers, marriage in Canna of Galilee, Passion of the Cross Her, when, according to the word of the holy righteous Simeon, it was realized: “A weapon will pierce your soul” (Luke 2:35), the Resurrection of the Son and God, the presence on the Mount of Olives at the hour of the Ascension, the Descent of the Holy Spirit on Her and the Apostles, the Dormition and, finally, the eternal reign with the Son and God in heaven. On major holidays, crowded ceremonial religious processions are held along the Theotokos Kanavka. This happens on the holidays of Easter, the Nativity of the Mother of God, the Day of the Holy Spirit, the Sunday of All Saints, the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, the Tenderness Icon of Seraphim-Diveyevo, the Transfiguration of the Lord, as well as on the day of the founding of the Mill Monastery on December 9 (22) with the singing of the Paraklis. A procession of the cross takes place along the Theotokos Kanavka with the rite of burial of the Mother of God, performed in Diveevo in the evening on the second day of the celebration of the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin Mary on August 16 (29). At Easter, the procession of the cross takes place after the evening service on the first day, every day after the liturgy during the week, and on every Sunday before the service. The religious procession with the rite of burial of the Mother of God along the Theotokos Kanavka is carried out according to a special charter. It takes place in the evening. In front, the priests carry the shroud of the Mother of God. They walk on a carpet of flowers, which pilgrims and nuns prepare before the all-night vigil in the afternoon. So, the Mother of God Canal for the sisters of the monastery and pilgrims is a place of purely individual prayer while passing along it in the general prayer course. In this move, each and everyone recites their own series of rosary prayers. The love of the sisters of the monastery for the Mother of God Canal is great; they walk along it both day and night. Some, after the festive night service and communion, or after the nightly reading of the incessant Psalter, do not go to the cell to rest, but go along the Theotokos Canal. 3.2. Fruits of prayer on the Mother of God Canal The fruits of prayer on the Virgin Canal are numerous and varied, but most remain unknown to the public. A systematic description of the miracles performed after the reconstruction of the Virgin Canal was first performed in the dissertation author's monograph 210. Below are some wonderful events. The first miraculous event associated with the Mother of God Kanavka was the appearance of the Most Holy Theotokos with the apostles Peter and John to the Monk Seraphim in the Sarov Forest, when the Mother of God blessed the Monk Seraphim not to leave the Diveyevo sisters, to create the Mill Monastery and fence it with the Kanavka. This happened on November 25 (December 8), 1825. Another miraculous event was the exact depiction of the Mother of God Canal by St. Seraphim on a piece of paper under Mikhail Vasilyevich Manturov, described in section 1.2.3. The third was the mysterious appearance and disappearance of St. Seraphim in the spring of 1829, when he personally laid the foundation for the construction of the ditch of the Theotokos Kanavka, appearing in Diveevo at night (see section 1.2.4, p. 59). It is unknown about the miraculous events on the Mother of God Kanavka in the second period of its history. Hieromartyr Seraphim (Chichagov) in the Chronicle describes many cases of miracles that happened in other places and at other times. He would undoubtedly have received this kind of information and conveyed it to us, in accordance with the style of his work, if such events had taken place on Kanavka. He communicated with contemporaries of the second historical period. Therefore, we conclude that during the period when the imperfect, shallow first Mother of God Canal was filled up, it did not manifest miraculous events. In the third historical period, three supernatural phenomena are noted at the end of the period, during Soviet times. In the year of the dispersal of the monastery on February 2, 1927, the Hieromartyr Seraphim (Zvezdinsky) from his cell saw the procession of the Mother of God along the path of the Mother of God Kanavka 211. Vladyka’s cell attendant Anna testifies that after the evening service, Vladyka, while in his cell, suddenly rushed to the window with a prayer, then ran to another with the exclamation: “The Most Pure Mother of God is walking along the Kanavka! I can’t behold Her wonderful beauty!” Bishop Seraphim did not hide the appearance of the Mother of God to him from those around him. We have another testimony about the grace-filled power of the Mother of God Canal in 1926 from Petrograd University professor I.M. Andreevsky. He wrote: “The Lord took from me, through my prayer on the Kanavka, all earthly blessings, but preserved forever the memory of that moment when, by the boundless mercy of the Monk Seraphim, I, a sinner, was completely undeservedly privileged to experience within myself the quiet, joyful, good and fragrant influence of the Holy Spirit of the Lord. In Diveyevo, bypassing the Kanavka, I was born spiritually” 212. We are unaware of miraculous phenomena in the fourth historical period, when the Mother of God Kanavka was desecrated by the Soviet regime. The nameless witness believes that her desecration by the predecessors and servants of the Antichrist became possible because she was not made in full profile, 213 that is, the will of St. Seraphim was not fulfilled. His point of view can be supported by the fact that after the performance of the Theotokos Kanavka in full profile, the miraculous phenomena of grace on the Theotokos Kanavka became so numerous that it can be called the miraculous Kanavka. This is a new development in Russian church vocabulary. There are miraculous icons, miraculous springs, miraculous relics of saints. Now the miraculous Theotokos Kanavka appeared in Diveevo. In the fifth historical period, during the construction of the Mother of God Kanavka, there is a known case of healing from the breast of the wife of the Nizhny Novgorod architect V.K., who was nursing twins and was healed with a handful of earth from the Mother of God Kanavka. Of the events that happened after the reconstruction of the Mother of God Kanavka, we will first focus on the most famous case of the healing of a disabled person from Krasnoyarsk. This remarkable event happened in the summer of 2005 (08/10/2005) 214, a year after the completion of the main work on the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka. It is depicted (Fig. 3.8) by icon painters Maxim and Irina Mironov on the wall in the Church of the Most Holy Theotokos in the name of the “Healer” icon at the “Nadezhda” monastery hospital, located on the territory of the Mill Convent, that is, on the territory fenced by the Mother of God Canal. The security officer on duty who escorted the disabled person to the shaft, Nikolai Nikolaevich Abramov, compiled a certificate of the miraculous event: “A disabled person on two crutches was allowed into the Virgin Canal. I needed to show him the beginning of the Virgin Canal. He moved very slowly. His bad leg was in limbo. To my surprise, the disabled person I had missed soon appeared on the descent from the shaft of the Virgin Canal. He was already walking on two legs, holding crutches under his arms. He approached the cross with the image of the Mother of God, which is at the end of the Virgin Canal, and, kissing it, wiped away his tears. I asked him how he prayed. He replied that he did not know how to pray, and when he entered the Mother of God Canal, he began to repeat: “Heavenly Father, help! Jesus Christ, heal!” His foot fell on its own onto the Mother of God Canal. So he walked around the entire Mother of God Canal with his feet, but with crutches.” After a short time, another pilgrim from Krasnoyarsk appeared in Diveyevo. He, as a resident of the same city, was told about the case of Sergius’ healing. He answered: “I am the same doctor who treated Sergius and told him that he would never walk.” Thus, the Lord, having completed the work of healing, informed his earthly collaborator about the final result of the treatment 215. Merab Mikhailovich Darchia, a participant in the work on the Virgin Kanavka, who worked for many years to care for the Virgin Kanavka, spoke about a wonderful visit to the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka. In the summer of 2012, from his workplace, he saw St. Seraphim on the rampart and even talked with him 216. Once they brought a demon-possessed woman to Diveevo to add to the relics of St. Seraphim, but several men were unable to do this. The demon showed such physical strength and resourcefulness in her that simple human strength was not enough to bring her to the shrine with the relics of St. Seraphim. Believing relatives took her in a crowd to the Mother of God Kanavka and dragged her along the rampart, despite her fierce resistance. At the end of the Holy Mother of God Canal, the demon left her 217. Many people know that the Mother of God visits Her Canal these days. The evidence of the appearance of the Queen of Heaven to two girls from the North Caucasus is in the archives of the Diveyevo Monastery and published in the dissertation author's monograph 218. Another testimony from Kazan reports the birth of a long-awaited child through prayers on the Mother of God Kanavka 219. Previously childless spouses write about similar help in healing from infertility in a letter from Chita, who, after praying on the Mother of God Kanavka, already had three children by the time the letter was written 220. They write from Donetsk and from the town of Mytishchi near Moscow about the fulfillment of the requested marriage 221 and about healing from leukemia 222. So, there is numerous evidence of the miraculous power of prayer on the Mother of God Canal. They point to the fulfillment of the prophecy of St. Seraphim about the healing properties of the earth and the gifts of grace to those who sincerely pray to God and the Mother of God on the Mother of God Canal. Of the recorded miracles, three took place in the first historical period during the life of St. Seraphim the Wonderworker, according to information from the Hieromartyr Seraphim (Chichagov) 223. In the second historical period such events were not noted. It is unlikely that this is due to a lack of information, since the Hieromartyr Seraphim (Chichagov) describes many miracles of the Monk Seraphim, dating back to the first and second historical periods highlighted in the dissertation. But among them there are no miraculous events associated with the Mother of God Canal during the period of its first desecration (1833–1862). In the third period (1862–1927), when the Mother of God Canal was restored in an imperfect profile and with errors in the placement of its beginning and end, the Hieromartyr Seraphim (Chichagov) also did not note miraculous events. His chronicle ends in 1895. But at the end of the period, before the dispersal of the monastery by Soviet authorities, three miraculous events took place. There are no known miraculous events in the fourth historical period (1927–1992) during the second desecration of the Mother of God Canal. Here, too, the absence of miracles should not be attributed to the incompleteness of the information, since it was collected from Orthodox witnesses of this period, such as schema-nun Margarita (Lakhtina) and nun Seraphim (Bulgakova), nuns of the pre-revolutionary monastery who lived until the 1990s, such as monk Seraphim (Artsibushev), a native of Diveevo (1919), who wrote a lot about his stories. They knew everything about the Mother of God Canal and visited it whenever possible. In the fifth historical period (1992–2018), after the reconstruction of the monastery and the reconstruction of the Mother of God Kanavka in accordance with the covenant of St. Seraphim, 12 miraculous cases were recorded 224, which occurred during the period of reconstruction work and in the period after the reconstruction. One can note a sharp change in the statistics under consideration and conclude that the Mother of God Canal, before its fulfillment in the proportions bequeathed by the Monk Seraphim, was stingy in miraculous phenomena. On the contrary, she revealed her miraculous power after the completion of construction in accordance with the covenant of the Monk Seraphim, which he received from the Mother of God. This testifies to the correctness of the decisions, firstly, about the restoration of the Theotokos Canal in the dimensions specified by the Monk Seraphim, and not in the form in which it was created and recreated in the 19th century, secondly, about the accuracy of the results of the study of the historical contour of the Theotokos Canal and, finally, thirdly, about the admissibility of using modern materials when recreating monuments of Orthodox culture. The creation of additional elements of the structure that meet the requirements of the 21st century also does not detract from the sanctity of the recreated structure. It is interesting that the miraculous events of recent years have occurred over a short period of about 15 years. 3.3. On the broad significance of the Mother of God Canal According to Bishop of Severomorsk Mitrofan Badanin (now Metropolitan of Murmansk and Monchegorsk), “Diveevo is an example of how Russia can be revived.” The Diveyevo Monastery and its Mother of God Kanavka were recreated, unlike many sites of the Orthodox Church, in conditions of freedom from Soviet laws on the protection of monuments 225. The Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow has also been recreated. Now the monastery's churches and its Mother of God Kanavka are better than they were before the 1917 revolution. Also better than the first church is the modern Cathedral of Christ the Savior, since the thrones of the Old Alekseevsky Monastery have been recreated in it, many premises for Councils and educational work have been created in it, and finally, it is technically more advanced and can withstand the failures that occur in the center of Moscow. Also, the Mother of God Canal was recreated not in those imperfect forms that it had at the beginning of the last century and always earlier, but in the forms bequeathed by the Queen of Heaven through the Monk Seraphim. And according to the laws on the protection of monuments, it would be necessary to restore what was. During its creation, the layout plan for the area indicated by St. Seraphim was preserved, and the shape of the ditch and rampart was made in the same way as it was originally made only a few tens of meters in the area of ​​100 meters from the beginning of the ditch of the Virgin Canal. The sisters of the Mill Convent on this site at the first turn showed their modern heirs how best to do it, but they themselves could not do it. Now they have made it according to this model, revealed by excavations. Not only the Mother of God Kanavka, but also the cathedrals of Diveyevo have been recreated in better terms than they were before the revolution. Everything old was perfectly preserved in them, but new things also appeared, which are better than before. First of all, it is necessary to note the magnificent painting of the Transfiguration Cathedral, which had not previously been painted and, as a monument to the era of the 1917 revolution, according to civil law, should have remained without painting. The Trinity Cathedral was also not painted after construction for about 50 years and thus entered the revolutionary era. Already in the current century, Metropolitan Georgy (Danilov) gave his blessing to paint it. Among the nuns there were doubters. Over the decades of the modern monastery, they were accustomed to the whitewashed interior of the cathedral. According to the law on the protection of monuments, it would be unacceptable to paint the Trinity Cathedral, but it is painted. Now everyone loves its new interior with paintings. A particularly illustrative case is the history of the iconostasis of the Trinity Cathedral with arks for the Tenderness icon and the image of St. Seraphim. They were recreated from an old photograph exactly as they were in the pre-revolutionary monastery. This should be done according to the law, and not otherwise. The initiator and sponsor of this recreation of the main part of the cathedral’s interior was a native of Diveevo, artist and memoirist, repeatedly mentioned above, Alexey Petrovich Artsibushev (monk Seraphim). He raised funds for the restoration of the iconostasis in Switzerland and France, where he gave lectures about Diveyevo. An artist, he selected the artists himself. When the iconostasis was completed and the scaffolding was removed, then the sisters, the abbess, and Metropolitan Nikolai (Kutepov) were horrified by the indecency of what had been done. And that’s exactly what happened. The icons painted by artists at the end of the 20th century from photographs of 19th-century examples were unsuitable for praying in front of. The first time they were written before the discovery of ancient samples, which happened in the revolutionary years 1905–1917, and before the creation of V.M. Vasnetsov's new style of icon painting in the Vladimir Cathedral in Kyiv. In the icons in their secondary execution there was not only realism, but naturalism. Vladyka gave his blessing to tear down the iconostasis and make a completely new one. This is a fundamentally important decision. Not everything old has the right to enter the new life. In light of the above, Diveevo is an example of the reconstruction of Russia, in which everything worthy of eternal life from the old monastery is collected. The collected items are combined with the new, modern, necessary and familiar for life in the 21st century. The dissertation author has the right to insert these thoughts about the combination of old and new, since they are similar to his thoughts published in a number of articles 226, 227, 228, 229. The articles are aimed at developing the theory of cultural ecology, proposed as a scientific direction by academician D.S. Likhachev. The main idea of ​​the theory is that a city, town, building - any object inhabited by people, or a place of their occupation, like a natural ecological object (ecosystem), is a combination of a material part and the population that uses it. Together, the material part and the population make up a system that we called an eco-cultural system. The population and material part correspond to each other. The population, according to the priest Pavel Florensky 230, carries within itself the “soul” of 231 objects. The dissertation candidate had the opportunity to discuss this theory in detail and repeatedly with its founder D.S. Likhachev in 1984–1986 during the period of joint expert work on the liquidation of the project for the transfer of northern rivers to the Caspian Sea. In the dissertation author’s article in the journal “World of God,” an analogy was drawn between the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and the Virgin Canal, which were recreated as eco-cultural systems. They recreate not only the material part, but also life corresponding to the material part. For the sake of this life, changes have been made to the material part in comparison with the primary object, since modern life is different from life 100 years ago. Adaptation and change of the material part contradicts the idea of ​​restoration adopted in the Venice Charter 232, but does not contradict the international practice of recreating historical buildings and structures. In Germany, after the Second World War, the architectural ensembles of ancient cities, destroyed by the barbaric total bombing of Anglo-American aviation, were restored. After the war, the facades and architectural appearance of the squares and streets were restored. At the same time, behind the facades, living quarters have been created, equipped with modern life support facilities, in which ordinary modern city life flows. In Dresden, after the fall of communist power in the GDR, the Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin Mary (==Frauenkirche) was restored from ruins with donations from parishioners and antiquity lovers who intended to become and became visitors to the cathedral. The cathedral was restored to serve at times as a place of prayer and at times as a concert hall in accordance with the needs of European society. In Diveevo, the cathedrals and the Mother of God Kanavka have been restored exclusively for prayer in accordance with the needs of our society. 3.4. About the numbers on the Mother of God Canal The holiness of the Mother of God Canal is also indicated by its blessed main dimensions. The numbers that express the dimension of the Theotokos Canal belong to those especially sanctified by the Holy Scriptures. These are the numbers "1", "3" and "7". “One” and “three” are sanctified by the dogma of the Holy Trinity. Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeev) 233 writes: “Christians believe in God the Trinity - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Trinity is not three gods, but one God in three Hypostases, that is, in three independent personal (personal) existences. This is the only case where 1 3 and 3 1. What would be absurd for mathematics and logic is the cornerstone of faith.” Historically, in the beginning, people believed in one God. Later His Trinity was revealed to them. Despite the appearance of God to Abraham in three Persons and the prophecies about the appearance of the Savior, the entire Old Testament is permeated with faith in one God, but in the New Testament the Trinity of the One God is indisputable. The attempts of heretics to destroy the Church’s faith in the Triune God were rejected by the Fathers of the First and Second Ecumenical Councils. For our subsequent reasoning, the noted sequence of revelation of the mystery of the Holy Trinity for believers is important, namely, that at the beginning 1, later 3. In likeness to the Most Holy Trinity, which has three equally glorious hypostases, the Cross of the Lord is composed of three trees. These are not three parts of one tree, but three different types of trees, having different colors and other differences, but one essence. The similarity of the Cross to the Most Holy Trinity is glorified in the song of the eighth canon to the Honest and Life-Giving Cross: “...The cross is three-part, an honorable tree: the Trinity bears a trinitarian image.” The Mother of God Kanavka also turned out to be worthy of bearing the trinitarian image of God in the One Trinity. The number 7 is sanctified many times in Scripture. It is consecrated as consisting of two numbers 6+1=7. First, there are the six days of creation and the seventh day, on which God “rested from His work” (Gen. 2:3). Secondly, God gave the commandment through the prophet Moses: “Six days you shall work and do all your work, and the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God” (Ex. 20:9–10). The number 7 was singled out by God from the series with the fall of the walls of Jericho: “The walls of Jericho fell down after a seven-day march” (Heb. 18:30). Honoring the holiness of the number 7, the Church established seven sacraments, limited the number of Ecumenical Councils to seven, and established a seven-week cycle of services. In the history of the Virgin Canal, the numbers 1, 3 and 7 are used many times. The Most Holy Virgin blessed the mill monastery to begin with seven peasant girls, whom she named to St. Seraphim by name. The noblewoman Elena Vasilievna Manturova was appointed as their boss. She did not join the seven, lived separately and soon accepted her voluntary death, in obedience to the Monk Seraphim. Now St. Helena is glorified among the saints. I would venture to compare her with the eighth day of existence, singling her out from among the seven nuns of the Mill Monastery. The Venerable Helen is different, just as the eighth day is different from the previous seven. The land for the Mill Convent was donated by the servant of God Vera Andreevna, initially in the amount of 1 dessiatine, and then increased the donation to three dessiatines. So her gift turned from 1 into 3. These three are a single and indivisible section of the Mill Monastery, fenced by the Mother of God Canal. From St. Seraphim, three cross-sectional dimensions of the Theotokos Canal have reached us: the width of the ditch, the depth of the ditch, and the height of the rampart. These are not three sizes, but one size, since they are equal to each other and amount to 3 arshins. But three arshins are equal to one fathom. Therefore, here three turns out to be one again. The site of the Mill Monastery was outlined in 1829 by a heptagon, which, according to the law of geometry, has seven sides. According to six of them, in 1829–1832, the sisters of the Mill Convent dug a ditch for the Mother of God Canal during the life of St. Seraphim, who supervised the work. When they completed the sixth line, the Monk Seraphim rested from his labors, departing to the Lord. The sisters didn’t dig on the seventh side after him. When the work was completed in 1997–2004, based on this study, only 6 sides of the heptagon were also excavated. In this you can see the fulfillment of the covenant: “Six days you shall work..., and the seventh day... unto the Lord your God” (Ex. 20:9-10). It should be noted that on the seventh side there should be a beautiful, according to St. Seraphim, church, which is justified in section 1.4.2 of the dissertation. While leaving space for the church, they did not dig a ditch here. The length of the axis of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka ditch, according to the results of research from 1997–2004 and in the project on a 1:500 scale plan, is 777 meters. In execution, it turned out to be 775 m, apparently due to the arc-shaped roundings at the turns in the corners of the heptagon. This error, as they say in technical sciences, cannot be considered significant. It is equal to 0.25% of the given value and is a measure of the disobedience of the executing sisters to the people who drew up the project, and to the Bishop of Nizhny Novgorod and Arzamas, who sealed it with his seal, blessing it. Or is it an assessment of the professionalism of the diggers, if there was no disobedience and desire to round corners in their souls. Numerous testimonies of the miraculous power of prayer on the Virgin Canal indicate the holiness of the place. The prophecies of St. Seraphim about gifts of grace to those who sincerely pray to God and the Mother of God on the Theotokos Kanavka are being fulfilled. They do not receive gifts for talking a lot, but only out of sincere faith. We see this from the case of Sergius from Krasnoyarsk, who did not know prayers, but received healing through ardent faith in the omnipotence of God, combined with hope for help. The sisters of the monastery, the creators and guardians of the Mother of God Canal, rejoice with those healed. The monastery is thriving spiritually thanks to the flow of believers attracted to Diveevo. The glory of the Mother of God Kanavka is growing and thus the flow of pilgrims to the monastery is increasing. It is growing as a center of Orthodoxy. The missionary significance of the Mother of God Canal is also great. It leads those of little faith and even non-believers to faith. Holy Groove is a school of prayer for those who have recently received the gift of faith. The holiness of the Theotokos Canal is expressed in the fact that its main dimensions are given by the numbers 1, 3 and 7, consecrated many times in the Holy Scriptures. The Mother of God Canal limits 3 dessiatines of land, which were first received as a gift in the amount of one dessiatine. Later the gift turned into 3 tithes. From the Monk Seraphim, three sizes of the Mother of God Canal came down: the height of the shaft, the depth and width of the ditch. All three sizes are equal to each other, so they can be called one size. It is equal to 3 arshins, or one fathom. Therefore, here again 3 is 1. Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeev) writes: “The Trinity is not three gods, but one God in three Hypostases, that is, in three independent personal (personal) existences. This is the only case where 1 3 and 3 1. What would be absurd for mathematics and logic is the cornerstone of faith.” This dogma was realized in the construction of the Mother of God Canal. The Holy Canal has been restored as an eco-cultural system, as a living object of the living Church. Everything in it is adapted for prayer in any weather, for healthy and disabled people, for monastics and parents with children. It was restored in the form bequeathed by the Monk Seraphim, and not in the form in which it existed in the past two centuries, since that form was imperfect and did not correspond to the behest of the Monk Seraphim. The main results of the dissertation are as follows: 1. In the history of the Mother of God Canal there are 5 historical periods, of which three are creative and two are destructive. Creative and destructive periods alternate. The work of the last period of 1997–2004 marks the completion of the construction of the Mother of God Canal, when for the first time the blessing of St. Seraphim was fully carried out. After 2004, a new, sixth, modern stage in the life of the Virgin Canal began. The history of the Church is the history of faith. Our research shows that the faith of the Diveyevo sisters and the society around them changed over historical periods. In the first period, it was a selfless faith created by the Monk Seraphim, which pushed the sisters to heroic work during his lifetime. In the second period, the faith of the sisters was manifested in resistance to the actions of the destroyers, who, however, were Orthodox Christians and did not stoop to gross mockery of the faith of the Seraphim sisters (we note something else in the fourth, Soviet period). In the third period, under conditions of earthly prosperity and under the protection of the tsarist power, the faith of the sisters cooled and acquired features of man-pleasing, expressed in the distortion of the plan of the Theotokos Canal for the sake of transport conveniences, the planned displacement of the cathedral of the Tenderness icon of Seraphim-Diveyevo for the sake of preserving the small winter church that occupied the place of the cathedral, in the refusal to carry out the profile of the Theotokos Canal in the dimensions of St. Seraphim. In the fourth period, in the absence of a monastery, the enemies of the Mother of God Kanavka showed fierce atheistic unbelief, which was expressed not only in the physical destruction of the Mother of God Kanavka, but also in unprecedented mockery of it, persecution of believers and desecration of the place where it passed. The fifth period, which coincided with the first decade after the second baptism of Rus', is distinguished by the manifestation of the strong faith of both the nuns and the pilgrims of Diveyevo, when people did hard work free of charge and accurately, when they attached importance to every line preserved in the earth from the time of St. Seraphim, when the sisters for two years refused to carry out the project in the part that did not correspond to the primary plan of the Theotokos Canal, and were supported in the fight against the designers by the Metropolitan of Nizhny Novgorod and Arzamassky George. In the modern prayer period of the life of the Mother of God Kanavka, thanks to many miraculous events on it, faith in the holiness of the Mother of God Kanavka has become established not only in Diveevo, but throughout Russia, and is penetrating abroad. The church building studied in the dissertation can rightfully be called the Holy Kanavka. Miracles happen on it, as always and everywhere, only by faith. Consequently, today the faith of those praying is great and pure. This is the history of faith in five historical and sixth modern periods. 2. The Mother of God Canal in the first historical period of its existence, with the blessing of St. Seraphim, was not completed with construction in the form indicated by the Mother of God, due to a lack of time, the small number of girls' community that carried out the work, and also because of the insurmountable difficulties at that time in the fight against natural processes that eliminated the ditch where it was dug to its full depth; in the third historical period at the end of the 19th century, judging by our exploratory excavations, the task was set only to restore (restore) the primary structure without attempting to carry out work in accordance with the dimensions specified by the Virgin Mary; This option for recreating the Mother of God Canal in the 19th century was driven by still insurmountable technical difficulties; The Mother of God Kanavka received the appearance given by the Blessed Virgin through the Venerable Seraphim only in its fifth historical period, 1997–2004. 3. The planned position of the axis of the Bogorodichnaya Kanavka ditch and its profiles in the first two periods of construction were established based on literary, archival and exploration data; in particular, in the excavations of 1997–1998, written information about the dimensions of the ditch given by the Monk Seraphim was confirmed, and the missing data on the width of the ditch along the bottom was additionally obtained; in 1998, a place was discovered where the Monk Seraphim personally began excavation work on the Mother of God Kanavka, and in 2004 a place was discovered where the Mill-Feeder, built with his blessing and with his participation, stood and the remains of the mill; it was established that the plan and profile of the Mother of God Canal of the third period (1862–1927) differed from the primary ones created under St. Seraphim; The Mother of God Canal was not dug in a straight line, closing the heptagon in the first period during the life of St. Seraphim; it was not dug here in the second period during the life of the seraphim novices; St. Seraphim's drawing also shows the absence of a ditch and rampart along the closing line - all this gave grounds in the fifth period to abandon the creation of the Mother of God Canal on the seventh closing segment of the border of the Mill Monastery and to confirm the historical fact of the existence of the blessing of St. Seraphim for the construction of a cathedral for the icon of the Mother of God "Tenderness" of Seraphim-Diveyevo instead of the ditch and rampart on the mentioned seventh straight line segment. 4. The recreated Theotokos Kanavka in its modern form is a spiritually significant, grace-filled, miraculous religious object of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveyevo Monastery, as evidenced by the attention paid to it by the nuns of the monastery, who daily read the statutory prayer on the Theotokos Kanavka, perform religious processions along it on holidays and a particularly solemn prayer procession with the rite of burial of the Most Holy Theotokos; the grace of the Theotokos Canal is clearly indicated by the miracles now performed through prayers on it; Its significance is evidenced by His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, who walks along the Holy Kanavka on every visit to Diveevo; First hierarchs of other Orthodox Churches also walk along it in prayer; Metropolitan Laurus prayed on it before the epoch-making reunification of the Churches; The holiness of the Mother of God Canal is emphasized by the numerical value of its dimensions, in which 1 corresponds to 3, three turns out to be equal to one, in similarity to the dogma of the Holy Trinity, and the number 7 is also widely used. The above allows us to consolidate the popular name “Holy Mother of God Kanavka” and recommend it for further use in literature. The affirmation of the fact of the existence, along with miraculous holy icons, holy springs and similar shrines, of a holy miraculous object of a new type is the main theological theoretical result of the study. 5. The main practical result of the research is the reconstruction of the exact image of the Holy Mother of God Kanavka, given by St. Seraphim to the sisters of the Mill Convent. The groove recreated in this image became the Holy Mother of God Canal. It was not called that before. The features of her exact image have been partially preserved to this day in excerpts from the records of St. Seraphim’s contemporaries quoted by the Hieromartyr Seraphim (Chichagov), partially in the memoirs of the nun Seraphima (Bulgakova), partially in the traces of the first ditch underground. The dissertation collected, analyzed and combined information from these sources, and recreated the exact image and rules for the construction of the Virgin Canal. In accordance with these rules, it was implemented in 1997–2004. The dissertation shows that technical decisions on the Virgin Canal could not be made by engineers without a spiritual basis. Therefore, the Nizhny NovgorodNIIgrazhdanproekt Institute, with the most severe time limits for work during March-April 2003, could not begin to design the Mother of God Canal and in the last days of April, on Easter Week, turned to MGSU with a proposal to urgently design a church building, taking into account the technical and spiritual requirements, which had to be built before August 1 of the same year. Based on the research, the dissertation author makes the following recommendations for continuing research and using the results already obtained in the development of the monastery. 6. In the general plan of the monastery, add the outline of the cathedral in honor of the icon of the Mother of God “Tenderness” of Seraphim-Diveevskaya, placing it between the beginning and end of the Theotokos Kanavka, possibly adjacent to the Annunciation Cathedral. This should be done in the same way as the Nativity chapels were added to the Church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God according to the word of St. Seraphim, that is, with the blessing of the Mother of God Herself. Note that, on the instructions of Metropolitan Georgy (Danilov) of Nizhny Novgorod and Arzamas, the architects had to design the Annunciation Cathedral as a single-domed one in the likeness of the Church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God. According to the architectural and planning idea of ​​Metropolitan George, the westernmost and easternmost churches of the monastery should be similar. So far this similarity is not complete. In the future, it is possible to improve the similarity of cathedrals by building on the porch of the Annunciation Cathedral a throne in the name of the Most Holy Theotokos, her “Tenderness” icon of Seraphim-Diveevskaya. 7. Find and implement a technical solution to ensure the stability of the sides of the ditch, since the existing braces distort the architectural appearance of the structure and are an imitation of crossings through the ditch, which, judging by the Chronicle, was not allowed by the Monk Seraphim, and this protected research has established that the information about the Holy Canal in the Chronicle of the Hieromartyr Seraphim (Chichagov) is completely reliable. Recommendations on the composition of technical solutions known to the dissertation author are not given, as they are beyond the scope of the dissertation topic. List of sources and literature used Archival sources Archive of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Convent of the Nizhny Novgorod Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church 234 1. Project for the restoration of section No. 6 of the Holy Mother of God Canal of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery in the village. Diveevo, Nizhny Novgorod region. Explanatory note. Drawings. M.: MGSU, July 2000. 2. Project for the restoration of section No. 2 of the Holy Mother of God Canal of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery in the village. Diveevo, Nizhny Novgorod region. Explanatory note. Drawings. M.: MGSU, May 2001. 3. The project of connecting the restored St. Bogorodichnaya Kanavka with engineering networks and a highway in the village. Diveevo (section from PC 3+10 to PC 4+22). M.: MGSU, September 2001. 4. Project for the restoration of the Holy Mother of God Canal on site No. 3 (along Pervomaiskaya Street). Explanatory note. Drawings M.: MGSU, May 2002. 5. Project for the restoration of the Holy Mother of God Canal on the territory of the boarding school and adjacent properties from PK 5+50 to PK 7+70. Explanatory note and drawings. M.: MGSU, March 2003. 6. Technical report on the survey on the Holy Mother of God Kanavka. Geotechnical Engineering Center LLC. Gene. director V.L. Vasilyuk, work supervisor S.N. Chernyshev. M., 2011. 118 p. 7. Chernyshev S.N. Report on engineering surveys and studies of the Holy Mother of God Canal of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery of the Nizhny Novgorod diocese. Vol. 3 (in three books). Book 1. Explanatory note. 60 s. + 19 adj. Book 2. Sketches of sections of the Holy Mother of God Canal. 72 p. Book 3. Photo album. 147 photos. 98 p. M.: MGSU, Laboratory of Engineering Surveys and Geoecology, 2005. Graphic materials and documents 8. Insurance certificate for the chapel built over the foundation of the Mill-Feeder at the end of the Holy Canal. 1910 9. “Plan of the Seraphim-Diveyevo Lavra, compiled and written by the Elder himself, Seraphim.” 1828 or 1829. Located in the Trinity Cathedral of the monastery. 10. Postcard showing the chapel above the foundations of the Feeding Mill at the end of the Holy Canal. 1910 Archive of the Research University "Moscow State University of Civil Engineering" (NRU MGSU) 11. Arch. No. 1519/320/1–03. Potapov A.D., Chernyshev S.N., Shcherbina E.V. T. 1. New construction. M.: MGSU, 2003. 70 p. 12. Arch. No. 1519/320/2–03. Potapov A.D., Chernyshev S.N., Shcherbina E.V. T. 2. Reconstruction. M.: MGSU, 2003. 23 p. 13. Arch. No. 1519/320–04. Potapov A.D., Chernyshev S.N., Shcherbina E.V. T. 3. Results of the survey of the reconstructed earthworks of the Holy Virgin Canal and technical recommendations for completing the work. M.: MGSU, 2004. 18 p. 14. Arch. No. 23 42/b/d-06. Chernyshev S.N. Reconstruction of the first plan of the village of Diveevo, indicated by St. Seraphim. Research report. M.: MGSU, 2006. 39 p. Archive of the editorial office of the magazine “Diveevo Convent” of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Convent of the Nizhny Novgorod Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church 15. The rampart and ditch of the Holy Kanavka in the early 1920s. Photo. 16. Forged fence lattice and in the background a lantern lighting line in the style of Russian architecture of the 19th century. Photo. 17. The religious procession first entered the path along the shaft of the Holy Kanavka on August 1, 2003. Photo. 18. Procession along the Holy Kanavka. Pre-revolutionary photography, before 1910. 19. The site of the first turning of the Holy Kanavka at the end of the Soviet historical period. Photo. 20. The site of the first turn of the Holy Kanavka in 2015. Photo. 21. Marble Crucifixion, installed in 2004 on the site of a wooden blue cross, 7 years after the installation of the cross by A.F. Gorbatova. Photo. 22. The plastering of the ditch slope is carried out by a pilgrim from Ukraine using the technology of plastering huts. Photo. 23. Pilgrims at the beginning of the Holy Kanavka in the spring of 1990. Photo. 24. “Plan of the former Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery” 1925. Scale 1:10000. 25. Plan of the village Diveev with the territory of the Mill Monastery, named on the plan “Community Monastery”. 1846 26. The sisters are digging a ditch at the almshouse in front of the road (the almshouse building is on the left). July 20, 2003. Photo. 27. With prayer along the Holy Kanavka in the early 1990s on the territory of the Diveyevo secondary school. 28. Laying rows at the base of the shaft of the Holy Canal at its end. 2004. Photo. 29. Patterns in the moat of the Holy Kanavka. Photo. Personal archive of the dissertation author - archive of the Chernyshev family (Moscow) 235 30. Ekaterina (Chernysheva), nun. Memories of work on the Holy Kanavka in the summer of 2003. Manuscript. 2 s. 31. Ermakov A.K., Chernyshev S.N. Project for the restoration of sections No. 3 and No. 4 of the St. Borodichnaya Kanavka of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery. Explanatory note. Drawings. M.: MGSU, June 1999. 32. Kirill (Pavlov), archimandrite. Letter to S.N. Chernyshev dated January 6, 2002. Manuscript. Postal card. 33. Macaria (Ogudina), nun. Letter to monk Bartholomew (Chernyshev) dated 01/01/2020 with text from the archives of the magazine “Diveyevo Monastery”. Computer printing. 1 p. 34. Raphaila (Prokopyeva), nun. Memories of the beginning of the reconstruction of the Holy Kanavka in 1997. Manuscript. 2 s. 35. Chernyshev S.N. etc. Report on engineering surveys and research of St. Mother of God Kanavka of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Convent in the village. Diveevo, Nizhny Novgorod region. Vol. 1. M.: MGSU, 1999. 29 p. + 10 adj. 36. Chernyshev S.N. The concept for the improvement of the monastery pond and the adjacent section of the path along the St. Kanavka. Bound typescript. M.: MGSU, 1999. 12 p. 37. Chernyshev et al. Report on engineering surveys and research of St. Mother of God Kanavka of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Convent in the village. Diveevo, Nizhny Novgorod region. Vol. 2. Bound typescript. M.: MGSU, 2001. 48 p. + 13 adj. 38. Chernyshev S.N., Shcherbina E.V. The main provisions of the project for the reconstruction of the Holy Mother of God Kanavka of the Holy Diveevsky Monastery of the Nizhny Novgorod diocese. M.: MGSU, May 2003. 16 p. Photos and drawings 39. V.V. Koval. Design profile of the Holy Canal in the monastery's geoplan, 1992. Photocopy of the drawing. A4 (gift from architect V.V. Koval to the dissertation candidate). 40. The end of the Holy Kanavka ditch in pit No. 55 in the photograph and sketch (photo and drawing by the dissertation author). 41. The site of the first turn of the Holy Kanavka in 2015. Photograph (photo of the dissertation author). 42. General view of the ditch and rampart of the Holy Kanavka (fifth straight line, 2016, photo by dissertation author). 43. Remains of a wooden pillar in the foundation of the mill (photo by the dissertation author). 44. Monument to the victorious warrior at the end of the Holy Kanavka. June 2004 (photo of the dissertation author). 45. Professor E.V. A chipped poplar felled onto a rampart. May 2003. (photo of the dissertation author). 46. Workers from Ardatov on the last straight line near the Church of the Sovereign Icon of the Mother of God, at that time a boarding school building, July 14, 2003 (photo by the dissertation author). 47. The rainbow over the monastery begins behind the bell tower at the end of the Holy Kanavka. May 26, 2004, during a prayer service for the beginning of the final stage of reconstruction of the Holy Kanavka (photo by E.V. Serdyuk). 48. Reconstruction of the primary ditch of the Holy Canal of the Mill Monastery at a distance of 1–3 m from the beginning of the ditch, August 1998. The length of the tape measure is 1 m. Photograph. 49. A ditch on the first straight of the Holy Kanavka, dug by pilgrims from Anna Gorbatova’s brigade in July 1997 (photo by the dissertation author). 50. The sisters of the monastery carry out excavation work in the moat of the Holy Kanavka with the help of pilgrims in June 2003 (photo by the dissertation author). 51. Blue wooden cross installed by A.F. Gorbatova at the second turn of the Holy Kanavka, at the intersection of Pervomaiskaya and Shkolnaya streets (photo by the dissertation author). 52. Layers of the shaft in a section at a distance of 10 m from the beginning of the St. Kanavka. The length of the tape measure is 1 m (photo by the dissertation author). 53. The corner of the primary ditch of the Holy Kanavka in the exploration section at the beginning of its first straight line (photo by the dissertation author). 54. International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites (Venice Charter) of May 1964 // International legal documents on cultural issues. Compiler and scientific editor A.S. Zapesotsky / reference / standard ed. St. Petersburg St. Petersburg State Unitary Enterprise, 1996. 388 p. 55. The main provisions of the project for the reconstruction of the Holy Mother of God Canal of the Holy Trinity-Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery of the Nizhny Novgorod diocese. M.: MGSU, May 2003. Approved by the rector of MGSU and blessed for implementation by the diocesan bishop of Nizhny Novgorod and Arzamas. 16 p. 56. Order of the Government of the Russian Federation dated March 28, 2019 No. 552-r “On approval of the list of activities for the development of the pilgrimage and tourism cluster “Arzamas - Diveevo - Sarov” in the Nizhny Novgorod region.” 57. Andreevsky I.M. Travel to Sarov and Diveevo in 1926 / Seraphim-Diveevo legends. Life. Memories. Letters. Church celebrations / Compiled by A.N. Strizhev. M.: Pilgrim, 2001. p. 550. 58. Artsibushev A.P. Mercy doors. Autobiographical novel by a Gulag prisoner. M.: Nikea, 2001. 460 p. 59. Artsibushev A.P. The hidden life of the soul. About the ways of God. M.: PSTGU, 2018. 432 p. 60. The Mother of God Rule of the Hieromartyr Seraphim (Zvezdinsky). https://azbyka.ru/molitvoslov/bogorodichnoe-pravilo.html (access date: 12/12/2019). 61. The Mother of God rule. M.: Danilovsky blagovestnik, 2010. 64 p. 62. Bulgakova S. A. (nun Seraphim). Seraphim-Diveyevo legends // The Fourth Destiny of the Mother of God. Compilation and preface: A.N. Strizhov. 1991. pp. 11–85. 63. Bychkov S.S. (comp., comments, afterword) Tales of the exploits and events of the life of Elder Seraphim. M., 2006. 380 p. 64. Georgy Pavlovich, priest, I.G. Melnikova. Seraphim-Diveevo Monastery and its first abbess Maria (Ushakova). M., 2018. 512 p.: ill. 65. Diveyevo legends. Collection. Diveevo: Publishing group of the Holy Trinity-Seraphim-Diveevo Monastery. No year of manufacture. 112 p. 66. Diveyevo legends. Collection. M.: Orthodox pilgrim; Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery, 1996. 463 p. 67. Diveyevo legends. Collection. M.: Skit; Stavropol Regional Committee of the Red Cross Society, 1992. P. 64. 68. Hourly prayer appeals of a repentant sinner to the intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos from the works of St. Ephraim the Syrian. Reprint reproduction of the 1907 edition. Ed. 2nd, additional M., 2008. 70 p. 69. Life of the monastery // Diveyevo monastery. Diveevo. 2017. No. 1 (23). pp. 12–23. 70. Life of St. Macarius (Nevsky), Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna // http://www.pravoslavie.ru/put/061025170209.htm (access date: 12.12.2019. 71. The Life of the Holy Blessed Pelageya Ivanovna Serebrennikova. Publishing house of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery, 2001. P. 36. 72. Lives of the Diveyevo Blesseds Pelageya, Paraskeva and Maria. Diveevo: Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Monastery, 2001. 176 p. 73. Kirill (Pavlov), archimandrite. Prophecies about Russia. https://politpuzzle.ru/57555-prorochestvo-o-rossii-arhimandrita-kirilla-sdelannoe-peredsamoj-smertyu (date of access: 02/12/2020). 74. Book about the Blessed Virgin Mary. Earthly life of the Mother of God. Chronicle of phenomena and miracles. Description of miraculous icons. Author-compiler V.I. Kazachenko. M.: Kovcheg, 2011. 768 p. 75. Chronicle of the Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery of Nizhny Novgorod province. Ardatovsky district with a biography of its founders: Venerable Seraphim and Schema-nun Alexandra, born. A. S. Melgunova. Compiled by Archimandrite Seraphim (Chichagov). Second edition of the Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery. St. Petersburg: Printing house of M. M. Stasyulevich. You. Ost., 5 lines., 28. 1903, 851 p. 76. Lyashevsky Stefan, archpriest. Diveev Monastery in the years of rebellion // Seraphim-Diveevskie legends. Life. Memories. Letters. Church celebrations / Compiled by A. N. Strizhev. M.: Pilgrim, 2001. pp. 447–483. 77. Margarita (Lakhtionova), schema-nun. “There will be a monastery for you” // Seraphim-Diveyevo legends. Zhitina. Memories. Letters. Church celebrations / Compiled by A.N. Strizhev. M.: Pilgrim, 2001. pp. 209–211. 78. International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites (Venice Charter) of May 1964 // International legal documents on cultural issues. St. Petersburg: State Unitary Enterprise, 1996. 79. Mill-Feeder of Diveevo orphans // The Fourth Destiny. Diveevo: Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Monastery. No. 5 (17), May 2004. P. 8. 80. Nikolaev V., Fomin-Shakhov O. Breeder Andrey Batashev. https://hystory.mediasole.ru/zavodchik_andrey_batashev (date of access: 06/26/2019). 81. Patriarchal calendar for 2019. M., 2018. 528 p. 82. Orthodox church calendar for 2019: with troparia and kontakion. M., 2018. 304 p. 83. Pentkovsky A.M., Bychkov S.S. Venerable Seraphim of Sarov. Life and feat. XVIII–XXI centuries Ed. 2nd. M.: Tatis Publication, 2005. 205 p. 84. Archpriest Vladimir Ivanovich Smirnov. Sermons, letters / Compiled by M.A. Tarusin. M.: Silver threads, 1999. P. 123. 85. Seraphim (Zvezdinsky), Bishop of Dmitrov, martyr // Orthodox calendar. https://days.pravoslavie.ru/Life/life4898.htm (access date: 12.12.2019). 86. Seraphim (Chichagov), sschmch. Chronicle of the Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery. Diveevo, 2015. 640 p. 87. Serafima (Bulgakova), nun. Diveyevo legends // Seraphim-Diveyevo legends. Life. Memories. Letters. Church celebrations / Compiled by A.N. Strizhev. M.: Pilgrim, 2001. pp. 76–157. 88. There will be a groove from earth to sky. B. m.: Publishing group of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo convent, 2001. 119 p. 89. Filaret Drozdov, metropolitan. Letters of Metropolitan Philaret to the abbot of the Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra, Archimandrite Anthony 1831–1867. Part I (1831–1841); Part 2 (1842–1867). M., 1977. 90. Chernysheva-Samarina E.A. Alexander Dmitrievich Samarin. Collection “Samarins. Mansurovs. Memories of relatives." M., 2001. 153 p. pp. 121–203. 91. Chichagov L.M. (Hieromartyr Archimandrite Seraphim). Chronicle of the Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery. Diveevo, 2015. 640 p. 92. Shmaliy V., priest. Theology // Orthodox Encyclopedia. M.: Church and Scientific Center “Orthodox Encyclopedia”, 2009. T. V. P. 520. 93. Shmonin D.V. Scientific rationality and “return to theology” // Questions of Theology. 2019. T. 1. No. 3. pp. 280–306. http //doi/org/10. 21638/spbu28/2019/301 94. Babichev I.T., Borovsky Ya.M. Dictionary of Latin winged words. 3rd ed. M.: Russian language, 1988. 960 p. 95. Bukova O.V. Women's monasteries of St. Seraphim of Sarov. History of ten Nizhny Novgorod convents. Nizhny Novgorod: Book, 2003. 192 p. 96. Bukova O.V. Truth and fiction about the life of schema-abbot Seraphim (based on the book “Chronicle of the Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery”) // Holy Fire. 2016. No. 14. pp. 34–51. 97. Basil the Great, saint. Conversations on the Sixth Day. M.: Sinopsis, 2020. P. 240. 98. Great Patriotic War 1941–1945 Encyclopedia for the Suvorov military, Nakhimov Naval School and cadet corps. M.: Voenizdat, 2013. 728 p. 99. Georgy (Danilov) bishop, Dmitriev V.V., Vyborny V.N. Problems of preservation and revival of monastic complexes in various urban planning conditions // Collection of works of the II International Scientific and Practical Symposium “Natural conditions for the construction and preservation of churches of Orthodox Rus'”. Sergiev Posad: Trinity-Sergius Lavra, 2005, pp. 247–255. 100. Dvorkin A.L. Essays on the history of the universal Orthodox Church. Ed. 2nd, corrected and supplemented. Nizhny Novgorod: Publishing house of the Brotherhood in the name of St. book Alexandra Nevsky, 2005. 924 p. 101. Ivannone John. Shroud of Turin. St. Petersburg: Amphora, 2014. P. 222. 102. Hilarion (Alfeev), metropolitan. The mystery of faith. Introduction to Orthodox dogmatic theology. Ch. 3. The Mystery of the Trinity. https://predanie.ru/book/67903-tainstvo-very-vvedenie-v-pravoslavnoedogmaticheskoe-bogoslovie/ (date of access: 06/01/2020). 103. Hilarion (Alfeev), metropolitan. The Mystery of the Trinity // Mgar Bell. No. 52. 2007. 104. Kalinin M.G., Seleznev M.G. Canon // Orthodox Encyclopedia. T. 30. M., 2013. pp. 203–204. 105. Canon of the Honest and Life-Giving Cross. Canon. M.: Institution of culture, art, science and education “Spiritual Transformation”, 2011. 416 p. P. 195. 106. Kvilidze N.V. Iconographic canon // Orthodox Encyclopedia. M., 2009. T. 30. P. 204. 107. Pentkovsky A.M., Bychkov S.S. Venerable Seraphim of Sarov. Life and feat. 2nd edition. M.: Tatis Publication, 2005. 205 p. 108. Sitnikov M. Review of the book “Tales of the exploits and events of the life of Elder Seraphim” / Compiled, comments, afterword by S.S. Bychkova. M.: INTEK LLC, 2006. 380 p. 109. Stepashkin V.A. The first biographers of Seraphim of Sarov. Sarov, 2004. 38 p. 110. Stepashkin V.A. Seraphim of Sarov / ZhZL. M.: Young Guard. 2018. 592 p. 111. Florensky Pavel, priest. Letter to A.S. Mamontova dated 30.VII.1917 // “He fought a good fight...” Materials for the biography of A.D. Samarina (1868–1932) / Compiled by S.N. Chernyshev and others. Dimitry Sazonov. Kostroma: Kostroma Metropolitan Publishing House, 2017. 317 p. pp. 258–259. 112. Chernyshev S.N. Historical view of domestic ecological culture // Velikoross. No. 1 (7). 2013. pp. 15–31. www.Velikoross.ru 113. Shargunov Alexander, archpriest. Tsar. M.: Sretensky Monastery, 2018. 784 p. 114. Shmaliy Vladimir, priest. Theology // Orthodox Encyclopedia. M.: Church and Scientific Center “Orthodox Encyclopedia”, 2009. T. V. P. 520. 115. Shmonin D.V. Philosophy, theology and the value-semantic sphere in education. Bulletin of the Russian Christian Humanitarian Academy. 2015. T. 16. Issue. 4 Publications of Monk Bartholomew (Sergei Nikolaevich Chernyshev) Articles in the scientific and theological journal of the Kostroma Theological Seminary, which is included in the Church-wide list of peer-reviewed publications in which the results of research of applicants for church academic degrees of Doctor of Theology, Doctor of Church History and Candidate of Theology should be published: 116. The history of the reconstruction of the Holy Mother of God Kanavka in the 19th century under Abbess Maria (Ushakova) // Ipatiev Bulletin. 2020. No. 1 (9). pp. 103–114. 117. History and background of the creation of the Holy Mother of God Kanavka during the earthly life of St. Seraphim of Sarov // Ipatiev Bulletin. 2020. No. 1 (9). pp. 89–102. 118. Canonical and engineering problems during the construction of the Virgin Canal // Ipatievsky Vestnik. 2020. No. 1 (9). pp. 128–136. 119. Prayer on the Holy Kanavka // Ipatievsky Bulletin. 2020. No. 1 (9). pp. 115–127. Publications in other publications 120. Holy Mother of God Canal. Scientific monograph. Diveevo: Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Convent, 2018. 344 p.: ill. 121. Mamontovskoe Abramtsevo as an eco-cultural system in terms of cultural ecology and modern tasks of reconstruction and restoration of historical complexes // Collection of abstracts of the 4th International Scientific and Practical Symposium “Natural conditions for the construction and preservation of churches of Orthodox Rus'”. October 8–10, 2009. Sergiev Posad, 2009. P. 82. 122. Scientific support of research, design, construction and operation of the Mother of God Canal of the Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery // Bulletin of MGSU. 2018. T. 13. Issue. 1 (112). pp. 95–106. Co-authors Darchia V.I., Kofanov A.V., Tazina N.G., Timofeev D.V. 123. Landscaping and securing the slopes of the ditch and rampart of the Holy Mother of God Kanavka in Diveyevo // Collection of articles. proceedings of the 5th International Scientific and Practical Symposium “Natural conditions for the construction and preservation of churches of Orthodox Rus'.” Sergiev Posad, 2014. pp. 207–230. Co-authors Tazina N.G., Darchia V.I. 124. Reconstruction of the first plan of the village of Diveeva, indicated by Rev. Seraphim // Sat. proceedings of the 3rd international scientific and practical symposium “Natural conditions for the construction and preservation of churches in Orthodox Rus'.” Sergiev Posad: Moscow Patriarchate Publishing House, 2007. pp. 297–323. In collaboration with V.V. Koval and N.S. Chernyshev. 125. Holy Mother of God Canal. History and reconstruction // God's World. No. 13. 2008–2009. pp. 108–113. 126. Holy Mother of God Canal: natural conditions and technical solutions for reconstruction // Sat. proceedings of the 2nd international scientific and practical symposium “Natural conditions for the construction and preservation of churches in Orthodox Rus'.” Sergiev Posad: Moscow Patriarchate Publishing House, 2005. pp. 247–253. In collaboration with Shcherbina E.V. 127. Environmental problems of the Seraphim-Diveevo Monastery and the Holy Trinity-Sergius Lavra, as a reflection of the state of nature and society // Collection. reports of the VI international Christmas educational readings. Moscow Patriarchate. M., 1998. pp. 247–259. In collaboration with N.S. Chernyshev. 128. Ecology of culture D.S. Likhachev, as a theoretical basis for the complex restoration of cultural monuments // Kadashevskie readings. VII, 2010. pp. 116–126. 129. Ecology of culture is part of the doctrine of the noosphere, the ideological basis for the reconstruction of buildings and structures // Bulletin of MGSU. 2013. No. 12. pp. 123–130. From the speech of S.V. Kiriyenko on 08/01/2003 at a festive meal on the day of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the glorification of St. Seraphim of Sarov in Diveevo, where the dissertation candidate was present. Order of the Government of the Russian Federation dated March 28, 2019 No. 552-r “On approval of the list of activities for the development of the pilgrimage and tourism cluster “Arzamas - Diveevo - Sarov” in the Nizhny Novgorod region.” Archim. Kirill (Pavlov). Letter to S.N. Chernyshev dated January 18, 2002 Seventh international scientific and practical symposium “Natural conditions for the construction and preservation of churches in Orthodox Rus'.” Trinity Sergius Lavra, Sergiev Posad. October 8–10, 2018. Archim. Seraphim (Chichagov). Chronicle of the Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery of the Nizhny Novgorod province of Ardatovsky district with a biography of its founders: St. Seraphim and schema-nun Alexandra Melgunova. Ed. second. St. Petersburg, 1903. 851 p. Next - “Chronicle”. Sschmch. Seraphim (Chichagov). Chronicle of the Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery. Diveevo, 2015. 640 p. Stepashkin V.A. The first biographers of Seraphim of Sarov. Sarov, 2004. 38 p. Pentkovsky A.M., Bychkov S.S. Venerable Seraphim of Sarov. Life and feat. 2nd edition. M., 2005. 205 p. Strizhev A.N. Diveyevo Easter. In the book: Sat. "The Fourth Destiny of the Mother of God." Diveevo. Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery. B. g. P. 3–10. Bukova O.V. Truth and fiction about the life of schema-abbot Seraphim (based on the book “Chronicle of the Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery”) // Holy Fire. 2016. No. 14. pp. 34–51. Pentkovsky A.M., Bychkov S.S. Venerable Seraphim of Sarov. Life and feat. XVIII–XXI centuries Ed. 2nd. M.: Tatis Publication, 2005. P. 162. Pentkovsky A.M., Bychkov S.S. Venerable Seraphim of Sarov. P. 135. There will be a groove from earth to sky. B. m.: Publishing group of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo convent, 2001. 119 p. P. 58. Chernyshev S.N. Holy Mother of God Canal. Scientific publication. Diveevo, 2018. 344 p. Ekaterina (Chernysheva), nun. Memories of work on the Holy Kanavka in the summer of 2003. Manuscript. 2 s. Raphaila (Prokopyeva), nun. Memories of the beginning of the reconstruction of the Holy Kanavka in 1997. Manuscript. 2 s. “Plan of the Seraphim-Diveyevo Lavra, compiled and written by the Elder himself, Seraphim.” Archive of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery. No number. Storage location: Trinity Cathedral of the monastery. Archim. Seraphim Chichagov. Chronicle of the Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery of Nizhny Novgorod province. Ardatovsky district with a biography of its founders: St. Seraphim and Schema nun Alexandra, born. A. S. Melgunova." 2nd edition. St. Petersburg, 1903. 832 p. Archive of the Seraphim-Diveevo Monastery. Bulgakova S. A. (nun Seraphim). Seraphim-Diveyevo legends // The Fourth Destiny of the Mother of God. Compilation and preface: A.N. Strizhov. 1991. pp. 11–85. Archive of the editorial office of the magazine “Diveevo Abode”, published by the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Monastery. Chernyshev et al. Report on engineering surveys and studies of the Holy Mother of God Canal of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery of the Nizhny Novgorod diocese. Vol. 3 (in three books). Book 2. Sketches of sections of the Holy Mother of God Canal. 72 p. Book 3. Photo album. 147 photos. 98 p. M.: MGSU, Laboratory of Engineering Surveys and Geoecology, 2005. Archive of the dissertation author, archive of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery, no number. For brevity, instead of the expression “Theotokos Canal of the third historical period,” the “second Theotokos Canal” is used, similarly to the “first Theotokos Canal,” dug in the first historical period, and the “third Theotokos Canal,” made in the fifth historical period and now existing. Lyashevsky S., prot. Chronicle of the Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery. Part two. 1903–1927 Publishing group of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Convent. Without indicating the place and year of publication. P. 111. Archive of the magazine “Diveyevo Abode”. Archive of the construction department of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery. Archive of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery. The Mother of God rule. M.: Danilovsky blagovestnik, 2010. 64 p. Shmaliy Vladimir, priest. Theology // Orthodox Encyclopedia. M.: Church Scientific Center “Orthodox Encyclopedia”, 2009. T. V. P. 520. Shmonin D.V. Philosophy, theology and the value-semantic sphere in education. Bulletin of the Russian Christian Humanitarian Academy. 2015. T. 16. Issue. 4. Words from the passport of the scientific discipline theology are in italics. Shmonin D.V. Scientific rationality and “return to theology” // Questions of Theology. 2019. T. 1. No. 3. pp. 280–306. http Basil the Great, saint. Conversations on the Sixth Day. M.: Sinopsis, 2020. P. 240. Ivannone John. Shroud of Turin. St. Petersburg: Amphora, 2014. P. 222. Chernyshev S.N. Historical view of domestic ecological culture // Velikoross. No. 1(7). 2013. pp. 15–31. www.Velikoross.ru The dissertation candidate, with the blessing of Metropolitan Kirill (now the Patriarch), participated in the preparation of the environmental section of the document. Bibliographic data of the named publications are given at the end of the dissertation. The personal archive of the dissertation author is the archive of the Chernyshev family. Archive of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery, without number. Oral communication from A.P. Artsibusheva. Chronicle. 2015. pp. 155–157. Monastery archive, no number. Nikolaev V., Fomin-Shakhov O. Breeder Andrey Batashev // https://hystory.mediasole.ru/zavodchik_andrey_batashev (access date: 06/26/2019). Life of the monastery // Diveyevo monastery. Diveevo. 2017. No. 1 (23). pp. 12–23. Newspaper of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Convent “Fourth Destiny”. No. 5 (17), May 2004. P. 8. Chernyshev S.N. Report on engineering surveys and studies of the Holy Mother of God Canal of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery of the Nizhny Novgorod diocese. Vol. 3 (in three books). Book 2. Sketches of sections of the Holy Mother of God Canal. 72 p. Appendix No. 16. M.: MGSU, 2005. Monastery archive. No number. Location: Trinity Cathedral, showcase at the shrine of St. Seraphim. Chronicle. 1903. pp. 262–263. Chernyshev S.N. etc. Reconstruction of the first plan of the village of Diveeva, indicated by Rev. Seraphim // Sat. proceedings of the 3rd international scientific and practical symposium “Natural conditions for the construction and preservation of churches in Orthodox Rus'.” Sergiev Posad: Moscow Patriarchate Publishing House, 2007. pp. 297–323. P. 302. Chernyshev S.N. etc. Reconstruction of the first plan of the village of Diveeva, indicated by Rev. Seraphim // Sat. proceedings of the 3rd international scientific and practical symposium “Natural conditions for the construction and preservation of churches in Orthodox Rus'.” Sergiev Posad: Moscow Patriarchate Publishing House, 2007. pp. 297–323. P. 320. Analogy is not equality, but only the similarity of objects in a number of essential characteristics with differences in other characteristics. “Behind the Cut” - a place behind the kitchen; kut in the language of the Angarsk peasants is a place for preparing food, a kitchen. The word kut was used in the Middle Angara in the 1960s, when the dissertation candidate was working on surveys for the Ust-Ilimsk hydroelectric power station. The same root is in the German name for the kitchen (Kuche). Angarsk archaism testifies not to the fact that the Russian word kitchen was not borrowed from the German language, unfamiliar to peasants, but to the kinship of languages. Mining waste is the part of the deposit where the mineral has been extracted. Typically, this area not only loses its natural appearance, but also becomes unsuitable for any use until reclamation, that is, expensive restoration. HELL. Potapov, S.N. Chernyshev. Report on engineering surveys and studies of the Holy Mother of God Kanavka of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Convent in the village. Diveyevo, Nizhny Novgorod diocese. Vol. 1. M., 1999. P. 13. Archive of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Convent and archive of the dissertation author. Bukova O.V. Women's monasteries of St. Seraphim of Sarov. History of ten Nizhny Novgorod convents. Nizhny Novgorod, 2003. 192 pp.; Bukova O.V. Truth and fiction about the life of schema-abbot Seraphim according to the book “Chronicle of the Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery” // Holy Fire. 2016. No. 14. pp. 34–51. Chronicle. 2015. pp. 207–208. Chronicle. 2015. pp. 208–209. The personal archive of the dissertation author is the archive of the Chernyshev family. A landslide is an instant collapse of stone or clay blocks from a steep slope, flying through the air. Landslide - a relatively slow sliding of blocks of clay along an inclined surface down a slope; lasts from several minutes to several days. Holy Mother of God Canal. Scientific monograph. Diveevo: Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Convent, 2018. P. 46. Chernyshev S.N. Report on engineering surveys and studies of the Holy Mother of God Canal of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery of the Nizhny Novgorod diocese. Vol. 3 (in three books). Book 2. Sketches of sections of the Holy Mother of God Canal. 72 p. M.: MGSU, Laboratory of Engineering Surveys and Geoecology, 2005. P. 53. Chronicle. 1903. pp. 256–257. Archive of the dissertation author - the Chernyshev family. The accuracy of the plan is analyzed in subsection 1.2.3.3. Testimony of Elder Anna Alekseevna. Chronicle. 1903. P. 256. Bukova O.V. Women's monasteries of St. Seraphim of Sarov. History of ten Nizhny Novgorod convents. Nizhny Novgorod: Book, 2003. 192 p. Bukova O.V. Truth and fiction about the life of schema-abbot Seraphim (based on the book “Chronicle of the Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery”) // Holy Fire. 2016. No. 14. pp. 34–51. Tales of the exploits and events of the life of Elder Seraphim. Comp., comments, afterword by S.S. Bychkova. M.: 2006. 380 p. Sitnikov Mikhail. Review of the book “Tales of the exploits and events of the life of Elder Seraphim.” M., 2006. Igum. Kirill (Semyonov). Is it for nothing that a wife is commanded to remain silent in the Church? // Russian line. 01/12/2009. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1PF_YE6v1Uinc0nylulWtQ 104 Artsybushev A.P. Who needs the “righteousness” of the unrighteous? Russian folk line. 03/08/2006. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1PF_YE6v1Uinc0nylulWtQ Artsybushev A.P. Who needs the “righteousness” of the unrighteous? Russian folk line. 03/08/2006. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1PF_YE6v1Uinc0nylulWtQ Chernyshev S.N. The concept of improvement of the monastery pond and the adjacent section of the path along the St. Kanavka / Chernyshev S.N. M.: MGSU. Manuscript. Dissertation archive. 12 s. Priest Georgy Pavlovich, Melnikova I.G. Seraphim-Diveevo Monastery and its first abbess Maria (Ushakova). M., 2018. 512 p.: ill. The Life of the Holy Blessed Pelageya Ivanovna Serebrennikova. Diveevo, 2001. pp. 35–36. Based on the results of a survey of old-timers. From the dissertation candidate’s conversation with A.V. Platonov during the work of his enterprise. Artsibushev A.P. Mercy doors. Autobiographical novel by a Gulag prisoner. M.: Nikea, 2001. 460 p. Artsibushev A.P. The hidden life of the soul. About the ways of God. M.: PSTGU, 2018. 432 p. Photo archive of the magazine “Diveyevo Abode”. Erosion is a term in the Earth sciences (geology, geography, soil science, hydrology), meaning the erosion by water or dispersal of soils by wind. The result of repeated measurements of the dissertation candidate. Oral messages from a number of old-timers to the dissertation candidate. Thy will be done. The life and works of the holy martyr Seraphim (Chichagov). M., 2003. P. 11, 791. “Father Leonid delivered the body of his deceased wife to Diveevo and buried him in the monastery cemetery. Soon a chapel was erected over the grave, and nearby Father Leonid prepared a place for his burial, which, however, never managed to take place here” (p. 11). People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR. Mon. Seraphim (Bulgakov). Memoirs // Diveyevo legends M., 1996. pp. 28–30. Nikolai Alexandrovich Motovilov and the Diveyevo monastery. Diveevo, 1999. 233 p. Bulgakova Serafima, nun. Memoirs // Diveyevo legends M., 1996. pp. 28–30. Thy will be done. The life and works of the holy martyr Seraphim (Chichagov). M., 2003. P. 37. Archim. John (Peasant). Letter to Varvara Vasilievna Chernaya dated October 17/30, 1993 from Pecher. A photocopy of the letter in the dissertation candidate's archive. Mon. Seraphim (Bulgakov). Memoirs // Diveyevo legends. M., 1996. pp. 28–30. Oral message from the dean of the Diveyevo Monastery, nun Ekaterina (Chernysheva). Orthodox church calendar for 2019: with troparia and kontakion. M., 2018. P. 124. Lyashevsky S.N. (Archpriest Stefan). Chronicle of the Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery. Part II. B. m. publications: Publishing group of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo convent, 1903–1927. 121 p. Margarita (Lakhtionova), schema-nun. “There will be a monastery for you” // Seraphim-Diveyevo legends. Zhitina. Memories. Letters. Church celebrations / Compiled by A.N. Strizhev. M.: Pilgrim, 2001. pp. 209–211. Oral message from nun Seraphima (Bulgakova). 1990 There will be a groove from earth to sky. B. m.: Publishing group of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo convent, 2001. 119 p. pp. 58–59. Oral communication from the expert to the dissertation candidate. Photo from the archive of the magazine “Diveevo Abode” of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Monastery. According to oral Diveyevo folk tradition, the larch tree was planted in 1904 in memory of the birth of the heir to the crown prince, Saint Alexy Romanov. According to the recollections of the dissertation candidate. The dissertation student participated in the preparation of the church for consecration and was present at the first services there. The dissertation author was with the abbess when she entered the church and negotiated with the family living in the altar to move into an apartment purchased for them. Chernyshev S.N. Holy Mother of God Canal. Diveevo: Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Convent, 2018. P. 79. Archive of the magazine “Diveevo Abode” of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Monastery. Surveys are preparatory work before the start of any construction, the purpose of which is to identify the natural conditions and existing structures at the site of the proposed work. The text was written in the 20th century; accordingly, the author refers to the “last century” as the 19th century, when the classification of loose surface (Quaternary, in geology) deposits was made by Moscow University professor, academician A.P. Pavlov is an Orthodox believer (according to the recollection of Prof. L.D. Bely, a student of A.P. Pavlov, communicated orally to the dissertation candidate). Darchia V.I., Tazina N.G., Chernyshev S.N. Landscaping and securing the slopes of the moat and rampart of the Holy Mother of God Kanavka in Diveyevo. Sat. proceedings of the 5th International Scientific and Practical Symposium “Natural conditions for the construction and preservation of churches of Orthodox Rus'.” Sergiev Posad, 2014. pp. 207–230. Chernyshev S.N. etc. Report on engineering surveys and research of St. Mother of God Kanavka of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Convent in the village. Diveevo, Nizhny Novgorod region. Vol. 1. M.: MGSU, 1999. Dissertation archive. 29 p. + 10 adj. Chernyshev S.N. and others. Report on engineering surveys and research of St. Mother of God Kanavka of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Convent in the village. Diveevo, Nizhny Novgorod region. Vol. 1. M., 1999. Dissertation archive. 29 p. + 10 adj. Botanical identification of the species of all plants in the study area, indicating their places of growth. During spore-pollen analysis, plant pollen is isolated from the soil, buried along with mineral particles, and by the shape of the “dust grains”, experts identify the type of plant that deposited pollen in the soil at the time of its deposition. Chernyshev S.N. Holy Mother of God Canal. Diveevo, 2018. P. 122, 337–341. Report on engineering surveys of the Holy Mother of God Canal of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Convent of the Nizhny Novgorod Diocese. Vol. 3. Book. 1. M.: 2005. P. 41. Report on engineering surveys of the Holy Mother of God Canal of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Convent of the Nizhny Novgorod Diocese. Vol. 3. Book. 2. M.: MGSU, 2005. P. 15. Chernyshev S.N. etc. Report on engineering surveys and studies of the Holy Mother of God Canal of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery of the Nizhny Novgorod diocese. Vol. 3 (in three books). Book 1. Explanatory note. 60 s. + 19 adj. M.: Laboratory of Engineering Surveys and Geoecology, 2005. Archive of the dissertation author, archive of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery, no number. S.N. Chernyshev. Holy Mother of God Canal. Diveevo, 2018. P. 12. S.N. Chernyshev. Holy Mother of God Canal. Diveevo: Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Convent, 2018. P. 146. Ep. Georgy (Danilov), Dmitriev V.V., Vyborny V.N. Problems of preservation and revival of monastic complexes in various urban planning conditions // Collection of works of the II International Scientific and Practical Symposium “Natural conditions for the construction and preservation of churches of Orthodox Rus'”. Sergiev Posad, 2005. pp. 247–2554. The term “canon” is used here in the same sense in which it is used to designate the rule for writing an icon, the rule for building a church. The forefather Noah was given the canon of building the ark, and the prophet Moses was given the canon of the Ark of the Covenant. They were given the dimensions and materials. The same is true in our case. The Canon of the Theotokos Kanavka was given by the Mother of God to St. Seraphim. It apparently was not written down, was lost and we have recreated it in this work on the basis of historical research. Ermakov A.K., Chernyshev S.N. Project for the restoration of sections No. 3 and No. 4 of the St. Borodichnaya Kanavka of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery. Explanatory note. Drawings. M., June 1999. Dissertation archive. Project for the restoration of section No. 2 of the Holy Mother of God Canal of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery in the village. Diveevo, Nizhny Novgorod region. Explanatory note. Drawings. M., May 2001. Archive of the dissertation author. Archive of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery. No number. Project for the restoration of section No. 6 of the Holy Mother of God Canal of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery in the village. Diveevo, Nizhny Novgorod region. Explanatory note. Drawings. M., July 2000. Archive of the dissertation author. Archive of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery. No number. The project of connecting the restored St. Bogorodichnaya Kanavka with engineering networks and a highway in the village. Diveevo (section from PC 3+10 to PC 4+22). M.: MGSU, September 2001. Archive of the dissertation author. Archive of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery. No number. Project for the restoration of the Holy Mother of God Canal on the territory of the boarding school and adjacent properties from PK 5+50 to PK 7+70. Explanatory note and drawings. M.: MGSU, March 2003. Dissertation archive. Archive of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery. No number. Potapov A.D., Chernyshev S.N., Shcherbina E.V. Project for the survey and design of earthworks of the Holy Mother of God Kanavka of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Convent of the Nizhny Novgorod Diocese. Explanatory notes and drawings. Agreement No. 320/03 dated April 28, 2003. T. 1. New construction. M.: MGSU, 2003. 70 p. Archives of MGSU, arch. No. 1519/320/1–03. T. 2. Reconstruction. M.: MGSU, 2003. 23 p. Archives of MGSU, arch. No. 1519/320/2–03. Dissertation archive. Archive of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery. No number. In convents where the abbess is the abbess, the head of the priesthood is the senior priest, who presides over all ceremonial services. Let us note that the Lord directs the actions on the Mother of God Canal and marks the places of significant events for ignorant but good-doing people. This remark must be correlated with the choice of location for the monument to soldiers of the Great Patriotic War, which is discussed in subsection 3.4.2. Three arshins are equal to one fathom, and in modern measure 2.13 m. Mon. Raphaila (Prokopyev). Memories of the beginning of the reconstruction of the Holy Kanavka in 1997. Manuscript. 2 s. Dissertation archive. There will be a groove from earth to sky. B. m.: Publication of the Publishing Group of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Convent, 2001. 119 p. With the blessing of St. Seraphim, reflected in the Chronicle. Darchia V.I., Pashkevich S.A., Pulyaev I.S., Pustovgar A.P., Chernyshev S.N. The influence of slope lighting conditions on the performance properties of geosynthetic meshes based on polyamide-6. Bulletin of MGSU. 2013. No. 12. pp. 101–108. Recording made by the dissertation candidate at a working meeting held by Bishop George on July 1 in the Abbot's building of the monastery. Diary of a dissertation candidate. Oral communication to the dissertation candidate in July 2003. Ekaterina (Chernysheva), nun. Memories of working on the Holy Kanavka in the summer of 2003. Dissertation archive. Prot. Alexander Shargunov. Tsar. M., 2018. 784 p. Oral tradition in the village of Diveevo. Vertyanovo is a part of the large village of Diveeva across the river, formerly a separate village of Vertyanovo, and now part of the regional center. In the current 2020, she has been gone for a long time. “...I didn’t place a single stone with them, I told them not a single word from myself...against the will of the Queen of Heaven..., fulfilling only Her most holy orders.” Chronicle. 1903. P. 465. Hourly prayerful appeals of a repentant sinner to the intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos from the works of St. Ephraim the Syrian. Reprint of the 1907 edition. 2nd edition, expanded. M., 2008. 70 p. The Mother of God Rule of the Hieromartyr Seraphim (Zvezdinsky). https://azbyka.ru/molitvoslov/bogorodichnoe-pravilo.html Chernyshev S. N. Holy Mother of God Kanavka. Diveevo: Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Convent, 2018. pp. 314–332. Hieromartyr Seraphim (Zvezdinsky), Bishop of Dmitrov / Orthodox calendar. https://days.pravoslavie.ru/Life/life4898.htm From the archives of the magazine “Diveyevo Abode”. According to a letter from the executive editor of the magazine “Diveevo Convent”, nun Makaria (Ogudina) dated 01/01/2020 to the dissertation candidate. There will be a groove from earth to sky. Published by the Publishing Group of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Convent. No year of manufacture. M.S. 58. Chernyshev S.N. Holy Mother of God Canal. Diveevo, 2018. pp. 314–316. Chernyshev S.N. Holy Mother of God Canal. Diveevo, 2018. pp. 319–320. Chernyshev S.N. Holy Mother of God Canal. Diveevo, 2018. P. 321. Chernyshev S.N. Holy Mother of God Canal. Diveevo: Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Convent, 2018. pp. 321–325. Chernyshev S.N. Holy Mother of God Canal. Diveevo: Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Convent, 2018. P. 325. Chernyshev S. N. Holy Mother of God Kanavka. Diveevo: Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Convent, 2018. pp. 319–320. Chernyshev S. N. Holy Mother of God Kanavka. Diveevo: Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Convent, 2018. P. 326. Chernyshev S. N. Holy Mother of God Canal. Diveevo: Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Convent, 2018. pp. 326–330. Chernyshev S. N. Holy Mother of God Canal. Diveevo, 2018. pp. 316–330. The Holy Kanavka was not registered as a historical monument. Chernyshev S.N. Holy Mother of God Canal. History and reconstruction // “The World of God”. No. 13. M., 2008–2009. pp. 108–113. Chernyshev S.N. Mamontovskoe Abramtsevo as an eco-cultural system in terms of cultural ecology and modern tasks of reconstruction and restoration of historical complexes. Collection of abstracts of the 4th International Scientific and Practical Symposium “Natural conditions for the construction and preservation of churches in Orthodox Rus'.” October 8–10, 2009. Sergiev Posad, 2009, p. 82. Chernyshev S.N. Ecology of culture D.S. Likhachev, as a theoretical basis for the complex restoration of cultural monuments // Kadashevskie readings. VII. 2010. pp. 116–126. Chernyshev S.N. The ecology of culture is part of the doctrine of the noosphere, the ideological basis for the reconstruction of buildings and structures. Bulletin of MGSU. 2013. No. 12. pp. 123–130. Priest Pavel Florensky. Letter to A.S. Mamontova dated 30.VII.1917. “He fought the good fight...” Materials for the biography of A.D. Samarina (1868–1932) / Compiled by S.N. Chernyshev and others. Dimitry Sazonov. Kostroma, 2017. pp. 258–259. There are no quotation marks in the text of the quoted letter, but the dissertation author considers it appropriate to put them, since the term soul to a cultural object can only be applied at the level of reasoning by analogy, but not at the level of equality or identity. International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites (Venice Charter) of May 1964 // International legal documents on cultural issues. St. Petersburg: GUP, 1996. 388 p. Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeev). The mystery of faith. Introduction to Orthodox dogmatic theology. Ch. 3. The Mystery of the Trinity. https://predanie.ru/book/67903-tainstvo-very-vvedenie-vpravoslavnoe-dogmaticheskoe-bogoslovie/ (access date: 06/01/2020). The archive is not systematized, storage units do not have archive numbers. The archive is not systematized, storage units do not have archive numbers. Storage address: Moscow. Leninsky pr., 37a, apt. 231.