Qualla: Valday Iversky Monastery

Valday Iversky Monastery: Introduction

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leon petrosyan, CC BY-SA 4.0. The lake is shallow and clear. Lake Valdayskoye sits at the height of land between the watersheds that flow north toward the Baltic and south toward the Volga, on the wooded plateau of the Valdai Hills, halfway between Moscow and Saint Petersburg. There is a small wooded island in its middle, called Selvitsky, and on that island in the spring of 1653 the Russian Patriarch Nikon ordered the felling of trees for two wooden churches. The Valday Iversky Monastery would within a few years become one of the wealthiest landowners in Russia, the second printing house in the country after the Moscow Print Yard, and the place where porcelain tile was made for the first time on Russian soil. None of which were the reasons the patriarch had picked the spot.

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Image: Leon petrosyan | CC BY-SA 4.0

Valday Iversky Monastery: Why Iberia, Why Iviron

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ji-Elle, CC BY-SA 4.0. Nikon named his new monastery for the Iviron Monastery on Mount Athos in northeastern Greece — Iviron itself named for Iberia, the ancient Georgian kingdom whose monks founded it in the 10th century. The choice was deliberate. Nikon was a reformer, determined to align Russian Ort...

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Image: Ji-Elle | CC BY-SA 4.0

Valday Iversky Monastery: Wealth, Books, and Tiles

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lodo27 from Moscow, Russia, CC BY-SA 3.0. Nikon was elected Patriarch of Moscow in 1652. The next year, he secured permission from Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich to found the monastery, and by autumn 1653 the first wooden churches stood on the island. In February 1654 the relics of Saint Iosif of Borovichi were transferred to ...

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Image: Lodo27 from Moscow, Russia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Valday Iversky Monastery: Nikon's Fall

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Д.Гиляй, CC BY-SA 4.0. Nikon's reforms — corrections to the Russian liturgical books to bring them in line with Greek practice, even small changes such as crossing oneself with three fingers instead of two — provoked the lasting schism in Russian Orthodoxy known as the raskol. The Old Believers split o...

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Image: Д.Гиляй | CC BY-SA 4.0

Valday Iversky Monastery: The Soviet Century

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Erik Palmquist, Public domain. After the 1917 revolution the monastery was closed. The icon disappeared. The buildings were used in turn as a prisoner-of-war camp, a hospital for tuberculosis patients, and a holiday camp for industrial workers. The cells became dormitories. The cathedral became, at various poi...

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Image: Erik Palmquist | Public domain

Valday Iversky Monastery: Approaching by Water

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ji-Elle, CC BY-SA 4.0. Visitors today reach the island either by a causeway built in the 19th century or, in summer, by small ferry. The setting is striking — a forested island in a clear lake, ringed by birch and pine, with the white walls and blue domes of the monastery rising directly out of the wat...

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Image: Ji-Elle | CC BY-SA 4.0