A women’s monastery in the heart of Riga; pretty flowers, and a long history
Молчание- золото
Silence is golden
To continue what has become a series on Riga’s Orthodox heritage- an aspect of Latvian and Russian culture which, in my opinion, is essential to understanding broader history- today we are at the Holy Trinity Monastery Riga. Located near the centre of the city this is an old Orthodox covenant established by two former aristocrats during the Russian Empire.
I was frankly overwhelmed the first time I came here. It was early morning, and I could not find the entrance- the stone fence travels long between apartment buildings. I caught sight of a babushka and decided to follow. She led us both around a corner and inside.
I recall that I sat for nearly an hour on a bench in the sun, overlooking a vegetable patch and watching as the nuns travelled from one building to another, preparing to cook for the people who come here for a free meal (some days, up to 250, I’m told). I smiled to myself when one very old priest, whose service I had attended in the morning, indulged a mother’s request for a photograph. The both of them beheld the phone with a degree of perplexity.
The monastery grounds are enormous. As well as vegetable patches, the large Cathedral, a minor church, and the buildings which house, today, some 140 sisters, there are rows of flower beds, old bell towers, small houses for stray cats and, in the trees, the birds. Above all there reigns a silence which would seem impossible from the busy adjacent street. The noise of the cars disappears under the tolling bell, the tremulous tree.
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(Credit: https://rpr.gov.lv/the-holy-trinity-convent/)
It would turn out that the history of this place is no less curious and wonderful than the place itself…
The Beginning of the Holy Trinity Monastery
It starts with one Boris Mansurov (1828-1910), Russian imperial diplomat and enthusiast of Byzantine antiquities. Boris’s social status was considerably improved by his marriage to Mariia Dolgorukova, member of the very esteemed House of Dolgorukov, an aristocratic family whose lineage included wives of Tsars (at least three) and whose patrilineal descent is claimed to be from Mikhail of Chernigov (d 1246), Grand Prince of Kiev.
Boris and Mariia had two daughters- Ekaterina and Natalia- who both moved from Moscow, where they had received their education under the abbess of the famous Strastnoi convent, to Riga on account of Natalia’s poor health. A change of climate and access to the sea was recommended (some of you might find Riga an odd choice!).
The sisters established a Sunday school and shelter for local women but, missing the religious aspect of their Moscow lives, they soon turned the small plot of land (apartments in a central housing block) into a covenant following strict monastic rules. Their covenant received recognition in 1891 and, because of their family’s status, they were able to successfully petition key figures in Russia to help fund the construction of the cathedral and the buying up of land. Alexander III himself donated 27,000 roubles to the project. Nicholas II, too, gave three or five times that amount.
The women showed remarkable zeal in their mission, the fundamental tenant of which was provision of food and shelter for the ‘urban poor’, a relatively new phenomenon in Europe and a consequence of rapid industrialisation and overcrowding. Riga itself was, at the time, undergoing immense change. And it was not all smooth sailing; Ekaterina and Natalia’s father Boris, on learning that both of his daughters had taken monastic vowels and would not marry, broke relations with them for several years.
The monastery continued to expand over the subsequent period, running a school, orphanage, women’s shelter and medical clinic. The sisters served daily lunches for free to Rigans. Of course, outside of these charitable works, they were engaged in other monastic duties.
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| Sisters Ekaterina and Natalia | Sisters (and sisters) Sergiia and Ioanna after taking monastic vowels, with their mother. |
War
In mid 1915 Germany launched a massive offensive against Russia, bringing the front line within miles of Riga. On the order of the government, Riga was substantially evacuated. The sisters left for Pskov province on a train. The monastery was largely abandoned for the next two years while the sisters remained in Russia. In 1917, and perhaps a lesser-known fact, the Germans entered and occupied the capital
German troops entering Riga 1917
Natalia and Ekaterina would never return to Riga. Both remained in Russia, where they continued to live a monastic life. But the sisters did, in 1921, hand over the leadership of the monastery to a close friend and monastic who, with a small group of sisters, returned to Riga to re-establish what they had begun.
The monastery during the Soviet period
The monastery, like all religious sites, suffered immensely under Soviet rule. Priests and nuns were routinely targeted in the ‘purges’, subjected to torture, show-trials, and execution. While Janis Pommers, now canonised, was a particularly effective combatant and worked scrupulously to protect not just Christians, but all Latvians, from the gross excesses of Soviet governance, he lived through the early years of Soviet rule. The remainder of the story is, unfortunately, a familiar one, and it is naturally hard to contemplate that we are so near in history to that offending.
Final thoughts
The monastery is right on the way to school, if you’re coming from Riga’s soviet suburbs. Naturally, I will recommend that you visit. I recommend that you visit for the silence, for the birds, the flowers, and the wonderful icons, some of which were given to the monastery by Nicholas II himself. This place issued from the final sighs of the Russian Empire, from aristocratic lineage. In fact, Boris and his wife are buried on the monastery grounds. What remains; the cathedral, her patrons, the monastics… and what has been washed away, the oppressions of the 20th century… this contrast is, perhaps, one of hope. As the Russian proverb goes,
Свет не исчезает, даже если его затмевает тьма
“Light does not disappear, even when overshadowed by darkness.”
Laef, currently studying Russian at Liden & Denz Riga.
P.s., I would like to draw especial attention to this article by James White, which provides a wonderful account of the lives of Ekaterina and Natalia, and on which I drew extensively for the details above.
