Church of the Ascension in Kolomna UNESCO. A marvelous temple in honor of the formidable king - the Church of the Ascension of the Lord in Kolomenskoye. Festive feast and death of Vasily III

The ingenious Church of the Ascension in the village of Kolomenskoye is one of the few surviving monuments from the era of Ivan the Terrible in Moscow. And in the urban planning model of the medieval “Third Rome,” Kolomenskoye was a symbol of the very Mount of Olives on which the Ascension of the Lord took place.

"For the sovereign"

According to legend, the history of the village of Kolomenskoye began in 1237, during the time of Batu’s invasion. Legend has it that at that time the inhabitants of the town of Kolomna fled from the terrible khan from their devastated city closer to Moscow and allegedly even wanted to take refuge within the walls of the Kremlin, but it was already occupied by Muscovites. And then the refugees set up the settlement of Kolomninskoye on the southern outskirts of the Mother See, on the high bank of the Moscow River, named in memory of their destroyed city. Then it began to be called simply Kolomenskoye.

Indeed, the name of the village of Kolomenskoye comes from the name of the city of Kolomna. But the origin of the name of the city itself, both legends and numerous versions of scientists, explain differently. Most likely, this is a hydronym for the Kolomenka River. Or it came from the word “quarry”, where building stone was then mined. Or from the word “well”, which meant a dungeon where prisoners languished in the stocks. Or even from the noble Italian family Colonna: supposedly its representative, Charles Colonna, fleeing the persecution of the Pope, begged land from the Russian sovereign, founded an entire city on it and named it after himself. It is usually believed that the name Kolomna is based on the Finno-Ugric word “kolm”, meaning burial ground or cemetery, or the Slavic word “kolomen”, that is, “neighborhood”, “surroundings” (“about”), which was quite suitable for Kolomna near Moscow, and for Kolomenskoye.

The village of Kolomenskoye was first mentioned in 1339 in the spiritual letter (will) of Prince Ivan Kalita, which he drew up before his next trip to the Horde (no one knew then what the prince would return with or whether he would return). At that time, Kolomenskoye was already listed as “the sovereign’s”, that is, it was listed as the patrimonial possession of the Moscow princes. It was truly a heavenly place with water meadows and picturesque surroundings, where the Grand Duke's and then the Tsar's summer residence was located for several centuries. In the same 14th century, the first wooden princely palace was built with a facade facing the Moscow River.

Prince Dimitry Donskoy stopped in Kolomenskoye to rest with his army, returning from the Battle of Kulikovo: here jubilant Muscovites greeted him with honor, bread and salt, “honey and sables.” According to legend, it was he who founded the thanksgiving ceremony here. wooden church in the name of St. George the Victorious, the patron saint of the princely family and the Russian army, near which they buried the soldiers who died on the return journey and were wounded on the Kulikovo field. According to another version, this church was founded in honor of the joyful meeting of the victorious prince.

The village of Kolomenskoye itself was then still insignificant. Ivan III especially fell in love with this place and established a permanent residence in it. And only since the reign of Vasily III, who loved to “live” here and played an exceptional role in the fate of Kolomenskoye, has the village experienced the beginning of its heyday. The most august residents of Kolomenskoye became the customers of its churches. The peculiarity of Kolomenskoye is that its monuments cannot be considered separately. Only together they form the historical phenomenon of Kolomenskoye, which contains many mysteries and secrets, capturing the most fateful and dramatic events of Russian history.

"And all the beauty under heaven"

It is believed that after the wooden St. George Church, the first stone church appeared here - in honor of the Beheading of John the Baptist, in Dyakovo - on a high hill, separated from the rest of Kolomenskoye by a deep ravine. (It is interesting that in this place in the 19th century the oldest archaeological culture in Moscow, the Dyakovo archaeological culture, a primitive settlement from the Stone Age, was discovered.)

The delightful Baptist Church, belonging to XVI century and revered as the architectural predecessor of the Church of the Intercession on the Moat on Red Square, it contains many mysteries. According to traditional opinion, it was founded by Vasily III in 1529 as a prayer and votive temple for the birth of an heir, whom the Grand Duke had been waiting for more than 20 years and for the sake of which he decided to take an unprecedented step at that time - an official divorce from his first wife, Solomonia Saburova. She was forcibly tonsured in the Moscow Nativity Monastery, and she, according to legend, cursed her ex-husband, his new marriage, and all his offspring for this. But in Vasily III’s second marriage to Elena Glinskaya, there were no children for several years. In the winter of 1528/1529, the grand ducal couple traveled to monasteries with a prayer for the granting of an heir, but the couple did not receive what they asked for until they turned in prayer to the Monk Paphnutius of Borovsky.

Grand Duke Vasily III began building prayer churches to St. John the Baptist long before the birth of his son. Their dedication was associated with the namesake of Ivan Kalita, the ancestor of the Moscow Grand Dukes: thus Vasily III prayed for the granting of an heir, whom he promised to name John in honor of his great ancestor. After the birth of a son in 1530, who was actually named John, churches of St. John the Baptist were built in honor of his name day.

It is traditionally believed that in 1529, Vasily III, in commemoration of prayer for his son, built the multi-altar Church of the Baptist in Kolomenskoye. High altar dedicated to John the Baptist, which symbolized the sovereign’s desire to have an heir, the namesake Ivan Kalita. The prayer for conception was expressed in the dedication of one of the chapels righteous Anna- Mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Another chapel is dedicated to the Apostle Thomas, who at first did not believe in the Resurrection of Christ, which symbolized the awareness of the sovereign, who had no offspring, of the sinfulness of unbelief and doubt. The dedication of another chapel to Metropolitan Peter, the patron saint of the Kalita family, marked a prayer for the sending of a miracle. The next altar was consecrated in honor of Equal-to-the-Apostles Constantine the Great and his mother Elena, which symbolized a prayer to the heavenly patroness Elena Glinskaya.

On August 25, 1530 (Old Art.), on the eve of the memory of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, the long-awaited heir, the future first Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible, was born. In honor of the birth of his son, Vasily III ordered the construction of several Baptist churches in Moscow the following year, 1531, including the famous Ioannovsky Monastery on Kulishki. The main of these thanksgiving churches was the Church of the Ascension in Kolomenskoye, consecrated in 1532.

However, the mysteries of the Forerunner Temple are just beginning. This is undoubtedly a memorial church, that is, erected to commemorate some event, but what - now historians doubt the definite answer. Modern versions of scientists are divided into the above-mentioned early one - the temple was built as a prayer to Vasily III for the birth of an heir, and the later one - the temple was built by Ivan the Terrible himself, who loved Kolomenskoye no less than his father, and was dedicated to him heavenly patron. It could have appeared in memory of the wedding of Ivan Vasilyevich to the throne in 1547, although in honor of this event the Petroverigsky Church on Maroseyka was built in Moscow (the wedding took place on the Feast of the Adoration of the Chains of the Apostle Peter), from which now only the name of Petroverigsky Lane remains. Among other reasons for the construction of the Baptist Church in Kolomenskoye, they include the capture of Kazan in 1552, and a prayer for the granting of an heir - Tsarevich John Ioannovich, and thanksgiving for his birth, and even repentance for his murder. Another ancient legend says that the Baptist Church was built by the same architects Barma and Postnik who erected the Cathedral of the Intercession on the Moat, which not only refutes famous legend about the blinding of the masters, but also gives it a different meaning: when asked by the king whether they could build a temple better, they answered that they could - and built a new miracle in Kolomenskoye. (If only the Church of the Baptist was actually built in the 1550s.)

But still, most scientists are inclined to the traditional version about the temporary priority of the Baptist Church over the Ascension Church and that it became the predecessor of the Intercession Cathedral, a kind of architectural experiment, where for the first time around central temple Several side churches were united. If the supporters of the later version are right, then the Church of the Baptist was the home church of the family of Ivan the Terrible, whose birth was so gratefully commemorated by the Church of the Ascension in Kolomenskoye.

The same debates are ongoing about the reason for the construction of the Church of the Ascension. Others believe that it could have been built by Vasily III not as a thanksgiving temple, but as a votive temple (if the Church of the Baptist was built later). Others even believe that the Ascension Church had nothing to do with the birth of the heir, but was built by Vasily III in gratitude for the victory over the Crimean prince Islam-Girey, won in 1528. The majority is inclined to the generally accepted version that the Ascension Church is a thanksgiving church, erected after the birth of the future tsar, which was accompanied by signs that greatly frightened Muscovites - a thunderstorm with lightning and even an earthquake.

The second line of dispute is the name of the architect of the Ascension Church. Some call him “unknown,” but undoubtedly a Russian master. Others - and the majority of them - consider him the architect of the Italian architect Petrok Maly, who built the fortress wall of Kitai-gorod in Moscow and the palace of Vasily III in Kolomenskoye in the same 1530s. Previously, the Kolomna Church of the Ascension was mistakenly attributed to Aleviz Novy, who built the Archangel Cathedral in the Kremlin. The architectural elements and technique of the Ascension Church indicate that its author was familiar with Italian architecture. After all, at that time the “great construction projects” of the Italians in Moscow were still going on, where they were nicknamed “Fryazins”: not accustomed to Russian frosts, they complained in their own language: “Fre! fre!” - "Cold". Petrok the Small, despite his masterpieces, was unlucky in Russia. From the “great rebellion and statelessness” that began after the death of Elena Glinskaya in 1538, he fled to Livonia, he was sent to Dorpat to be tried by the local bishop, who decided to hand over the fugitive to the Moscow prince. What fate befell him in the future is unknown. After all, he knew many secrets of the Moscow fortresses, which the Russian sovereigns did not want to divulge.

To understand the symbolic and architectural phenomenon of the Ascension Church of Kolomensky, one should turn to the canons of the urban planning model of medieval Moscow, which conceived itself as the “Third Rome”, and the only heir of Byzantium, and God’s chosen power, called upon to preserve the Orthodox Church, and the center of world Orthodoxy. Medieval Moscow reproduced in its urban planning the symbols of the main Christian civilizations - Jerusalem, Constantinople, Rome, of which it felt itself to be the successor, and the image of the City of God from the Revelation of John the Theologian. Moscow was meaningfully arranged as an architectural and urban planning icon of the City of God - Heavenly Jerusalem - and was likened to the image of the Holy Land associated with earthly life Lord Jesus Christ.

In this urban planning model of the “Third Rome”, Grand Duke Kolomenskoye was given a special role - to symbolize the Jerusalem Mount of Olives, on which the Ascension of the Lord took place. The largest Orthodox researcher of medieval Moscow, M.P. Kudryavtsev, noted that in Moscow, unlike Jerusalem, this urban planning axis developed not to the East, but to the south - from the Kremlin to Kolomenskoye through Zamoskvorechye, which in turn was an image of the Garden of Gethsemane. And the very architecture of the snow-white, slender, crystal-faceted Kolomna Church, soaring into the sky on the high bank of the Moscow River, symbolized the Ascension of the Lord.

According to Russian eschatological idea The Kolomna Church of the Ascension was also a symbol of the Second Coming of Christ, which is expected there, on the Mount of Olives, where His Ascension took place. Moscow, which set itself up as the “Third Rome,” seemed to be preparing the way for the Lord. And so it turned out that in Kolomenskoye - the symbolic Mount of Olives of Moscow - it was the Ascension Church that was built, as in Jerusalem. There is a version that the temple in Kolomenskoye is located at the same distance from the Kremlin “a day’s journey” as the Mount of Olives is from Jerusalem. In medieval times, the expectation of the imminent end of the world was natural, and it could be expected precisely in the “Third Rome” as the last and only stronghold of world Orthodoxy after Russia realized its messianic idea. According to Moscow legend, a symbolic place was even prepared for the Lord in the eastern part of the Ascension Church.

Moreover, before the final construction of Ivan the Great under Boris Godunov, it was the Ascension Church in Kolomenskoye that was the tallest building in Moscow: its height was more than 60 meters . The construction of such a symbolic temple in the Grand Ducal Kolomenskoye emphasized the role of the Moscow sovereigns and the entire Russian state as a stronghold and defense of the Orthodox Church according to the ideology of the “Third Rome”. The enormous height of the temple also determined the freedom of the internal space, which created a feeling of free ascension and eyes and souls directed to the sky.

“That church is wonderful in its height and beauty and lightness, such has never been seen before in Rus',” an ancient chronicler wrote about it. The purpose of the Ascension Church to symbolize God's chosenness of Russia and the Russian idea corresponded to the new ingenious architecture of the temple, like an arrow rushing to heaven: a tent placed at the base of the temple instead of the traditional cross-domed churches that came to us from Byzantium. This was the first stone tented temple in Rus'. It expressed, firstly, the identity of Russia as an independent Orthodox civilization and, secondly, the very symbolic idea of the tent. If in cross-domed churches the Orthodox cross is the basis of the layout, the internal pillars mean the support (pillars) of the Church (that’s why images of saints were painted on them), and the traditional five-domed structure symbolizes the Lord Jesus Christ surrounded by the four evangelist apostles, then in a tented church the meaning is revealed otherwise. Since ancient times, since Old Testament times, the tent canopy has symbolized the holiness of the place over which it was erected. IN Christian tradition the tent canopy, as an image of Divine grace, was erected over the sacred place, symbolizing its God-preservation and the grace of God descending on it. In tent-roofed church architecture, a canopy was erected both over the temple - the house of God and its altar, and over those praying in it, and in the Kolomna Ascension Church - also over the members of the grand ducal family, and especially over the heir born through fervent prayers.

Most importantly, the tented temple in Kolomenskoye was associated with the dedication of this temple near Moscow to the Lord and His Ascension and His blessed canopy, which He spread over Russia and Moscow, which conceived itself as the “Third Rome” and “New Jerusalem”. Thus, in Russian architecture, the canopy in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, the main Christian temple universe. The single-domed roofed temple symbolizes Christ as the Head of the Church, and the pillar-shaped tented temple seemed to itself become a pillar of the Church and faith. The tent of the Church of the Ascension, original and free, truly ascends into the sky, towards eternity, lifting the souls of those praying to God.

Some find in the tented church a negative feature of a break with tradition and even “the aspiration upward of a lonely, proud soul.” Others, on the contrary, see in it Russian prayer in stone - a new understanding of completely traditional ideas without any break with them. Sometimes the Ascension Church is compared to a powerful tree, rooted in the ground with strong roots, symbolizing the heavenly “tree of life” and the tree of the grand ducal family. After all, it was the Grand Duke’s order that gave birth to a new architectural form of the tent-temple, which Patriarch Nikon later fought against as a non-canonical phenomenon. And if the Church of the Ascension in Kolomenskoye was the first of the Russian stone hipped churches, then the last one preserved in Moscow, built in the hipped style before the decree of Patriarch Nikon in 1648, is the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary in Putinki on Malaya Dmitrovka. Nikon, having banned tented churches, ordered a return to the Byzantine cross-domed church and demonstrated the required model in the Cathedral of the 12 Apostles in the Kremlin, built in his patriarchal residence. And from then on, tents were erected only over bell towers for a long time, and only from the end of the 17th century began new era in the history of Moscow tented churches - Naryshkin Baroque.

Researchers also argue about the sources of the tent-roofed architecture of the Ascension Church. Some unconditionally consider the tent to be a purely national style, born from wooden Russian architecture, but others see in it Italian, Polotsk, and even Tatar origins. This explanation is also interesting: as the Moscow population increased, temples were needed that could accommodate more people, and internal pillars interfered with this, so architects tried to do without them, erecting the first pillarless temples, where the roof rests directly on the walls, such as a church Saint Tryphon in Naprudny.

The Church of the Ascension, which became the summer church of the Grand Dukes, was intended only for members of the august family (which is why its internal dimensions are relatively small) and was connected by a covered passage to the palace. It also had an important defensive significance - a watchtower from which watchmen received “telegraph” fire signals about danger from the Moscow region. With the help of torches or lit birch bark they were transferred further - to the Simonov Monastery and to the bell tower of Ivan the Great. After all, it was from the south that the greatest danger to the borders of Moscow was then threatened - Tatar raids.

In the same 16th century, a separate bell tower appeared, which became the belfry of the Ascension Church. In its lower tier, the throne was consecrated in the name of St. George the Victorious. According to legend, it was built on the site of the wooden St. George Church, which was erected by Dmitry Donskoy. There is a version that the construction of this bell tower also began under Vasily III in honor of the birth and namesake of his second son, Yuri (baptized George), born in October 1533. Slender, swift, high bell tower as if its architecture echoed the Church of the Ascension.

The truly wonderful Ascension Church was consecrated by Bishop Vassian (Toporkov), nephew of Kolomna St. Joseph Volotsky was especially close to the court of the Grand Duke, who confessed and administered unction to Vasily III on his deathbed and to whom Ivan the Terrible later turned for advice on how to govern the state. After the consecration, Vasily III generously donated the temple with precious vessels and icons in rich vestments, and arranged a feast in Kolomenskoye, which lasted three days. But the time of the death of the Grand Duke was not far off. After his death in December 1533, Kolomenskoye was left to wait for a new owner - Ivan the Terrible himself.

Ivan the Terrible loved Kolomenskoye. According to legend, he built a huge “pleasure” palace here and spent a long time enjoying the beautiful view from the gallery of the Ascension Church. Here, in Kolomenskoye, he assembled regiments before the campaign against Kazan, here he was informed about the capture of Astrakhan, here he loved to hunt. For a long time there were legends about treasures with countless treasures, which the formidable king allegedly took from the conquered Novgorod and hid them in the dungeons under the Ascension Church. And most importantly, perhaps it was in Kolomenskoye that his legendary library was kept. There was a legend that Ivan the Terrible imposed a curse: whoever gets close to his “Liberia” will go blind.

Miracles of Kolomna

The beginning of the “rebellious age” was as difficult for Kolomensky as for all of Russia. In the summer of 1605, the troops of False Dmitry I were stationed here. Just a year later he was killed by the rebel Muscovites. The impostor was first buried in the Poor Houses at the Pokrovskaya Zastava (now Taganskaya Street), but then his body was dug up and burned in the village of Kotly, which was located a mile from Kolomenskoye. And in 1606, the rebel Ivan Bolotnikov camped here, who, in the wake of unrest, led another impostor, “Tsarevich Peter,” supposedly the son of Tsar Theodore Ioannovich, to Moscow. From Kolomenskoye he set out on a campaign to Moscow, but government troops fought at the very walls of the capital and drove Bolotnikov back to Kolomenskoye, where he suffered a siege by “fiery cannonballs” and went to Kaluga.

After his accession, Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov immediately ordered the construction of a new palace church in Kolomenskoye in honor of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, who saved Rus' from unrest. It was built only under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, in 1653, and its consecration was timed to coincide with memorable date: under the cross of the temple there was an inscription that it was erected in honor of the 100th anniversary of the capture of Kazan. It was under the “Quiet” Tsar that Kolomenskoye experienced its heyday: the famous wooden palace, a fabulous tower, was erected here, called the eighth wonder of the world by Simeon of Polotsk, who wrote: “Its beauty can be equaled / to Solomon’s beautiful palace.”

Sometimes it is even compared to the Palace of Knossos on the island of Crete. It had 270 rooms and three thousand mica windows, the painting of the choir was supervised by Simon Ushakov himself, and at the gate stood wooden lions covered with skins, rolling their eyes and roaring menacingly with the help of a skillful internal mechanism. Two more such lions stood on the sides of the royal throne and roared loudly as the ambassadors approached it. The palace was connected by a covered passage to the newly built Kazan house church, which had its own hierarchy of worshipers: the retinue prayed in the refectory, and those closest to them prayed in the temple in front of the iconostasis. With the liquidation of the palace in the 18th century, the Kazan Church became the parish church of the village of Kolomenskoye, and services under its arches were interrupted only in 1941–1942.

Here, in Kolomenskoye, Alexey Mikhailovich dealt with the participants of the Copper Riot in July 1662, when a crowd of thousands of Muscovites moved here demanding the extradition of the traitor boyars who had started a disastrous reform, from which money had become worthless. But the rebels were met by rifle regiments that arrived in time. There was also a special “petition pillar” on which petitions to the king were placed at a strictly allotted time, although other scientists believe that it was a pillar for a sundial, and petitions were placed to the king on a separate table specially set for that purpose. But it is known for sure that it was from here, from this royal residence, that the expression “Kolomenskaya Verst” came, as they jokingly call a tall, thin, lanky man. The fact is that when the royal road, magnificent for those times, was laid from Moscow to Kolomenskoye, new, huge mileposts of a hitherto unprecedented height were placed on it, and they were remembered by the people.

The very picturesque panorama of Kolomenskoye, natural and man-made, was designed to impress both foreign ambassadors and loyal subjects with the majesty of the royal residence, to symbolize the power, glory and idea of the great sovereigns of the Orthodox “Third Rome” - the Russian state.

According to legend, it was in Kolomenskoye that Peter I was born, which is why the poet A.I. Sumarokov pompously called Kolomenskoye “Russian Bethlehem” in his verses:

The greatness of Russia has shone in you;
The baby you matured in swaddling clothes,
Europe saw on the city walls,
And the ocean gave water to his area,
The peoples of all the earth trembled from him.

However, there are several such “legendary” places associated with the birth of Peter the Great in Moscow - this is also the Kremlin, and Petrovsko-Razumovskoye, which allegedly received its name because of the birth of Tsarevich Peter Alekseevich there... Most historians are of the opinion, that this sovereign was born in the Kremlin, and spent his childhood in Kolomenskoye. He and his brother were brought here from the raging Moscow during the Streltsy riot of 1682, here under a huge shady oak tree he learned to read and write from Nikita Zotov. Here young Peter lived after a quarrel with Princess Sophia, conducted his maneuvers, sailed for the first time on small boats along the river to the Kremlin and the Nikolo-Ugreshsky Monastery, even in stormy weather, and assembled amusing regiments. He honored the tradition of Russian sovereigns and, returning victorious after the capture of Azov and the Battle of Poltava, stopped in Kolomenskoye before the ceremonial entrance to Moscow, as Dimitri Donskoy once did. The last time Peter visited Kolomenskoye was during the coronation of Catherine I. But his daughter, the future autocrat Elizaveta Petrovna, was actually born in Kolomenskoye. For the rest of her life she remembered the wonderful fruits from the Kolomna gardens, so she often ordered them to be delivered to her in St. Petersburg. To keep the berries fresh, they were generously sprinkled with grain.

The emperors did not immediately abandon the “grandfather’s” Kolomensky. Catherine II at first fell in love with this “royal village of Moscow”, even ordered the miracle palace of Alexei Mikhailovich to be dismantled and built a new Catherine Palace with four floors, in which she wrote her famous order for the deputies of the Legislative Commission. Here she lived with her grandchildren Alexander and Konstantin. According to legend, they once secretly staged a duel in the deep ravine of Kolomenskoye. The future Emperor Alexander Pavlovich, like his great ancestor, also learned to read and write here, only under the cedar tree - this is how, according to tradition, the royal children were taught in the summer in the open air. Then Catherine II got bored, as she put it, “climbing mountains like a goat,” and during one such walk in Kolomenskoye, the empress set her sights on the neighboring estate of Black Mud, which then belonged to Prince Kantemir. Catherine bought Black Mud and renamed it Tsaritsyno. And her palace in Kolomenskoye was occupied by the French in 1812 and destroyed. The eminent architect Evgraf Tyurin built a new Alexander Palace, which was abolished due to disrepair at the end of the 19th century, and the royal residence here was never restored.

Kolomenskoye was also famous for its wonderful springs. An ancient legend says that along the bottom of a ravine in Kolomenskoye, St. George the Victorious was chasing a serpent on horseback. The horse's hooves hit the ground and springs with clean water, healing both eye and kidney diseases and especially infertility in women. They say that one of Grozny’s wives was healed here... And since then, women have prayed in Kolomenskoye for the gift of offspring. One such spring next to the Church of the Ascension is called “Kadochka”: in the log house above it there used to be a wooden tub, from which Muscovites collected healing water in buckets - and there was enough for everyone.

Main blow Kolomenskoye experienced after the capital was moved to St. Petersburg. Over time, Kolomensky’s life changed: the oblivion of the old Moscow residence by the emperors had an effect. The spirit of pre-revolutionary capitalism did not escape him either, when magnificent orchards began to be rented out, the land was prepared for cutting into summer cottages, and the territory of the estate was given over to folk festivals and entertaining bear fights.

And only the Ascension Church remained a place of pilgrimage, continuing to amaze those who saw it. Composer Hector Berlioz recalled that the shock experienced by the Church of the Ascension overshadowed the impressions of the Milan and Strasbourg cathedrals. “Nothing struck me so much in life as a monument ancient Russian architecture in Kolomenskoye... Here the beauty of the whole appeared before me. Everything inside me trembled. This was a mysterious silence, a harmony of the beauty of completed forms... I saw an aspiration upward, and I stood stunned for a long time.”

Something great, wonderful, long-awaited was about to happen under the arches of this temple. History has indeed prepared the highest mission for this church, and the miracle of God dawned on Kolomenskoye. Met here the coming revolution miraculous appearance of the Sovereign Icon Mother of God, which happened on that terrible day for Russia, March 2/15, 1917, when the sovereign abdicated the throne. The first spiritual rebuff to the dark times of Russian history was given right here, in the Kolomna Church of the Ascension.

The history of the phenomenon is well known: in February 1917, on the eve of the tragic events, peasant woman Evdokia Adrianova from a village neighboring Kolomenskoye had two wonderful dreams. In the first, she stood on the mountain and heard a voice saying: “The village of Kolomenskoye, a large, black icon, take it and make it red, then pray and ask for it.” The God-fearing peasant woman became timid and began to ask for an explanation of the unknown dream. A few days later she had a second dream: she saw white church, entered and saw the Majestic Woman sitting in her, in whom she recognized with her heart Holy Mother of God, although I did not see Her face. Having compared the two dreams and received communion, she went to Kolomenskoye and saw the very white church that she had dreamed about. The priest of the Church of the Ascension, Father Nikolai Likhachev, after listening to her, went with her in search of the image, but they found it only when they decided to go down to the basement and look at the icons stored there. When they discovered the largest icon, blackened with dust, and carefully washed it, the Sovereign image of the Mother of God was revealed, signifying that power in Russia had passed into the hands of the Queen of Heaven Herself.

There were several months left before the reign of the God-fighting Bolsheviks; news of the miraculous appearance of the icon spread throughout Russia. Crowds of pilgrims flocked to Kolomenskoye to worship the miraculous image, from which the first healings began, then the icon was brought to Marfo-Mariinskaya monastery to Saint Elizabeth Feodorovna. Then they took her to other churches, and only to Sundays she remained in Kolomenskoye.

There is a version that this image used to belong to Voznesensky convent in the Moscow Kremlin - Starodevichy. Before Napoleon’s invasion, everything valuable was hidden from the Kremlin, sent for evacuation, and they decided to hide the Sovereign Icon in Kolomenskoye, where by God’s Providence it remained until 1917. After the revolution and the closure of the Ascension Church, the icon was transferred to the neighboring St. George Church, and after its closure - to the storerooms of the State Historical Museum. Only on July 27, 1990, the Sovereign Icon returned to Kolomenskoye, to the Kazan Church that was then in operation. Thousands of people in the pouring rain were waiting for the shrine in Kolomenskoye... And when the icon arrived, the sun shone and in its rays the image returned to the temple. Tradition linked the return of the miraculous image with liberation from militant atheism and the salvation of Russia from theomachism. The very next year, the USSR ended its existence along with the fall of the power of the CPSU.

A joyful milestone in the history of the truly God-protected Kolomensky was the appointment of Pyotr Dmitrievich Baranovsky as director of the museum organized here, who became its real creator. In the first years of the revolution, the collective farm “Garden Giant” was already located on the territory of Kolomenskoye. All churches, except Kazan, closed in the 1920s. Baranovsky had to save not only Kolomenskoye, but also old Russia. He traveled around the country and collected the most valuable monuments, protecting them from destruction, took all the most valuable things from churches destined for demolition, and the staff of the Kolomna Museum then consisted of four people, including a watchman. This is how the saved wooden Russian monuments ended up here. architecture XVII century: a meadery from the village of Preobrazhenskoye, a gate tower from the Nikolo-Karelian monastery and even the house of Peter I from Arkhangelsk. According to the recollections of museum employees, Baranovsky himself more than once climbed a rope to the dome of the Church of the Ascension, and once fell and fell to the ground, but “rested.”

Baranovsky also opposed the active search for the “Liberia” of Ivan the Terrible. These searches intensified after the revolution, and archaeological searchers had government permission to do so. The mysterious library was then searched for everywhere it could supposedly be - in the Kremlin, and in Alexandrova Sloboda, and near the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, and in Kolomenskoye... Here excavations were carried out under the Ascension and Predtechenskaya churches: these dungeons were declared a search area because , they say, only deep underground could the library be reliably hidden from fires. Baranovsky, who was distinguished by his strong and sharp character, in turn turned to the authorities with a demand to ban the search by government decision, because the required excavation work threatened the most valuable architectural monuments and was in itself unsuccessful.

Now the Ascension Church is jointly owned by the Kolomna Museum and the Patriarchal Metochion, founded here in 1994. Two years after the creation of the courtyard, the Ascension Church was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

The Church of the Ascension of the Lord in the village of Kolomenskoye on the Moscow River was built in 1532. This is the second stone tented church in Rus', which marked the beginning of a wonderful temple style, which, alas, existed only until the reform of Patriarch Nikon in the middle of the 17th century.

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02 The village of Kolomenskoye on the Moscow River, according to legend, was founded by several families from the city of Kolomna, who fled by boat upstream from the invasion of the troops of Batu Khan in 1237. It is mentioned in the spiritual charter of Ivan Kalita in 1339, and from the beginning of the 15th century it passed from the Serpukhov prince Vladimir (grandson of Ivan Kalita) to the Moscow Grand Duke Vasily I and became a palace.

03 The princely and royal palaces were changed here several times, the most beautiful of which, built by Alexei Mikhailovich, stood until 1768.

04 The Ascension Tent Church - the main and most beautiful building of the palace village - was built in 1532. This is the first stone tented church (there is an assumption that wooden tented churches began to be built only in imitation of Kolomensky) in Rus', striking in its grandeur and at the same time harmonious forms.

05 He doesn’t even seem very tall until people appear next to him - only then do you realize how huge this church is. The temple was founded either in 1529 or 1530, by order of Vasily III in honor of the appearance of the long-awaited son and heir to the throne.

06 There is a high probability that the Ascension Church was built by Italian architects, perhaps Petrok Maly, who arrived in Moscow in 1528.

07 The “Italian” version is supported by the decor, which has not been seen before in Russian architecture, and the date stamped on the capital of the column in Arabic numerals according to the new chronology (from the Nativity of Christ), which were not used in Rus' at that time.

08 The building was built of large bricks; during construction, wrought iron ties were laid into the basement masonry. The composition of the temple is centric, even the altar part is not marked from the outside by an apse. The temple, cruciform at the base, is topped with an octagon, on which a high tent is placed. The transition from the lower part to the octagon is hidden by rows of triple kokoshniks, from which an octagonal pillar seems to “grow”.

09 At the bottom the temple is surrounded by galleries-promenades, supported by arcades; Covered stairs lead to the galleries. Initially, the walkways were open, and behind the altar there was a royal place with a “tower” roof, most likely built under Alexei Mikhailovich. From there the king distributed alms after the service.

10 The temple is decorated extremely skillfully and richly, without excesses: the edges of the lower volume are decorated with pilasters, a row of kokoshniks is placed along the bottom of the tent, the walls of the gallery and stairs are also not smooth.

11 But the most interesting is the surface of the edges of the tent itself: they are decorated with white stone rods in the form of “diamond rustication”, and at the time when the tent was painted red, they remained white. The inside of the tent is open, which creates a feeling of spaciousness inside a small temple.

12 The original tyablo iconostasis was dismantled under Nicholas I and replaced with an iconostasis from the Kremlin Ascension Monastery.

13 Later, the iconostasis was restored with the ancient icons preserved, although not in its original form.

14 In Soviet times, the Church of the Ascension, along with the rest of the monuments in the village of Kolomenskoye, was transferred to the jurisdiction of the museum-reserve, organized in 1928. In 2007, the lengthy restoration of the monument was completed, around which there was a serious discussion about its quality. But one way or another, the forests that for a long time hid the oldest tent of Moscow have now been removed, and the main vertical of the high bank of the Moscow River is again visible from everywhere.

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03 The princely and royal palaces were changed here several times, the most beautiful of which, built by Alexei Mikhailovich, stood until 1768.

06 There is a high probability that the Ascension Church was built by Italian architects, perhaps Petrok Maly, who arrived in Moscow in 1528.

12 The original tyablo iconostasis was dismantled under Nicholas I and replaced with an iconostasis from the Kremlin Ascension Monastery.

13 Later, the iconostasis was restored with the ancient icons preserved, although not in its original form.

The ancient village of Kolomenskoye near Moscow has been known since the beginning of the 14th century. For the first time it is mentioned in the spiritual letter of Ivan Kalita. Since ancient times, this village, located on a high bank above the floodplain of the Moscow River, served as the summer residence of Moscow princes and tsars. It was especially loved and developed by Grand Duke Vasily III, during whose reign the famous Church of the Ascension was built in Kolomenskoye - the main and most beautiful building of the palace village. This is the first stone tented church in Rus', which laid the foundation for a remarkable temple style that lasted until the reform of Patriarch Nikon in the mid-17th century.

No documentary information was found about the beginning of construction of the Church of the Ascension in Kolomenskoye. Legend connects the date of the start of construction of the Church of the Ascension in Kolomenskoye with the birth of the long-awaited heir of the Grand Duke - the future Tsar Ivan the Terrible.
Construction was completed in 1532, about which a short entry was preserved in the chronicle: That same summer (1532) the stone church of the Ascension of the Lord God and our Savior Jesus Christ was completed in Kolomenskoye.” The consecration of the temple took place on September 3, 1532 by Metropolitan of All Rus' Daniel in memory of one of the largest holidays of Christianity - the Ascension of the Lord. The chronicle reports a three-day feast on this occasion for the Grand Duke, Metropolitan Daniel and numerous guests.

Italian architects probably took part in the construction of the temple. The “Italian” version is supported by elements of the decorative decoration of the temple that have not been seen before in Russian architecture: pilasters with carved capitals characteristic of Renaissance architecture and semi-columns framing the windows, typical of late Middle Ages and Italian Renaissance Gothic keeled arches - vimpergi. The participation of a foreign architect in the construction of the Church of the Ascension is evidenced by the date “1533” found on one of the pilasters. Everything about it is unusual for Russia: the Gothic-Renaissance font (Albrecht Dürer used a similar font to put dates in his paintings), the use of Arabic numerals to indicate dates (in Rus' at that time, dates were indicated by Cyrillic letters, equipped with special sign- title), the manner of chronology from the Nativity of Christ, and not from the Creation of the world, as was customary in Rus', and, most importantly, the countdown of the new year according to one of the Italian city calendars is not from September, as in Rus', but from March.

In 1528, Italian architects arrived in Moscow with the embassy of the Grand Duke from Rome. Among them was Pietro (Francesco?) Anibale (Peter Hannibal) or Petrok Maloy (i.e. younger, young), as he was called in Moscow, who is considered the architect of the Church of the Ascension.

The Church of the Ascension was erected on a high hill on the right bank of the Moscow River. A unique foundation was laid at the base of the temple: it is a huge artificial rock with an area of 600-650 m² (26x24 m) and a volume of 4000 m³. A huge pit was dug on the slope of the river terrace, the bottom of which was reinforced with piles. Then, from limestone blocks held together with mortar, a monolithic foundation was built, which had different depths. The more massive part of the foundation farthest from the slope forms a kind of “anchor”, which is fixed to the slope and does not allow huge temple slide down the slope. The upper edge of the foundation in the form of a low stylobate is visible on the surface of the slope. The foundation additionally raised the temple and carried it forward, above the steep slope.

The main monolith of the temple, built of large bricks, consists of a basement, a dissected quadrangle above it, an octagon and an octagonal tent, topped with an octagonal drum with a small dome and a cross. The transition from the lower part to the octagon is hidden by rows of triple kokoshniks, from which an octagonal pillar seems to “grow”. The facades of the “pillar” are decorated at the corners with pilasters, and the walls of the quadrangle with pointed triangular blind arches (vimpergs), which emphasizes the general upward direction of the entire volume of the temple. The main element and main innovation in the composition of the temple is its dome: an elongated multifaceted pyramid stretching into the sky. The masterfully calculated proportions of the tent, both powerful and light, are emphasized by the edge (shaft laid along all the ribs) and the diamond-shaped cells of the “mesh” made of diamond-cut white stone beads. On all sides the temple is framed by a two-tiered bypass gallery, to which three external porches with shoots lead. Such bypass galleries, combined with a high central volume of the building, are often found in the design graphics of the great theoreticians of the Italian Renaissance, but neither in Italy nor in other European countries these projects were not implemented.

In general terms, the temple is an equal-ended cross with short branches. The temple lacks important for traditional Orthodox Church semicircular apses: the eastern wall is completely flat inside and outside.
The wide gallery that encircles the temple is found for the first time in Russian architecture, since for architecture Orthodox Rus' it was not typical to place any structures east of the altar.

In the center of the eastern façade of the gallery, which overlooks the floodplain beyond the river, there is a stone throne about which there are many legends. According to one of the legends from there, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich distributed alms after the service. The design of the throne carved from stone is a high back with flutes, a semi-circular conch filled with oak branches (from the Greek konch - shell - the inner part of the apse arch in the form of a quarter of a sphere: located above the throne, altar and deacon, and symbolizes the “immaterial tabernacle of God" - God's glory and grace), side panels with floral patterns (acanthus leaves), legs in the form of animal paws - undoubtedly of Renaissance origin and appearance close to the thrones of the Virgin Mary on the canvases of Italian masters of the 15th-16th centuries. One of the assumptions is that before us is a unique three-dimensional icon “The Prepared Throne” (Etimasia) - a symbol of the second coming of Christ and Last Judgment. The theological interpretation of the Ascension is closely related to the idea of the heavenly throne and the new coming of Jesus. The presence of this throne transforms the temple tent into a huge ciborium, overshadowing the throne as a shrine, and transfers an iconic, figurative character to the entire architectural composition.
Despite the impressive external volume, the area of the interior of the Church of the Ascension is relatively small: 8.5 m x 8.5 m. The small interior of the temple was not intended for a large number of people, since it was a house church. During the service, the king was in it, members royal family and some dignitaries close to him. The tent, open for viewing, goes 41 meters up. At its corners there are powerful pilasters decorated with carved white stone capitals. The small area of the room, as if compressed by pilasters, and the large layer of air above the head emphasizes the height of the hall. Light enters the temple through unusually located windows. The lower part of the temple is illuminated by openings cut not in the walls, but in the corner projections of the quadrangle. The four windows of the main tier are located in the facades of the branches of the cross. In the octagon, the windows are placed crosswise on opposite sides of the tent. On edges without windows they are replaced by niches. On the facade and inside the octagon there are small slit-like windows of the staircase, which runs inside the wall, going around the octagon from the southwest. In the tent, the windows are located in the cardinal directions. Well-placed windows provide a lot of light and make the tent light and airy.

During the construction of the church, the floor was covered with triangular ceramic tiles of brown and black color, laid in an envelope. The ancient iconostasis of the 16th century and the wall paintings have not survived. Three icons are known from the original iconostasis, which were brought into the church in 1532 when illuminated. They are depicted in a miniature from the Front Vault of the 16th century.
During the restoration in 2007, it was recreated according to an analogue of the original royal gates of the 1570-80s. ancient tyablo iconostasis.

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