About 150 kilometers south of Moscow, on the right bank of the Osyotr, a tributary of the Oka (a larger river emptying into the Volga), there lies the old Russian city of Zaraisk. Its focal point, the kremlin, is perhaps the smallest in Russia. Surprisingly, it has survived intact to our days.
The first documentary evidence about Zaraisk (first known as Osyotr) dates back anno 1146--that year is mentioned in the Ipatyev and Nikonov chronicles.* Later on, Zaraisk comes up in a code of the Tales
* Ipatyev chronicle--one of the oldest dating from ca. anno 1420; named so after the Ipatyev monastery at Kostroma. It was in two parts, with the first known as the Tale of Bygone Years. The Nikon chronicle, named after Patriarch Nikon, the great Russian Orthodox reformer of the 17th century. Dated to the 16th century, it glorifies Ivan the Terrible and his reign.The name Zaraisk means a "town on the ravines" (zaras, the old word "ravine"); for just a while, before the Mongolian raids of the mid-13th century, it was named Krasny i.e., a "red, or beautiful" town.--Ed., Tr.
about Nikola of Zaraisk: in 1225 Eustachios, an Orthodox priest, brought in the miracle-working image (icon) of Prelate Nikola (St. Nikolai, St. Nicholas) from the old Greek town of Chersones (today within the city limits of Sebastopol in the Crimea, Ukraine). As the father superior of the church put up and dedicated to St. Nikola, Eustachios started putting down events related to the prelate's life, thus making the beginning of the Tales. This work was carried on by the Father's descendants and followers--Prokopios, Nikita, Vasilisk, Za-
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charios, Feodosios, Matthew, Ioann the Clgpaug ("John the Lop-Eared") and Peter. It took them as long as 335 years to complete this opus classicum that Acad. Dmitry Likhachev, an outstanding 20th-century scholar of Slav and Russian letters, described as a signal phenomenon of old Russian literature.
The Nikola (St. Nicholas) ...
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