St. Basil's: The Stuff of Legend

There are a handful of world treasures that have come to symbolize

certain cultures to the rest of the world: the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, the Pyramids, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the White House … and, of course, St. Basil’s Cathedral. The story of this multi-colored cathedral—consecrated 440 years ago this year, on June 29, 1561—how it has endured through the centuries, and how it has become known around the world, is a rich and fascinating historical tale.  By Andrei Yurganov

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 Moscow 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 16th 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 17th century that the church took on the color and appearance with which we are now familiar.

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 Built between 1555 and 1561, it superceded (and incorporated) the Church of the Trinity that Ivan had ordered built in commemoration of the sacking of Kazan on October 1-2, 1552, a battle begun on the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

How is it that this name, connected with one of 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 in Christ”) Vasily (Basil), who died just weeks before the storming of Kazan in 1552.

Who was this man? The Chronicles recount Vasily’s rather odd acts: 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 yurodivy was full of misfortune and misery, for no contemporary was supposed to know his main secret.

A yurodivy 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 yurodivy was one of the hardest in Russia. In fact, there are no more than 30 such yurodivy 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 tormentors. The yurodivy forsook normal reason for Christ’s sake and gained the ability to see through the devil’s plans, resist them, and daily pursue the devil while making a mockery of him.

In one of his recorded miracles, “Vasily the Blessed” is said to have seen “with the supreme reason of the saintly spirit” the image of the devil hidden behind an 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 that “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 such apochryphal tales, it was bold prophecies that distinguished the yurodivy, and 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 up 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.” Fletcher noted that Vasily “dared to blame the late tsar [Ivan the Terrible] for his cruelty and all the oppressions he inflicted upon his people.” It was a charge Ivan was susceptible to accepting in the repeated bouts of cruelty and repentance throughout his life. 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 though it was with the victory over the Tatars at Kazan. Even if the memory of this saint was sacred, why would this national victory be less so? 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. Too little we can take as fact, that is. In the “Short Chronicle of the Kazan Tsardom,” the author tells of the storming of Kazan by the Russian army in 1552, but also combines real facts with folkloric fantasies. Tsar Ivan the Terrible is portrayed in the language of fairy tales as a flawless, ideal man: “And quite wise he was, and persistent, and strong in his body, and light on his legs like a snow leopard; and in every undertaking he was like his grandfather [Ivan III].” The tsar prays for the whole Orthodox people, confident in a long-awaited victory. The Russian warriors are similarly portrayed in hyperbolic fashion: “All the warriors, those holding spears and the cavalry men — they breathed like fire in Kazan with bravery and with wrath ...” Meanwhile, the Tatars are depicted as barbarians who pillage Rus’ and torture Christians, “putting hot coals in their sandals.” The Tartars “took along tall wives and strong girls whom they taught the art of field battle and how to shoot and defend the city’s fortress walls; they even made them wear armor.”

Yet, for all his patriotic fervor, the Chronicle’s author still shares his admiration for the defenders of Kazan. In the chapter, “On the Fall of the Brave Residents of Kazan,” he sings praises to the heroic deeds of the enemy: “Each Kazan resident fought with a hundred Russians, and sometimes even with two hundred.” Nor does the chronicler hide the fact that Russia’s sack of Kazan was followed by the destruction of mosques, murders and atrocities.

The attitude towards Tatars in Russia has always been mixed. True, in the minds of the Russians, the Tatars adhered to an alien faith; they were Muslim. Thus, their political power could not be totally accepted by an Orthodox country not ready to forget its Kievan Rus’ heritage. Yet, since 1472 and the reign of Ivan III, the threat of Tatar domination had all but subsided and the khanates bordering Rus’ southern lands (e.g. Kazan, Astrakhan and Crimea) were largely subsumed by internal intrigues, for a century fluctuating between being allies, adversaries and vassals of the strengthening Muscovite state.

The khanate of Kazan was particularly rife with internal struggles for succession after the death of Safa-Girey in 1549. Ivan, who initially sought to secure 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 sought to put a Muscovite governor on the throne. Not surprisingly, this raised the ire of not only Kazan Tatars, but also those in neighboring Crimea, which attacked Muscovy from the southwest. The Tatar forces were repelled by the Tula militia and the path to Kazan was opened. Ivan laid siege to the fortress city for two months, before German engineers blew a hole in the walls that led to the sack.

It took Muscovy five years to pacify the region, but the victory in Kazan was hugely significant, opening the empire’s expansion to the South and effectively ending (but for a dangerous episode in the Time of Troubles) the Tatar threat. Shortly thereafter, the khanate of Sibir’ and the 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 achievement, 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 of 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.”

Ostensibly, it appears that the builders and architects allowed themselves some creative freedom in the construction of this national monument. The architects Barma and 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 of the Ascension at Kolomenskoe (commissioned, incidently, 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 the 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 in eight, guided, as one medieval chronicle has it “by spiritual reason.”

That the architects’ vision was correct is clear. The tent-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 it is perfectly symmetrical, with three chapels across in any direction, vertical, horizontal or diagonal.

Nonetheless, apparently such creative freedom was not the norm, particularly as the Orthodox Church under Metropolitan Macarius was seeking to regularize liturgies, practices and even architecture. Some, including the tsar, regarded Barma and Postnik’s revisionism as inadmissible in an Orthodox tsardom (making doubly 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—about which we can only guess from the scarce fragments extant in the Russian Chronicles. Yet the polemics were perhaps not rooted only in a debate over the artistic merits of the Cathedral of Intercession on the Moat.

Three years after construction began on St. Basil’s, the udelniy (regional) prince Vladimir Andreevich began construction of another important church employing tent-roof architecture. It was the Church of Saints Boris and Gleb in Staritsa (now the site of New Jerusalem monastery; the church was torn down about a century later to make room for new construction). And it was completed and consecrated on May 2, 1561, when the remains of the two most revered of Russian saints were transferred there—a month before the dedication of the Cathedral of the Intercession on the Moat.

Could there have been some rivalry behind the building of the Boris and Gleb church concomitant to the completion of the Cathedral of the Intercession? The dedication inscription in Boris and Gleb by the Staritsa prince offers a clue: “To parents, in obedience.”

Whom could Prince Vladimir have had in mind? Of course, in the first place he was referring to his father, Andrei Staritsky, who raised the revolt against Yelena Glinskaya, mother of then child Ivan, since become Ivan IV. Yet because Prince Vladimir’s mother Evfrosiniya Khovanskaya was still alive at the time of the construction, then why the plural “parents”? As it turns out, the reference is to Vladimir’s father as well as to the Grand Princes Vasily II (“The Dark”) and Ivan III, grandfather and father of Tsar Ivan IV. Thus did Vladimir seek to elevate his own lineage on a level with that of the tsar, as if to say “we all come from the same stock.”

In one of his polemical letters to his confidant (and later opponent) Andrei Kurbsky, the tsar averred to this incipient rivalry and questioned the lines of succession: “And why would Prince Vladimir be the head of the state? Wasn’t he born from the fourth regional prince? ...What is his merit before the state? What is my fault before him?” Perhaps not surprisingly, by the end of the decade, in 1569, Prince Vladimir and his family fell victim to Ivan IV’s paranoid delusions, forced to drink poison at the tsar’s command.

Nearly four hundred years later, Josef Stalin, in many ways Ivan the Terrible’s historical doppelgänger, 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), proving itself to be a monument to “spiritual reason” which simply cannot be destroyed.  RL

Andrei Yurganov is a Doctor of History at the Russian State Humanitarian University who specializes his research and teaching in medieval Russia. His article on Ivan the Terrible appeared in the January 1997 issue of Russian Life.