Feodorovskaya Icon Cathedral (also Cathedral of Our Lady Feodorovskaya, ) — an Orthodox church in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It belongs to the Central Deanery of the St. Petersburg Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church. The cathedral was built in Commemoration of the Romanov Tercentenary.
The reinforced concrete building was designed in the style of the Rostov cathedral churches of the era of the accession of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov according to the project of Stepan Krichinsky (, 1874–1923).
History
Prehistory (end of 19th – beginning of 20th century) From the end of the 19th century until the revolutionary events of the year 1917, the land on which the church is situated today belonged to the town residence of the Feodorovsky Gorodetsky monastery of the Nizhny Novgorod diocese.
For several decades in the late 19th – early 20th century, thanks to the efforts of the Abbot Archimandrite Alexy (Yakovlev), the town residence gradually increased its presence in Saint-Petersburg. First, an icon case with Feodorovskaya Icon of the Mother of God and an icon of St. Alexander Nevsky was installed in the 3rd class passenger hall of the Nikolayevsky railway station.
Then permission was given to erect a stone chapel near the gate of the goods depot. The chapel project was submitted for approval of Emperor Alexander III, and he suggested to build a church instead of the chapel. Thus in 1904, a small church of the Feodorovskaya Icon of the Mother of God and of St. Alexius, Metropolitan of Moscow, was consecrated in memory of the birth of Tsarevich Alexei. It stood approximately in the place where the brick-red "Kremlin" wall is located today.
However, Abbot Alexy was not content and in 1906 he petitioned to expand the territory of the town residence of Gorodetsky monastery for the construction of a new spacious church "because of the tightness of the Aleksievskaya Church". By 1909, the concept was "to construct a stately monument to the successful 300-year reign of the Romanov Dynasty", as stated in the petition addressed to the St. Petersburg Metropolitan bishop.
The Construction Committee was headed by major-general of His Majesty's council Dmitri Yakovlevich Dashkov, and worked under the patronage of Grand Duke Michail Alexandrovich, the Emperor's brother.
Construction and Early Service (1909–1917) The Romanov Tercentenary Church was to combine traditional forms of ancient Russian architecture with modern technologies of the time. One of the major conditions posed to the competing architects was that the appearance of the Church should contain visual references to the time of the beginning of the reign of the Romanov dynasty, i.e. to the architecture of the Muscovite Russia at the beginning of the 17th century.
Of the three winners in the competition of projects, Stepan Samoilovich Krichinsky's project was selected.
The collection of funds for the construction of the church began. The first donation of 100 rubles was contributed by the Holy Righteous John of Kronstadt as he lay on his deathbed. The Emperor provided 25,000 rubles. Funds were raised by monasteries, government agencies, educational institutions, military units, railway, city and provincial councils, banks and other public institutions. Private donations were also collected.
Ceremonial laying of the cathedral foundation took place on August 5, 1911, after site preparation and the erection of supporting framework for the building. The short time available necessitated constant adjustment of the building plans. Not surprisingly, the main event – the consecration of the upper Church – took place later than planned, on January 15, 1914. It was headed by the Metropolitan bishop of Saint Petersburg, Vladimir (Bogoyavlensky), the future first new martyr, in the presence of Emperor Nicholas II, members of the royal family, the Government, the State Duma, the students of educational institutions and the military.
World War I affected the construction and decoration plans for the cathedral and other buildings in its premises. However, the Clergy house was built in 1915–1916. It was demolished in 1960-s and has been restored on its historical place next to the cathedral in keeping with the few surviving drawings and the only old photograph.
The Parish Church (1918–1932) After the Revolution of 1917, the Construction Committee ceased to exist. The church itself no longer was a monastic metochion (an ecclesiastical embassy church) and received the status of a parish church.
The parish life in these years was closely tied to the activity of the Alexander Nevsky Brotherhood that existed in Petrograd-Leningrad in the 1920s and early 1930s. The Brotherhood was engaged in active missionary, educational and charitable work despite the hostile environment of the Soviet state. The last Abbot of the Feodorovsky Cathedral before its closure, Archimandrite Lev (Egorov), was one of the leaders of the Brotherhood. Archimandrite Lev was arrested together with many other members of the Brotherhood in February 1932. He was sentenced to 10 years in a Correctional labour camp. There he was charged again with counter-revolutionary activities, sentenced to death and shot on September 20, 1937. Nowadays the Church revers him in the host of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Milk Plant (1932–2005) The parish ceased to exist by decision of the executive committee of Leningrad Region dated May 10, 1932. Authorities considered "the Romanov Church ... suitable for the milk plant Soyuzmoloko", which determined the fate of the Feodorovsky сathedral building for more than seventy years. During this time it was reconstructed to meet factory needs – its outer and inner appearances were changed almost beyond recognition. As a result, the original two-storey five-domed сathedral was turned into an almost cubic five-storey industrial building, surrounded by chaotically added brick annexes, the footprint of which was almost as big as that of the сathedral.
Return to Church and Start of Reconstruction (1992–2006) In the early 1990s it was decided to evict the milk plant from the Feodorovsky сathedral building and return the building to the St. Petersburg diocese, but it took 13 years to implement this decision.
Meanwhile, parish life revived. In 1998 on the ground assigned nearby, a Chapel of the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia was built, where regular worship began. Parishioners and benefactors donated their work, time and money and the church was filled with prayer and Christian communication.
On August 4, 2005, the parish took over the Feodorovsky cathedral building which lay waste with stinking, dirty, cluttered and badly heated rooms. Walls were tiled and there was almost no running water or sewerage.
Over a year and a half a number of former factory premises were repaired and the parish launched there educational activities. On the second floor (Upper church) under the low factory ceiling, worship services took place for a total of two years from August 28, 2005, to August 29, 2007. Restoring the original layout and decoration of the cathedral would require huge financial investments.
Restoration (2007–2013) At the end of 2006 Boris Gryzlov, than the Chairman of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, visited the church and accepted the offer of the Metropolitan bishop of St. Petersburg and Ladoga Vladimir to establish and to head a board of trustees for the restoration of the cathedral.
Restoration began in the summer of 2007 and lasted for six years without ceasing even for one day. The scope of work to be done in the cathedral building which for decades was used as an industrial enterprise was formidable. On the upside, the restoration process allowed for correction of some deficiencies and shortcomings that occurred during the initial construction process.
The restoration works were funded every year from different sources: both public (Federal and Municipal budgets) and private. The Board of Trustees managed to attract major donors, so a range of works not covered by State programs became possible, including the purchase of the Soviet era building which was later recreated as the historic Clergy house. The congregation itself raised funds for the painting of new icons and restoration of church utensils.
The restoration project was designed by the architectural and restoration workshop No. 5 Research Institute Spetsproektrestavratsiya (St Petersburg). Restoration works were performed by companies Resma, Vympel and Promproject (Moscow), as well as Construction culture (St Petersburg). The design and installation of new engineering networks was made by the company Telros (St Petersburg).
During the first two and a half years of restoration (2007—2009) all the traces of the former factory were eliminated: annexes, floors, dilapidated engineering networks. Old ceilings in the Lower and Upper churches were replaced and the basement was waterproofed. The five domes of the cathedral with their new golden cupolas were returned to their places prior to the Festival of Patrons on August 29, 2009.
In 2010–2011 all the facilities of the basement, as well as of the Lower and Upper churches were recreated and decorated, some roofs were tiled and others covered with copper; new engineering networks were constructed, the Bell Tower was restored, work on reconstruction of the inner pictorial decoration and the liturgical utensils of the cathedral started.
In the autumn of the year 2011 in the Lower church a marble altar was erected under the guidance of Archimandrite Zinon (Theodore). All the eleven bells of "Romanovsky ringing" were recreated, to sound for the first time on March 27, 2011, for the feast of the Feodorovskaya Icon.
During the year 2012 an intense effort was made to re-establish the white-stoned facades of the cathedral, including the majolica panel. Decoration work inside the church was in full swing; the interior items, the five-tier iconostasis of the Upper church and many other things were recreated.
Its centennial anniversary of the construction, year 2013, the cathedral met restored and redecorated.
Appearance Built in neo-Russian style by architect Stepan Krichinsky, the Feodorovsky cathedral recalls famous examples of the Old Russian church architecture. The architectural motives of the churches and towers of historical Russian cities: Rostov, Yuryev-Polsky, Yaroslavl, Suzdal, can be recognized in the overall silhouette of the cathedral and its separate parts and details.
The use of Old Russian designs in the architecture of the cathedral did not preclude use of advanced construction technology from the early 20th century. The cathedral stands on a firm and stable base – a solid concrete foundation slab. The main framework consists of four arches, also made of reinforced concrete, which form the skeleton of the building. The arches support the central dome. The intersection of the two pairs of arches is clearly visible from below in the space inside the dome of the Upper church.
An important stylistic feature of the cathedral is multiple asymmetry. Each of the three towers on the perimeter of the cathedral looks different: the North East tower is octagonal with a bulbous copper dome; the North West tower is noticeably higher and wider with a square base and a four-sided tile roof; the South West tower is also square, but smaller with a more elongated peaked roof. Equally diverse are the rooftops of the Feodorovsky cathedral, partly coated with copper, partly with tiles of a deep emerald colour. The domes of the cathedral, according to the original project, were to be gilded, but in fact it was done only during the restoration.
The exterior walls of the cathedral are coated with white "staritsky stone" – limestone, decorated with various carvings, including mythical animals: a Unicorn, a Phoenix, a Double-headed eagle, a Sirin-bird, and among them a Lion.