Voronezh region > Spassky convent

Spassky convent in Kostomarovo

The main attraction of the sanctuary is a set of unique cave churches hidden in the thick of a chalk mountain We do not know when they were founded and who those people were because no chronicle records have survived.

One of the theories goes that the churches were built as early as the 8th or 10th century by migrant Greek monks fleeing their motherland from the persecution of the supporters of the iconoclastic heresy that had seized the Byzantine Empire.

They could eventually make it up to the middle parts of the Don region where they built magnificent cave churches in keeping with the Byzantine tradition.

Later on the nomad raids caused these areas to be desolated, and mon-asteries abandoned.

Another theory suggests that the cave monasteries did not appear before the 17th century, their builders being monks from Malorossia who had come to the Don area together with the Dnieper Cossacks fleeing their native lands from the persecution of the Polish noblemen and the Union.

In the late 18th early 19th century, the sanctuary in Kostomarovo became, so the local legend goes, the skete of the Belogorsky Monastery where a number of schemamonks followed their holy pledge. The first records of the caves of Kostomarovo date back to that period.

After the 1917 Revolution, a number of hermits were secretly pursuing the life of prayer and devotion here among whom blessed elder Peter (Yeremeyenko) was particularly renowned .

In 1946 the Christian community of the neighboring villages managed to get the official permission to perform acts of worship in the caves of Kostomarovo. This period saw the cave passages in the Church of Our Saviour being extended and expanded and a second cella created in honor of the Martyr Saints Vera, Nadezhda, Lyubov, and Sophia (literally, Faith, Hope, Love, and Wisdom).

In October 1959 a decision was passed to close the Cave Church of Our Savior and to terminate the activities of the associated religious community.

Up until 1993 the caves of Kostomarovo had been in desolation. Speleologists studied these caves in the 70's and made a diagram consistent with the present state of the cave network of the Covenant of Our Savior.

In 1993 the clergy of the Ostrogozhsk Deanery of the Voronezh Eparchy took charge over the clearing activities in the caves.

In 1997 the eparchial Covenant of Our Savior was officially opened. This year marked the beginning of a new period.