The
Inkerman Monastery of St. Clement is a
cave monasteryA cave monastery is a monastery built in caves, with possible outside facilities. St. Anthony the Great known as the founder of monasticism lived in a cave.- List of cave monasteries :*Albania**St...
in a
cliffIn geography and geology, a cliff is a significant vertical, or near vertical, rock exposure. Cliffs are formed as erosion landforms due to the processes of erosion and weathering that produce them. Cliffs are common on coasts, in mountainous areas, escarpments and along rivers. Cliffs are usually...
rising near the mouth of the Black River, in the city of
InkermanInkerman is a town in Crimea, Ukraine. It is situated 5 kilometres east of Sevastopol, at the mouth of the Chernaya River that flows into Sevastopol Inlet . Administratively, Inkerman is subordinate to the municipality of Sevastopol which does not constitute part of the Autonomous Republic of...
, administered as part of the sea port of
SevastopolSevastopol is a city on rights of administrative division of Ukraine, located on the Black Sea coast of the Crimea peninsula. It has a population of 342,451 . Sevastopol is the second largest port in Ukraine, after the Port of Odessa....
. It was founded in 1850 on the site of a medieval
ByzantineByzantine usually refers to the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages.Byzantine may also refer to:* A citizen of the Byzantine Empire, or native Greek during the Middle Ages...
monastery where the relics of
St. ClementStarting in the 3rd and 4th century, tradition has identified him as the Clement that Paul mentioned in Philippians as a fellow laborer in Christ.While in the mid-19th century it was customary to identify him as a freedman of Titus Flavius Clemens, who was consul with his cousin, the Emperor...
were supposedly kept before their removal to San Clemente by
Saints Cyril and MethodiusSaints Cyril and Methodius were two Byzantine Greek brothers born in Thessaloniki in the 9th century. They became missionaries of Christianity among the Slavic peoples of Bulgaria, Great Moravia and Pannonia. Through their work they influenced the cultural development of all Slavs, for which they...
. The early Christians are supposed to have kept the relics in a grotto which could be visited only on the anniversary of his death. William Rubruck described it as a church "built by the hands of angels".
The Byzantine monastery, probably founded in the 8th century by icon-worshippers fleeing persecution in their homeland, had eight chapels of several storeys and an
innInterNetNews is a Usenet news server package, originally released by Rich Salz in 1991, and presented at the Summer 1992 USENIX conference in San Antonio, Texas...
accessed by a stairway. The caves of Inkerman were surveyed by
Peter Simon PallasPeter Simon Pallas was a German zoologist and botanist who worked in Russia.- Life and work :Pallas was born in Berlin, the son of Professor of Surgery Simon Pallas. He studied with private tutors and took an interest in natural history, later attending the University of Halle and the University...
in 1793 and looted by the British in the 1850s. The Russians added two churches, commemorating the Borki Incident (1895) and the
Crimean WarThe Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...
(1905). The monastery was damaged by the Crimean Earthquake of 1927 and was closed between 1931 and 1991. During
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
the caves housed the officers of a Soviet army defending Sevastopol. Several churches were taken down by the Soviets.