Sergiyev Posad is one of the Golden Ring towns. That is, it’s one of twelve towns floating around Moscow which are historically significant and are recommended as worth a visit if to anyone who is going to be in the region for any length of time.
You’ve actually been to two. The other one was Suzdal.
But you tended to go to Sergiyev Posad at least once a year to visit the Trinity Monastery of St Sergeius.
It was founded in about 1340 by St Sergeius of Radonezh, whose relics are entombed in one of the churches. The monastery is the most important in Russia and is the spiritual centre of the Orthodox church. It also has the biggest seminary and is a pretty thriving religious community all round.
One of the interesting aspects of being there is seeing all the inhabitants hurrying to and fro, from bent and wizened old monks, through rotund and bustling priests to fresh faced young seminarians.
Last time you were there you ended up round the back of the public building, where you also stumbled on some women scrubbing our vast salt cucumber barrels, which you thought was pretty cool. And that’s before you add all the pilgrims, tourists and local wedding parties doing their tour of the local hotspots.
The whole place was looking rather spiffy too, after years of restoration work.
So in honour of Easter and the fact that you’ve just discovered how embarrassingly easy it is to upload images, here are a few more pictures:
please got to http://thelamp.wordpress.com/2007/04/08/what-does-god-have-to-say/
This is probably bad but I look at those photos they give me flashbacks to Disneyland’s “It’s a Small World.”
The buildings are so pretty, so glowey, have such complacent and expected and almost comic in its expected ornamentation.
I am for sure going to hell.
It all depends on what you’re used to, really. A friend who was in Russia for the first time at the same time as me couldn’t abide the gaudiness of St Basil’s (Red Square) and would wince everytime she saw it. Which was unfortunate as it was right opposite where we were working at the time (set our watches by the Kremlin clock tower every morning – how cool is that?).
Anyway, it was summer at the time and she comforted herself with the thought that perhaps it would be more bearable – and comprehensible – as an antidote to the long dark winter coming up.
And when winter arrived we discovered that minus ten temperatures notwithstanding, a lot of what Russian winters are about are crisp blue skies and bright sunlight bouncing off the fresh white snow. So that wasn’t much of a help.
For me, though, it’s the freshly painted look I find particularly unnerving.
Thing is, what I find natural and soothing are the great old stone cathderals and medeival churches in the UK, which are unornamented because the (pretty gaudy actually) wall paintings have worn off and any other decoration has either been pillaged by Henry VIII’s lackeys, destroyed by the puritans, covered up by the Victorians because it was showing too much leg or sold off to pay the rising costs of making the roof watertight. Fresh paint never enters into it. Although, to be fair, fresh paint probably only enters into the Russian look as they are making up for years of neglect.
B thinks my favourite churches are horrifyingly – bordering on insult – bare. It’s the very lack of colour that bothers him. Except for the stained glass windows, which Russian churches don’t have.
Luckily, round here the churches are mostly Victorian. And they may have been protestant, but the Victorians couldn’t resist a bit of colourful brickwork, wrought iron designs for the light fittings and the odd improving mosaic. So we are both equally freaked out but able to meet the look somewhere in the middle.
Anyway, that’s a long winded way of saying that if you are going to hell, I’ll probably be joining you. And when it turns out that God is, in fact, Catholic and hates onion domes, so will B. So that’s allright.
Oh yeah. Found two more pix – the bell tower and the banquetting hall. At least that’s what I think it was used for by the Soviets. Not sure what it’s for generally.
I really like Orthodox churches and the way they are done.
Then again, this is what I grew up with.
I think they’re very lively – and very warm and welcoming. They are cheerful – not nearly as dramatic as what you’d normally see in the West, but very cozy, and, I think, joyful. They remind me of religious variations on the Gingerbread House, minus a flesh-eating witch on the inside (but with a lot of incense to make up for it). They incorporate a lot of pagan traditions into their colourful style – or so some have argued. I especially like stars on blue domes – and the way that same style is sometimes incorporated into icons depicting Mary. Mary literally has the universe draped over her shoulders in one of my favourite icons.
My boyfriend, who has a very “British” sense of style (well, so he says), tends to hate them. He thinks they’re “gaudy,” “tastless,” and an “affront to the poor.” I couldn’t disagree more.
The trouble is really that Orthodoxy and Protestantism are on the opposite ends of the theological spectrum and never the twain shall meet. The whole affront to the poor thing is definitely a Protestant sentiment.
Isn’t the argument for that it gives people something to aspire to, creates a pocket of ‘heaven’ on earth and brings a little colour into their otherwise drab lives?
Anyway, tell your boyfriend he’s a joyless Puritan.
What I like about Orthodoxy is what makes it so different from Prtotestantism. Which I also like.
I like the atmosphere in Orthodox churches during a service. It’s a bit of a hubub, with the service going on in the middle and large sections of the congregation milling around the edges, visiting with their favourite icons and exchanging nods as well as dropping in and out of the ritual. It has a very engaged, connected and communal feel.
Protestant services, on the other hand are rampantly individualist. You progress through the service barely acknowledging the presence of others and they are, in comparison, _seemingly_ passionless and mechanical. It’s all inward. Meditative. Good thinking time, I always found.
Probably I will get shot for this. But, I think the interpretation here of protestant is wrong.
I have a dear friend. I live and grew up in the Stripes. We are a county of civil unrest, difficulty, drama, devisiveness. In part because we are a country of so many different peoples coming together so fast. But, that is beside the point.
She attended a church in the deep south, and that means something here, and, one day, a black man apeared in the church, and that means something too, and, in the deep south, with a single black man appearing to worship, things can go wrong. However, at the end of service, her father walked up to that man, and shook his hand, and welcomed him to the congregation. And, behind him, other men followed. And so. By his example, and walking forward first, a man was welcomed to a house of God.
I am not hugely religious. Okay I am vaguely or not at all or not entirely religious, depending on interpretation and definition. I am spiritual. But what I do believe in is the best of man. That to me counts. And, my friend’s father represented that on that day, in a white congregation or protestants, the man who seeing a situation that could go wrong because of mens petty divisions, stepped out first to overide prejudice and strange group mentality and make a Black man welcome there.
What is hugely ironic and wrong is, that effort should never have been necessary. What is right there is, it never occurred to him doing the right thing could have cost him. But then, I do not know that. Maybe he did know what it could cost him, and stepped into the divide anyway. He was that kind of man.
It’s really interesting that you should mention individualism, S, because one of my main problems when it came to “fitting in” in Protestant churches in the U.S. had to do with the fact that I perceived the Orthodoxy to be more individualist.
I think the reason why I thought this way had to do with the fact that in Kiev, I could walk into an Orthodox house of worship at any day of the week and not be forced to speak with anyone but God. I could stand off to the side, light a candle for a dearly departed, or a dearly loved, or both, and not even have to look around me. Even if a service is going on – most churches are designed so that peopel can slip in and out relatively unnoticed. All I head to do was wear a scarf, and I thought they were pretty anyway…
Protestant churches forced me to interact, and that was just weird to me at the time.
*Grins* Well, my other theory about Orthodoxy is that it does represent the anarchic tendencies of the inhabitants of that part of the world. ‘Look!’ I say to B, ‘You can’t even stand facing in the same direction doing the same things for a couple of hours in church, for goodness sake!’
Protestantism, on the other hand, is much better for the British, who never saw a rule they didn’t like and didn’t feel obliged to follow (that being the Right Thing To Do) regardless of how irrelevant, unhelpful or outdated it is.
Someday I’ll tell you the illustrative story of me and B going though airport security which neatly encapsulates both those attitudes.
B isn’t impressed by the theory though. Or the story.
Shoot you, Max? *Looks around vaguely for her shotgun* You know, I rarely have to shoot people. Mostly I just talk to them until their lower intestine leaps up and strangles them to put them out of their misery.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate Protestantism, or even think it doesn’t have value in fostering a sense of community and good relations between people. It’s just that, mostly, all the community bonding stuff takes place ourside of the worship time. Over coffee afterwards or the commitees to organise the next jumblesale or cricket match.
Mind you, the evangelical arm of Protestantism always looks a lot more engaged (and as though they are having a lot of fun). But they are all still facing ahead rather than each other.
Although it occurs to me that I feel more engagement with the congregation in Orthodox churches because I’m people watching there rather than following the service. A small Protestant rebellion that. You can lead a horse to water…
I love these photos and this distinctive architecture. Have always wanted to visit Russia since my early days of reading Dostoevsky and Turgenev. Now I think I’d better start planing! Thanks for the post.
Russia is striking in places. I recommend St Petersburg. I like St Petersburg.
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