“Thousand miles north from the capital in the waters there is Solovetsky monastery, since the old days famous for its devotional places. Remoteness of this sacred place from the vanity of the world had attracted Saint Germanus, Zosimas and Sabbatius of Solovki, the religious devotees, who had founded the solitary monastery on Bolshoy Solovetsky Island in the middle of the fifteenth century.

Year by year monastic order abounded and by the end of the sixteenth century the monastery had become the biggest Orthodox citadel in the north of Russia. That is why hermits had chosen Anzersky Island, the most remote of all the Solovetsky islands. It is situated farther in the north, on the edge of terra firma in the cold boundless Sea.

In the seventeenth century hermits under the leadership of Eleazar came to Anzersky island. They founded Svyato-Troitsky skete. Later, in the beginning of the eighteenth century in the middle of the island there appeared the second Golgotha mount with the skete founded by Saint Job, the spiritual father of Peter the Great’s family.

In the twentieth century Anzersky Island’s Golgotha was covered in blood of the numerous prisoners of the Solovetsky special purpose camp, created by theomachist government that turned temples and monastic cells into inquisition rooms and prison wards. Many orthodox Christians and church officers died there. The new martyr Pete (Zverev), the archbishop of Voronezh and Zadon, whose glorifying took place in 2000, was among them.

The Lives of Anzersky island’s men of faith show that this very place is under the special auspices of Holy Mother.” (from the appeal to the readers of the book “Solovetsky monastery. Anzersky Island and its sanctities”)

Archimandrite Joseph,

The vicar of Spaso-Preobrazhensky Solovetsky stavropegial friary.