The monograph by E. S. Kharin is dedicated to a complex and ambiguous phenomenon - Old Russian monasticism. The author identified the possibilities of church-canonical sources to restore the details of the life of pre-Mongol communal monasteries. According to available sources, the features of the everyday life and lifestyle of ancient Russian monasticism of the 11th - first third of the 13th centuries have been reconstructed. - a special environment where the culture of Domongol Rus was created for two centuries.