History of Murom Cathedral Temple

The Lost Shrine of Muromskaya Land

Many residents and guests of Murom, walking today in the city's Oka Park, do not assume that they are in the very place where the shrine of the Murom land - the Cathedral Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin previously stood for many centuries.

The ancient history of this cathedral is little known. It is not yet possible to establish the exact date of its foundation. We can only assume that it was erected by one of the Murom princes, on the territory of the princely court as a house church in the second half of the XII century. Subsequently, such a temple became the burial place of the prince and his relatives.

For the first time the Cathedral is mentioned in the chronicles of the vaults in 1228, as the location of the faithful Murom Prince David, baptized by Peter, and his wife Fevronia. In this case, the organizers of the church could be brothers - Prince David and Vladimir.

The place of burial of the Murom Prince Yuri Vladimirovich in 1174 is not known. If we assume that it was the Christmas Church, then the founder of the temple can be considered this prince.

Undoubtedly, by the beginning of the XIII century, the church already had the status of a Cathedral, since the relics of Yuri’s son Prince Peter and his wife Fevronia were laid in it. The data of archaeological excavations on the territory of Voevodina mountain, where the temple was located, do not contradict both assumptions. Perhaps future research of sources and archaeological finds will allow to establish the exact date of foundation of Murom Cathedral of the Nativity of the Virgin.

In the future, the fate of the temple was as tragic as the fate of Murom. The Cathedral was destroyed by the Tatars in the XIII century, and was erected on its former place in the middle of the XIV century by the Murom Prince Yuri Yaroslavovich, who fortified the city and put his courtyard there. It is not known how many times during the XIV-XV centuries the Cathedral was restored after fires and destruction, being, all this time, the spiritual center of the Murom region. Therefore, in the middle of the fifteenth century it was in it that St. John, Archbishop of Ryazan and Murom, took on his epitrachil from the hands of Prince Ivan Ryapolovski, the children of Grand Duke Vasily the Dark, John and Yuri, who fled from the persecution of his uncle Dmitry Shemyaki. Later, Ivan Vasilyevich, becoming Grand Duke Ivan III, remembering his deliverance, prayed in the Cathedral over the relics of the Murom wonderworkers.

By the middle of the XVI century, the title of the diocesan center of the Murom land was fixed for the Christmas Cathedral. In 1552, during the campaign to Kazan, he prayed and asked for help from the Murom saints in the campaign against the “supostats”, Tsar Ivan the Terrible. Returning from Kazan to Moscow, he ordered to build instead of a wooden, stone Cathedral Church, and also granted the Cathedral to the patrimony in the Murom district of the village of Novo with villages and wastelands.

So in the second half of the sixteenth century on the territory of the Murom Kremlin among the wooden siege courtyards rose three-domed stone Cathedral of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin.

Subsequently, in 1597, Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich confirmed the patrimonial rights of the Cathedral to the lands given by his father, and granted additionally to the temple “for incense, for church wine and for prasphyrs” meadows along the Oke River.

The first detailed descriptions of the Cathedral belong only to the first half of the XVII century. At that time, on the territory of the already updated Kremlin. There was a Cathedral Church of the Nativity on three tops with a papert, a stone papert ... in the aisle of the supreme apostles Peter and Paul, and in the same aisle are the Murom miracle-workers, the noble prince Peter and Princess Febronia. In it the image of the local Most Pure Virgin in the kiota, near the kiot, on the shutters of the feasts of the Virgin and the Murom miracle workers on gold, the image of the blessed memory of Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich is put. The listing of all the images and church utensils in the temple will take a long time.

Under the cathedral church there were two tents, and in which every city outfit was kept: cannons and balls of iron and stone, lead and potion. Apparently, its cellars were considered the most reliable place on the territory of the Murom Kremlin. Near the temple in the bell tower were installed 4 bells. The bell was heard twenty miles around. At the end of the XVIII century, the eminent Moscow citizen, outhouse counselor and mayor Vasily Yakovlevich Zhigarev arranged a rakka in the Cathedral to preserve the relics of Prince Peter and Princess Fevronia.

By the XIX century, the Cathedral was already without a parish and was kept exclusively on income from the sale of candles, on a circle and plate collection. His philanthropy largely depended on the disposition of the headman, elected by the City Duma.

In the nineteenth century, the Cathedral was visited by some majestic persons. So in 1812, Archbishop Augustine, who was in Murom with icons of the Most Holy Virgin of Vladimir and Iberian, offered prayers here for the liberation of Moscow from enemies. In 1837, Emperor Alexander II was in the service of the temple, being at that time still the heir. In memory of this visit in 1887, Emperor Alexander III granted a wreath from the tomb of Alexander II. At this time the temple was already in a dilapidated state. Around the middle of the XIX century, its reconstruction was carried out. Capital restoration of the temple was carried out on voluntary donations of the church, societies and citizens. A total of 34394 rubles were collected. The largest donations were made by P.S. Zvorykin, M.E. Ermakova, A.K. Kiselev, Murom merchant and Murom philistine societies. After the reconstruction, the Cathedral turned into a beautiful Byzantine style building, with a length of 12 sazhen and a width of 7 sazhen, crowned with five chapters with four-pointed crosses gilded on them. Inside, the cathedral was very splendid. Four massive stone pillars supported his vaults. Light into the temple came through 19 windows, located in 2 rows in the four and through 38 windows located in the domes. Under the middle dome on the balance hung a massive panicadilo with 40 candles. There was no wall painting in the cathedral. The five-tiered, gilded iconostasis housed 62 icons of ancient writing.

The twentieth century was fateful for the temple. At the end of the 20s of this century, the fate of several temples was decided in Murom, including the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin. By this time, the city authorities had already decided to close it, but parishioners spoke in defense of the temple. In the early 30s, local authorities proposed to transfer the Murom Museum to its building. Then the museum categorically objected to the transfer to the Cathedral, citing the lack of space and poor conditions in the temple for storing museum exhibits. Therefore, at the state level, it was decided to leave “the building of the Church of the Bogoroditsky Cathedral for the use of believers.” Over the following years, the temple continued to collapse. No work has been done to restore it. In addition, in 1933, when shooting bells for scrap metal, significant damage was caused to the bell tower and the temple itself. The fate of the Cathedral was decided in 1939, when the City Council decided to break it. The following year there was nothing left of the temple but memories.

With the destruction of the temple, hopes for further studies of the history of the Cathedral were extinguished, and there was a fear that many questions concerning it and the history of the city would not be answered. For example, when was the first stone temple built in Murom? In the middle of the XVI century, or a few centuries earlier? In 1873, during archaeological research on the territory of the Cathedral, fragments of stone columns and capitals bearing traces of the XII century were discovered. Perhaps these are the remains of a stone temple standing at that time in the settlement on Voevodina Mountain. If this assumption is confirmed, it will require a rethinking of some of the accounts of Murom’s ancient history known today.

In 1999, in the Oka Park, at the very place where the Cathedral stood, a monument to the monk warrior, the Monk Ilya Muromets, was erected.

The Cathedral Church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God should remain in the memory and souls of the Muromites. Located in the Kremlin on the Voevodina Mountain, towering over the Oka River, it was a majestic temple of our city, which experienced all the joys and sorrows with it. For many centuries, with the ringing of a large bell of the Cathedral belfry, the bells of all Murom temples began to ring. During these centuries, the Cathedral united the inhabitants of the city and its environs in bright holidays, in the fight against the enemy, and was the spiritual center for many generations of Muromites.