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Here is Kostroma further down the Volga - a city with a lighter historical touch founded in the 12th century.
The Ipatyevsky Monastery is located where the Kostroma River flows into the Volga. The monastery prospers early from lavish donations in the form of land, villages and money made by the Godunovs . One of the most ancient chronicles - the Ipatievsky Chronicle - is now kept in the Library of the Russia Academy of Sciences.
In 1600, Gudunov exiles Fyodor Nikitich Romanov, then head of the Romanov family, to St. Ipaty Monastery. His son Mikhail is here when he is elected Czar in 1613. The Ipatievsky Monastery enjoys royal patronage for the following three hundred years (the length of the Romanov Dynasty).
A famous hero of the struggles against the Poland, Lithuanian and Swedish intervention in the 17th century is the peasant Ivan Susanin who takes the enemies to thick woods and deadly swamps, where both he and they meet death. He is buried on monastery grounds.
Trinity Cathedral (1652) is a structure with five cupolas, porches on three sides and decorated with the wall-paintings by Guri Nikitin. The second icon to the right of iconstasis doors represents the name of the church, -- in this case The Trinity. But Russian Orthodoxy forbids the depiction of the Trinity in any form but that of three angels (whereas the "Old Believers," as they are now called, showed the Father and Son and the Dove, representing the Holy Spriit). In this church both depictions are shown but in different places: three angels are shown in the icon second to the right from the altar doors and the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are shown in the icon located directly above the altar doors. The guide asks us to notice where the dove is, as it later turns out, we all have different recollections of its location. My friend Ann says that it is over the head of the Father. I say that it appears at the throat of the Father over the head of the Son. Someone else saw it over the right shoulder of the Father. What a difference of opinion! As it turns out , the dove is at the throat of the Father, which makes sense because scripture tells us that it is the spirit of God moving across the face of the deep which speaks the first words of creation: "Let there be light."