Vladimir: The Power of Architecture

“[1224] The same year, for our sins, unknown tribes came. No one knows them, who they are or whence they came, or what their faith is; but they call them Tatars. . ..”

Thus the Novgorod chronicle described the first appearance of the Tatars in Russia. Other chronicles were to give more precise information–the “Tatars” were in fact part of the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan–but all accounts contain the same interpretation, drawn from the lamentations of the Old Testament prophets: that an unprecedented calamity had overtaken Russia as a punishment for its sins. After a defeat of Russian forces in 1223 at the River Kalka (in the southern steppes, near the Sea of Azov), the Mongols returned to the eastern steppes, where they were to reorganize following the death of Genghis Khan in 1227, and launch another attack to the northwest. Led by Batu, a grandson of Genghis Khan, a Mongol army of some 150,000 troops struck the disorganized Russian lands, first at the southern principality of Ryazan in 1237, and then Vladimir in the winter of 1237-38. The devastating invasion eventually carried them to Kiev (1240) and Galicia, then to Poland and Hungary in 1241.

According to an account in the Galician chronicle, the catastrophe at Vladimir began with the defeat of local Russian forces and the death of Grand Prince Yury. When the Mongols approached the city and attempted by threats to gain entrance without a siege, Bishop Mitrofan assumed leadership (Yury’s young son Vsevolod was thoroughly demoralized) and exhorted the citizens to fight. In the words of the chronicle: “The Tatars battered the town with their wall- battering instruments; they released arrows without number. Prince Vsevolod saw that the battle waxed yet more fierce, took fright because of this youth, and went forth from the town with his small group, carrying with him many gifts and hoping to receive his life. Batu, like a wild beast, did not spare his youth, but ordered that he be slaughtered before him, and he slew all the town. When the bishop, with the princess and her children, fled to the church [the Cathedral of the Dormition], the godless one commanded it to be set on fire. Thus they surrendered their souls to God.” Such was the catastrophe that engulfed Vladimir, one of the great centers of early medieval Russian culture.

The city’s rise to prominence actually occurred within a relatively brief period. Although settled as early as the first century by Finno-Ugric tribes, these lands were not colonized until the tenth century by Slavs from the west, drawn to the rich forests and tillable land. During the eleventh century, Kievan princes extended their authority over the northeast, and strengthened settlements such as Rostov and Suzdal (see Russian Life, Dec./Jan. 1998). Yet Kiev’s control was tenuous: in 1071 one of Rostov’s first bishops, Leonty, was killed in a pagan uprising, and the area was under the constant threat of raids by Volga Bulgars. At the beginning of the twelfth century, Suzdal was fortified and granted its own prince.

Suzdal was soon overshadowed by the fortress of Vladimir, established in 1108 a few miles south of Suzdal, on the Klyazma River. Its founder, Vladimir Monomakh, grandson of Yaroslavl the Wise and grand prince in Kiev from 1113, was the last of medieval Kiev’s great rulers. Monomakh’s death in 1125 led to competition for succession to the throne at Kiev among his numerous sons, including the heir to Suzdalia, Yury Dolgoruky. Yury finally gained Kiev shortly before his death, in 1157, but during the protracted struggle he built much in Vladimir, center of his principality, and established a number of settlements, including a small fortified post called Moscow. It was Yury’s son, Andrei Bogolyubsky, who began the era of great architecture in Vladimir.

Andrei has entered Russian history as a controversial figure, feared by those who supported the power of Kiev and Novgorod, but venerated in Vladimir, the city he considered his own. Throughout his reign he tenaciously pursued a policy of aggrandizement at the expense of both Kiev and Novgorod. His intention was not to rule from a capital in the south, but to transfer power to Vladimir; and in this he was largely successful. Although primarily a warrior prince, Andrey understood the power of church architecture as a symbol of his own authority.

The greatest part of Andrey Bogolyubsky’s architectural legacy occurred not in Vladimir itself but in Bogolyubovo, a special settlement built between 1158 and 1165 and located some ten kilometers to the east of Vladimir. The center of Bogolyubovo consisted of a walled compound with the princely residence and a richly decorated limestone cathedral dedicated to the Nativity of the Virgin. It was at this residence, in the summer of 1174, that Andrei met his death at the hands of conspirators (probably from his own retinue) exasperated by his strong temper and autocratic rule.

According to a chronicle account, the assassins rushed his chambers at night, surrounded the unarmed prince, and flailed away–with some difficulty, for they were drunk and he, despite his age, was still vigorous. Having stabbed the prince and left him for dead, the assassins heard groans from the staircase in the gallery connecting the palace and the church. With lighted candle, they followed the trail of blood, found the wounded prince, cut off his right hand, and threw hin into the courtyard, where he lay “for the dogs.” Many of the local inhabitants, indifferent to princely feuds and their ruler’s fate, joined in the pillage of the residence. Two days later a visitor from Kiev recovered the corpse and placed it on the porch of the Nativity Church; not until six days after the murder did a delegation from Vladimir retrieve the body for burial in the city.

The Bogoliubovo compound was converted into a monastery in the thirteenth century, and in 1702 Andrey was canonized. Although much damaged in the Mongol devastation in 1238, many of the structures remained until the eighteenth century. An unfortunate attempt to enlarge the windows of the Nativity Church upset its structural balance and led to the collapse of the church in 1723. A new church was then built on the lower walls of the original.

Yet the vigorous building campaign that Andrey initiated has not been entirely effaced. The one church from his reign that has survived in something like its original form, the Church of the Intercession on the River Nerl, is arguably the most perfect thing created by medieval Russian architecture. Located a short distance from the palace at Bogolyubovo, the church was built in one construction season in 1165 or 1166. It honors the holy festival of the Intercession of the Virgin, derived from a Byzantine miracle but elevated to a major religious holiday by Andrey himself.

The unknown builders had to work with a very unlikely site, on low, marshy ground near the confluence of the Klyazma and the River Nerl (which has since become a small oxbow lake on two sides of the church.) On this location, exposed to spring floods as high as four meters, the builders fashioned an artificial hill, paved with stone, that not only protected the church from high water and provided a buttress for the deep foundation walls (five meters), but also served as the first stage of the visual ascent.

In addition to its superb proportions, the Church of the Intercession is the earliest surviving monument in the Vladimir area to display an iconographic message in stone. The white limestone quarried in the area provided a durable material suitable for carving, and certain details such as the portal arches suggest the presence of foreign masters familiar with the Romanesque style in central Europe. The dominant element is a high-relief carving of King David, placed in the upper part of each facade. The prominence alloted to David has various interpretations: as God’s anointed, the king of Judah, he represents the warrior-leader who defeated his enemies and united his kingdom–deeds Andrey would have compared to his own campaigns to consolidate power and to defeat such external enemies as the Volga Bulgars. Built to commemorate a victory over the Bulgars, the church also testifies to the power of divine intercession frequently invoked in the Psalms.

Although the church honors the Intercession of the Virgin, whose protection is extended to the Vladimir lands, no representation of Mary appears on the church facade. Yet the concept of feminine protection is symbolized in the twenty high-relief masks of braided maidens, also placed along the upper facades.

The period following Andrey’s assassination in 1174 was marked by the usual struggle among contenders for power in Vladimir. By 1177 the issues had been resolved in favor of Vsevolod, half-brother of Andrey, who in 1162 had driven Vsevolod’s mother, Elena, and her sons into exile in Constantinople. Vsevolod’s return ensured not only the continuation of the Monomakh princely line in Vladimir, but also a renewal of Greek art in medieval Russian architecture.

Not until 1185, however, did Vsevolod III–known as the “Great Nest” for the number of his male progeny–turn his attention to a major building campaign. The immediate cause was a fire that destroyed much of Vladimir and severely damaged the Dormition Cathedral, originally built in 1158-60 during Andrey’s reign. Vsevolod’s builders ingeniously retained the walls of the earlier structure, weakened by fire, as the core of the cathedral, and added another aisle on each side. The new walls were raised two stories, but not to the full height of the original structure, thus allowing a view of the relation between the old and the new.

The exterior walls have little carved ornament, but are marked by a closed arcade strip–one of the features that Aristotle Fioravanti would use when he rebuilt the Dormition Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin in the 1470s. Indeed, Ivan the Great commanded that the Vladimir cathedral be used as a model, thus symbolizing the importance of Vladimir as a precursor of Moscow’s power. The most spectacular change in Vsevolod’s rebuilt cathedral was the addition of four cupolas placed over the corners. As before, the walls of the cylinders supporting the cupolas were sheathed in gilded copper; and although the basic roofing material was sheet lead, there is evidence that the large central cupola was also covered with gilded copper. The rebuilding of the Dormition Cathedral produced one of the largest masonry structures in medieval Russia. (Its imposing bell tower was added in 1810, with a mixture of neoclassical and Gothic revival elements. And in 1864 a “warm church” was added between the bell tower and the original cathedral.)

Subsequently, Vsevolod commissioned a palace church, dedicated to St. Demetrius of Salonika and built not far from the Dormition Cathedral in 1193-97. In contrast to the limited carving on the facade of the Dormition Cathedral, much of the limestone facade of the St. Dmitry Cathedral is covered with carved images, whose derivation remains open to question. Futhermore, there is the issue of the iconographic meaning of the carvings, whose order has been partially preserved despite renovation over a period of eight centuries– the most extensive being a restoration begun in 1832. The original carvings on the exterior display a system of religious, secular, and ornamental motifs that comprise a message in stone. Many of the human figures have been identified, and it is possible to read the facades as a text on the prince whose authority is sanctioned by God, by the Orthodox Church and its saints, and by legendary rulers of antiquity.

Following the construction of the Cathedral of St. Dmitry, Vsevolod commissioned the Dormition Church of the Knyaginin Monastery in 1200 (its present form dates from the beginning of the sixteenth century). Although he continued to rule effectively until his death in 1212, conflict between his sons Konstantin and Yury led to disunity. Konstantin ruled from Rostov, while Yury, the younger of the two, was Vsevolod’s choice to rule in Vladimir and maintain its supremacy. In 1216 the two factions clased in a battle on the River Lipitsa. Although Yury was supported by three of his brother princes, the victory went to Konstantin (reinforced by Novgorod), who assumed power in Vladimir. Yury endured peaceful exile in Suzdal, and after Konstantin’s death in 1219, returned to rule in Vladimir. His long association with Suzdal inspired him to rebuild its Nativity Cathedral in 1222-25 (see Russian Life, Dec./Jan. 1998). Despite the return to apparent stability, none of these principalities was prepared for the overwhelming force of the Mongols.

After the invasion and the death of Grand Khan Ugedei, Batu withdrew from Europe to the lower part of the Volga, where he established his leadership of that part of the Mongol empire known as the Golden Horde. From their capital of Old Sarai, Batu and his successors exacted tribute from Russia, conferred the title of Grand Prince on Russian leaders whom they favored, and made periodic raids to maintain their dominance. Russian princes were frequently required to accompany Mongol punitive expeditions against rebellious Russian cities; the ambitious princes of Moscow were adept in exploiting this role to their own advantage.

The “Tatar Yoke,” which was not formally abrogated until 1480, led to a decline in architecture for both technical and economic reasons. Brilliant though they were in military organization, the Mongols had little to offer the more highly developed Russian culture, from which they remained detached by both religion and secular custom. (as Alexander Pushkin remarked: “The Tatars were not like the Moors. Having conquered Russia, they gave her neither algebra nor Aristotle.”) During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the process of assimilation increased, as many Mongols accepted the Orthodox faith and the authority of Moscow.

In the period following the Mongol invasion, a modicum of organized existence returned to the devastated towns of the Vladimir area. In 1252, the title of Grand Prince of Vladimir was bestowed by the Mongols on Alexander Nevsky, prince of Novgorod and grandson of Vsevolod III. His policy of accommodation provided a fragile stability to the area. In any event, the predominance of Vladimir had passed. In 1328 Moscow’s Grand Prince Ivan I (Kalita, or “moneybags”) persuaded the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Feognost, to transfer his residence from Vladimir to Moscow; and, by the end of Ivan’s reign, Vladimir had been incorporated into the Moscow principality. Even the city’s most treasured icon, the Virgin of Vladimir, was taken by Moscow as a protection from a threatened invasion by the fierce Tamerlane in 1395 (it now hangs in the Tretyakov Gallery). One might argue that Moscow repaid its debt to Vladimir in 1408 with the arrival of the greatest medieval Russian painter, Andrey Rublev, and his colleague Daniil Chorny to repaint the badly damaged frescoes of the interior of the Dormition Cathedral.

In subsequent centuries, Vladimir served as a regional center, with modest growth reflected in the building of new churches. During the reign of Catherine the Great, its central district was replanned and new administrative buildings were constructed. Nonetheless, the city languished and was probably best known for the road of tears called the “Vladimirka,” along which innumerable prisoners plodded to exile in Siberia.

With the completion of a major railroad from Moscow through Vladimir to Nizhny Novgorod in the 1860s, economic growth increased, and, during the Soviet period, Vladimir became a major transportation center–again to grim reknown for the thousands of prisoners who passed through its notorious transit prison during the Stalin era. Vladimir’s large factories (primarily machine construction and chemical) now support a population of over 350,000.

But these factories also contribute to air pollution that is literally eroding the limestone of its great cathedrals. Local preservation expert Alexander Skvortsov recently illustrated the damage on the exterior of the St. Dmitry Cathedral, where it is possible to crumble once solid limestone between two fingers. Such are the problems that confront many old Russian cities. But within this typical industrial environment, with its monotonous housing projects, one can still see the twelfth-century Golden Gates, through which passed the ancient road to the east; one can still find enclaves of wooden houses in traditional designs (left); and the golden domes of the great Vladimir cathedrals still rise above the banks of the Klyazma River–testimony of a time when this city ruled medieval Russia.