Christ the Saviour, Part III

Help! I'd better finish the Christmas entry before Great Lent starts! ;)

More pictures of Christ the Saviour Cathedral. Click to enlarge:

In the background you can see the elaborate "cave" made of evergreens and flowers surrounding the (very large) icon of the Nativity. I tried without success to get a good picture of it--people, of course, kept venerating it and walking past it as I was trying to get a shot of it.

Emmanuel--the Divine Christ Child, God With Us.

Here is an excerpt from the web site of Christ the Saviour, about the original church:

"The best architects, builders and artists of the time fulfilled K. Ton's designs. V. Surikov, baron T. Neff, N Koshelev, G. Semiradsky, I. Kramskoy, V.P. Vereshchagin, P. Pleshanov, and v. Markov (all members of the Russian Academy of Arts) took twelve and a half years to create the unique frescoes. Baron P. Klodt, N Ramazanov, and A. Loganovsky created the exterior sculptures. Count F. Tolstoy designed the Royal Doors using the newest galvanoplastic techniques.The sculptures and frescoes in the Cathedral were unified by several themes: the mercy of the Lord vouchsafed to the Russian people through the intercession of saints during the past nine centuries, and the ways and means chosen by God for the salvation of mankind from the creation, to the fall and the redemption through our Lord and Savior. Therefore, holy protectors and intercessors for the Russian land, as well as those leaders, who worked to affirm and spread Christianity and those princes that laid their life down for the freedom and integrity of the Russian land are pictured throughout the Cathedral."

Visit the excellent Christ the Saviour website for a more complete history of the church:

http://www.xxc.ru/english/history/index.htm

I think this is the Nativity of the Mother of God...

The Nativity scene high above the altar. It was strikingly beautiful and had an amazing 3-D quality to it. You felt like you were right in there in the cave on the night of the Nativity... I couldn't stop looking at this...

The Ascension.

Pentecost.

Prophet King David and other Prophets.

I managed to get a shot of His Holiness, Patriarch Alexii II...

...together with his Heavenly Protector, St. Alexii, Metropolitan of Moscow.

Here is the life of St. Alexii (Alexis) of Moscow:

http://ocafs.oca.org/FeastSaintsViewer.asp?SID=4&ID=1&FSID=100506

Patriarch Alexii is amazing for serving almost every single day at his age. He is well-respected by his Orthodox Christian flock here.

Be sure to click on this to see the details.

This may be the choir-loft--I'm not sure which "corner" it was in. They were so high you couldn't see the choir at all!

And with this I'm going to say good night....

Christmas Day at Christ the Saviour Cathedral Part II

(If you haven't read Part One yet, please select that from the "archive" links now....)

Inside, the Cathedral is just simply--beautiful! Pictures can't do it justice, because of its grand scale--only a fish-eye lens could get in what your eyes see at once, and then it would look distorted.


Anyway, the cathedral was reconstructed completely from scratch, and -- unlike most other churches -- exactly as it was before it was destroyed. That means the icons are a cross between "real" and "traditional iconographic" styles. They are not gushy Romantic, but are stylized in a dignified way.


The centerpiece of the church is, of course, the Altar. In this case it is a magnificent round structure-round in the middle, at least, then with the straight walls on either side. The picture here is only the very top of it (see below for the bottom). This round style, where the deacons' doors are actually on the sides at an angle from the Royal Doors, is quite common here. I guess it saves space, so you can get as many icons in in a small space as you would if they were all in a straight line. Important, because so many churches have three altars, that each one actually ends up being quite small. Click on the pictures to enlarge them.


Here is the bottom part, looking from the left-hand side. You can see the Royal Doors, but cannot see into the Altar, which is to the left. The grey part on the right is actually on the other side of the church. Notice the row of clergy--and that is not all: an equal number stretched out further to the left! I think this event is something that everyone goes to.

Here is one of the large niches to either side of the main altar, with a Nativity scene. They look and are meant to look quite 3-D--you feel as if you are stepping into the Holy Land, back into time....

(More to come. Sign up to be alerted when new posts are added, so you can follow my (very) erratic schedule :)

Christmas Day at Christ the Saviour Cathedral

December 25, 2007/January 7, 2008

Well, here I am again…I apologize for the long delay--was looking for something to help me create a blog entry faster, but so far to no avail.

So… back to Christmas Day... At about 2:30 my iconographer friend from St. Nicholas Church on Maroseika Street called and said, "The Patriarch is serving Nativity Vespers today at 4 PM—if you leave now you'll have just about enough time to get there by Metro." Talk about having to make quick decisions! I sort of wanted to stay home, but I hadn't seen Christ the Saviour Cathedral yet, and of course, it would be rather neat to see the Patriarch again (maybe a better view this time?), so I decided to go. I just about literally threw on my clothes, ran out the door, down the elevator, and down the street to catch a bus to the nearest Metro station.

When I emerged from the Metro station on the other end, there it was: unbelievably large and imposing. (Those are people at the bottom of the picture, and they are actually quite a long way from the church.) I looked at my watch: I had made pretty good time—it was only 4:20. So, I started to walk towards the cathedral. You couldn't just go straight up the main path; they had it blocked off so that you had to queue up in a round-about sort of way. I started walking through the narrow way formed by barriers and hadn't gotten too far when, to my surprise, an officer appeared who stopped me. "Wait here," he said. Pretty soon, several other people had come along and joined me. After about 10 minutes, there was a crowd of 50 people or so, pushing and crowding. No one asked "why" we were waiting (except me), nor was there an answer to the question. In the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd was a short, little woman all of about 4'10" or so, who couldn't even see over anyone's shoulders. I felt sorry for her, but she was very chipper and friendly. "You would think," I thought to myself, "that they would at least let people in one by one: one comes out of the church, one goes in. But no, we waited in a growing crowd just like cars held up at a Big Dig construction site. ("Big Dig": a hole in the ground in Boston into which tons of money was poured...)

After about half an hour in the 25-degree weather, the crowd was getting really antsy. They began saying things to the guards, who replied politely but still wouldn't let us through. I was afraid I'd miss the whole service… Finally, the guards said something, and the crowd, like a great tsunami wave, pushed past the barriers, past the guards, and down the path towards the Cathedral. I couldn't tell whether the guards had let us through or had simply not fought us when the crowd pushed through. But finally, there I was, on my way in.

Almost. First, in the middle of the square in front of the Cathedral you had to walk through an airport-type metal detector and put your purse, keys and stuff in a little bin. Considering that the Patriarch and lots of other high-level people come here, I guess it isn't an unreasonable thing as far as security goes.

When I got by this barrier, there before me on the path/square in front of the cathedral was an enormous Christmas tree—a kind of cross between the Nutcracker Suite and Las Vegas. I started to hurry by it when I realized I had dropped one of my gloves. I turned around and looked on the ground, but it wasn't there. It had to be by the guards at the metal detector. The last thing I wanted to do was get anywhere near guards again for another half-hour wait, but I got up my courage and asked in my best Russian if they had seen a glove like my other one, which I held up. One of them looked, found it, and politely gave it to me. Whew, I thought, and ran up the Cathedral steps.

Tremendous bas-relief sculptures by the doors stared majestically down, -- it definitely makes an impression on you... (The photo on the left is not mine, but from the Саthedral web site.)
(Правый угол Храма. Многофигурная композиция "Давид в собрании вельмож передает Соломону чертежи Храма". Автор воссоздания Ю.В. Александров.)

I successfully merged with the crowd and passed through the right-hand arched door. I was in--and what a sight!

To be continued...