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MOSCOW - SCENES

 
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This photo of the Chudov Monastery in the Kremlin in Moscow is from National Geographic, Vol XXVI No 5, November 1914. The monastery was destroyed in the 1930's by the Communists.

 
 

The monastery known as the "Miracle" Chudov was physically erased by the Bolsheviks in the nineteen twenties after having served such historical figures as the monk Dmitrii Otrep'ev as a place for scholarly endeavors and others for nearly six centuries. Having thus prevented archaeologists from doing their research, information on this important institution is found in documentation. The "Miracle" is that of the Archangel Michael who by the grace of God stemmed the tide of Lucifer's armies at ......... The founder, Metropolitan Alexei (the Andronikov monastery was also founded by him in 1359 or a year later), was a major figure in the turbulent fourteenth century Rus' and as such was beified in 1483. Ivan III built a special church with two altars: one in the name of the Annunciation (for women) and the other after the saint Alexei (for men). The story of his healing the Tatar khan's daughter. The heir apparent Vasilii Dmitrievich had to flee Tochtamysh in 1386. He fled the Horde into Moldavia and then to the land of the Livonian Order and then to Lithuania. Later after thirty year of marriage, the widow Sophia Vitovtna in 1425 left the country in the hands of Yurii Dmitrievich of Zvenigorod.
The principal source of information on the Chudov monastery is contained in the agiographic literature contemporary and in later re-writings. Amongst the authors are the monk Epithani who wrote the biography of Saint Sergei Radonezhski, the monk Kiprian who was also a contemporary and wrote several works devoted to church history such as the biography of Metropolitan Peter, and following the disastrous battle of Kosovo Pole, the emigrant Serb monk Pokhomii Logofet who arrived with the Greek metropolitan Fotii in the beginning of the fifteenth century wrote the most important historical work on Rus' known as the Cheti Minei and in our era the noted historian Pokrovskii. Regardless of one's historical interpretation of the reasons for its founding, Mr. Beliaev considers that it was founded no earlier than the third quarter of the fourteeth century, likely at the time when the church of the Archangel Michael. This question in his opinion will remain unanswered until additional archaeological work is carried out.
In 1431, the stone church's walls collapsed, and a new smaller stone church was built. In the opinion of N.N. Voronin, the original church had been built without attention to such architectural details as a ground floor or a high and wide wall underpining., as it is stated in Pakhomii Logofet's work devoted to Sergei Radonezhski "the sole support was the ground it stood on." The edifice was begun anew in the beginning of the sixteenth century, leaving the present generation a complex structure with three tiers which was destroyed in 1929. Construction features of the original 1365 church may have been used in the 1501-1504 building. Some architectural details of the later church have been preserved for further study.
The cemetery of the sixteenth century was disturbed several times and as such presents difficulty in historical research. The site of the monastery was well defined by its surrounding structures. In the reign of Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich the Annunciation church began seriously deteriorating and he ordered that it and all buildings in the Chudov monastery be rebuilt with the blue prints submitted to him for his approval. The church was on a high substructure whose entryway was accessed by a high stairway and an additional chapel on the south side was dead center of a rectangular square. Other churches in the complex were named after Yevkokiya the Martyress consecrated in 1556 in the presence of the tsar and the tsaritsa Anastasia I and the apostle Saint Andrei the First Called, turned over to the sister of the Cross Hospital. A third was for the martyrs Platon and roman later renamed to the Glory of All Saints.

The documentation is of some value as the archaeology cannot add to those sources any pertinent data. Its analysis is outside the competence of the archaeologists.
The site of the Chudov monastery is a square in front of the building of the Presidium of the Supreme Council chambers and its western side. Beliaev feels confident that archaeological work will be carried out to clarify any tendencies to ascribe a more ancient dating to this monastery. Fortunately for the visitor to the Kremlin there is a standing church of that period. The church of Our Lady's Nativity and its older antecedent, the Church of Resurection of St. Lazarus where both built by Yevdokiya, wife of prince Dmitrii Ivanovich.

 

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