Church of St. Catherine on S'ezdovskaya Liniya Street (Saint Petersburg)
27A S'ezdovskaya Liniya Street, Vasilyevsky Island, Saint Petersburg (tel.: +7 812 328-23-63, +7 812 328-25-72), Metro stations: "Vasileostrovskaya", "Sportivnaya".
In the first half of the 19th century, the monumental dome of a church dominated the architecture of St. Petersburg's riverside; that church was the Church of St. Catherine the Great Martyr in S'ezdovskaya (then Kadetskaya) Liniya Street, on Vasilievsky Island.
On religious holidays, the Church's high bell tower used to sent the loud chime of its main, 8,000-kilogramme (17,500-pound), bell along the Neva River, summoning the believers to one of St. Petersburg's most beautiful Orthodox Christian churches, full of space and light.
Since old times, the location occupied by the Church of the Great Martyr Saint Catherine has been consecrated by the presence of God's temple. In 1745, the "portable" Church of the Life-Giving Trinity of the Kabardian Regiment stood on this site. Later, it was replaced with the wooden St. Nicolas Church of the Astrakhan Dragoon Regiment. Some time between 1745 and 1773, the Church got its current name, the Church of the Great Martyr Saint Catherine. For some time, it was used by the Kexholm Regiment.
In 1782, the wooden St. Catherine's Church became a smallpox church. This kind of church was dedicated to those ill with smallpox or measles. Priests of smallpox churches were allowed to enter only those houses where people that had contracted these diseases were situated, and residents of these houses could order occasional services only from priests of smallpox churches.
It is known from archives that the wooden Church burned down on Christmas Day in 1809. Out of all the Church's property, only the icon of the Great Martyr Saint Catherine survived.
Right after the disaster struck the wooden Church, a fund-raising campaign started, for the construction of a new church on the same site. The Church was commissioned from the merchants Ivan Vodovozov, P. Novikov and Daniil Golubin. The Church was designed by Andrey Mikhaylov, a professor at the Imperial Academy of Arts, who was also involved in the construction of St. Isaac's Cathedral.
The Church in the name of the Great Martyr Saint Catherine turned out to be his best work. Once the work had started, donations also started flowing in. Contributions were made by everybody who was able to donate: merchants, peasants, stock brokers and common workers. By 1823, the construction had been completed, and the Church was consecrated by the Eminent Gregory (Postnikov), who would later become the metropolitan of St. Petersburg.
In 1863, built to a design by Academician Fyodor Nesterov, a stone bell tower was added to the western side of the Church. Together with the bell tower, a building for watchmen and a new stone chapel were added; the chapel kept the icon of the Great Martyr Saint Catherine saved from the fire that had destroyed the original church. Since then, the Church's appearance has remained almost unchanged.
The Church has the plan of a four-pointed cross, and it is crowned with a large dome resting on a high drum decorated with 24 Corinthian columns. Rising high above the dome, there is a figure of an angel standing on a ball and holding a copper cross. Originally, the cross and the ball were gilded, the Church's dome was clad with white-painted iron, and the roof was painted green with oil paint. On the interior, the walls were painted with Biblical scenes, and the vaults were made in the shape of rosettes. The northern wall featured "The Adoration of the Kings", the southern one "The Baptism of the Christ" and the western one "The Entry into Jerusalem"; the Mother of God was depicted on the dome and the Four Evangelists on the pillars. The Church's entire floor was wooden and painted yellow in the altars, the ambons and the kliroses.
The Church had three side-altars and three altar tables: the main one was consecrated in honour of St. John the Baptist, the second one in the honour of St. John the Evangelist and the third one in honour of the Great Martyr Saint Catherine. Over the main altar table, on four pedestals decorated with gold carving, a canopy was set up, out of the baldachin that stood over the coffin of Empress Yelizaveta Alekseeyna when her ashes were being carried from the town of Belyaev to Chesma.
In 1907, the Holy Tables and the propheses in all the three altars were magnificently inlaid and covered with Carrara marble. On the propheses' upper panels, the words "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom" and the names of the donators were carved.
Behind the holy table of the main altar, there was an icon of the Resurrection of Christ, made by Karl Bryullov, sporting a golden frame. The iconostasis was decorated with sculptures by Professor Vasily Demuth-Malinovsky. The icons of the large iconostasis were painted by the famous artists Fyodor Bryullov and Academician Grigory Ugryumov.
The church's congregation consisted mostly of peasants, workers from the stock exchange and the vessels, and it was like a second home for the members of the cooperatives associations related to the Stock Exchange. The cooperative associations were involved in the construction and decoration of the Church. Each association had its own icon; the members of the association took care of it, decorated it, prayed and burned sanctuary lamps in front of it.
Every year on the Day of the Procession of the Cross, a cross procession, which included the blessing of the waters and prayers, started at the Church, stopping by two chapels assigned to the Church: by the chapel in the name of the Saviour Not-Made-By-Hands, next to the customs office, and by the cast-iron one close to Tuchkov Bridge (the former was built in 1900 by hay merchants in memory of Emperor Alexander III). A house church at the Midwifery and Gynaecology Institute was also assigned to the Church.
In 1876, the Parish Charitable Society was organised at the Church; among its members was the famous Petersburg merchant Grigory Yeliseyev. The members of the Society provided help for poor parishioners by raising funds for monthly allowances for the destitute, and in 1888 an almshouse for female elders without relatives was opened.
The fate of the Church of the Great Martyr Saint Catherine after the 1917 Russian Revolution was similar to the fate of most of Saint Petersburg's Orthodox churches. The St. Catherine's Church went through the same experience as the entire Russian Church: the struggle against the schism of the Renewed Church, the temporary victory of the schismatics, the shutting down of the St. Catherine's Church in March 1936 while controlled by the schismatics, the cynical abuse of God's temple and the traceless disappearance of the Church's sacred objects and decoration.
For a long time, the building of the Church of the Great Martyr Saint Catherine was occupied by a laboratory of the Hydrology Institute. In 1953, despite being under the protection of the state as an architectural monument, the building was handed over to the All-Russia Petroleum Research Exploration Institute (VNIGRI) to be used as a laboratory block. The Church was made a four-storey one by putting additional concrete ceilings between its chief walls; and the Church's central part, the one under the dome, was enclosed with a glass "aquarium", which collected emissions coming from the chemical laboratories through a ventilation system.
In March 1996, a part of the building of the Church of the Great Martyr Saint Catherine was handed back to St. Petersburg Diocese, and on 21 November the same year the first Divine Liturgy took place here. Since that time, the Church has hosted church services regularly.
On 1 December 2000, on the eve of the Church's Dedication Day, a joyful and long-awaited event took place: a gilded cross was erected on the bell tower. And on 7 December 2004, for the first time in many decades after the Church was shut down, a prayer service dedicated to the Great Martyr Saint Catherine was performed in the cleared part of the Church, under the dome. The sculpture of an angel with a cross, the one on the Church's dome, has been prepared for its complete restoration.
In August 1794, the solemn consecration of the city of Odessa took place; during this ceremony, the site for construction of a church of Nicolas the Wonder-Worker was consecrated in Sobornaya Square; and in 1795, the first stone was laid. This Church became the forerunner of the future Cathedral.
The construction works on the Church, to a design...
WorldWalk.info
en
info@worldwalk.info