RUSSIAN CHURCHES & CATHEDRALS

Orthodox Christianity was brought to Russia during the time of Vladimir, Grand Prince of Kiev, during the twelfth century. Vladimir sent representatives to distant lands to study the religions of other civilizations. They reported back to him saying:

Then we went to Greece, and the Greeks led us to where they worship their God, and we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We only know that God dwells there among men. (The Russian Primary Chronicle)

Bishops from Greece traveled to Russia to spread the faith, and Vladimir and many of his countrymen were converted to Christianity.

The history of Russia was always characterized by invasions from foreign enemies, such as the Tartar Khans, in which the people sought to defend their homeland. By the 16th century the Khans suppressed the independence of the Russian lands, exacting monetary tribute, and prohibiting the unhindered practice of the Orthodox Christianity by the Russian peoples. It was primarily the desire for political and economic freedom, and the desire for the freedom to worship in the Orthodox Christian manner, which lead the Russian Czar Ivan Grozny to lead an army of 150,000 upon the Tartar stronghold at the city of Kazan in the summer of 1552.

On the Orthodox Feast Day of the Protection of the Theotokos, called "the Pokhrov" (October 1, 1552) the army marched on Kazan. The following day the city fell to the armies of Ivan. The victory was attributed to the intercessions of the Theotokos (the Mother of God) on behalf of the Russian people. Some 3 years later in 1555 the Czar ordered the beginning of the construction of the Pokhrovsky Cathedral in commemoration of this victory.

The Cathedral of the Pokhrov, commonly called St. Basil's Cathedral, is one of the most prominent landmarks in Russia, and one of the most spectacular buildings in the world. It is recognized the world over as a symbol of Russia and of the Russian Orthodox Church.

After Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453, Russia continued for several centuries to develop a national art that had grown out of the middle Byzantine period. During the 10th-15th centuries, Russian art had begun to show marked local variation from the Byzantine model, and after the fall of Constantinople it continued along these distinctive lines of development. This period of Russian art, which lasted until the adoption of western European culture in the 18th century, is also known as the Moscow or National period.

During the Moscow period, churches in Russia began to develop a style all their own. The following brief essay describes well the changes in Russian architecture:

After the hegemony in the world of Orthodox Christianity shifted to Muscovite Russia, Moscow, having become the new city of Constantine--the "third Rome"--and aspiring to rival the older centres of culture, launched a building program commensurate with its international importance. The Kremlin and two of its important churches were rebuilt by Italian architects between 1475 and 1510. These churches, the Assumption (Uspensky) Cathedral and the Cathedral of St. Michael the Archangel, were largely modeled after the churches of Vladimir. The Italians were required to incorporate the basic features of Byzantine planning and design into the new cathedrals; it was only in the exterior decoration of St. Michael the Archangel that they succeeded in introducing Italian decorative motifs. A third church, the modest Annunciation Cathedral (1484-89), with its warm beauty, was the work of Pskov architects. There the kokoshniki were introduced in the treatment of the roof. This element, similar in outline to the popular Russian bochka roof (pointed on top, with the sides forming a continuous double curve, concave above and convex below), foreshadowed a tendency to replace the forms of the Byzantine arch by more elongated silhouettes. Ecclesiastical architecture began to lose the special features associated with the Byzantine heritage, becoming more national in character and increasingly permeated with the taste and thought of the people. The most important change in Russian church design of the 16th century was the introduction of the tiered tower and the tent-shaped roof first developed in wood by Russia's carpenters. Next was the substitution of the bulb-shaped spire for the traditional Byzantine cupola. This affected the design of masonry architecture by transforming its proportions and decoration and even its structural methods. The buildings acquired a dynamic, exteriorized articulation and specifically Russian national characteristics.

The boldest departures from Byzantine architecture were the churches of the Ascension at Kolomenskoye (1532) and the Decapitation of St. John the Baptist at Dyakovo (c. 1532) and, above all, the Cathedral of St. Basil (Vasily) the Blessed (or, the Pokrovsky Cathedral) in Moscow, 1554-60. In St. Basil the western academic architectural concepts, based on rational, manifest harmony, were ignored; the structure, with no easily readable design and a profusion of disparate colourful exterior decoration, is uniquely medieval Russian in content and form, in technique, decoration, and feeling. St. Basil, like its predecessors the churches at Kolomenskoye and Dyakovo, embodies the characteristic features of the wood churches of northern Russia, translated into masonry. An effective finishing touch was given to the ensemble of the Kremlin's Cathedral Square by the erection of the imposing Belfry of Ivan II the Great, begun in 1542. The colossal white stone "column of fame," with its golden cupola gleaming above the Kremlin hill, was the definite expression of an era, reflecting the tastes and grandiose political ambitions of the rising Russian state. (Russian Orthodox Church)