Valday

Valday lies beside a lake of the same name among the wooded hills between Novgorod and Moscow. Its island monastery, founded by Patriarch Nikon, transformed the lakeside settlement into the centre of an extensive ecclesiastical estate. Across the water the monastery’s churches rose above the forested shores.

In 1653 Nikon began building the Iversky monastery on an island in Lake Valday, taking as his model the Iveron monastery on Mount Athos. Two wooden churches were ready that year. A royal charter in 1654 granted the monastery the lake and its islands, together with Valday and estates including Borovichi, Yazhelbitsy and Vyshny Volochyok. The monastery thus acquired lands and income far beyond its island. In 1655 more than seventy monks arrived from the Kutein monastery near Orsha, bringing their printing skills and equipment. Their press made the new monastery a place of book production as well as worship. An icon copied from the Iveron image on Mount Athos was brought for the consecration of the Assumption cathedral in 1656. The monastery’s fortunes later changed; from 1712 to 1730 it was attached to the Alexander Nevsky monastery in St Petersburg.