St. Vvedensky Tolga Convent

The history of the monastery is as follows. Bishop Prokhor, returning along the Volga to Yaroslavl from Belozerye, on August 7, 1314, together with the priests who were with him, stopped for the night on the right bank of the Volga, 8 versts from Yaroslavl. At midnight, he saw a shining pillar of fire on the opposite shore and a bridge to it. On the morning of August 8, an icon of the Most Holy Theotokos was found there. At this place, the saint began to build a church. By noon it was built, by evening Vladyka Prokhor consecrated it in the name of the Introduction of the Most Holy Theotokos into the temple. The image of the Mother of God was brought into the church, named "Tolgsky" after the small Tolge River flowing nearby. At the same time, the celebration of the appearance of the Virgin was established – on the eighth day of August. On the same day, a blessing was received for the establishment of the monastery.

At the beginning of the XV century there was a fire here. The cells and the fence burned down, and the church was instantly engulfed in flames. Nothing could be saved from the church utensils. But when the fire went out, the holy icon was found outside the monastery, in the forest, completely unharmed and shining with light. The monastery did not cease to exist, which happened to many others after the fires.

In 1553, Tsar John Vasilyevich the Terrible visited the monastery. The reason for the visit was the tsar's pilgrimage trip to the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery on the occasion of leg disease. On the way back, the king stopped at Tolga. He prayed a lot in front of the miraculous icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary. According to the chronicles, his legs became stronger after that, he was able to get up from the chair on which he was carried. The tsar endowed the monastery with generous alms, ordering the construction of a stone temple, which was subsequently erected under Abbot Theodosius.

During the Time of Troubles, the Tolga monastery was completely ruined, but the miraculous icon survived. The year 1612 is marked in the chronicle of the monastery by the oldest known religious processions with the Tolga icon of the Virgin Mary to Yaroslavl, then designated as a gathering point for the people's militias gathered to save Moscow and the Russian state.

The rapid flourishing of the monastery in the last quarter of the XVII century is associated with the name of Abbot Gordian, under whom the construction of the holy monastery gates was completed and the majestic Vvedenskaya Cathedral Church was erected on the site of an ancient small and already dilapidated one. Abbot Gordian died in 1700 and was buried at the north-western wall of the altar of the cathedral monastery church he built. Under the cathedral church there is also a tomb of honorary citizens of the city, who during their lifetime made donations to the holy monastery, as well as representatives of famous families: Golitsyn, Vyazemsky, Troekurov, Melgunov and others.

In the XVIII – beginning. In the 20th century, the monastery was visited more than once by members of the royal family. In 1763, Empress Catherine the Great was here, and in 1913, Emperor Nicholas II and his family visited the Tolga Monastery.

In 1928, the monastery was closed. In 1932, construction of the dam of the future hydroelectric power station began near the monastery. The monastery was completely evicted. It was chosen as a base for the organization of construction management, since in those years there were only villages, fields and forests around. Specialists of hydraulic engineering works began to arrive here. Many of them brought their families with them, who inhabited the cells. Technical experiments were carried out on the territory of the monastery, which showed the inadmissibility of building a dam in this place, the project was moved higher along the Volga to the Rybinsk area.

The revival began in 1987. In September 1988, the Tolga Monastery was handed over to the faithful. By the decision of His Holiness Patriarch Pimen and the Holy Synod, the first women's monastery in many decades and at that time the only one in Russia was established on the territory of the monastery (after 1917, all Orthodox monasteries were gradually closed on the territory of the RSFSR).