History
The Kazan diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church was established on April 3, 1555, three years after the conquest of the Khanate of Kazan. The first ruling bishop was the abbot of the Tver Selizharov monastery, Gury, who went to Kazan with archimandrites Barsanuphius and Herman of Kazan and Svyazhsk.
The most important events in the life of the Kazan diocese were the discovery of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God in 1579, the participation of Kazan residents in the militia of Kuzma Minin and Dmitry Pozharsky with the blessing of Patriarch Hermogenes, the former Metropolitan of Kazan, and the all-Russian glorification of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God.
During 1741, the missionaries managed to baptize 9,159 people throughout the province. Tatars and Bashkirs were only 143 among them. One way or another, missionary work in the Kazan region was rather sluggish, and the activities of the Kazan Theological Academy were reduced mainly to an in-depth study of the linguistic and cultural aspects of the existence of the peoples of the East.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the Kazan branch of the Bible Society was opened to translate the Holy Scriptures into local languages. In 1814, the New Testament was translated into Tatar, and in 1819, the first of the Old Testament books (the Book of Genesis). In 1847, a translation committee was opened at the Kazan Theological Academy, and in 1854 - three missionary departments. To support missionary education, the Orthodox Brotherhood of St. Gurias was established on October 4, 1867.
According to the data cited by Professor Nikolai Zagoskin,[1] at the end of the 19th century in Kazan “there were 4 cathedrals, 28 parish churches, 2 churches assigned to monasteries, 3 military churches and 22 house churches, a total of 59 Orthodox churches” and 7 monasteries within the city, of which 4 have so far been transferred to dioceses, Fedorovsky[2] was completely destroyed in the 20th century (in its place was the Kazan Scientific and Cultural Center); The Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery (the brethren's building, the 19th-century fence, the basement of the Transfiguration Cathedral have been preserved) and the Resurrection[3] (also called New Jerusalem, the 18th-century temple has been preserved) are not active.
On June 11, 1993, the Yoshkar-Ola diocese was separated from the Kazan diocese within the Mari El Republic.
On June 6, 2012, independent Almetyevsk and Chistopol dioceses were separated with the inclusion of them and the Kazan diocese in the newly formed Tatarstan metropolitanate, after which the northeastern half of Tatarstan remained within the Kazan diocese.
