- Saint Andrew's Cathedral (Saint Petersburg)
Saint Andrew's Cathedral ( _ru. Андреевский собор) is the principalFact|date=April 2008 church of
Vasilievsky Island and the lastBaroque cathedral built inSaint Petersburg ,Russia .The cathedral was conceived at the time of
Peter the Great as the chapter church of Russia's first chivalric order, that of Saint Andrew. The most famous architect of the Nordic countries,Nicodemus Tessin the Younger , was called upon to design a church resemblingSaint Peter's Basilica inRome and exceeding 430 feet in length.By the time Tessin submitted his designs, the tsar had died and the costly project was suspended. Two years later,
Giuseppe Trezzini , a city architect to St. Petersburg, had the territory behind the building of the Twelve Colleges cleared from wood and built a modest timber church, which was consecrated byFeofan Prokopovich in the name ofSaint Andrew on8 October ,1732 . It was an austerely rational structure with few stylistic pretensions.Empress Anna donated furnishings to the church, while the icon screen required by Orthodox usage was taken from a chapel of the neighbouringMenshikov Palace .As the timber church was found too small to house its increasing congregation, Trezzini designed a stone church, which was founded on
2 July ,1740 in the proximity of the timber cathedral. The shell of the church was erected within five years, but decoration works prevented its consecration until 1760. It was here thatMikhail Lomonosov andVasily Trediakovsky were sworn in as professors of theImperial Academy of Sciences on30 July ,1745 . The structure, dedicated in the name of Three Holy Men, still stands.On
4 July ,1761 the wooden cathedral was struck by lightning and burnt to the ground. The architect Alexander Whist (1722-94) was charged with the task of designing a new cathedral of stone. Though founded on18 July ,1764 , the church took 22 years to complete. A delay was due to the collapse of its cupola on6 August ,1766 , a disaster which led to the architect being taken into custody. It was not until21 March ,1780 that the five-domed pastel pink cathedral was consecrated.The decoration of the cathedral is restrained ( [http://www.hram.sp.ru/s14.jpgpicture] ), although
Emperor Paul , in reasserting its importance as the chapter church of the oldest Russian order of knighthood, had the entrance decorated with a relief representing the order carried by two angels. A special place was reserved in the cathedral for the tsar until 1813.The pyramidal bell-tower, attached to the church by a refectory, was built in two tiers in 1784-86 and formerly boasted ten bells, the largest of which weighed in excess of four tons. The top of the belfry was remodeled in 1850. Seven years later, the cathedral interior was renovated and the 18th-century icon screen augmented. Furthermore, when the first permanent bridge across the Neva was built in the 1850s, a chapel on the bridge became affiliated with the cathedral.
After the
Russian Revolution of 1917 , theBolsheviks confiscated many valuables from the church. On24 April ,1924 a crowd of several hundred worshipers attempted to defend the icons and clashed with the members of the "expropriation committee". As a consequence of the disorders, the cathedral was given over to therenovationists , a state-sponsored sect which sought to reconcile the ideals of Christianity and Communism.On
16 May 1938 the cathedral was closed down, its priests arrested and the bells destroyed. However, the impressive baroqueiconostasis was restored, while a 17th-century icon with the portraits ofPatriarch Nikon andTsar Alexis was taken to theRussian Museum . During theSiege of Leningrad , the dome was equipped with cannons which helped protect the area from intensive bombing.In 1992 the cathedral of St. Andrew and the church of Three Holy Men were returned to the
Russian Orthodox Church . In 2001, anobelisk was unveiled in front of the church to commemorate the tercentenary of the restored Order of St. Andrew.External links
* [http://www.hram.sp.ru Official website]
References
*commons-inline|Category:Saint Andrew's cathedral (Saint Petersburg)|Saint Andrew's cathedral (Saint Petersburg)
*Корольков М.Я. "Андреевский собор в Санкт-Петербурге" ["Saint Andrew Cathedral in Saint Petersburg"] . SPb, 1905.
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