As one takes a closer look at the rich bouquet of the Russian cultural legacy and traditions-including painting, music, architecture and the applied arts-one immediately becomes aware of what one could call an unmistakable "flavor of ascetism". This flavor has been left to us by centuries of ascetic and prayerful life of the founders of the early Russian monasteries and their devout flock. With his famous Word on the Law and Grace (written between 1037 and 1050) Metropolitan Hilarion traces the origin of the first monastic communities to the reign of Prince Vladimir of Kiev (?-1015, honoured with the title "Equal to the Apostles" for making Christianity the official religion in his dominions in 988). The Word hails that time as "the dawn of the true faith" when "heathen altars were smashed and replaced with churches, idols were torn down and replaced with icons of saints, when demons fled and the towns were sanctified with the Cross". It was then that "cloisters stood up upon mountains with hermits who dwelled therein". According to the Old Russian chronicle The Tale of Bygone Years, it was in the reign of Prince Yaroslav the Wise (978-1054) that "monks grew in number and monasteries began to appear". This process got a new momentum with the establishment in 1062 of the famous Kiev- Pechery Lavra, or the Kiev Crypt Monastery (originally a grotto near Kiev dug by the monk Antony from Mount Athos). As the Christian faith continued to spread across Eastern Europe promoting cultural links with the Byzantine (East Roman) Empire, Athens and Bulgaria, the number of monasteries continued to grow. By the time of the Tatar invasion (early 13th cent.) there were no less than 70 or 80 such cloisters with most of them located, until the middle of the 14th century, at towns. The famous Russian historian Vassily Klyuchevsky (1841-1911) points out that the prevailing atmosphere of coenobitic life was that of work, meditation and prayer. Many chose to withdraw from the "vanities o ... Читать далее