In 2008, the religious life of the Northern capital was marked by an important event - after a long break, the church of St. Spyridon of Trimifuntsky in Lomonosov, a city that is a municipal formation, part of the Petrodvorets district of St. Petersburg, reopened its doors. Having experienced decades of persecution against the Church and repressions against its ministers, together with the whole country, he took his rightful place among the spiritual centers revived from oblivion.
God's saint from the coast of Cyprus
Before we start talking about the temple of Spiridon in Lomonosov (address: Ilikovsky Prospect, 1.), let's briefly dwell on the history of God's saint himself, in whose honor it was built. It is known that this saint was born in Cyprus, in the city of Aski, and covered the period from 270 to 348 with his earthly life. Combining the meekness of King David, the kindness of the forefather Jacob and the love for strangers that was once characteristic of Abraham, he was able to receive from the Lordthe gift to work miracles and heal ailments.
In those years, through his prayers, the Lord sent down rains in the dry months, and stopped the raging streams. As the legend says, once the 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 the temple, in the city of Lomonosov.
Hero of Nicea Council
During the reign of Emperor Constantine the Great (324-337), widowed and taking monastic vows, Spiridon took the episcopal chair of the Cypriot city of Trimifunt, from which the now-famous nickname came. The pinnacle of his archpastoral ministry was participation in the First Ecumenical Council, 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 malicious heretic Arius, who tried to distort Christian teaching.
The saint of God completed his life in 348 and was buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles in the city of Trimifunt. Soon, miracles of healing began to happen at the grave, which, along with previous merits, gave rise to his canonization and further glorification in the guise of saints. According to the calendar of the Russian Orthodox Church, every year on December 25, the memory of St. Spyridon of Trimifuntsky is celebrated. The temple in Lomonosov, where a solemn service is performed, is especially crowded on this day.
The temple is the brainchild of members of the august family
The history of the temple of Spiridon in Lomonosov includes three stages, and begins with the laying of a small wooden church in October 1838, a project developed by the St. Petersburg architect A. P. Melnikov. The construction was carried out at public expense, and its main initiator was Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, the wife of Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich (son of the murdered Emperor Paul I), who before the adoption of Orthodoxy bore the name of Mary Charlotte Frederick of Württemberg. Once in Russia and married to a member of the imperial family, this German princess entered the history of our Motherland as an outstanding statesman and public figure - an ardent supporter of the abolition of serfdom. Many of her lifetime portraits have been preserved, one of which is shown above.
Another initiator of the construction was the husband of Elena Pavlovna - Grand Duke Mikhail, who was the commander of the Separate Guards Corps, which included the Life Guards Volynsky Regiment, stationed in Oranienbaum - that was the name of the city of Lomonosov until 1948. When laying the future temple, a glass vessel was placed in its foundation, extracted during the construction work of 1895, which will be discussed below. It contained a memorandum indicating the date of foundation, as well as a list of dignitaries who assisted in this good cause.
The appearance of the first Oranienbaum temple
To this day, the description of the temple of Spiridon in Lomonosov (Oranienbaum), founded in 1838, and which wasprecursor to later buildings. 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 meters, and the height (excluding the dome) was 8.5 meters.
An iron cross towered over the altar part of the building, and on the western side there was a small bell tower. Since the temple was assigned to the Separate Guards Corps, then, according to the established tradition, it had a marching 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 story of the first temple
In 1856, by order of the then reigning Sovereign Alexander II, the Life Guards Volynsky regiment was transferred to Warsaw and, having served there, took with him all the church utensils from the Spiridon Church that had belonged to him until that time. In Lomonosov (Oranienbaum), a sapper regiment was stationed, under whose jurisdiction the orphaned shrine passed, but after it was disbanded three years later, and there were no other military units in the city, the church was assigned to the court church of St. Panteleimon, and its parishioners became civilians.
Only in 1861 the temple was again filled with people in uniforms. This happened after one of the infantry battalions was transferred to Oranienbaum. Its commander, V. V. von Netbek, turned out to be an unusually pious man, and on his initiative, a reconstruction was carried out.building, as a result of which two new aisles were added. The last stage in the history of this first church of St. Spiridon in Lomonosov is associated with the creation of the Officer Rifle School, to which he was assigned in 1882.
Building a second temple
After almost six decades since the foundation of the wooden regimental church by Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, its building was very dilapidated, and in 1895 the command of the unit to which it was assigned decided to dismantle and completely rebuild the structure. Work on the project of the new - already the second temple of Spiridon in Lomonosov (Oranienbaum) was entrusted not to a professional architect, but to 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 found. Before immuring it again in the bowels of the brickwork, a sheet with records was placed inside, concerning this time the new - the second temple. The work was financed at the expense of funds allocated by the military department and the Holy Synod, as well as collected from voluntary donors, including many we althy people. The construction of the new church of Spyridon Trimifuntsky was carried out at a rapid pace, and already in August 1896, Archbishop Arseny (Bryantsev) performed its solemn consecration. The final stage of the work was the construction of a nearby one-story residential building for members of the clergy.
On the Way of the Cross
Rise to powerBolsheviks, 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 Spyridon Trimifuntsky, where for many decades Russian soldiers were spiritually strengthened before standing up for the Fatherland on the battlefield, did not avoid trouble. The soldiers of the Red Army did not need God's blessing - they were quite satisfied with the "living word of Ilyich", which promised land, and freedom, and the coming of a bright future.
Since the temple ceased to be a regimental one, and they did not immediately decide to close it, they were temporarily assigned to the Oranienbaum Cathedral of the Archangel Michael, built in 1913 on the occasion of the celebration of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. A few years later, the temple came under the jurisdiction of the rector of the Panteleimon Church, which was part of the palace complex, and in the early 30s, when waves of anti-religious campaigns swept across the country one by one, it was finally taken from believers.
The fate of St. Michael's Church was no less sad: in 1932 it was closed, the rector was shot, and the members of the clergy and the most active parishioners were sent to camps. At the same time, the parish of St. Panteleimon, whose premises were transferred to the disposal of state institutions that moved into the royal palace. The domes of the church of St. Spyridon were demolished immediately after the closure, the bells and crosses were sent for remelting, and the building itself was used for household purposes, not at all caring about its condition, so by the beginning of perestroika it had fallen into disrepair and was readycollapse at any moment. This is how the contours of a bright future promised to the people by the Bolsheviks actually appeared.
Restored shrine
In 2002, in the wake of perestroika, the church of Spiridon in Lomonosov reopened its doors to parishioners, services resumed there. They continued 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 then restore it to its original form.
Completion of the planned scope of work took eight years. It was decided to build the new building on the old, well-preserved foundation using the 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 contains both contemporary photographs of him and those taken long before the revolution.
Services in the restored church were resumed after its solemn consecration, which took place in August 2016. Currently, it is a wooden structure with a length of 32 m, a width of 19 m and a height (including the dome) of 25.5 m.
Temple Interior
The interior of the templeSpiridon in Lomonosov, as well as its appearance, fully corresponds to the historical model of 1896. The design of the walls and ceiling, covered with wooden carved ornaments painted in pink tones, has been recreated with maximum accuracy. As before, from the sails (the lower parts of the dome) the faces of the holy evangelists look at the pilgrims, and above the iconostasis they face the icon of the Nativity of Christ, once donated to the temple by Countess E. A. Mordvinova.
The snow-white two-tiered iconostasis, richly decorated with gilded wooden carvings, also attracts attention. In it you can see the temple image of St. Spyridon, seized from the former temple at the time of closing and carefully preserved by believers throughout the entire atheistic period. The side gates with icons of the holy archdeacons Philip and Stefan placed on them are also interesting.
Relics kept under the vaults of the church
Besides its history and outward conformity to the previous architectural forms, the Lomonosov Church of St. Spyridon is also famous for its authentic relics. These include six icons that once belonged to the Separate Guards Corps, the commander of which was 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 down through the prayers of believers. There are also purely historical relics in the temple, such as the banner of the Shooting School, run bywhere he once was, as well as two letters bestowed personally by the sovereign Emperor Nicholas I.
God's shepherds who led the parish
At the end of the article, it would be appropriate to talk about the abbots of the church of Spiridon in Lomonosov, who headed his parish in different historical periods. According to archival materials, this pastoral ministry fell to the lot of ten priests. The first of them was Priest Father Vasily (Nadein), who took over 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 guidance of the soldiers-defenders of the fatherland.
Followed by a numerous and glorious galaxy of God's servants, 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 shot along with thousands of other Christian New Martyrs of the 20th century.
The personality of the current rector of the church of Spyridon Trimifuntsky in Lomonosov, Archpriest Father Oleg (Emelianenko), who took over this cross in 2002, immediately after the former dilapidated building was handed over to believers, is also quite remarkable. Thanks to his efforts, the once trampled shrine was revived, which today has taken its rightful place among other spiritual centers of Russia.
