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2
BCD SPECIAL REPORT ON
HISTORIC CHURCHES
22
ND ANNUAL EDITION
WOODEN CHURCHES
OF THE RUSSIAN NORTH
Richard Davies
C
HRISTIANITY WAS formally
established in what is now Russia
in AD 988. In Nestor’s
Primary
Chronicle
we are told that Prince
Vladimir of Kievan Rus was urged by
envoys from neighbouring countries to
adopt their faith. He was tempted by the
Muslim Bulgars’ promise of beautiful
women in paradise but ‘circumcision
and abstinence from pork and wine
were disagreeable to him. “Drinking,”
said he, “is the joy of the Russes. We
cannot exist without that pleasure”’.
Vladimir eventually decided to be
baptised into the Orthodox faith and,
as the chronicles tell, he ‘ordained that
wooden churches should be built and
established where pagan idols had
previously stood’.
Thousands of wooden churches were
built all over Russia although many were
later rebuilt in stone and brick as wooden
churches became unfashionable. In the
1830s a German traveller noted that ‘the
Russian country people take a particular
pride in stone churches in their villages…
nay its inhabitants would scarcely marry
those of villages with wooden churches’.
However, in northern Russia, where
wood was the most common building
material, wooden churches were still
being built up to the time of the Bolshevik
revolution. The new and surviving ancient
churches were often clad in white-painted
boards and their aspen-shingled onion
domes gave way to shiny metal ones
to give the impression that they were
spanking new stone churches.
The north of European Russia grew
prosperous over the centuries, exploited
by the traders of Novgorod for its
resources – fur and salt in particular. Its
rivers and lakes were important trading
routes and many settlements grew up
beside them. Each town and village had
its place of worship, traditionally not
one building but three: a winter church,
a summer church and a bell tower. Each
city had its cathedrals and churches.
Monasteries and hermitages were built
on the islands of the White Sea, on the
islands in the vast northern lakes and in
deep forest.
Kholmogory and later Archangel, on
the Northern Dvina River, were the most
important ports of medieval Russia and
trade with the English and the Dutch
Church of the Virgin Hoddigitra (1763), Kimzha, Mezen district, Archangel region (All photos by the author)