July 17, 2009.

In Noginsk district a unique underground monastery is dug out…

Near Avdotyino village unique temple caverns are located. Two years ago archeological excavations began there. Since then, unique pieces of ancient art can be observed by anybody who would like to do so.

From Moscow to village Avdotyino it is only one hour drive on Shelkovskoye Shosse. One can get there on a commuters train from Yaroslavsky Train Station; from Tchkalovskaya railway station bus #321 will take you directly to that place. Several minutes by foot – and you are at the walls of the famous diocesan men’s monastery of Nicola Berliukovsky Wilderness. It stands upon a high bank of the Vorya River. On a spacious meadow among pine trees a ditch is dug out with underpass ways leading underground. It is the famous monastery caverns – a unique phenomenon in the history of Christianity. By the way, such underground monasteries were made on the territory of Russia in Chernigov, Voronezh, Kursk, Tambov, Nizhny Novgorod and Pskov regions. Most of them have not survived to this day and will hardly ever be found. This adds a special value to the caverns in the Moscow area. If before they were open only for specialists now even tourists are allowed in.

As a novitiate of the Nicolo-Berliukovsky Wilderness Alexey Diakonov told a correspondent of The Russian Gazeta, the caverns did not emerge on an empty place. The first ones to discover karst caverns were ancient Slavs who created a pagan cult center in them and Berlino settlement above them. After that the place was chosen by hermit monks. In the beginning of XVII century, St Nicolas Berlinskaya Wilderness was founded in the caverns; later it was renamed to Berliukovskaya. In 1806-1811, a monk-priest Maxim (Pogudkin) “having loved quietness” began to dig a cell for himself… In 1863, under hieromonk Joseph (Ivanov) above the caverns the foundation of a temple was laid in the name of the Cathedral of John the Forerunner. The temple had an outward façade of an ordinary church with a dome; but it is its altar part that was beneath the ground. From the altar section through pass ways one could get into underground cells created by monks. The means to erect the underground part of the temple was given by a patron. As the priestmonk Josef wrote, “a Muscovite merchant Nikita Schennikov through a frequently recurring dream desires to build a church in the entrusted to me monastery in the lower cavern of the chapel.” The merchant offered three thousand silver rubles for the temple and one thousand rubles more for building of an iron cast iconostasis weighing almost three tons. As contemporaries wrote, the iconostasis was “oil gilded through fire,” while icons were drawn on copper leaves. The cavern pass ways were enlarged and laid with bricks. Famous architect of that time Nicolay Kozlovsky oversaw the works.

It is hard to imagine now how the operating underground complex looked a century ago – in the Soviet years the temple buildings were desolated and the monastery was closed. Several flooding springs washed away the banks of the river, and the summer gardeners took away the bricks for their own purposes. Folk lore historians-speleologists in 1960 finished it off – they dismantled one of the temple’s walls, which resulted in a landslide that buried the remains of the church.

But in May of 2007, on the holiday of John of the Ancient Caverns research works were begun. As the head of Moscow’s “Restavros” club Constantine told The Russian Gazeta, the site was nothing but a huge dump. The brethren of the monastery, villagers and even local officials helped to clear up the place. In two years a significant part of the underground section was cleared. Not only so, the famous iconostasis was discovered along with the remains of the church floor, ceramic glazed pipes that once used to serve as parts of the drainage. In the nearest future, the iconostasis will be restored and the brass icons will be recovered. For this purpose offerings are already being collected. The search for relics continues.

Irina Igoreva, The Russian Gazeta, central edition, 07.17.09