DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.47325#0385
LEONID A. BELIAEV
THE SANCTUARY BARRIERS
AND OTHER LITURGICAL ARRANGEMENTS
IN THE EARLY MOSCOW CHURCHES
Altar screens as well as other liturgical devices of medieval Moscow churches
are little investigated by archaeologists.
For the pre-Mongolian period there exist several field report publications done
by G. M. Shtender. V M. Kovaliova, etc., and also the first attempts were made to gen-
eralize information on liturgical devices of the sacred space of the Old Russian altars
by T. A. Chukova. However, for the post-Mongolian period, from the 14th until the
17th c., we have nothing.
Thus an impression appears that specialists underestimate the necessity of such
research. The reasons for this situation are clear enough: architectural archaeology of
the “Moscow period”. 14th-17th c„ in general, is developed very little; archaeologists
and the restorers of architecture used to work separately; the materials of field research
and arcliitectural measurements are published spontaneously. This includes also the
general social situation in the countiy, as well as the historical ways of the Russian
scholarship.
Today the importance of archaeological research on the appearance and devel-
opment of the high iconostasis, the key-problem for the formation of the interior of the
Russian Orthodox Church is obvious. This is the archaeology that might give the pos-
sibility to build a reliable typological line of the transformation of a low altar screen of
the “Byzantine” type into the Russian iconostasis of the transitional period, from the
13th to the 15th c.. because the examples of such a type have rarely survived. It con-
cerns also the existence of altar screens with architectural decoration during the early -
Moscow period — a transitional type between Byzantine altar screens and the devel-
oped type of a high Russian Orthodox iconostasis of the late-medieval period. Even
this long-lasting problem, yet the only one to have arisen, is still waiting to be resolved.
One of the problems was formulated by L. Betin and V. Sheredega1 in a brief
issue devoted to the remains of the old altar screen, discovered by
S. S. Pod’yapol’skii in the cathedral of Savvino-Storozhevskii monastery in
Zvenigorod. Tire authors promised to continue investigations and to solve a problem
of interaction between the construction of wooden altar screens and high iconostasis.
THE SANCTUARY BARRIERS
AND OTHER LITURGICAL ARRANGEMENTS
IN THE EARLY MOSCOW CHURCHES
Altar screens as well as other liturgical devices of medieval Moscow churches
are little investigated by archaeologists.
For the pre-Mongolian period there exist several field report publications done
by G. M. Shtender. V M. Kovaliova, etc., and also the first attempts were made to gen-
eralize information on liturgical devices of the sacred space of the Old Russian altars
by T. A. Chukova. However, for the post-Mongolian period, from the 14th until the
17th c., we have nothing.
Thus an impression appears that specialists underestimate the necessity of such
research. The reasons for this situation are clear enough: architectural archaeology of
the “Moscow period”. 14th-17th c„ in general, is developed very little; archaeologists
and the restorers of architecture used to work separately; the materials of field research
and arcliitectural measurements are published spontaneously. This includes also the
general social situation in the countiy, as well as the historical ways of the Russian
scholarship.
Today the importance of archaeological research on the appearance and devel-
opment of the high iconostasis, the key-problem for the formation of the interior of the
Russian Orthodox Church is obvious. This is the archaeology that might give the pos-
sibility to build a reliable typological line of the transformation of a low altar screen of
the “Byzantine” type into the Russian iconostasis of the transitional period, from the
13th to the 15th c.. because the examples of such a type have rarely survived. It con-
cerns also the existence of altar screens with architectural decoration during the early -
Moscow period — a transitional type between Byzantine altar screens and the devel-
oped type of a high Russian Orthodox iconostasis of the late-medieval period. Even
this long-lasting problem, yet the only one to have arisen, is still waiting to be resolved.
One of the problems was formulated by L. Betin and V. Sheredega1 in a brief
issue devoted to the remains of the old altar screen, discovered by
S. S. Pod’yapol’skii in the cathedral of Savvino-Storozhevskii monastery in
Zvenigorod. Tire authors promised to continue investigations and to solve a problem
of interaction between the construction of wooden altar screens and high iconostasis.