Historical Context
The founding of the Savior Pechenga monastery falls within a well-documented wave of late-medieval Russian monastic expansion. In the 14th and 15th centuries the lands around Vologda drew monks seeking desolate places for solitary ascetic life while remaining connected to the princes of Moscow.
Several wilderness monasteries arose in this region during the same era, and the work of Abraham and Coprius in 1492 fits squarely within this pattern of monastic settlement of the northern Vologda wilderness.
This Pechenga in the Vologda land is distinct from the better-known Pechenga Monastery on the Kola Peninsula, founded by Saint Tryphon in 1533.