Church of John the Warrior on Yakimanka

The lowlands between the modern street Bolshaya Yakimanka and the Moskva River flooded regularly in the spring, there were archers , Poles and ordinary peasants ^[1] .

In 1709, Peter I, after examining the damage caused by the flood, noticed the destruction of the church of St. John, who was then closer to the river, and ordered to build a new church in a safer place - in memory of the Battle of Poltava ; according to legend , a new temple was erected according to the drawing of the king himself ^[2] .

In 1711, the refectory with a southern chapel was completed; the consecration of the entire church was performed on June 12, 1717 by the Exarch, Metropolitan of Ryazan, Stephen Yavorsky . In 1759, the southern chapel was built.

The forged patterned fence on a brick foundation was erected in 1754–1758 (its eastern side in 1984 was significantly moved closer to the temple due to the expansion of the street; the fence on the south side appeared even later, after the demolition of the house standing there).

In 1785-1796, Priest Matvey Desnitsky served as the future Metropolitan of Novgorod and St. Petersburg Michael . Already in his youth he gained fame as a preacher.

In 1779-1791 the church was decorated by Gabriel Domozhirov ( frescoes ) and Vasily Bazhenov ( iconostasis ); these works were lost in the 1860s. In 1928, the church was equipped with an iconostasis from the destroyed Church of the Three Saints at the Red Gate ^[3] .

From 1906 until his death in May 1922, the abbot of the temple was Archpriest Christopher Nadezhdin . With him in 1912, the church celebrated its 200th anniversary - the liturgy on the occasion of the jubilee and the temple festival on July 30 was performed by Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna Vladimir . In 1922, Archpriest Christophor was accused of “opposing the seizure of church property” and shot among some other persons of the Moscow clergy after the sentence of the Moscow Revolutionary Tribunal ^[4] . ( Glorified in the Council of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in 2000).

The temple was never closed for worship and was not in renovation .

In the 1930s, some shrines from closed or destroyed nearby churches were placed here; One of them was the closed temple of Maron the Hermit in Old Paneh , whose rector Alexander Voskresensky in 1930 became the abbot of the Church of John the Warrior († 1950) ^[5] .

According to the memoirs of Nikita Krivoshein ^[6] :

In the autumn of 1952 I ended up in Moscow as a student, and thanks to the late Nina Konstantinovna Bruni (daughter of Konstantin Balmont), I found my way to the Church of John the Warrior on Yakimanka Street. There were services and singing - as in the Parisian adolescence. There - I don’t remember how it happened - I was astonished to listen to the blasphemous requiem "With the saints rest ... O Lord, the soul of your servant Joseph ..." A month later, on Good Friday morning, they reported about the dismissal of the poisoning doctors . The parishioner of this temple, Ivan Bruni , said with confidence: “Our return soon!” (From Vorkuta and Taishet ). In this church, I got used to the “collective confessions” (it is so easy to answer “sinner” to all the questions of the priest), I got used to combining the main events of life in the same space and time: there were weddings at the altar, conveyor baptisms in the aisle and at the same time serial funerals ... It was necessary to master the isolation, almost inaccessibility of priests. The most painful of all - I am not afraid of the word - was to retain in myself unconscious hope and listen to how the rector quite often read the Patriarchal messages about Korea , then Vietnam, World Peace and Imperialism ...

The architecture of the building combines elements of Moscow baroque styles with Ukrainian baroque and European influence that was common in Russian architecture in the time of Peter. The architect remained unknown; similarity with the Menshikov Tower suggests the work of Ivan Zarudny . The main building is a traditional Moscow octagon in a square ( octagon on a quadrangle ), however, in this case there are two coaxial octagons, each crowning half of the dome.

The southern side of the temple - in the name of mchch. Guria, Samona and Aviva; North - St. Dimitri of Rostov ; auxiliary - Great Martyr Barbara ; in the temple there is also the venerated icon of the last of the Church of Barbara on Varvarka Street , relics of over 150 saints of God in arks and icons ^[2] .

In the temple, besides, the icons of Joachim and Anna are wonderful (“The Conception of the Holy One, Always Concealed by the Most Holy Mother of God”) with stamps — in the northern aisle (brought from the destroyed temple of Joachim and Anna ), and the Savior of the “Great Angel Council” - before the salt the main altar, next to the highly revered temple icon of the martyr John the Warrior.

• The prior of the church, Archpriest Gennady Geroev, graduated from the Moscow Theological Seminary in 1987.
• Archpriest Georgy Mezentsev graduated from the Moscow Theological Academy in 1982.
• Archpriest Alexei Palinov graduated from the Moscow Theological Academy in 1999.
• Priest Anthony Smirnov graduated from Sretenskaya Theological Seminary and Magistracy in 2014.
• Deacon Daniel Semin studied at the Moscow Theological Seminary from 2010 to 2015 ^[7] .

1. Archpriest Vladimir Rozhkov . Church of St. John the Warrior on Yakimanka in Moscow. // gmp . 1968, No. 4, pp. 8-14.

• Temple site
• Temple page on the portal Orthodoxy.ru
• Temple of John the Warrior on sobory.ru (inaccessible link)