History

Holy Trinity Monastery was founded in 1930, and began both printing and publishing books regularly in 1947.

Inheritors of a Five Hundred Year Old Tradition

Archbishop Vitaly (Maximenko) and the monks who came to Holy Trinity Monastery from Eastern Europe after World War II brought with them a tradition of printing that stretched back to St Job of Pochaev in the seventeenth century, and almost to the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century. Through the fathers’ tireless efforts, the monastery has been printing and/or publishing Orthodox Christian books for over seventy years. More than five hundred works have been published in Church Slavonic, Russian and English. During the dark years of the Soviet Union, many of these books published by the monastery played an integral role in keeping the Orthodox Faith alive amidst stark oppression. Even today, many Russian clergy and faithful remember the days when the only Orthodox books they could obtain were Jordanville publications.

For much of this time the Fathers of the monastery operated their own printing press known as the Print Shop of St Job of Pochaev. Books were typeset, printed, and hand bound in the print shop. Increasingly they were sold not only to visitors to the monastery but also to other monasteries and churches throughout the world, as well as to libraries and the occasional commercial bookstore.

Changes

The world has changed dramatically since 1947. The Soviet Union is long dead and the Russian Orthodox Church freely ministers to the needs of the faithful in Russia. Conversely there is a growing spiritual vacuum in the West which cries out for knowledge of “the Faith once and for all delivered to the Saints.” This Faith has been preserved by the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian people with its own cultural uniqueness. Holy Trinity Monastery is an inheritor of this culture and seeks now through its publications to make this more widely known.

Holy Trinity Publications

Holy Trinity Publications thus seeks to make known the heritage of Orthodox Russia in a way that is accessible to all today who seek to live a life of faithfulness to God within His Holy Church. We publish primarily in English and to a lesser extent in Church Slavonic and Russian. Our list is divided into two imprints: The Print Shop of St Job of Pochaev (PSJP) and Holy Trinity Seminary Press. (HTSP) Increasingly rights to our titles are being sold or granted to publishers in other countries who publish them in other languages including Russian, Romanian, Greek and Japanese. 

Modern Technology

We make best use of all that modern technologies can offer so that this heritage can be found and appropriated by the greatest number of people. Whilst no longer printing at the monastery, we acquire, prepare and publish content reflecting the heritage of Orthodox Russia in both physical and digital forms.