St. Basil’s Cathedral: history, mysteries, legends
Many legends, stories and wonders are related to St. Basil’s name. For example, once thieves noticed that the saint was dressed in a very good fur coat given to him by a boyar and decided to take it from him by deceit. One of them pretended he was dead, while others asked the saint to give them money for his burial. Basil covered “the dead man” with his coat but seeing the deceit said, “Be from now on really dead for your slyness, for it is written: the sly ones shall be dealt with.” The liar actually died.
They say that Basil in the summer of 1547 came to a monastery on Ostrog (now Vozdvizhenka Street) and prayed with tears before a church for a long time. In this way he foretold a terrible fire in Moscow that started on the next day from none else but the Vozdvizhenka monastery. Tsar Ivan Vasilievich honored and feared St. Basil as “a seer of human hearts and minds.” When Basil fell seriously ill not long before his death the Tsar himself with queen Anastasia visited him. Basil passed away on August 2, 1552.
The Tsar himself with boyars carried his death bed; metropolitan Macarius conducted the burial. The saint’s body was buried in the Troitskaya church cemetery that was in the Ditch, on the place where the Cathedral of Intercession would be later built.
Since 1588 people began to talk about miracles taking place at the coffin of Basil the Blessed; because of this patriarch Job designated to celebrate the memory of the wonderworker on the day of his death, August 2. Tsar Fyodor ordered a side-chapel named after Basil be built in the Cathedral of Intercession on the site where the saint was buried and constructed a silver shrine for his hallows. Memory of the Blessed saint from of old has been celebrated in Moscow very solemnly: the patriarch himself conducted the service, and the Tsar was present at it.
Treasures of the Temple
St. Basil’s hallows are not the only valuable item of the Temple. Three unique façade icons were painted for it in XVIII century that are still kept in the Cathedral to this day: “A sign with the saints on the fields,” its replica and “Intersession with Basil and John the Blessed Above.”
The icon “A sign with the saints on the fields” on the eastern side of the Trinity church is the earliest one, of the first quarter of XVIII century. According to the Cathedral’s warden V. L. Belyankin’s words, “oral tradition has it that this icon was drawn with a special craft on wet lime mortar not with oil but watercolors.” It is assumed that this icon’s author is an icon-painter Timofei Arkhipov who was buried in 1737 at the walls of Mikhail the Archangel’s Miracle church of Moscow’s Chudov monastery.
The icon immediately became reverent and later was even considered to be miraculous. This is the reason why a replica was made of it on a wooden base in 1780s. The icons differ by the content of the saints on the fields. The icon’s size is striking: 2.84 by 2.84 meters. The third icon – “Intersession with Basil and John the Blessed Above” – is as big (2.6 by 3.8 meters) and is on the southern wall of the Cathedral of Intercession.
The appearance of Virgin Mary’s icons “the Sign” and “the Intersession” on the walls of the Cathedral is logical. The plots of the Intersession and the Sign of the Mother of God have both one and the same symbolic meaning – the Mother of God’s intersession before the face of the enemy and establishing the Mother of God’s intersession to Orthodox people.
Altogether there are 9 iconoscopes in the Cathedral containing around 400 icons of 16-19 centuries – they present the best patterns of Novgorod and Moscow Icon-painting schools. The walls of the Cathedral are completed with oil painting and murals of 16-19 centuries. Apart from icons, portraits and landscapes of 19 century are represented in the Cathedral as well as churchware of 16-19 centuries. Among the most valuable items is a communion cup that belonged to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich.
Miraculous salvations
Numerous attempts have been made to demolish the temple of unique beauty but each time the temple miraculously continued to stand in its place. In 1812, as Napoleon left the ruined capital of Russia he ordered the Cathedral of Intercession be blown up together with the Kremlin. However, the French in a hurry had no time to make a sufficient number of saps, and the Kremlin was blown up only in five places – the temples remained intact. As for the Cathedral of Intercession, it was not damaged because rain extinguished the kindled fuses.
After the revolution the Cathedral of Intercession was once again miraculously saved. Its last dean, archpriest Ioann Vostorgov, especially hated by the Bolsheviks, was shot in 1919, and in 1929 the temple was finally closed; the bells were sent for recasting. In 1930s, Lazar Kaganovich who had previously initiated demolition of the Temple of Christ the Savior, the Kazan Temple of the Kremlin and other temples of Moscow suggested the Cathedral of Intercession be torn down as well to clear the space for parades and demonstrations.
There is a legend spread among the people that he made a model of the Red Square with a detachable Cathedral of Intercession and brought it to Stalin. Proving that the temple frustrates passage of cars and demonstrations he suddenly plucked the temple from the Square. Stunned, Stalin allegedly spoke a historic phrase, “Lazar, put it back!” Famous restorer P. D. Baranovsky sent telegrams to Stalin with an appeal to spare the temple. There were rumours that when Baranovsky was invited to the Kremlin to discuss the situation he went down on his knees before a gathering of the Central Committee’s members entreating them not to destroy the temple, and it worked. Baranovsky, however, was sentenced to a long term in prison afterwards.
The temple is standing and remains a genuine symbol of Moscow and Russia. “This monument, famous all over the world,” says I. Y. Zabelin, “by its originality has occupied its place both in the general history of architecture and at the same time serves as a typical feature of Moscow itself, a special feature of the originality and distinctiveness that makes Moscow as an old Russian city different from all the cities of Western Europe. In its own way it is as great, if not even greater, a Moscow and people’s wonder as John the Great, the Tsar Bell and the Tsar Cannon. Western travelers and scientists studying history of architecture who are very sensitive to all originality and uniqueness a long time ago saw the true value of this wonderful monument of Russian Art” (“Features of Originality in Old Russian Architecture”).
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