The Churchyard “At the Resurrection by Molodi”

Abstract

When describing the Molodi battle, the main reference to where it took place is the mention of the church or the burial ground “of Resurrection by Molodi”. Traditionally, in historiography and literature on local history the place of the fight has been identified by the location of the village of Molodi situated on the right bank of the Rojayka river as a part of Zamitskaya volost of the Moscow uyezd in XVII–XVIII centuries. Although this populated center has been marked as Molodi village in the sources only starting 1646, in the earlier descriptions it is called Golovina hamlet. And the churchyard of the Resurrection “by Molodi” is mentioned in the cadastre of 1627/28–1628/29. Through the chart of 1688 and the military topographical survey from the mid-XIX century, it is possible to find the location of the churchyard on the left bank of the Rojayka river. The church itself was relocated to the right bank of the same river in the early XVIIIth century. The archaeological research of the area on the left bank of the Rojayka river showed the presence of a subsoil burial ground, with the individual finds pointing to the XVIIth–XIXth centuries and the mass material pointing to the XVth–XIXth centuries. Therefore, using the results of the complex research, the article provides the evidence of localization of the “Molodi churchyard”, near where at the Rojayka river the battle between a Russian army led by knyazh Michael Ivanovitch Vorotinsky and the forces of Crimean khan Devlet I Giray took place in 1572.

Keywords

• molodi
• molodi fight
• churchyard
• subsoil burial ground
• localization
• complex research