Inkerman Cave Monastery
Ukrainian: Інкерманський печерний монастир
One of the Inkerman Cave Monastery chapels in 2012.
Inkerman Cave Monastery is located in Sevastopol
Inkerman Cave Monastery
Inkerman Cave Monastery
Inkerman Cave Monastery is located in Crimea
Inkerman Cave Monastery
Inkerman Cave Monastery
Inkerman Cave Monastery is located in Ukraine
Inkerman Cave Monastery
Inkerman Cave Monastery
General information
LocationInkerman, Ukraine
Country Ukraine
Coordinates44°36′13.32″N 33°36′26.72″E / 44.6037000°N 33.6074222°E / 44.6037000; 33.6074222
Construction started1850
OwnerUkrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate)

The Inkerman Monastery of St. Clement (Russian: Инкерма́нский Свя́то-Климе́нтовский пеще́рный монасты́рь) is a cave monastery in a cliff rising near the mouth of the Black River, in the city of Inkerman, administered as part of the sea port of Sevastopol.

History

A postcard from the 1910s

It was founded in 1850 on the site of a medieval Byzantine monastery where the relics of St. Clement were supposedly kept before their removal to San Clemente by Saints Cyril and Methodius. The early Christians are supposed to have kept the relics in a grotto which could be visited only on the anniversary of his death. William Rubruck described it as a church "built by the hands of angels".[1]

The Byzantine monastery, probably founded in the 8th century by icon-venerators fleeing persecution in their homeland, had eight chapels of several storeys and an inn accessed by a stairway.[2] The caves of Inkerman were surveyed by Peter Simon Pallas in 1793 and looted by the British in the 1850s.

The Russians added two churches, commemorating the Borki Incident (1895) and the Crimean War (1905). The monastery was damaged by the 1927 Crimean earthquakes and was closed between 1931 and 1991. During World War II the caves housed the officers of a Soviet army defending Sevastopol.[3] Several churches were taken down by the Soviets.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "The iournal of frier William de Rubruquis". Ebooks.adelaide.edu.au. Archived from the original on 30 March 2012. Retrieved 29 December 2014.
  2. ↑ "КРЫМСКАЯ область". Ua.vlasenko.net. Retrieved 29 December 2014.
  3. ↑ "ИНКЕРМАНСКИЙ СВЯТО-КЛИМЕНТОВСКИЙ МОНАСТЫРЬ" (in Russian). Archived from the original on December 23, 2009. Retrieved August 1, 2010.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.