The Cathedral of the Intercession on the Moat

The true identity of “St. Basil’s Cathedral”: the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat (Pokrovsky sobor), built on Red Square in 1555–61 by Ivan the Terrible to give thanks for the conquest of Kazan. Its nine (later ten) chapels commemorate the days of the Kazan campaign; its design is a theological program in stone. Basil’s chapel, added in 1588, gave the whole its worldwide popular name — but the church is, and always has been, dedicated to the Theotokos.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (glorified 1588; feast 2 August O.S. / 15 August N.S.)

The Real Dedication

The building that the world knows as “St. Basil’s Cathedral” bears, in the Church’s usage, quite another name: the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat (Sobor Pokrova Presvyatoy Bogoroditsy chto na Rvu), or simply the Pokrovsky Cathedral (Brumfield, A History of Russian Architecture, Cambridge University Press, 1993, ch. 4; Erusalimsky, in Pravoslavnaya Entsiklopediya [PE], vol. 7, “Василий Блаженный,” Moscow, 2004, pravenc.ru/text/150789.html). Its principal feast is the Protection, or Intercession, of the Theotokos (Pokrov), kept on 1 October — the feast that recalls St. Andrew of Constantinople’s vision of the Mother of God spreading her veil in protection over the city, itself a yurodstvo text, so that the cathedral of the fools’ feast came, fittingly, to bear a fool’s name (on the Pokrov feast and Andrew see Foolishness for Christ in Rus’). The dedication to the Intercession was chosen because the decisive assault on Kazan fell on the eve of that feast; the church is a thank-offering to the Theotokos for the victory (Brumfield, 1993).

Built for Kazan, 1555–61

The cathedral was raised by Ivan IV, “the Terrible,” between 1555 and 1561, to commemorate the capture of the Tatar khanate of Kazan in 1552 — the conquest that opened the Volga and began the transformation of Muscovy into a multi-ethnic empire (Brumfield, 1993, ch. 4; PE, vol. 7). It was built at the very heart of Moscow, on Red Square before the Kremlin, on the site by the moat where the Trinity church stood and where Basil would be — or had just been — buried (see Death and Burial). Tradition names the builders as the masters Barma and Postnik (sometimes taken to be two men, sometimes one, Postnik Yakovlev), and preserves the legend — almost certainly apocryphal — that Ivan had the architect blinded so that he could never build anything to equal it (Brumfield, 1993, treating the Barma-and-Postnik attribution and dismissing the blinding legend as folklore).

[Apocryphal: The famous story that Ivan the Terrible blinded the cathedral’s architect(s) so that they could never create its equal is a legend with no contemporary documentary basis; it is reported in later tradition and popular retellings, not in the sixteenth-century record, and is generally dismissed by architectural historians (Brumfield, A History of Russian Architecture, 1993). This compendium reports it as folklore, not fact.]

A Theology in Stone

The cathedral’s astonishing form — a central tented tower ringed by eight domed chapels, each different, the whole a vertical explosion of colour and silhouette — is not decoration but program. The eight surrounding chapels were each dedicated to the saint or feast on whose day a decisive event of the Kazan campaign fell, so that the building is a calendar of the victory rendered as architecture; the ninth, central chapel, rising highest, is dedicated to the Intercession itself, gathering the rest around the Theotokos’s protection (Brumfield, 1993, ch. 4, on the dedicatory scheme; PE, vol. 7). The whole was read by contemporaries, scholars argue, as an image of the heavenly Jerusalem — the New Jerusalem descending, the Church triumphant made visible on Red Square, the ceremonial focus of the Palm Sunday procession in which the tsar led the patriarch’s mount as an image of Christ’s entry (Flier, studies on the Intercession Cathedral and the “New Jerusalem” symbolism of Red Square). The building is thus a dense theological and imperial statement: Muscovy as the new Israel, the victory over Kazan as a sacred triumph, the Theotokos as the city’s protector.

The Tenth Chapel

Into this completed program a tenth chapel was inserted in 1588, at the northeast corner, over the grave of Basil the Blessed, to house his newly glorified relics (Brumfield, 1993; PE, vol. 7; see The Chapel and the Relics). It is the one chapel not part of the original Kazan scheme — an addition prompted by the cult at the grave rather than by the campaign. And it is the one whose dedication would, in popular speech, swallow all the others: because the Basil chapel held the wonder-working relics and was heated and open through the year for daily services, ordinary Muscovites came to it most, and its saint’s name became the name of the whole (Brumfield, 1993; on the naming see The Name and the Cult). The great imperial thank-offering to the Theotokos is known to the world by the name of the naked fool whose bones lie in its corner.

The Cathedral’s Afterlife

The Intercession Cathedral survived the centuries to become the single most recognizable image of Russia — its silhouette a visual shorthand for the nation, reproduced on everything from icons to tourist posters (Brumfield, 1993; see Basil in Art and National Memory). It survived, too, the Soviet assault on the Church: closed as a place of worship and made a museum in the 1920s–30s, it was reportedly slated for demolition to clear Red Square and — in the persistent tradition — spared, so that it stands today as both museum and, in part, functioning church (Brumfield, 1993, on the Soviet-era museum status). Through all of it the building has kept its double identity: dedicated in law and liturgy to the Intercession of the Theotokos, known to the world by the name of St. Basil. That doubleness is the cathedral’s, and the saint’s, most enduring peculiarity — and the subject, from the saint’s side, of The Name and the Cult.

See Also

References

  • Brumfield, William Craft. A History of Russian Architecture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, ch. 4. (The Cathedral of the Intercession on the Moat; construction 1555–61 for the Kazan victory; the dedicatory scheme of the chapels; the Barma-and-Postnik attribution; the blinding legend as folklore; the 1588 Basil chapel; the popular naming; the Soviet-era museum status.)
  • Erusalimsky, K. Yu., and A. S. Preobrazhensky. “Василий Блаженный.” In Pravoslavnaya Entsiklopediya, vol. 7, 123–131. Moscow, 2004. pravenc.ru/text/150789.html. (The cathedral’s dedication; the 1588 chapel and relics.)
  • Flier, Michael S. Studies on the Church of the Intercession on the Moat and the “New Jerusalem” symbolic program of Red Square and the Palm Sunday procession. (The theological reading of the cathedral’s form.)