Tent churches in Russia: examples

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:46

High, tented temples, visible from afar, turned out to be the most suitable in form for construction in Russia. Many monuments have survived to this day and still amaze tourists with their beauty. Even the area of the interior did not play a role; in the old days, hipped temples were not created for a large crowd of people. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries proved to be the most fruitful for the appearance of interesting monuments. For example, St. Basil's Cathedral (Cathedral of the Intercession on the Moat) in Moscow, on Red Square, was built in 1552 and marked the appearance of the capture of Kazan. Other tent churches in Russia can hardly compete with him in beauty and fame.

Architecture

Basically, they were all built in roughly the same way. A stable quadrangle, on which a small octagon was installed - a support for an octagonal tent, directed high into the sky. Nevertheless, each architect brought something of his own to the construction, which is why there are no two absolutely identical temples. Ingenuity was most often expressed in variations of various details, in decoration.

A feature that all tent temples retain is the absence of pillars, that is, the whole structure rests on the walls, thereforewide tents are practically impossible. So, it was for this reason that the overly wide stone tent of the cathedral of the New Jerusalem Monastery collapsed. Then it was replaced with a light wooden one and sheathed with iron, and the temple stands, pleases the people around.

Prohibition?

For one century hipped temples have spread widely in the country. But the church reform of Patriarch Nikon broke out in 1653, after which this style became as if under a ban. Tent temples in Russia ceased to be built. Perhaps there was no direct ban on construction. But the fact is that stone hipped temples were not erected after Nikon's reform. In the north, wooden tents continued to be erected on small churches, and the same tops of the bell towers remained popular until the advent of classicism.

Unfortunately, very few examples of wooden architecture have been preserved, hipped wooden temples, in addition to wear and tear and post-revolutionary abandonment, have undergone many hardships and almost disappeared. There are, however, reserved islands in the country where antiquities are kept. When at the end of the nineteenth century popularity returned to the Russian style (it turned out, however, pseudo-Russian), hipped architecture seemed to be revived. However, these buildings were very different from their predecessors. The hipped temples of the 17th century turned out to be impossible to repeat, and even more so the very first ones that appeared at the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Traditions

The appearance of tent tops is primarily due to the fact that Russian churches were built most often as monuments dedicated to certain events. The hipped temples of the 16th century were more and more stretched upwards. Russian temple architecture developed precisely from changes in vaults. The hypothesis about the connection between the traditions of stone architecture and the earlier - wooden - remained unproven and not even completely true. This can be deduced from studies of the first buildings - the Church of the Ascension in Kolomenskoye (1532, Vasily III) and the Church of the Ascension in Vologda Posad (1493). These are the most eloquent examples of stone-made hipped temples.

An interesting example and the Church of the Intercession in Medvedkovo, where the architectural type is clearly expressed with a tent instead of a dome. This temple is very similar to the magnificent multi-domed Cathedral of the Intercession of St. Basil the Blessed and is quite worthy of a more specific description. The most famous Russian hipped churches are also very characteristic: Intercession (formerly Trinity) Church of Alexander Sloboda (1510), Uglich Church "Divnaya" (1628), Moscow's Church of the Nativity of the Virgin in Putinki.

Medvedkovo

This temple is built on a high basement (down there, Znamenskaya Winter Church), which holds the entire volume of the quadrangle, the corners of which are completed with small cupolas. On the quadrangle there is a rather low light octagon as the base of a pointed stone tent. The proportions of the quadrangle and octagon are squat, solid, and the tent gives the structure a special harmony and almost flight, because the height of the tent almost exceeds the entire lower part of the temple. The basement, surrounded by galleries, has two equal-sized aisles - the Nine Martyrs and SergiusRadonezh.

By the way, for the first time in Russia, single-domed quadrangles here were given a four-pitched roof. The altar part of the building, crowned with a special dome, has its own rare multi-stage composition due to the apse lower church extended to the east. Kokoshniks, placed in rows along the entire top of the walls of the quadrangle, as well as on the base of the tent and on the crowning dome, emphasize the pyramidal construction of the building, its solemnity, aspiration to the sky and beauty that elevates the soul. And from the west, the temple seems to be supported by an Empire two-tier bell tower, rebuilt in the 1840s.

History

The coming Time of Troubles was marked by all sorts of natural disasters, interventions from the Poles and Swedes, so the state, political and economic situation of the state was the hardest. The hipped temples of Moscow, and indeed the whole country, have practically ceased to be built. Stone construction as such ceased altogether. Only twenty-five years later, Russia reached a sufficient level for the resumption of stone architecture. Basically, after 1620, the temples repeated the previous types of buildings.

And very soon the reform of Patriarch Nikon followed, when the tent churches no longer "corresponded to the rank." Nikon liked domes with three or five domes. In 1655, during the construction of the church in Veshnyaki, by order of the patriarch, two aisles were completed not with pointed, but with round domes, although the project provided for the first.

Pillar as a forerunner

Here first of allthere was a refusal in the course of the church reform from everything old and the preference of the patriarch of everything Byzantine, including cross-domed structures. While the tent-roof churches in Russia were more reminiscent of Western European Gothic: dynamics, upward striving, tower-like architecture of pillar-shaped churches.

For example, the Church of John the Baptist in the village of Dyakovo (Moscow) and the Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord in the village of Ostrov (Moscow region). Both were built in the second half of the sixteenth century, both are pillar-shaped and precede the tent-type buildings. Another example is one of the most famous churches-bell towers "Ivan the Great", built in honor of John of the Ladder on the territory of the Kremlin in 1505.

Examples

The function of the bell tower with a tier of belfries built directly above the temple does not correspond to the purpose of tent churches. There were many different architectural solutions in use here, great freedom for the architect, and yet, almost always, small pillar-shaped temples were obtained.

For example, the Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit (1476, Trinity-Sergius Lavra), Kolomna St. George's Bell Tower (formerly the Church of the Archangel Gabriel, 1530), the Church of Simeon the Stylite (Danilovsky Monastery, Moscow, 1732, built over Holy Gates), two also gate churches in the Donskoy Monastery, the Church of St. Sergius of Radonezh (Novospassky Monastery, bell tower), the Church of Theodore Stratilates the Holy Warrior (Menshikov Tower, Moscow, nineteenth century) and some others.

Symbols

Stone tent architecture is similar in form to wooden, this style is common from ancient times to the present day. It appeared, judging by the chronicles, obviously according to the samples of wood. However, if for structural reasons the dome was replaced by a tent during the construction of temples made of wood, then stone construction can in no way be connected with the construction. Rather, it was a desire to convey a certain image - festivity, striving upward. Not only in the provinces, but also in the capital, the elongated silhouettes of wooden temples were the most desirable and always played a leading role.

Tent architecture contains the deepest semantic load: it is both the path to the Kingdom of Heaven and the connection of a square (the created world) with a circle (a symbol of eternity). Chetverik - a square symbolizing the earth, an octagon - all directions of space along the cardinal points, plus an eight-pointed star as a symbol of the Virgin and the eighth day - the sacred number of the century to come. The tent crowning the temple is a cone, the image of the ladder of the Forefather Jacob, the path to God.

Kolomenskoye and Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda

Trinity Church of Alexander Sloboda (now - Intercession) - the palace church of Prince Vasily III. Concerning the date of construction, there have been disagreements for a long time, but recent studies date it to 1510. Prior to this, the very first tent church was considered to be the Ascension Church in Kolomenskoye (1532), which was also built by the same Grand Duke.

This is by far the greatest masterpiece, but it was not the first. Both temples were built in the sovereign's estates assmall courtiers. Moreover, Voznesenskaya became a monument in honor of the birth of the heir - the great Ivan the Terrible. The creator of the amazing ensemble in Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda is considered to be the architect from Italy - Aleviz Novy, the author of the Church of the Ascension is also supposedly an Italian - Petrok Malaya.

St. Basil's Cathedral

Since this is the main attraction not only of Moscow, but of the whole country, this tented temple needs to be told in as much detail as possible. The Kazan Khanate was defeated, and a monument was created in honor of this, which to this day is a symbol of Russia and an unsurpassed architectural monument. The Cathedral of the Intercession on the Moat was under construction for six years (since 1555) and turned out to be unusually, even not at all earthly beautiful. Previously, the Trinity Church and a defensive moat along the entire Kremlin were located here, which was filled up only in 1813. In its place is now a necropolis and a mausoleum.

Who is St. Basil the Blessed, buried right next to the Trinity Church, on Red Square? This is a Moscow holy fool, endowed with the gift of clairvoyance, who predicted many disasters, including a huge fire in 1547, when almost all of Moscow burned down. Ivan the Terrible himself honored and was rather afraid of St. Basil the Blessed, which is why they buried him with honors and in the reddest place. Moreover, a temple was soon laid nearby, where the relics of the holy fool clairvoyant were later transferred, since real miracles began on his grave immediately after the funeral - people were healed, regained their sight, the lame began to walk, and the paralyzed got up.

From eight victories

The Kazan campaign began, for the first time ending in victory, usually the Russians in this direction suffered setback after setback. Ivan the Terrible made a vow - if Kazan falls, the most grandiose temple will be erected on Red Square as a memory of the victory. And he fully fulfilled the promise.

The war was long, and in honor of each victory of Russian weapons, a small church was built next to the Trinity Church in honor of the saint whose day it coincided with its possession. After the triumphant return, Ivan the Terrible, instead of eight new wooden churches, decided to build one large stone one - the most famous one, so that for many centuries.

Legends

The builders of the beautiful temple have received such an abundance of a wide variety of stories that it is simply not possible to bring everything here. It was traditionally believed that Tsar Ivan the Terrible hired two craftsmen: Barma and Postnik Yakovlev. In fact, there was only one person - Ivan Yakovlevich, by the name of Barma, and nicknamed Postnik. There is a legend that after the construction, the sovereign blinded the architects so that they would never again and nowhere build anything more beautiful than this temple. How many works of art based on this fairy tale have been written! However, this is not the case either.

There are documents, and there are quite a lot of them, that after the Cathedral of the Intercession this Postnik built the Kazan Kremlin. It could have been more beautiful, probably, but nowhere. Of course, not the same as St. Basil's Cathedral, which is unique, but also a great work of architecture. In addition, it is Postnik's hand that is felt in the constructionAnnunciation Cathedral (Moscow Kremlin), Assumption Cathedral, St. Nicholas Church (Sviyazhsk - both), even the Church of John the Baptist in Dyakovo. All these temples were created much later.