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Holy Sophia or Holy Wisdom Cathedral is a Russian Orthodox Church in Novgorod. It was erected in 1045- 52 on a site chosen by Ioakim Korsunianin, when the city was the capital of the Novgorod Republic. It was widely believed that the site previously served as a pagan temple, where ancient Slavs carried out their religious rituals and even performed sacrifices (including human sacrifices). Archaeological digs in the 20th century discovered medieval cemetery that date back to pre- Christian period, indicating that it is quiet probable that church does stand on the site of the polytheistic religious site. Medieval Slavs often buried their dead near spiritual or holy sites.
In 1046, Grand Duke Yaroslav the Wise and Princess Irina (Ingigerda)
went to Novgorod from Kyiv to visit their son Vladimir to lay the
foundation stone for St. Sophia Cathedral. The cathedral was founded in
Detinets on the site of the Vladychny Court and was built until about
1050 instead of the wooden temple “made of oak with 13 tops” (13-domed)
of 989 that had burned down before, but not in the same place, but to
the north.
The cathedral was consecrated, according to various
chronicles, in 1050 or 1052 by Bishop Luka Zhidyata. The temple has five
naves and three galleries, which housed several additional thrones. The
northern gallery was rebuilt several times.
Initially, the walls
of the temple were not whitewashed, with the exception of the apses and
drums, which were curvilinear in plan and covered with a layer of
nodules. The inner sides of the walls were also exposed, while the
vaults were originally plastered with opal and covered with frescoes.
This design was chosen under the influence of the architecture of
Constantinople, in which the marble cladding of the walls was combined
with the mosaics on the vaults; however, the marble was replaced with
limestone and the mosaics with frescoes. The walls were completely
plastered with opal, probably already in 1151. The bronze Magdeburg
Gates in the Romanesque style of the middle of the 12th century are
mounted on the western portal with a large number of high reliefs and
sculptures.
During the assault on Novgorod by the troops of Jacob
Delagardie, the archpriest of the cathedral, Amos Ivanovich, died in a
battle with Swedish soldiers.
Not later than the 18th century, to
strengthen the walls, three buttresses were added to the southern and
northern facades. During the restoration of 1893-1900, the buttresses
from the southern facade were dismantled and the roof was returned to
the temple. The restoration of the cathedral was carried out by the
architect V. V. Suslov.
After the revolutionary events in 1922,
during the campaign to seize church valuables, part of the church
property was seized. In 1929, the cathedral was closed, and an
anti-religious museum was opened in it, where the treasures stored in
the sacristy of the cathedral were displayed as an example of the riches
of the church. During the occupation of Novgorod by the Nazi troops, the
temple was damaged and looted, after the war it was completely restored
and became a department of the Novgorod Museum-Reserve. In 1991, it was
transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church and on August 16, 1991, it
was re-consecrated personally by Patriarch Alexy II. In 2005-2007, the
domes of the cathedral were restored.
The cathedral is a five-nave cross-domed church. Temples of this
type were built in Rus' only in the 11th century; in addition to
Novgorod Sofia, they include St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev and St.
Sophia Cathedral in Polotsk, as well as the Kiev Church of Irina and
George. The temple has three apses - the central one is five-sided,
and the side ones are rounded. On three sides, the central building
is surrounded by wide two-story galleries. The time of the emergence
of the gallery and its original appearance are the subject of
scientific disputes, but it probably arose already during the
construction of the temple.
The cathedral has five domes, the
sixth is crowned with a stair tower located in the western gallery
south of the entrance. Poppy domes are made in the form of ancient
Russian helmets.
The main volume of the cathedral (without
galleries) has a length of 27 m and a width of 24.8 m; together with
the galleries, the length is 34.5 m, the width is 39.3 m. The height
from the level of the ancient floor, which is 2 meters lower than
the modern one, to the top of the cross of the central dome is 38 m.
limestone of different shades. The stones are not trimmed (only the
side facing the surface of the walls is hewn), they are fastened
with lime mortar with impurities of crushed bricks (the so-called
chickweed). Arches, arched lintels and vaults are made of plinth. In
the main apse and in the sails under the middle drum, the inner
walls are filled with golosniks - round-shaped ceramic vessels. In
some places, through the openings, the voices have access to the
interior space, due to which, despite the significant volume of the
building, there is no echo in it. In addition, the use of hollow and
at the same time rounded shapes in the masonry significantly reduced
the load of the drum on the girth arches.
The interior is
close to that of a Kievan church, although the proportions of the
vertically elongated arches and narrow vertical compartments between
the pillars differ noticeably. Thanks to this, the interior has a
different character. Some details were simplified: triple arcades
were replaced by double-span ones (later their lower tiers were
replaced by wide arches).
Sophia Cathedral was made in the
Byzantine style, had a pyramidal structure and 6 domes.
Sophia Cathedral was finally painted by 1109, but only fragments of
frescoes of the central dome with figures of prophets and archangels
remained from this painting, in the center between which before the
Great Patriotic War was the image of Christ Pantokrator, who died from a
shell hit. In addition, an ancient wall image of Equal-to-the-Apostles
Constantine and Helena has been preserved in the Martirievskaya porch.
There is a version that this image was supposed to be the basis for the
mosaic, as it was made with highly diluted paints. The main surviving
painting of the temple dates back to the end of the 19th century.
The cathedral has three iconostasis. Of these, the most famous are
the main one (icons of the 15th-16th centuries, the festive row of icons
of the 14th century is kept in the museum’s exposition) and the
Rozhdestvensky (16th century, individual icons of the 19th century, the
icon “The Savior on the Throne” of the 14th century). Among the icons
stand out:
Icon of the Mother of God "The Sign"
Euthymius the
Great, Anthony the Great, Savva the Sanctified
Sophia, the Wisdom of
God (XV century). Located in the central iconostasis. It is
distinguished by great symbolism even in comparison with icons of the
same type. For example, Wisdom in the Novgorod version is red, meaning
the sacrifice of Christ.
Tikhvin icon of the Mother of God (XVI
century). Located in the Nativity iconostasis. This icon was with the
people of Novgorod during the conclusion of the Stolbovsky Peace. The
riza on the icon was made by order of Princess Sophia.
The Deesis
tier of the Assumption iconostasis was written by Aaron, an icon painter
of the 15th century.
The cathedral constantly houses the remains of the saints: Anna, Princes Vladimir, Mstislav and Fedor, Bishops Joachim Korsunyanin, Luka Zhidyata, Nikita and Arkady and Archbishops John, Gregory, Martyry, Anthony, Vasily Kaliki, Simeon and Affony. Church attribution of the remains, according to the Soviet historian V. L. Yanin, does not correspond to historical reality. Also in the cathedral you can see the tombstones of bishops of the XVIII-XIX centuries.
Magdeburg, otherwise Korsun gates - the name of the bronze doors originally a side chapel of the Nativity of the Mother of God of St. Sophia Cathedral in Veliky Novgorod; then these doors, restored by master Avram, were transferred to the western portal of the cathedral. For several centuries, the gate served as a solemn entrance to the cathedral. Currently, they are open only during the holidays, when the service is led by the Metropolitan of Novgorod and Starorussky.
On the cross of the central dome is a lead figure of a dove - a
symbol of the Holy Spirit. According to legend, when Ivan the Terrible
massacred Novgorodians in 1570, a dove sat down to rest on the cross of
Sophia. Seeing from there a terrible massacre, the dove was petrified
with horror. Afterwards, the Mother of God revealed to one of the monks
that this dove was sent to console the city - and until it flies off the
cross, the city will be protected by it.
On July 5, 1942, during
the shelling by the Soviet troops of the German commandant's office,
which was located in the Kremlin (according to intelligence, the high
front command of the German troops was supposed to come that day), the
image of the Almighty Savior (painted in 1109) in the central dome of
the cathedral was destroyed, damaged frescoes in the drum, in some
places the vaults and the wall were pierced.
During the shelling,
80 shells were fired, 5 of which fell on the cathedral. By order of the
German command, according to a long-established plan, many works of art
were taken from Novgorod to Pskov, Riga and Germany, among which were
also valuables from St. Sophia Cathedral: iconostases, mosaic slabs,
etc.
The main cross of the cathedral, hanging on chains, was
removed by order of the commandant of the city. The golden lining of the
damaged dome was used by the soldiers for souvenirs that were sent home
(snuff boxes, dishes, etc.). At that time, the engineering corps of the
Spanish Blue Division, which fought on the side of Nazi Germany, was
located in Novgorod. The cross, like a trophy, was taken by them to
Spain. At the request of the governor of the Novgorod region to the
Spanish embassy in Russia in 2002, it was found out that the cross is in
the chapel of the museum of the Military Engineering Academy of Spain in
Madrid. The rector of the Cathedral of St. Sophia, Archbishop of
Novgorod and Old Russian Lev, having received information about the
location of the domed St. Sophia Cross, at a meeting with Russian
President V.V. Putin, inquired about the possibility of returning the
cross to Novgorod. As a result of negotiations between the Russian
President and the King of Spain, the Spanish side decided to transfer
the cross of St. Sophia Cathedral to Russia.
On November 16,
2004, in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, he was returned to the
Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Alexy II by the Minister of Defense of
Spain and is now placed inside St. Sophia Cathedral. By order of the
Novgorod administration, an exact copy of the cross found in Spain was
made. It was handed over to the Spanish side to replace the original
one. The cross, now located on the central dome, was made in 2006 and
installed on January 24, 2007.
Graffiti on the walls of St. Sophia of Kyiv were discovered at the
end of the 19th century. Stratigraphic and paleographic analysis shows
that more than half of the graffiti of St. Sophia of Novgorod dates back
to the second half of the 11th - beginning of the 12th century. In 1978,
251 inscriptions were published in the book by A. A. Medyntseva, 10 of
them were Glagolitic, the rest were Cyrillic. By 2012, 22 Glagolitic
inscriptions were known. In total, about 800 texts are known by 2014.
The upper date of graffiti drawings probably coincides with the
extinction of the tradition of scratching on the walls of inscriptions.
In Sophia of Novgorod, this border falls mainly on the XIV century. S.
A. Vysotsky believed that the graffiti inscriptions of Sophia of
Novgorod had a more everyday character in comparison with the same
material from Sophia of Kyiv. Aleksey Gippius considers the divination
of the priest of the ravens Yakov Noga in relation to Khoten Nos,
discovered in Novgorod Sofia, to be the rarest fragment of the oral
poetic tradition that has come down to us in the Tale of Igor's
Campaign, in which the epic singer Boyan is called prophetic.
Other attractions
Alexievsky cross, erected in Novgorod by Archbishop
Alexy of Moscow in the 1380s and, possibly, being both a worship and
memorial cross in memory of those who fell in the Battle of Kulikovo. He
was abducted during the Great Patriotic War, then returned and placed in
the St. Sophia Cathedral.
The royal prayer place, established by
order of Ivan the Terrible, was made by Novgorod masters for two years.
Chandelier of the main dome, German work, donated by Boris Godunov.