The Peter and Paul Cathedral (Петропавловский собор) of Kazan is
located at the address: Musa Jalil Street, 21; before the revolution
of 1917, Musa Jalil Street was called Peter and Paul Street after
the name of the cathedral.
During the reign of Peter I,
churches in the Russian Baroque style were created throughout
Russia: the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity in Trinity-Lykovo near
Moscow (1697), the Church of the Resurrection in Kadashi in Moscow
(1687), the Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Nizhny Novgorod
(1719 .). The Peter and Paul Cathedral of Kazan is one of the most
striking examples of the style of the Petrine era, exceptional for
regional architecture.
Visitors to the Peter and Paul
Cathedral were all Russian emperors, starting with Catherine II
(except Nicholas II), and almost all famous people, regardless of
religion, who visited Kazan - descriptions of the cathedral are
given in the works of Alexander Humboldt and Alexander Dumas,
Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin was here, in The cathedral choir was
sung by Fyodor Ivanovich Chaliapin.
The temple complex
includes the following buildings: the cathedral itself, the bell
tower, the house of the clergy.
The wooden church of the same name has stood on this site since 1565.
The history of the new cathedral is connected with the name of Peter I.
On May 27-30, 1722, on his way to the Persian campaign, Peter I visited
Kazan. This was Peter's third visit to the city (the first one took
place in 1695 during the Azov campaign, the second - in 1708, when the
admiralty was opened in Kazan). The emperor stopped at the well-known
Kazan merchant and philanthropist, the owner of a cloth manufactory,
Ivan Afanasyevich Mikhlyaev, whose two-story brick house was located
next to the wooden Peter and Paul Church. On May 30, Peter the Great
celebrated his 50th birthday in Kazan. In memory of this event and in
gratitude for the trust of the sovereign, who gave him unprofitable
state-owned cloth manufactories to manage, Mikhlyaev decided to erect a
new magnificent cathedral in the name of St. Peter and Paul in stone, an
unprecedented height and luxury for Kazan and the entire Volga region of
that time.
For 4 years, local forces built a church, they took as
a basis the usual plan of a township church, which were built a lot in
Kazan and throughout Russia, but they did not take into account that the
traditional scheme of the temple does not imply a huge height, as a
result, the temple vault collapsed at night. Upon learning of this, the
tsar sent builders from Moscow (it is assumed that Florentine architects
arrived along with the Moscow masters) and already in 1726, Metropolitan
of Kazan and Sviyazhsky Sylvester (Kholmsky) solemnly consecrated the
new church (which there was a corresponding inscription on a wooden
cross stored in the sacristy of the Peter and Paul Cathedral before the
1917 coup).
Fires and restoration of the cathedral
The
cathedral was badly damaged by fires in 1742, 1749, 1815, 1842, and in
1774 it was plundered by the Pugachevites. It suffered especially badly
after the fire of 1815, when the lower church and the northern limits on
the first and second floors burned out, the 25-meter iconostasis of the
main church miraculously survived, although with great losses.
After a fire in 1815, the cathedral was restored by the zeal of the
headman, the Kazan merchant Saveliy Stepanovich Zaitsev.
After
another fire in 1824, the cathedral again needed restoration, which was
carried out at the expense of the next headman, the merchant Vasily
Nikolaevich Unzhenin, whose descendants did good deeds and supported the
temple throughout the 19th century.
In 1824-25, the icons on iron
sheets that adorned the outside of the cathedral were restored by the
famous Kazan artist "titular adviser, Vasily Stepanov, son of Turin."
Vasily Stepanovich also renovated some of the icons in the iconostasis
and the refectory of the temple.
1864 restoration
By 1864, the
parishioners of the cathedral collected a large sum for the restoration
of the cathedral. 5,000 rubles were personally donated by the headman N.
Unzhenin.
In 1864-67. the carving of the iconostasis was
completely, with the dismantling of the iconostasis, restored by the
Arzamas workshop, later the Kazan merchant of the second guild M. A.
Tyufilin (the cost of the work was 11,000 silver rubles). In the altar,
the master Tufilin recreated the throne, the altar and the carved gilded
canopy, towering over the throne on four columns. Before the closure of
the temple in 1938, there were icons on the canopy: from the east, from
the side of the mountainous place - St. Basil the Great, Gregory the
Theologian and John Chrysostom, from the side of the royal doors - the
Savior blessing the bread and the cup, from the south side - St. Gregory
the Dialogist, from the side of the altar - St. Apostle James.
Tufilin also made a carving in the refectory part of the temple above
the arch of the central opening and arranged icon cases for choir icons
in the same place.
Wall images, painted on iron sheets, framed
with stucco, were also very dilapidated from time and fires. In 1865-67.
Nikolai Alekseevich Meguntov, a student of the Moscow School of
Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, made a new painting on new
twelve-pound iron sheets, 1225 rubles were spent on the work.
Meguntov also renewed the local coloring of the walls of the temple
(with a total area of 1524 square arshins, including 600 square arshins
on the porch and stairs, and a total of 2124 square arshins (236 square
sazhens)), covering them with glue paint: blue in the altar, in the
central parts of the temple are light yellow, in the refectory - light
pink. Meguntov also restored the stucco decorations of the interior of
the cathedral; another 775 rubles of church money were spent on these
works.
All the icons in the lower row of the iconostasis, except
for the temple one, are St. Peter and Paul, were refurbished by the
famous Kazan icon painter, "a provincial tradesman of the city of Arsk"
Timofey Terentyevich Gagaev, and in the remaining tiers of the
iconostasis, due to losses, they were rewritten by Gagaev again. Another
3,300 rubles of parish money was spent on this work.
In 1867, the
restored church was consecrated by Archbishop of Kazan and Sviyazhsky
Anthony (Amphiteatrov).
However, the restoration touched only on
the interiors, while the facades of the cathedral were very dilapidated,
covered with numerous cracks, especially the northern aisle, the walls
of which, having cracked, “moved away” from the main temple, the
cathedral could turn into ruins.
Archpriest Gavriil Fedorovich Melanovsky, rector
of the Peter and Paul Cathedral at that time, limited himself in
everything, collecting funds for the restoration of the facades of the
cathedral. Anticipating his imminent death, Fr. Gabriel donated 18,000
rubles of personal savings for the renewal of the Peter and Paul
Cathedral. At the same time, the headman Unzhenin planned to start
restoration, but the estimate turned out to be huge, and only after
collecting additional funds in 1888, with the blessing of the Archbishop
of Kazan and Sviyazhsky Pavel (Lebedev), the building committee began a
major restoration of the facades.
In 1889-1890, the civil
architect Mikhail Nikolaevich Litvinov (later superintendent of the
building of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow) prepared a
restoration project according to the drawings made back in 1815 by the
Kazan provincial architect A. K. Schmidt, the author of the project of
the Spassky memorial church on Kazanka.
It was completely
dismantled and built again from brick, and not as before - from stone, a
two-story northern aisle. The porch (open gallery) was restored from the
west. The main work consisted in laying a new foundation under the walls
of the cathedral and the bell tower. All the cracks in the walls were
repaired and old bricks were replaced with new ones.
All stucco
molding on the outer facades was also restored and all 87 icons on the
facade and 4 on the bell tower, which originally existed, were restored.
The painter I. N. Khrustalev "from the 3rd grade of the Academy of Arts"
painted icons on the drum of the head of the dome and in the top row of
the octagon. The rest of the icons on the facades were painted by a
student of the 4th grade of the Academy of Arts S. A. Kiselev.
In
1890, the crosses were gilded and, with the permission of the Moscow
Archaeological Society, the roof was painted in two colors, green and
vat paint, in a checkerboard pattern. The wall on three sides of the
open gallery is decorated with tiles. The local background of the facade
of the cathedral is painted with golden ocher, white-stone carved
decorations and stucco - with a whole range of colors and shades, in the
nature of which M. Fechner sees the influence of "local addiction to a
bright combination of colors."
Under the floor of the first
floor, a stove was built and pipes were laid that heated the upper
temple. Colored glass was inserted into the windows - yellow in the
altar and blue in the temple, in the shape of a cross.
On the
bell tower, “the master of the Kazan merchant Pyotr Ionov Klimov”
arranged a new clock (only the dial remained from the old ones at that
time), the decorations carved from white flask stone and alabaster were
restored.
Under the bell tower, a chapel was restored above the
family tomb of the temple creator Ivan Afanasyevich Miklyaev and three
doors were arranged in it, as before: from the east, west and north,
above them - kokoshniks made of brick and white stone. A separate
passage was arranged to the bell tower through a door in the
southernmost wall. The churchyard was paved with cobblestones, and a
forged fence with icons was placed on the street.
At the end of 1930, the rector of the Peter and Paul Cathedral,
Archpriest Andrei Bogolyubov, was arrested for "anti-Soviet activities",
which consisted in applying for financial assistance in 1928 to the
former headman of the Peter and Paul Cathedral, hereditary honorary
citizen of Kazan, Pyotr Vasilyevich Unzhenin, who emigrated to China
after the Bolshevik coup. For the help that the community received from
Harbin in 1928, the 67-year-old priest, who came from a peasant family,
was sent to the camps by the communists.
Since 1931, a campaign
to close the temple began. In 1931, comrade Shisranova spoke at a
meeting of the group committee of political education, who, in view of
the urgent need for housing in general and for cultural institutions in
particular, demanded that the cathedral be transferred “to a club, a
reading room or a library,” for which a resolution was sent to the
regional council of the SVB. The very next day, the SVB sent comrade.
Kornilov with an anti-religious lecture on the topic "On Religion and
the Cultural Revolution" at a pasta factory, TatStroyobedinenie and a
confectionery factory, and in the following days a number of
organizations, campaigning for "liberation from priestly fetters of that
mass of the population that has not yet realized the harm and lies of
religion" . All reports from such events were collected in order to have
a complete package of documents for the closure of the temple.
Meanwhile, in Kazan, the new authorities consistently closed churches,
and the Peter and Paul community received believers from closed
churches: the Kazan Bogoroditsky Monastery, the Georgian Church, and the
Feodorovsky Monastery. Icons, utensils, banners, including a reliquary
with part of the relics of the Kazan hierarch Barsanuphius, were brought
to the cathedral from closed churches.
In 1938, mass arrests of
priests took place in Kazan, including the arrest of the clerics of the
Peter and Paul Cathedral, Archpriest Vasily Petrovich Ivanovsky, who had
served in the Russian Orthodox Church since 1908, and Deacon Ivan
Fedorovich Gavrilov. Soon, during Great Lent (03/11/38), the 63-year-old
archpriest of the cathedral Mikhail Fedorovich Zosimovsky turned to the
commission on cult issues under the TatCIK with a request to Mustafin,
the responsible secretary of the cult commission, “I ask the cult
commission to remove me from the registration of a full-time clergyman”
due to “my serious illness” .
In the same year, the CSC secretly
issued a decree: “to transfer the building to the Central Museum of the
TASSR for an anti-religious museum (first floor) and a lecture hall with
the installation of a Foucault pendulum (second floor). The community
should be transferred to the empty building of the Cemetery Church.<…>
Submit this resolution for approval by the Presidium of the Supreme
Council of the TatASSR.”
In 1939, the cathedral was closed, the
Foucault pendulum was never installed, and the Party archive was placed
in the temple. The tomb of the temple builder of the cathedral, the
merchant Miklyaev, was looted.
In 1964, a planetarium was opened
in the lower Sretensky Church of the Peter and Paul Cathedral, for which
the ties that strengthened the vault were barbarously cut off.
In
1967, the restoration workshops of the State Museum of the TASSR were
placed in the upper church. In the upper temple, a billiard was placed
in front of the iconostasis, in the altar - the so-called. "red corner"
and a conference room.
In the late 80s of the XX century, through the joint efforts of the diocese and the Kazan intelligentsia, it was possible to achieve the return of the cathedral to the Church. Andrey Petrovich Gavrilov, editor-in-chief of the then most influential city newspaper Vechernyaya Kazan, played a special role in the campaign to return the temple. On July 25, 1989, the church was consecrated by Anastassy, Bishop of Kazan and Mari. The church received the cathedral in a ruined state, in some places the roof was torn off, brickwork fell out. First of all, the carving of the lower tier of the iconostasis was restored, the royal gates were recreated, the roof was fixed, and the destruction of the facade was eliminated.
Cathedral
Logo of the competition "Wiki loves monuments" Cultural
heritage site:
No. 1610032003
Initially, the main approach to the
cathedral was from the side of the Spasskaya Tower and the Gostiny Dvor,
and it was the northern side that was planned by the architects as the
main facade of the temple: from the north to the second floor, to the
main chapel of St. Peter and Paul, leads to a direct front staircase
(destroyed by fire in 1815, restored in 1888-90). To the left of the
stairs there is a chapel with a temple in the name of the Burning Bush
(until 1848 in the name of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist) on the
first floor and the "Life-Giving Spring" on the second, complementing
and emphasizing the height of the main volume of the temple, with steps
decorated with stucco quadrangle, octagon, and two heads looking up.
Above the octagonal cornice, instead of typical baroque stone finials,
there are light patterned forged lattices. From the north and west, the
cathedral is surrounded by an open gallery, which, turning, descends to
the south side, to the lower church of the Presentation of the Lord. At
the gallery level, multicolored stone floral ornaments are complemented
by yard-long painted tiles. Over time, the approach to the temple from
the north side was built up with houses, and now the main entrance to
the cathedral is from the south.
Bell tower
Shortly after the
construction of the cathedral, a 49-meter (21 sazhens and 1 arshin
without a cross, with a cross 22 sazhens and 2 arshins) 6-tiered bell
tower was erected to the northeast of it. In the second tier, in the
niches of the southeastern and northwestern corners of the quadrangle,
there were sculptural images of the Evangelists. The multi-colored
baroque decor of the bell tower was not inferior to the cathedral: under
each of the 8 windows of the "lantern" of the bell tower in a square
recess there are blue, with yellow and white flowers, star-shaped tiles,
above each window of the bell tower, in all its tiers - white stone
kokoshniks.
In 1888-1890. in the penultimate tier, the working
hours of Pyotr Ionovich Klimov were set. Before the revolution, there
were 10 bells on the bell tower, the largest one had an inscription: “In
the blessed reign of the Most Pious Autocratic Sovereign Emperor
Alexander Pavlovich and All Russia, with the blessing of His Grace
Ambrose, Archbishop of Kazan and Simbirsk and various orders of the
cavalier, this bell will be poured in the reigning city, Kazan, to the
Cathedral Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul. Weighing 189
pounds. 34 pounds. Copper 161 pounds. came from the old broken large
bell, and the rest was added, and the overflow was also paid for by
collection from well-meaning donors. This bell was lit by the Kazan
merchant Ivan Efimov Astrakhantsev of 1825. There were bas-relief icons
on the bell: on the north side - the Presentation of the Lord; from the
south - the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God; from the western St.
apostles Peter and Paul; from the east - the image of the Annunciation
with the upcoming Kazan saints: St. Guriy, Herman and kneeling
Barsanuphius.
On the second bell there is an inscription: “This
bell was cast in the reigning city of Kazan, in the factory, Serey
Kornilov, to the church of Peter and Paul, by the donation of Peter and
Nikolai Molostvyovs and the diligence of the parishioners and the
diligence of Archpriest Viktor Petrovich Vishnevsky and the elder of the
church, Kazan merchant Savely Stepanovich Zaitsev, in 1835, the month of
June, 10 days, 99 pounds.
On the third bell: “Come people to the
Temple of the Salvation of our God. Lil master Petr Nikitin Kiryukhov.
Weight 54 pounds. and 17 pounds.
On the fourth bell weighing 15
pounds and 11 pounds. bas-relief icons, to the east the Exaltation of
the Cross of the Lord by Konstantin and Elena, to the west the
Crucifixion, to the south the Kazan icon of the Mother of God, to the
north Nicholas the Wonderworker. Inscription: "This bell was poured in
Kazan, in the factory of Ivan Kiryukhov." Pre-revolutionary bells were
destroyed, recently a new 3-ton bell of Yaroslavl casting was erected on
the bell tower, the same as it was before the revolution.
House
of the clergy
House of Mikhlyaev
On the western side of the
cathedral, on the territory belonging to the garment factory, there is
the house of the merchant Miklyaev built in the 17th century - the
oldest monument of civil architecture in Kazan, where Peter I stayed in
1722. From the house there was a direct passage to the temple, and from
the north the house adjoined small church of Cosmas and Damian.
According to Miklyaev's will, the house was given to the cathedral, but
due to an error in paperwork, it passed to Miklyaev's heirs, the
Dryablovs.
The main decoration of the Peter and Paul Cathedral is a majestic, modern church, 25-meter 7-tiered iconostasis. The magnificent baroque gilded carving of the iconostasis was made by master Gusev, the wooden gilded Royal Doors were made using the technique of through carving. All icons are written on a golden background. According to the headman of the cathedral, the Kazan merchant P.V. Unzhenin, an eyewitness to the renovation of the iconostasis in 1865-1867, only one of all the icons in the iconostasis has survived without renovation - this is the temple icon of Sts. Chief Apostles Peter and Paul. On three icons in the local row, faces and robes were renewed, this is the icon of the Savior in the form of the Tsar and the Great Bishop, with a scepter and orb, the Jerusalem icon of the Mother of God on the throne and the icon of the Assumption of the Mother of God. The remaining icons of the iconostasis, due to heavy losses due to fires, were rewritten by Gagaev again, in 1865-1867.
Before the revolution, the sacristy kept utensils donated by the
Cathedral Warden Ivan Afanasyevich Miklyaev and other Kazan
philanthropists, of which the following can be highlighted:
Three
altar crosses:
Silver gilded, cross reliquary of 1693, set with
pearls and 19 emeralds.
Another “gold, silver and magarite
decorated”, as indicated in the inscription, is an altar
cross-reliquary.
On the third cross was engraved: "This honest cross
was attached to the Sretensky Church at the Kazan Peter and Paul
Cathedral after the fire that was on September 3, 1815 of the Kazan
military orphanage department by the head of Lieutenant Colonel Alexei
Andreyevich Kopylov."
Gospel (1681), with 5 fractions. The gospel
oklad is decorated with a "blue yakhont" and other gems. The inscription
on the gospel "This honest and most sacred gospel was built in the holy
church in Kazan of the holy glorious and supreme apostles Peter and Paul
from the birth of the reverent and honest Mr. Ivan Afanasiev son
Miklyaev, in the years of God, March 1726, on the 25th day."
Miklyaev
also donated a silver censer, reminiscent of the shape of the cathedral
itself, 3 priestly robes (3 phelonions of “fine grassy brocade” with
crosses embroidered with pearls on the shoulder and 3 stole) and
surplice, studded with pearls; liturgical vessels, tabernacle.
The
liar with the inscription "Peter Michlaeff" is believed to be a personal
gift from Peter I to Ivan Afanasyevich.
Analogue icon of St. Peter
and Paul, invested according to legend by the temple builder I. A.
Miklyaev, on the margins of the icon are images of St. Alexander Nevsky,
John of Damascus, Alexander Svirsky and Kirill Belozersky.
The
cathedral was illuminated by a huge 5-tier chandelier for 40 candles
weighing 50 pounds, decorated with gilded leaves on all tiers, also
donated by Miklyaev. The weight of this chandelier was determined when,
around 1867, the church warden Vasily Nikolaevich Unzhenin decided to
gild this chandelier - the carters undertook to transport it to the
workshop of the Tula merchant Lev Alekseev Lyalin at an agreed price
from each pood of the total weight of the chandelier. (lost, for details
see Seizure of Church Treasures in Russia in 1922).
Large silver
lamps in front of the icons in the lower row of the iconostasis are a
donation from Ivan Dryablov (1761). An inscription was carved on each
lampada in block letters: “In 1761, the month of January, the 1st day,
this lampada was submitted from the Kazan Cloth Factory of Ivan
Fedorovich Dryablov to the Cathedral Church of the Holy Apostles Peter
and Paul.”
Revered icons
Before the revolution, there were venerated
icons in the cathedral: the Icon of the Mother of God "The Life-Giving
Spring" in the aisle of the same name and the Icon of the Mother of God
"The guarantor of sinners."
The icon of the Mother of God "The
guarantor of sinners" on the reverse side had the inscriptions: in white
paint - "A copy of the Miraculous and Myrrh-streaming image of the
guarantor of sinners, which in May 1848 was given by Lieutenant Colonel
Dmitry Boncheskul, to the church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, in
Khamovniki, on the occasion of the great miracles that have taken
place"; in ink: “To the Church of Peter and Paul. In Kazan. Brought as a
gift by Dimitry Nikolaev Boncheskul, 1858 May 15th "S: G: Moscow". In
1860, the chasuble was made for the icon by the zeal of the headman
Unzhenin, as evidenced by the inscription: “donated by the Kazan
merchant Vasily Nikolaich Unzhenin in 1860, July 28, the ark weighs 10
lbs. 17 gold.
In the altar of the upper temple there was an
ancient Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God in a gilded silver frame, the
robe and crown of the Virgin were decorated with pearls. The inscription
on the icon: “On January 22, 1727, I gave this image of Vladimir Btsy in
a treasure trove in Kazan to the Cathedral Church of Peter and Paul.
Kazan merchant Pyotr Ivanov, son of Zamoshnikov. The fate of these icons
after the closure of the temple is unknown.
In the lower row of
the iconostasis of the upper temple there is a revered icon of Sts.
Apostles Peter and Paul, the only one preserved without renovations from
the original iconostasis.
In the Peter and Paul Cathedral are the
relics of locally venerated Kazan saints, found in 1995 during
excavations of the "cave" of the Transfiguration Monastery in the Kazan
Kremlin:
in the upper church - the monks Jonah and Nectarius of Kazan
(XVI century), the father and son of the boyars of Zastolbsky -
associates of St. Gury of Kazan;
in the lower church of the relics of
St. Ephraim, Metropolitan of Kazan († 1614), successor to the Kazan
cathedra of schmch. Hermogenes, later Patriarch of All Rus'. Saint
Ephraim blessed the army of K. Minin and Prince D. Pozharsky for a feat
of arms with a list from the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God (now
located in the Yelokhov Cathedral in Moscow). In 1613, Metropolitan
Ephraim crowned Mikhail Feodorovich Romanov as king.
In the altar of
the lower Sretensky Church are the relics of St. Epiphanius, Archbishop
of Jerusalem.