TO THE QUESTION OF PATRIARCH NIKON’S PROHIBITION FOR HIPPED-ROOF TEMPLES CONSTRUCTION
DOI: 10.23951/2312-7899-2017-3-33-44
This article is devoted to the analysis of the issue of one episode of the history of Russian temples construction – of the prohibition imposed by Patriarch Nikon on the construction of hipped-roof temples, which played an important role in the semiotic structure and aesthetic design of the space of Russian cities and monasteries. In the last years some researchers question the fact that Patriarch Nikon’s prohibition for hipped-roof temples construction in the middle of the 1650s took place. After analyzing all arguments “pro” and “contra”, I show that this prohibition actually took place, and its reasons were as follows. Firstly, the Patriarch took some kind of “monopoly” for such roofs, having decided to erect a tent-roofed rotunda in his New Jerusalem. Secondly, the Patriarch was obliged to take care of the financial and material sides of Church life, and hipped roofs were too expensive, technologically complicated and inefficient from the point of view of temples capacity. Thirdly, hipped roofs did not satisfy Nikon by personal (e. g., aesthetic) reasons. There is also the statistics of hipped-roof temples construction in the article: since 1513 until the beginning of the XVII century about 30–35 such temples were built, ands approximately the same quantity – since the late 1620s until the mid of 1650s. Then such construction was stopped due to Nikon’s prohibition for some decades.
Keywords: Russia, architecture, hipped-roof temple, patriarch Nikon
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Issue: 3, 2017
Series of issue: Issue 3
Rubric: ARTICLES
Pages: 33 — 44
Downloads: 2688