Extension. Ex. 45. Give the written description of the palace, picture gallery, museum, temple you know well

Ex. 45. Give the written description of the palace, picture gallery, museum, temple you know well. Use for help Ex. 41, 42, 43.

Ex. 43. Write an excursion to Buckingham palace using the information from Ex. 42.

Ex. 44. Write an excursion a) to the sights of native city b) to any place you like.

Ex. 46. Express your view on the text and relate it to your own experiences. Write a summery of it.

If you walk up into Red Square from the North on a snowy winter morning, you will be treated to a breathtaking sight. Like a colorful toy resting in the palm of this cobblestone field, the Cathedral of St.Vasily (Basil) the Blessed climbs into view, its jeweled domes looking more like a circus attraction than a national shrine. Perched high above the Moskva River, flanked by the stolid, gothic towers of the Kremlin fortress and the creeping commerciality of GUM, the church radiates an architectural self-confidence that is at once appealing and awe-inspiring. It is so amazingly out of place, and yet so perfectly set.

Interestingly, this icon of Russian culture was not always the multicolored baroque wonder we see today. Originally, the church was much less bright, more calm in tone. A 16^th century visitor would have seen only red brick and white stone, star-shaped blue and yellow rosettes on the facets of the tent tower and onion domes covered with tin sheeting (there were also eight small onion domes perched on the tines of the eight–pointed star that divides the central tent-roof chapel). It was only during the 17^th century that the church took on the colour and appearance we are familiar now with.

What is more, the true name of this church is not St. Basil’s, but the Cathedral of the Intersession on the Moat. Built between 1555 and 1561, it superceded (and incorporated) the Church of the Trinity that Ivan had ordered to built in commemoration of the sacking of Kazan on October 1-2, 1552. A battle begun on the important Orthodox holiday of the Intercession of the Virgin. Thus was the first part of the church’s name. The second part refers to the moat which once flowed below the church.

How is it that this name, connected with one of the Rus’ most important military victories, was cast from popular usage? The answer lies in a saint buried in one of the cathedral’s eastern chapels. This chapel is dedicated to the “ yurodivy ” (“fool of Christ”) Vasily (Basil), who died just weeks before the storming of Kazan in 1552.

Who was this man? The Chronicles recounted Vasily’s rather odd facts: he gave alms to a rich merchant instead of a poor one, he threw stones at the homes of the righteous and kissed the homes of the corrupt. He was repeatedly beaten for breaching public order; he was humiliated and often stoned by children. The life of this yourodivy was full of misfortune and misery, for no contemporary was supposed to know his main secret.

A yourodivy is one “touched”, a fool for God, a saint whose outward derangement belies a hidden fight with the devil – a fight beyond the capacities of an ordinary man. The life of a yuorodivy was one of the hardest in Russia. In fact, there are no more than 30 such yurodivys recorded from medieval Russia, and each knew he was doomed to die in misery and shame.

During the day, the yurodivy would “play” with the devil, then at night pray for God to forgive his torments. The yurodivy gained the ability to see through the devil’s plans, resisted them, and daily pursued the devil while making a mockery of him.

In one of his recorded miracles, “Vasily the Blessed” is said to have seen the image of the evil hidden behind the Icon of the Virgin, which hung above the Varvarskiye gates in Kitay-Gorod. Vasily ordered his disciple, a dyak (“scribe”) to destroy the icon, reputed to have miraculous powers. The dyak dared not, so Vasily himself broke the icon with a stone. He was set upon by an irate crowd and promptly arrested. In court, the yurodivy declared: “This devilish miracle [the icon] was meant to lull the believers into temptation”. The image of Satan was uncovered behind the icon; the painter was executed and Vasily was released.

Whether one believes that or not, Vasily was renowned for his courage and prophetic gifts. In particular, he is reputed to have predicted the devastating fire of 1547 (which may not have been so miraculous, given how susceptible the medieval town of wood was to fire).

The English traveler Giles Fletcher, who visited Russia during the reign of Boris Godunov, wrote: “In addition to monks, they have special eremites there whom they call holy men… They walk completely naked, even in winter in hard frost… with long hair… They are thought to be prophets and men of great holiness and thus are allowed to speak freely without any limits even of the very highest himself God. If such a man blames someone… no one argues and they just say that the accused deserves this because of his sins”. Flatcher noted that Vasily “dared to blame the late tsar [Ivan the Terrible] for is cruelty and all the oppressions he inflicted upon his people”. Indeed, Vasily was revered by the tsar, who, along with Metropolitan Macarius, attended Vasily’s funeral on August 2, 1552.

And yet, The Story of Vasily the Blessed does not tell us why his name superceded the official name, connected through it was with the victory over the Tatars at Kazan. Perhaps the personal victory of one holy fool over evil is more memorable than a distant military battle. As it is, we know all too little about the battle at Kazan.

The attitude towards Tatars has always been mixed. True, Rus’ southern flank through alliances with the khanates, elected to intervene in Kazan, in 1551 placing on the throne there Shah Ali, protected largely by troops from Moscow. But Ali did not sit well with either his protectors or his vassals, and within a year he was ousted. This time Ivan thought to put a Moscovite governor on the throne. Not surprisingly, this raised the ire of not only Kazan Tatars, but also those in neighboring Crimea, which attacked Moscovy from the southwest. The Tatars forces were repelled by the Tula militia and the path to Kazan was opened. Ivan laid siege to fortress city for two months, before German engineers blew a hole in the walls that led to the sack.

It took Mocsovy five years to pacify the region, but the victory in Kazan was hugely significant, opening the empire’s expansion to South and effectively ending (but for a dangerous episode in the Time of Troubles) the Tatar threat. Shortly thereafter, the khanate of Sibir’ and Nogai horde both pledged their subservience to Ivan, who in 1556 went on to conquer the Astrakhan Khanate, opening the full length of the Volga to Russian dominance.

So it was that the seizure of Kazan came to symbolize the growing power of Moscow, the vanquishing of the “infidels”, and the confirmation of Ivan IV’s righteousness in proclaiming himself not just grand prince, but “tsar” in his 1547 coronation. The Church of the Intercession was to embody this glory and achievements, to stand as a grand symbol of Rus’ Eastern Empire.

Interestingly, for all of its exterior grandeur, the Cathedral of the Intercession is remarkably small and close in its interior. While its external appearance could not but attract the attention to all (particularly given its commanding position in Red Square – at the time of its construction and until the completion of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower, it was the tallest structure in Moscow), its interior chapels are so small as to accommodate only small services of four or five persons. It gives the appearance more of a family church for the tsar, an elite cathedral for the few “chosen ones”.

It appears that the builders and architects allowed themselves some creative freedom in the construction of this national monument. The architects Barma Postnik Yakovlev created a new type of church, using as its central unifying element the amazing tent-roof (“shatyor”) structure first employed in the Church the Ascension at Kolomenskoe (commissioned, incidentally, by Vasily III on the occasion of the birth of his son, Ivan IV).

Ivan ordered Barma and Yakovlev to raise a stone church consisting of eight chapels adjoined to the existing Trinity Church. A monument to the warriors who gave their lives for their homeland, several of the chapels were to be named for Saints’ Days which coincided with important battles against Tatars. Yet, instead of eight, the craftsmen built a total of nine chapels, perhaps, it is argued by some, because they envisioned greater symmetry in nine than eight, guided, as one medieval chronicle has it “by spiritual reason”.

That the architects’ vision was correct is clear. The ten-roof chapel (which is the Church of the Intercession from which the assemblage of chapels derives its name) is a powerful central axis, uniting the eight onion domes of the other chapels, each with its own image, yet each somehow resembling the others. Contemplating the church, one is struck by an overall harmony that embraces the distinctive characters of each of the elements. While it appears at times asymmetrical from various angles, with different sized and shaped cupolas, if viewed from above, it is readily apparent that is perfectly symmetrical, with three chapels across in any direction, vertical, horizontal or diagonal.

Apparently such creative freedom was not the norm. Some, including the tsar, regarded Barma and Postnik’s revisionism as inadmissible in an Orthodox tsardom (making doubtly odd the myth that Ivan had their eyes gouged out so that they could not again make anything so beautiful). The church may well have been the first Russian architectural monument which triggered public polemics.

Nearly four hundred years later, Josef Stalin, in many ways Ivan the Terrible’s historic doppelganger, slated the Cathedral of the Intercession on the Moat for destruction, to share the ignominious fate of Konstantin Ton’s Savior’s Cathedral. Yet, by virtue of the miraculous intervention and temerity of the architect Konstantin Baranovsky, who protested against the barbaric plan of Stalin’s “enlighteners”, it survived. In yet another legend surrounding the mythic cathedral, tales abound of Baranovsky having barricaded himself in the church with a machine gun. Baranovsky’s heroic defense of the sacred monument (which was only polemical) cost him several years in Stalin’s camps.

Perhaps it is inevitable that such a significant national monument would become shrouded in mysteries and legends. Thankfully for our modern edification, this amazing cathedral has outlasted them all (as well as 440 years of Russian rulers), providing itself to be a monument to “spiritual reason”, which simply cannot be destroyed.

(Russian Life November/December 2006)

Unit 5

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