The following charter, granted by the Patriarch Iov on 5 February 1590 to the abbot of the Novinskii monastery, gives a picture of an important late-sixteenth-century monastic estate and the range of obligations imposed on its peasants.

The monastery had been founded by the metropolitan Fotii in 1430; it was located west of Moscow, on the east bank of the Presnya, by the confluence of the Presnya and the Moskva, near Kudrino village. By the sixteenth century the monastery's lands in this area stretched from what is now the Arbat to the Krasnaya Presnya; the monastery was, thus, important in terms both of its links with the highest levels of the church and its location.

For ease of reference only, sections of the charter have been numbered; in what follows figures in brackets refer to these numbered sections.

The charter shows that the monastery held lands in a number of locations. The monastery itself was on the outskirts of Moscow, but there were holdings in Moscow uezd, in Ruza, Dmitrov (3), Romanov (21), Kostroma (23) and Kashin (24) uezds. It had artisan quarters, free settlements (2, 27), manorial settlements, villages and their dependent hamlets (e.g. 2 and 3). One group of settlements is specified as ‘distant villages’ (21).

The various categories of monastic clergy, monks and servants, and also rural servants, and peasants are mentioned, as well as hired men (2, 26, 27, 28).