Holy Trinity Monastery is a male monastic community in Jordanville, New York. It is under the auspices of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. The monastery is dedicated to the Holy Trinity, and its patronal feast day is Pentecost.
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In 1928, two monks from St. Tikhon's Orthodox Monastery in South Canaan, Pennsylvania, in search of greater seclusion, purchased a small farm near Jordanville in Herkimer County, New York. With the help of four new brothers, including Bishop Vitaly, a house with a chapel was completed in 1935 and the tiny brotherhood was ready to move in. However, towards the conclusion of the dedication ceremonies a fire suddenly broken out on the second floor of the new house, and the building with all of its contents burnt to the ground. The small brotherhood struggled along for some years.
After World War II, when Czechoslovakia became an atheistic communist state, the St. Job of Pochaev Brotherhood, which had been in exile there since being forced to flee from its original location in the western Ukraine with the outbreak of the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, had to again relocate. After a brief stay in Munich, the Brotherhood accepted the invitation of Bishop Vitaly to join the struggling Brotherhood at Jordanville, resulting in the largest Orthodox Monastery in America. The Brotherhood of St. Job brought St. Job’s printing press with them across the Atlantic, and, until the fall of the Soviet Union, Holy Trinity Monastery was the only place in the world that could typeset in Old Church Slavonic. Today, it holds the distinction of the only place in the world that prints in Russian using the pre-1918 Old Orthography (see Reforms of Russian orthography). The Printshop of St. Job of Pochaev now uses modern, computerized typesetting. Until recently, St. Job's printing press was kept as a relic in the Print Shop, now that most of the printshop's space is used for the seating of pilgrims during the busy times of the year
The present Cathedral of the Holy Trinity was completed in 1951; the Governor of New York, Thomas E. Dewey, attended the dedication. The monastery also houses the Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary.
On December 3rd, 2011, on the feast day of the Entry of the Theotokos into the Temple, government officials came to the monastery, enjoyed food, listened to talks held in the seminary hall, where the official ceremony of the monastery as a historic landmark took place. National Register of Historic Places.[1]
The Monastery is also home to one of the largest Orthodox Christian Cemeteries in the United States. Currently there are three individual cemeteries with one more cemetery currently under construction. Orthodox Christian monasteries regularly pray for the reposed in their cemeteries and Holy Trinity Monastery is no exception. "The Monastery takes very seriously its duty of prayer for the departed, and at every liturgy the names of all Orthodox Christians buried within the monastery are commemorated. Several times a year a general and magnificent requiem is performed within the cemeteries for all of our brothers and sisters departed before us. Visitors are left with the impression of the strong feeling of serenity and peace within the cemeteries."[2]
"The monks who came to Holy Trinity Monastery from Eastern Europe after World War II inherited a tradition of printing that stretches back almost to the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century. Through the fathers’ tireless efforts, the monastery has been printing and publishing Orthodox Christian books for over sixty years. At first, these books were sold from a table in the monastery office to pilgrims, visitors, and churches all over the world. During the dark years of the Soviet Union, the monastery played an integral role in keeping the Orthodox Faith alive amidst stark oppression."[3]
"Holy Trinity Icon Mounting Studio has for many years been producing high quality print icons painted by the Fathers of Holy Trinity Monastery as well as other iconographers."[4]
"The monks who came to Holy Trinity Monastery from Eastern Europe after World War II inherited a tradition of printing that stretches back almost to the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century. Through the fathers’ tireless efforts, the monastery has been printing and publishing Orthodox Christian books for almost sixty-five years. During the dark years of the Soviet Union, the monastery played an integral role in keeping the Orthodox Faith alive amidst stark oppression. Even today, many Russian clergy and faithful remember the days when the only Orthodox books they could obtain were Jordanville publications.
For much of this time the Fathers of the monastery operated their own printing press in the Print Shop of St. Job of Pochaev. Books were typeset and hand bound in the print shop. Increasingly they were sold not only to visitors to the monastery but also to other monasteries and churches throughout the world, as well as to libraries and the occasional commercial bookstore.
The world has changed dramatically since 1947. The Soviet Union is dead and the Russian Orthodox Church is again free to minister to the needs of the faithful in Russia. Simultaneously there is a growing spiritual vacuum in the West which cries out for knowledge of “the Faith once and for all delivered to the Saints.” This Faith has been preserved by the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian people with its own cultural uniqueness. Holy Trinity Monastery is an inheritor of this tradition and seeks now through its publications to make this more widely known."[5]
Holy Trinity Publications works under the guidance and blessing of the Abbot of Holy Trinity Monastery, Archimandrite Luke (Murianka). He has assigned the day-to-day oversight of Holy Trinity Publications to Nicholas Chapman, who directs a team of monastics, local Orthodox clergy, seminarians and other lay workers.
Holy Trinity Publications has "a goal to publish between four and eight new books each year and to make these available in both traditional print and varying digital forms." They also "hope to refresh some of our classic titles and make them available in new forms." They also "publish two periodicals on a regular basis, one in Russian and one in English."[6]