Cathedral of St. Mary Magdalene Equal to the Apostles (Warsaw)

Circumstances of appearance and design

The rapid development of the Warsaw district of Prague took place during the second half of the XIX century. It was associated with a general increase in the importance of Warsaw and led to the active settlement of this city. Among the visitors were dominated by Russians and representatives of other nationalities, Orthodox by religion. Orthodox were soldiers of two Russian garrisons who were in Prague. In general, among other confessions, Orthodox made up a few percent of the entire population. The closest Orthodox church was a church on the left bank of the Vistula , in connection with which Orthodox believers repeatedly appealed to the Bishop of Warsaw and Novogeorgovsky Ioanniky (Gorsky) to start building a new temple. In November 1865, the bishop received the consent of the governor of the Polish Kingdom of Fyodor Berg to form a committee that was to supervise the construction. In the summer of 1866, a building committee was formed, headed by former civilian governor of Warsaw, Lieutenant General Yevgeny Rozhkov. Two years ago, the bishop announced the start of preparatory work.

The committee members were Prince Vladimir Cherkassky and General Yevgeny Roznov , for whom the construction of the church in Prague was a response to the real needs of the people and at the same time the possibility of building another facility at the strategic point of the city (opposite the Vilnius station) that would indicate that Warsaw was in the Russian Empire. According to Rozhnova, the temple was supposed to be another means of asserting the Russian people here. Upon completion, General Roznov and Colonel Palitsyn, the business manager, received state awards.

Due to the strategic nature of the building, the architect of the Holy Synod Nikolay Sychev already in 1867 presented the finished project and estimate. According to him, it was planned to build a single-headed church without a bell tower, worth 122,000 rubles. The St. Petersburg Committee for Church Construction made substantial corrections to the project, ordering it to be likened to a similar church in Kiev, which should emphasize emphasizing the connection of Orthodoxy on Polish lands with the Kiev Orthodox metropolitan church , denying the claim of its foreign origin and artificial introduction. It was also commissioned to build a bell tower, which increased the cost of work up to 140 thousand rubles. The church-building committee, seeking to receive state funding, adopted the amendments, ordering the construction of a structure, in terms of which is close to a Greek cross, topped with five domes grouped around a large central one. The area of ​​the building, after changes in the project, would have to be 766 square meters, which would allow the participation of 800-1000 believers in the service.

Construction

The place for the church was chosen at the corner of Aleksandrovskaya and Torgovaya streets at the Petersburg (now Vilna) railway station.

June 14, 1867 a solemn inception of the first stone took place, but first it was necessary to carry out work on the stabilization of moist soil. Despite the fact that the construction was initially behind schedule, the building was completed by the end of 1868, and the work on the interior continued for six months. The work was supervised by engineer Colonel Palitsyn.

Thus, in Warsaw, the first architecturally completely original Orthodox shrine appeared. The remaining churches, such as the Church of the Holy Trinity on Pidvalli, or the Church of the Icon of God Vladimirskaya, were free in former Roman Catholic buildings and, moreover, were part of large architectural complexes, which created restrictions for their creators (for example, the Church of St. Alexander Nevsky on Warsaw strongholds). During the construction of the church worked exclusively Russian artists.

On June 29, 1869, on the day of the consecration of the church, a solemn procession of the Warsaw Orthodox clergy took place, which went to the sound of the bells at nine o'clock in the morning from the Holy Trinity Cathedral on Dolgaya Street. The procession was solemnly greeted by Bishop Ioanikiy, who about ten began his solemnity, and then sent the service as a token of gratitude.

Before World War I

The Church of St. Mary Magdalene served as a parish church until the end of the First World War. Despite this, its construction, and then the content, was interpreted by the Russian authorities as a matter of prestige, given the localization of the object. In 1870, the temple was visited by Emperor Alexander II .

In the years 1871–1872 a two-storey house was built. At the church there was a guardianship, a parish school , a shelter, a registered chapel and two houses of prayer.

In connection with the special significance of the church, already in 1895, general repair was started, which Archbishop Flavian (Gorodetsky) requested in a letter to the Chief Prosecutor of the Most Holy Synod, Konstantin Pobedonostsev . He wrote that the church is in poor technical condition and does not look the best way compared to the nearby church of St. Michael and St. Florian, which was still under construction. The archbishop also pointed out the fact that the church often arouses interest among foreign visitors to Warsaw. The repair was led by Vladimir Pokrovsky, the then chief architect of the diocese. He restored the lost fragments of plaster, cleaned the walls from candle soot, restored the gilding of domes and the iconostasis. Upon completion, the temple was re-consecrated.

The interwar period and the Second World War

In 1921, after the Orthodox Church lost the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral and the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, the church of St. Mary Magdalene became the Metropolitan Cathedral of the Polish Orthodox Church . It was in this temple that an announcement of the recognition of autocephaly was held, which was contained in the Tomos Patriarch of Constantinople. It happened on September 17, 1925. The decision to raise the church of St. Mary Magdalene to the rank of a cathedral was associated with the process of reindication in Poland. In the capital of Poland, only two Orthodox churches remained. The rest were returned to the previous owners (this concerned the Roman Catholic property requisitioned in tsarist times), given to other denominations, or destroyed.

There were plans to destroy this cathedral as well, finally canceled by the local authorities in 1926. To celebrate this decision, the Czestochowa icon of the Mother of God was placed in the temple, an image especially revered by Polish Catholics.

In 1928, in the basement of the church, a second shrine was erected - the chapel of the Passion of the Lord, to which a part of the saved equipment from the dismantled cathedral of St. Alexander Nevsky fell. Earlier, in 1925, the general repair of the cathedral began, which, due to a lack of funds, was interrupted upon the completion of exterior works. Only in 1930 it became possible to begin repair work in the interior, in particular the cleaning of the frescoes. The commission that led the repair, led by Bishop Savva (Sovetov) , also ordered the restoration of the iconostasis of St. Job of Pochaev and the repair of the electrical installation.

During the Second World War, the cathedral was not significantly damaged. In 1939, a bomb explosion near the cathedral led to minor damage to the roof of the side nave. In the fall of 1944, during the shelling of Prague by the Germans, one of the shells hit the central dome and destroyed it. The cathedral was saved by the rapid reaction of the inhabitants of Prague from a serious fire that could lead to total destruction. A temporary repair of this damage was carried out in 1945. In 1944, the Germans demanded to give them church bells in order to melt them and make shells. The bells were cut and piecemeal lowered. However, it turned out that the alloy from which they were made is not suitable for shells. The cut bells were left in front of the entrance to the cathedral. New bells were purchased in 1947 with donations. The repeated appeal of the priest John Kovalenko to the Ministry of Public Administration led to the transfer in 1951 of five more bells from the store in Gdansk.

Cathedral at the time of the Polish People’s Republic

Immediately after the war, the clergy of the cathedral planned to repair it. However, this turned out to be difficult, due to the lack of resources and reduction in the number of parishioners, which made it impossible to raise sufficient funds. Only in 1955-1957, through subsidies to 90% of the cost of work from the restoration of the Public Fund for the Restoration of Warsaw and the Church Fund, the stairs were restored, a new paving was arranged around the cathedral and a new entrance gate was made. Due to lack of funds, restoration works of frescoes damaged by moisture have not been carried out. During the repair work, the parish several times sued the workers, due to the waste of the materials they purchased.

The initiator of the next repair work was the Metropolitan of Warsaw and all of Poland Stephen (Rudyk) . Selected in 1966, the Repair Committee, headed by priest Athanasius Semenyuk, appealed next year with a request to co-finance the project from public funds. The authorities of the PNS allocated a million zlotys to this matter. However, due to the late preservation, the interior was badly damaged, which led to high restoration costs. Therefore, the Committee was looking for additional sources of funding, including abroad. Due to the poor state of the frescoes, the Artistic - Theological Commission, which collaborated with the Committee, even considered the possibility of making new murals. Known one unrealized project. According to him, only the Last Supper in the altar room should have remained of the old frescoes. Near it must be the plot of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane , and above - the fresco of Oranta . On the side walls of the cathedral, it is planned to complete the images of the Three Saints Hierarchs, St. Stephen, as well as the patrons of the Warsaw Metropolitan: Saints George, Dionysius, Timothy and Macarius. Above the entrance to the cathedral there should have been a composition with the image of the Nativity of Christ , above the iconostasis - Christ the Deliverer. The project did not cover the entire surface of the walls of the cathedral, leaving some of their parts to the discretion of the artist. A choice was offered from among the scenes depicting 12 major Orthodox holidays. In front of the table, it was suggested to place tables with the history of the temple. The repair committee arranged a competition for the project, but the initiative was taken by the Conservation Department, ordering instead of the proposed changes, to perform a detailed reproduction of the type of frescoes from the first years of the cathedral’s existence, which was done. The works were led by Tadeusz Romanovsky and Ryszard Beletsky. The representative of the church, who was engaged in observation, was Abbot Savva (Gritsunyak) . At this stage of repair, the electrical installation was also changed and the equipment for loud speech was mounted.

In 1965, the cathedral entered into the register of monuments. No services were carried out in the cathedral during repair work. Believers prayed in the lower chapel, or in the chapel of St. Michael - the private chapel of the Warsaw Metropolitan .

As part of small works in the interior of the department, Adam Stalone-Dobzhansky created a new stained glass window with the plot of the meeting of Christ with Mary Magdalene, and in 1980 the roof covering was again replaced. Probably in the same period, the pictorial decoration was completely eliminated from the facade, the existence of which is remembered by the 1968 repair reports.

Third Polish Commonwealth

In 1996, the new abbot John Seasons conducted a thorough restoration of the lower chapel. The following repair work began regular Warsaw Metropolitan Sawa (Grytsunyak) after taking office, Metropolitan of Warsaw. After 1998, the floor and wooden windows were replaced, the electrical installation and the entrance stairs were replaced. In 1999, waterproofing was re-done. In the 2000s, the next update of the frescoes, which were in a worse condition than expected. In this regard, some elements, such as the words of the Our Father's prayer, written on the drum of the main dome, had to be sketched. Restored gilding kiots and crosses on the domes.

Now the cathedral is the shrine of two parishes - of sv. Mary Magdalene and the parish of St. Nicholas. Since the 1990s, services in the latter occur in front of the altar of St. Job of Pochaev .

Temple painting

• Acad. Vinogradov R.F.
• Acad. Vasiliev V.V.
• Acad. Korsalin K.I.

Shrines

• Part of the relics of St. Mary Magdalene, presented by Archpriest Anthony Devyatovsky.
• The image of Our Lady of Pochayev. Lost in 1915 during the evacuation.

• RGIA, f. 173, op. 1, d. 552.
• RGIA, f. 797, op. 37 (4 dep., 5 table), d. 40.
• RGIA, f. 797, op. 25, d. 10.

• Warsaw Diary. 1869 № 140. Pp. 566, 567; No. 168. Page. 678-680.
• Kholm-Warsaw diocesan messenger. 1892 № 5. Pp. 82. 1895 № 16. Pp. 261-263.
• Russian churches and monasteries in Europe. SPb .: "Faces of Russia". 2005 pp. 165-167.
• Sokol K. G. Russian Warsaw. Reference - guide. M .: Synergy. 2002