7 points
6 km
6 hours
The Founding of the Monastery
The monastery was founded in the 14th century by Bishop Jacob. According to the saint's Life, before founding the monastery the bishop was himself condemned for acquitting a woman sentenced to death. Defending her, the bishop told whoever considered himself without sin to cast the first stone at her, and sent the woman off to do penance. The prince and the Rostov boyars, displeased with the bishop's judgment, drove Jacob out of Rostov. Going out to the shore of Lake Nero, where the monastery stands today, he built a small church of the Conception of the Most Holy Mother of God by St. Anne. Thus he founded the monastery, which was then called the Conception Monastery. Next to it stood the Monastery of the Savior on the Sands, a monastery for men founded in the 13th century by Princess Maria. She was the wife of Prince Vasilko Konstantinovich, who died a martyr's death in the battle with the Tatars on the Sit River. She also began keeping the first Rostov chronicles, preserving the memory of the Russian princes killed by the Tatars. Later the two cloisters were merged; in the mid-18th century they gained the relics of St. Demetrius of Rostov and escaped abolition under the monastic reform of 1764.