The Nagye’s Tombstones and Tomb of the 16th Century in the Church of Blagoveshchensky Pogost in Vladimir Region

The article publishes three monuments of 16th century epigraphy — tombstones of representatives of the famous boyar family of Nagye from the church of the Blagoveshchensky pogost in the Vladimir region. These inscriptions are not fully preserved, nevertheless their reading enables dating and attributing these memorial monuments. The study of historical and geographical realities, biography and genealogy of the Nagye family members, whose names are mentioned on the tombstones, indicates that the church was a patrimonial church-tomb and was located in the center of the ancient patrimony of this family in Tikhotin stan, Yuryevsky uyezd. The emergence of this fief belongs at least to the second half of the 15th century (possibly earlier), and can be traced in the Nagye family and their Sobakin kin up to the middle of the 17th century. One of the tombstones (of the maiden Evfrosinya, who died in 1596) is the evidence of the family tragedy of the voivode Ivan Grigorievich Nagoy, who spent several years in exile in Siberia, and then fell into disgrace immediately after his return to European Russia. Apparently, these difficult circumstances explain the fact that Evfrosinya Nagaya was buried in the old ancestral church, which by that time had been taken over by the Trinity-Sergius Monastery, and not in the monastery of St. Sergius itself. The preserved slabs in the interior and the tomb under the floor (not investigated) represent a unique example of the preservation of elements of one of such temple-vaults, which were widespread in the late 15th – first half of the 16th century.