"Poem in Stone": Dmitrievsky Cathedral in Vladimir, eclipsing all the temples built before him

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Due to the abundance of patterns of white stone carving covering the facade of this cathedral, it is called "", "", "". With its rich carved decoration, it overshadows, perhaps, all the temples built before him in Russia.

The history of the construction of the cathedral

The Vladimir-Suzdal principality during the reign of Prince Vladimir Vsevolod the Big Nest reached the zenith of its glory. "" (VO Klyuchevsky). And the personification of this glory was to become the Dmitrievsky Cathedral.

The prince, who received the Christian name Dmitry at baptism, decided to build a new church in honor of his patron Saint Dmitry of Thessaloniki. The construction of the Dmitrievsky Cathedral took place between 1194-1197. The temple was erected by the hands of the best Russian craftsmen; white limestone was used as a building material for the walls.

The rarest shrines were brought from the distant Byzantine city of Thessaloniki for the erected temple: "" - an icon depicting Demetrius of Thessaloniki, and a chased silver ark with "" - a piece of the martyr's clothing with traces of his blood.

Before the Battle of Kulikovo, these relics were taken to the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin, where they are kept to this day, only copies remain in the Vladimir Cathedral.

In 1237, the temple was plundered by the Tatar-Mongols, after which it survived several more robberies and fires. But the greatest damage was inflicted on it in 1837-1839, when Nicholas I, having visited the cathedral and seeing what condition it was in, ordered to urgently restore it. But "", who took up this work, instead of rebuilding the temple mutilated, and it began to collapse.

Since 1919, the temple was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Vladimir Museum. Its limestone walls were rapidly collapsing, but for a long time nothing was done to save the temple, the reconstruction could be carried out only in 1941, just before the war.

The next stage of work to preserve the stone walls of the cathedral began only after 1974. And the final restoration, as a result of which the temple was able to largely return the lost original appearance, was completed already in the 2000s. The stone walls were covered with a protective mixture, drainages were made and the necessary microclimate inside the cathedral was created. Now the Dmitrievsky Cathedral is included in the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List.

Here it is, the Dmitrievsky Cathedral, in all its glory!

Since this cathedral was built on the territory of the prince's court and was intended only for the prince's family, its dimensions are small, but the rich decor of its facade is impressive - it contains more than 600 relief images of animals, plants, mythical creatures, and saints. Moreover, many of the reliefs have been preserved in their original form, the same ones that were lost have been restored.

The facades of the temple consist of three tiers. On the lower tier, there is practically no decor, only portals are decorated with carvings.

This is due to the fact that earlier the temple was surrounded on three sides by a gallery connecting it with the house. It ended on both sides with towers. Unfortunately, the gallery has not survived, and the walls have remained smooth from below.

The middle tier is decorated with a colonnade belt with the richest ornamentation of carved figures.

The upper tier, which has narrow windows, is completely dotted with carvings.

The drum is also decorated with carvings, on which there is a gilded dome with an openwork gilded cross.

The white-stone decoration of the cathedral contains a lot of motifs that were widespread in Byzantium, the Balkans, and throughout Europe. Therefore, scientists assume that along with Russian master carvers, people from the Balkan Peninsula - Bulgarians, Serbs, Dalmatians - also worked on stone carving.

However, the idea of the creators of the delightful white-stone carving of the Dmitrievsky Cathedral has not yet been fully studied, the decoding of many compositions and plots is the subject of controversy for more than one generation of scientists.

Some elements of carved ornament

The central place in the design of the cathedral is given to the biblical king and prophet David. His image can be seen on three facades of the temple. The quality of these images is excellent, apparently, they were made by one of the best stone cutters. At first, historians believed it was Christ, then for a long time they chose between David and Solomon. And only after the restorers found the inscription "DAV Kommersant" next to this image, the disputes over this issue ended.

The facade is dotted with images of animals, birds and plants. The abundance of plants is used to create the image of the Garden of Eden.

Many of the animals are symbols of power - lions, eagles, leopards. As for strange monsters - animals with two heads, half-dogs, half-birds and the like - these images are well known to us from Russian mythology and fairy tales, so they do not frighten at all, but only give a fabulous character to carved patterns.

Saints and Princes

A whole gallery of figures of saints is carved on the middle-tier colonnade belt that girded the cathedral from three sides. Among them, the first holy princes-martyrs Boris and Gleb are identified, depicted in princely hats, in their hands they hold crosses.

All 12 apostles are depicted here, the "portraits" of Peter and Paul are beyond doubt - they are signed.

Two more compositions depicted on the facade are interesting.

Ascension of Alexander the Great

The "technology" of ascension is depicted as follows. Alexander sits in a basket, holding up his hands, in which he holds little lion cubs as bait. Two griffins, tied to a basket, are drawn to the bait, and due to this, the basket rises up. Despite the fact that Alexander the Great is still a pre-Christian character, this plot was used quite often in medieval Europe.

Vsevolod with his sons?

On the northern façade, you can find a picture of a man sitting with a child in his lap. Older children surround him on both sides. Many historians believe that this is depicted Vsevolod with his sons. He did have many children, which is why he got the nickname Big Nest. Only it is not clear why Vsevolod does not have a beard here.

However, there is another version, according to which it is not Vsevolod with his sons that is depicted here, but the biblical Joseph with his brothers.

Hypothesis regarding the coloring of cathedrals

We are all accustomed to believing that the white-stone temples that have survived to this day were originally the same, namely, white.

However, in the photographs of the 19th century, you can see different color options for the facades of the Dmitrievsky Cathedral - "" and "". White ornament on a dark background looks like this (this color existed in 1847-1883):

And this is a dark ornament on a white background:

And in 2015, in Pereslavl-Zalessky, on the facade of the white-stone Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral, the remains of an ancient mural were discovered. Based on this, scientists have suggested that in ancient times this temple was "". It is possible that the facades of other white-stone temples in ancient times were also decorated with paintings, and this beauty looked something like this:

But after the Mongol-Tatar invasion, many temples stood in desolation. Russia was poor, and in order to refresh the churches, they were simply whitewashed with lime. So the paintings disappeared. But this is still just a hypothesis.

And in the suburbs there is a temple that the Orthodox Church refused to consecrate … And he, too, is of great interest.