Горицкий Успенский монастырь – Goritsky Dormition Monastery, held from fragmentary evidence to have been founded in the early XIV century under the auspices of

Иван I Даниилович "Калита" – Ivan I Daniilovich "Kalita" or "Moneybags" (c. 1288; reigned as Grand Prince of Moscow from 21 November 1325 and as Grand Prince of Novgorod with the blessing of the Muslim Golden Horde from 1328, both until his death on 31 March (1340?).)

The monastery was closed, not under the godless Soviet regime, as was so often the case, but in 1744, as the fortress became the Pereslavl bishop's residence. The extant structures are XVII and XVIII century.

It is curious to reflect that, while Ivan Moneybags was getting rich and leading Moscow's ascendancy over neighboring competitor cities like Tver, largely through deft dealing with the Muslim Horde, the rest of European Christendom, and eventually the Russian lands too in 1351, were about to fall prey to another kind of scourge from Muslim Central Asia,

the Mors Nigra – Atra Mors – Black Death – Чёрная смерть – Schwarzer Tod.

Indeed Astrakhan and the Crimea were among the earliest hit, in 1346. The Black Death is also called Bubonic Plague, though this latter term refers to one of three plagues from the Yersinia pestis. Never fully eradicated, the plague recurred times without number, and there are cases even in the XXI century. Death can happen before symptoms occur, and even with antibiotic and other supportive treatments, mortality rates are around 10 percent. But from 1346 to 1353 — October of 1347 was a key to mass onset — this horror from Asia killed within a week nearly everyone it touched. Some pockets of European Christendom with small and isolated populations were nearly untouched, most strikingly eastern German and Polish lands and, curiously, Santiago de Compostela. With wide variations, and with our Mediterranean port cities especially hard hit, the Black Death killed one third, perhaps nearly half of our people of European Christendom. Priests, nuns and monks, caregivers for the sick and dying, were hit even harder. This circumstance, our most Christian people dying, and other related dislocations and distortions — poorly formed religious replaced the dead; the faith of many was shaken and sects emerged — all this supplied a significant part of the context for the Protestant disruptions to the life of Church and Christendom.