The founder of the monastery, Sergy Radonezhsky, played a huge role in the socio-political and religious life of Russian people in the 14th and 15th centuries. He had over seventy students, who founded over fifty monasteries across all of Rus, ten of which are objects of Russian cultural heritage today. Thus was established the whole monastic school which would affect the future of the country’s culture.
Sergy Radonezhsky also exercised a great spiritual authority and reconciled the Russian princes to each other, thus preventing civil war and unifying the Russian principalities into one state. In 1380 the Moscow prince Dmitry Donskoy came to Sergy at the monastery and requested a blessing on his battle against Tatar Mongol oppressors. This was the first victory for Russian troops over the oppressors and marked the beginning of liberation from the domination of the Tatars. During the troubled period from 1608-1610 the monastery withstood the siege of foreign interventionists and became once again the centre of political life of the country. Hence, in 1613, Tsar Mikhail Romanov went to Moscow to be crowned. At the monastery, Pyotr I twice survived attempts on his life from rebellion and musketeers of Princess Sofia in 1685. In the 19th century, the monastery became elected as a Patriarch of Moscow and all of Rus.