St. Theodore Stratelates the Great Martyr's Monastery

The cave monastery dedicated to the Holy Great Martyr Theodore Stratelates stands in the rock of Cape Ai-Todor above the Belbek valley, near the village of Malosadove, Bakhchysaray district, Crimea (formerly known as Kuchuk-Suiren), and the ruins of Syuren Fortress¹. The monastery's own old name, Ai-Todor-Koba ("Cave of St. Theodore"), was replaced in Soviet times with the more neutral Chylter-Koba ("Cave with a Grille") - probably by analogy with the Chylter-Marmara monastery¹.

The cave complex - the main church, cells and refectory - is linked by paths cut straight into the rock monolith². The monastery holds more than 50 caves in four tiers, and one of the lower tiers has a large chamber with five columns resembling a pagan sanctuary²; one regional local-history guide, by contrast, counts only 23 chambers in four tiers - a discrepancy neither source explains³.

At the entrance to the main church eleven rock-cut tombs survive, including one child's grave about half a metre long; researchers note that they held not only monks but also residents of the nearby Syuren Fortress¹.

The dedication, according to that same guide, was long uncertain among three saints named Theodore - Stratelates, Tyron and the Studite - and the name of Theodore Stratelates eventually prevailed³; the Encyclopaedia of Modern Ukraine gives the same identification².

Sources date the monastery's founding differently. The Encyclopaedia of Modern Ukraine places its construction in the ninth century². According to the monograph of Yu. M. Mogarichev (1997), by contrast, the temple complex is a single structure fully built in a later era - the time of the Principality of Theodoro, that is, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries¹.

The monastery's economy, per the research of V. N. Danilenko, was almost entirely self-sufficient; other everyday items - amphorae, pithoi, dishware, church books and vessels - could be bought in other towns of the peninsula with proceeds from selling wine¹. Researchers propose that a group of four chambers on the third tier served as a kitchen, a storeroom and a refectory: the last measured 16 square metres, and about fifteen people could sit at its table at once, matching the number of cells¹.

Researchers agree that the monastery survived at least until 1475, when the Principality of Theodoro fell under the Ottoman military machine: a coin minted two years before the Turkish campaign in Crimea was found in the refectory¹. By another account, the monastery was destroyed by the army of the Ottoman commander Kedukh-Ahmet Pasha, who, having taken Feodosia, marched to conquer the Principality of Theodoro and ravaged the monastery along the way⁴. For a long time the church stood empty, its caves used as pens for livestock³.

Sources disagree on the date the new monastic life began. According to the chronicle on one of the tourism guide sites, in the autumn of 2000 a monk settled in the abandoned monastery, with the blessing of Vladyka Lazar, Metropolitan of Simferopol and Crimea, beginning its revival; services resumed there from 2002⁴. According to that same local-history guide, by contrast, the cave monastery was given a second life in 2005, when it was filled again with monks³.

In the summer of 2006 a spring and a font were set up⁴. In the spring of 2007 the church was fenced off, a partition and a door were installed, and the space began to be heated in winter⁴; that same autumn a bell tower was erected⁴. In the summer of 2008 the sacrament of baptism was performed in the font for the first time⁴.

In March 2011 the monastery held a monastic tonsure for the first time in 500 years⁴. On 14 June 2011 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, chaired by His Beatitude Metropolitan Volodymyr of Kyiv and All Ukraine, having heard the report of His Grace Lazar, Metropolitan of Simferopol and Crimea, resolved to bless the opening of a men's monastery dedicated to the Holy Great Martyr Theodore Stratelates in the village of Malosadove, Bakhchysaray district, Autonomous Republic of Crimea⁵.

That same year, in June, a gift album, Revival, dedicated to the monastery's revival was published⁴, and in August a Sunday school opened for parishioners⁴. In November 2011 construction began, on the monastery grounds, of a skete dedicated to the Hieromartyr Parfeniy of Kyzyltash⁴; during 2011-2012 an iconostasis and a new altar were installed⁴.

In April 2012 a hostel for pilgrims opened on the grounds⁴, and in June of that same year the ruling bishop, Vladyka Lazar, visited the monastery⁴. In February 2013 a dormitory building was built on the grounds⁴; that same year, at parishioners' request, a book of Sermons, a collection of the superior's sermons, was published⁴, and in July the monastery began baking prosphora, for which it set up its own prosphora bakery⁴.