In 2008, the religious life of the Northern capital was marked by an important event - after a long break, the church of St. Spiridon Trimifuntsky in Lomonosov, the city that is a municipality that is part of the Petrodvorets district of St. Petersburg, reopened its doors. Having survived, together with the whole country, decades of persecution of the Church and repressions against its ministers, he took his rightful place among the spiritual centers revived from non-existence.
God's saint from the coast of Cyprus
Before starting a conversation about the temple of Spiridon in Lomonosov (address: Ilikovsky Prospekt 1.), we will briefly discuss the history of God's saint, in whose honor it was built. It is known that this saint was born in Cyprus, in the city of Aski, and his earthly life spanned the period from 270 to 348. Combining the meekness of King David, the cordial kindness of the forefather Jacob, and the love for wanderers that was once characteristic of Abraham, he was able to receive from the Lord the gift to work miracles and heal ailments.
In those years, through his prayers, the Lord sent down rains in the drier months, and stopped the raging torrents. According to legend, once a saint healed Emperor Constantine from a serious illness, and also resurrected his own daughter, born to him in marriage with a pious virgin and who died at a young age. Many other miracles were revealed through St. Spyridon, whose monument is a temple, in the city of Lomonosov.
Hero of the Nicene Cathedral
During the reign of Emperor Constantine the Great (324-337), the widowed and monastic tonsured Spiridon took over the bishopric of the Cypriot city of Trimifunt, from which came the now-known nickname. The pinnacle of his archpastoral ministry was his participation in the First Ecumenical Council, which was held in 325 in the city of Nicaea, and dedicated to the definition of basic Christian truths. On it, thanks to the arguments given in the speech of Bishop Spyridon, it was possible to expose and condemn the evil heretic Arius, who was trying to distort the Christian teaching.
God's saint completed his life journey in 348 and was buried in the church of the Holy Apostles of the city of Trimifunt. Soon, miracles of healing began to take place on the grave, which, along with previous merits, gave rise to its canonization and further glorification in the face of the saints. According to the calendar of the Russian Orthodox Church, on December 25 every year the memory of St. Spyridon of Trimyphthus is celebrated. The temple in Lomonosov, where a solemn worship is held, is especially crowded on this day.
Temple - the brainchild of august family members
The history of the Spiridon temple in Lomonosov includes three stages, and begins with the laying in October 1838 of a small wooden church, a project developed by St. Petersburg architect A.P. Melnikov. The construction was carried out at public expense, and its main initiator was Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna - wife of Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich (son of the murdered Emperor Paul I), who was named after Mary Charlotte Frederica of Württemberg before Orthodoxy. Once in Russia and having married a member of the imperial family, this German princess went down in the history of our country as an outstanding statesman and public figure - an ardent supporter of the abolition of serfdom. Many of her intravital portraits have been preserved, one of which is given above.
Another initiator of the construction was the spouse of Elena Pavlovna - Grand Duke Mikhail, who was the commander of the Separate Guards Corps, which included the Life Guards Volyn Regiment, stationed in Oranienbaum - the city of Lomonosov was called until 1948. When laying the future temple in its foundation was placed a glass vessel, extracted during the construction work of 1895, which will be described below. It contained a memo indicating the date of foundation, as well as a list of senior officials who assisted in this good deed.
The appearance of the first oranienbaum temple
The description of the temple of Spiridon in Lomonosov (Oranienbaum), founded in 1838, and which was the forerunner of later buildings, has been preserved to this day. According to available materials, it was a wooden building erected on a brick foundation, the length of which was 26 meters, the width was 10.5 m, and the height (excluding the dome) was 8.5 meters.
An iron cross rose above the altar part of the building, and on the west side there was a small bell tower. Since the temple was assigned to the Separate Guard Corps, according to established tradition, it had a traveling iconostasis - easily collapsible for transportation in case of emergency relocation of the unit. The solemn consecration of the newly erected church took place on the day of memory of St. Spyridon on December 12 (24), 1838.
Continuation of the history of the first temple
In 1856, at the behest of the then sovereign Alexander II, the life guard, the Volyn regiment was transferred to Warsaw and having left there, he took with him all church utensils from the Spiridon temple that belonged to him at that time. In Lomonosov (Oranienbaum), a sapper regiment was placed, which was taken over by the orphaned shrine, but after it was disbanded three years later and there were no other military units in the city, the temple was assigned to the court church of St. Panteleimon, and his parishioners became peaceful citizens.
Only in 1861 did people in uniforms fill the temple again. This happened after one of the infantry battalions was transferred to Oranienbaum. Its commander V.V. von Netbeck turned out to be an unusually pious man, and on his initiative the building was reconstructed, as a result of which two new chapels were added. The last stage in the history of this first temple of St. Spiridon in Lomonosov is associated with the creation of the Officer Rifle School, to which he was assigned in 1882.
The construction of the second temple
After nearly six decades from the founding of the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna of the wooden regimental church, its building was dilapidated, and in 1895 the command of the unit to which it was assigned decided to dismantle and completely rebuild the structure. Work on a new project - the second Spiridon temple in Lomonosov (Oranienbaum) - was entrusted not to a professional architect, but to a military engineer V.I. Shcheglov, who expressed a desire to work hard for such a charitable cause.
When installing the foundation, the above mentioned glass vessel with a memo was discovered. Before walled it up again in the bowels of the brickwork, a sheet was placed inside with notes concerning this time a new - second temple. Funding was carried out at the expense of funds allocated by the military department and the Holy Synod, as well as collected among voluntary donors, among whom there were many wealthy people. The construction of the new church of Spiridon of Trimyphuntus was carried out at a rapid pace, and already in August 1896, Archbishop Arseny (Bryantsev) made its solemn consecration. The final stage of work was the construction of a nearby one-story residential building for members of the clergy.
On the Way of the Cross
The coming to power of the Bolsheviks, who carried out an armed coup in October 1917 and tried to replace the faith of their fathers with their ideology, was a tragedy for the entire Russian Orthodox Church. The church of Spiridon of Trimifuntsky was not spared, in which for many decades Russian soldiers were spiritually strengthened before standing up for the Fatherland on the battlefield. The soldiers of the Red Army did not need God's blessing - they completely lacked the "living word of Ilyich", which promised both the earth, freedom, and the coming of a bright future.
Since the temple ceased to be regimental, but did not dare to immediately close it, they temporarily attributed it to the Oranienbaum Cathedral of the Archangel Michael, built in 1913 to mark the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. A few years later, the church passed into the jurisdiction of the head priest of the Panteleimon Church, which was part of the palace complex, and in the early 30s, when waves of anti-religious companies swept through the country one after another, it was finally selected from the faithful.
The fate of the Mikhailovsky Church was no less sad: in 1932 it was closed, the abbot was shot, and members of the clergy and the most active parishioners were sent to camps. At that time, the parish of St. Panteleimon, whose premises were placed at the disposal of state institutions that had settled in the royal palace. The domes of the church of St. Spyridon were demolished immediately after the closure, the bells and crosses were sent for re-melting, and the building itself was used for household purposes, not caring at all about its condition, so that by the beginning of the perestroika it had come into disrepair and was ready to collapse at any moment. So in fact the outlines of a bright future, promised to the people by the Bolsheviks, appeared.
Reborn shrine
In 2002, in the wake of perestroika, the church of Spiridon in Lomonosov reopened its doors for parishioners, and divine services resumed. They lasted for six years, but since the vaults were ready to fall on people's heads, the diocesan leadership, together with the city authorities, decided to completely dismantle the building, and its subsequent restoration in its original form.
Implementation of the intended scope of work took eight years. It was decided to erect the new building on the old, well-preserved foundation using technical documentation provided to the builders by the employees of the State Historical Archive. Thus, the appearance of the new third temple is fully consistent with the appearance of its predecessor, built in 1896. This is not difficult to verify, since the article presents both his contemporary photographs and those taken long before the revolution.
Divine services in the restored church were resumed after its solemn consecration, held in August 2016. Currently, it is a wooden structure 32 m long, 19 m wide and 25.5 m high (taking into account the dome). For greater reliability, the builders installed stone pillars on the previous foundation supporting the roof and the dome.
Temple interior
The interior of the temple of Spiridon in Lomonosov, as well as its external appearance, is fully consistent with the historical model of 1896. The decoration of the walls and ceiling, covered with wooden carved ornaments painted in pink, is recreated with maximum accuracy. As before, from the sails (lower parts of the domed ceiling), the faces of the holy evangelists look at the pilgrims, and above the iconostasis they will see the icon of the Nativity of Christ, donated to the church by the countess E. A. Mordvinova.
The snow-white two-tier iconostasis, richly decorated with gilded wooden carvings, also attracts attention. In it you can see the temple image of St. Spyridon, withdrawn from the former temple at the time of closing and carefully preserved by the faithful throughout the period of the atheism. The side gates with the icons of the holy archdeacons Philip and Stephen placed on them are also interesting.
Relics stored under the vaults of the church
In addition to its history and external correspondence to previous architectural forms, the Lomonosov Church of St. Spyridon is famous for the authentic relics stored in it. These include six icons that once belonged to the Separate Guard Corps, commanded by the founder of the temple, Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich.
In addition, the object of pilgrimage is the miraculous image of the Mother of God, whose history dates back two and a half centuries, and is full of examples of healings sent out by the prayers of believers. There are purely historical relics in the temple, such as the banner of the Rifle School, which he once was in charge of, as well as two letters granted personally by the Emperor Nicholas I.
God's shepherds who led the parish
At the end of the article, it will be appropriate to talk about the abbots of the temple of Spiridon in Lomonosov, who headed his parish in different historical periods. According to archival materials, this pastoral ministry fell to the share of ten priests. The first of them was Priest Father Vasily (Nadein), who took the reins of government from the hands of the founders of the temple - Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna and her husband Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich. It was he who was then entrusted with the spiritual nourishment of warriors-defenders of the fatherland.
This is followed by a numerous and glorious galaxy of servants of God, who preserved and increased the traditions laid down by their predecessor. Among them, I would especially like to single out Archpriest Father Vasily (Sysoev), who headed the parish from 1916 until its closure in 1932. Soon after, he was arrested on false charges and executed, along with thousands of other 20th century Christian new martyrs.
The personality of the current abbot of the temple of Spiridon of Trimifuntsky in Lomonosov is very remarkable - archpriest Father Oleg (Emelianenko), who took over this cross in 2002, immediately after the old dilapidated building was handed over to believers. Thanks to his efforts, the once-violated shrine was revived, which has taken its rightful place today among other spiritual centers of Russia.