A French journalist once wrote about the capital of Russia: "You have before you a sad landscape, vast like the ocean, and to animate the emptiness, a poetic city whose architecture has no name."

History books first mention Moscow in the chronicles of A.D. 1147 when the settlement was little more than a frontier stockade. As the nation of Russia expanded, Moscow became a major center geographically and commercially. It became a political and cultural center during the 12^th century when the metropolitan, or head bishop, of the Russian church moved to Moscow from the city of Vladimir. At that time Moscow’s ruler, Ivan I, was given the title and privileges of grand prince. During Ivan’s reign the city of Moscow became an important and beautiful city.

At the heart of the city where the first stockade, the kremlin, had stood, successive rulers rebuilt the oak-fenced area into a vast stone fortress, enclosing within its walls a growing number of stone churches and palaces, as well as an arsenal, an armory, and a senate building. It was a citadel of Church and State.

St. Basil’s Cathedral

St. Basil’s Cathedral, perhaps the greatest Russian architectural achievement, was built by the Russians in the 16^th century, as the seat of the Russian Orthodox Church. A monk of that time, in a letter to King Vasily III, wrote: "The first Rome fell because of the Apollinarian heresy, the second Rome, Constantinople, was captured and pillaged by the Turks, but a new third Rome has sprung up in your sovereign kingdom: the third Rome is Moscow."

Just as the Eiffel Tower has come to represent Paris, St. Basil’s Cathedral is the icon of Moscow. Built between A.D. 1555 and 1560, it is representative of the Russian style of architecture. Often referred to as "a box of glazed fruits"—because that is what it actually looks like—it is distinguished because of its many multi-colored "onion domes."

Basil the Blessed, in whose name the cathedral is dedicated, was a poor miracle worker, known as "the holy fool," to whom Ivan the Terrible credited Russia’s victory over the Kazan Monglos in A.D. 1552. To be "idiotic for Christ’s sake," as was often said about St. Basil, was a deeply revered religious behavior of the times. One, such as Basil, who could willing give his life over to Christ so "foolishly" was thought of as the one true way to live in imitation of Christ.

After the architects, the Yakovlev brothers, completed the St. Basil Cathedral, Ivan the Terrible ordered them to be blinded so that they would not be able to design another, more beautiful church. Known for his despotic temperament he was also know as one of the greatest patrons of the arts. He hired architects, masons, wood carvers, enamelers, and gold and silver smiths from all over Europe to complete his grandiose building scheme. As terrible as Ivan may have been, it is he who is most responsible for the beauty of Moscow.

Muscovite Monasticism

"When looking from afar in the clear sunlight at an old Russian monastery," wrote a Russian essayist, "it seems to be burning with a many-colored flame; and when these flames glimmer from afar, they attract us to them like a distant, ethereal vision of the City of God."

The ideals of monasticism had been inherited from Byzantium, and through the patronage of the nobility, monasteries sprang up throughout the Russian countryside outside Moscow. These religious outposts were incorporated into a network of fortress-monasteries that formed Moscow’s outer wall of defense.

The Trinity-Sergius Monastery was transformed from a compound of wooden shelters into a walled city, and the buildings within became a rich architectural heritage. The original monastery, founded by St. Sergius had been created through his life of fasting and prayer in the wilderness. The monastery eventually became a splendid group of buildings. An account by the 17^th century Byzantine priest, Paul of Allepo, describes the monastery as being furnished with "objects surprising to the mind, and dazzling to the sight."

Another node in the outer reaches of Moscow was the Novodevichy Monastery, which was primarily a convent for women. It served as a strategic stronghold, built at a bend of the Moscow River, in order to control an important crossroads. This monastery played an important role in defending the city from various attacks during the 14^th and 15^th centuries. By the 16^th century, however, Moscow’s borders had spread far beyond the Novodevichy and the other fortress-monasteries, so the builders and restorers concentrated less on defense than on ornamentation.

Smolensk Cathedral with its five "onion domes" dates from the founding of the monastery and stands at the center of the fortress. The Patriarch of Russia once stated: "We possess no convent equal to this in riches; and this is, because all the Nuns who reside in it, and successively resort to it, are widows, or maiden daughters of the nobles of the empire, who come with all their property and possessions, their plate, gold and jewels, which they settle upon the convent."

Other Geography topics in Volume VI (1997-98) of St. Joseph Messenger:

Venice: Bride of the Sea
Florence: City of Flowers
The Vatican City State: 100 acres and a Pope
Constantinople: Capital of the East