Optinsky Monastery

The Optina Hermitage (Russian: Оптина пустынь, Optina Pustyn) is an Eastern Orthodox monastery for men near Kozelsk which used to be the most important spiritual centre of the Russian Orthodox Church in the 19th century. The holy Fathers made the Optina Hermitage (or Poustinia) a focus for the powerful renewal movement that spread through the Church in Russia beginning early in the nineteenth century, and continuing up to (and even into) the atheist persecutions of the twentieth century... It is not clear when the monastery was established. Its name is popularly derived from the Russian word for "living together". This may be explained by the fact that nuns were allowed into this cloister prior to 1504. Most of the monastery buildings were erected at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, when the monastery was being renovated as a centre of Russian staretsdom. In 1821, a hermitage for startsy was established 400 metres away from the monastery.