Alexander Nevsky (Alexander Yaroslavich Nevsky, Александр Ярославич Невский; c. 1220 – 14 November 1263) was a 13th-century Russian prince whose victories over Swedish and German invaders made him a national hero; the Russian Orthodox Church canonised him in the 16th century.[1][2] He was prince of Novgorod and, from 1252, Grand Prince of Vladimir. His name comes from his victory on the river Neva in 1240, and his defeat of the Livonian knights on the ice of Lake Peipus in 1242 — the "Battle on the Ice" — is known far beyond Russia, not least through the film that Sergei Eisenstein made about him in 1938.[2][1]

His life ended in the Nizhny Novgorod land. Returning gravely ill from the Golden Horde in the autumn of 1263, he passed through Nizhny Novgorod — the city at the confluence of the Volga and the Oka, called Gorky in 1932–1990 — and died at a monastery in Gorodets (Городец), a Volga town upstream, after taking monastic vows.[3][4] His son Andrei inherited Gorodets, and the town keeps his memory to this day: its Feodorovsky Monastery was rebuilt and consecrated in 2009, two monuments to him stand there, and a museum is named after him. In Nizhny Novgorod itself the tallest church, the cathedral on the Strelka where the Oka meets the Volga, is dedicated to him.[3][5][6][7]

Prince of Novgorod and Grand Prince of Vladimir

Alexander was the second son of Yaroslav Vsevolodovich, prince of Pereslavl and from 1238 Grand Prince of Vladimir. As a boy he represented his father in Novgorod, and from 1236 to 1252 he was its prince.[2] In the summer of 1240 a Swedish force came in ships up the Neva and halted at the mouth of the Izhora, "wishing to take possession of Ladoga, or in one word, of Novgorod". Alexander, with the men of Novgorod and Ladoga, attacked at once and defeated them on 15 July; the victory gave him his name, Nevsky ("of the Neva").[4][2]

Two years later the Livonian Order, which had taken Pskov, threatened Novgorod from the west. In the winter of 1241–1242 Alexander, with reinforcements from the Suzdal land led by his brother Andrei — "the men of the Lower country", as the Novgorod chronicler calls them — cleared Pskov and marched into the land of the Estonians ("Chud"). On 5 April 1242 the knights, "driving themselves like a wedge", attacked his army drawn up on the ice of Lake Peipus and were routed.[4][2] The Russian and German chronicles give different figures for the losses, so the scale of the battle is debated, but it kept the Livonian–Novgorod border unchanged until the 15th century.[2]

After his father's death in 1246 Alexander travelled to Batu Khan and on to the Mongol capital, Karakorum. In 1252 he received from the Horde the patent (yarlyk) to rule as Grand Prince of Vladimir. His policy combined loyalty to the Horde with a firm refusal of union with the Roman Church — to the papal envoys he is said to have answered, "We do not accept teaching from you." He had to help the Mongol officials carry out a census for tribute, which met resistance in Novgorod and in 1262 provoked uprisings in Rostov, Vladimir, Suzdal and Yaroslavl; to plead for the towns he went once more to the Horde at Sarai.[2] Historians judge him differently: in Russian tradition he is a national hero and a far-sighted statesman, while some Western historians argue that his role has been exaggerated and that his accommodation with the Mongols distanced Russia from Western Europe.[2]

The last journey: Nizhny Novgorod and Gorodets

Gorodets on the Volga was a town he knew: the Laurentian Chronicle records that in 1256 Grand Prince Alexander came to Gorodets to meet his nephew Boris of Rostov, who was setting off for the Horde.[3] In 1262 Khan Berke kept Alexander at the Horde for a whole year; he spent the winter there and fell ill.[4][2] The Moscow chronicle compilation describes his way home:

…and he fell ill, and reached Novgorod the Lower, and stayed there a little, and went to Gorodets, and there fell into a greater illness, and took the monastic vows on 14 November, and the same night died; and his holy body was carried to Volodimer.

— Moscow chronicle compilation, quoted by the Gorodets district administration[3]

The Novgorod chronicle tells the same story: "Knyaz Olexander came back from the Tartars in very bad health, in the autumn; and he came to Gorodets [monastery] and was shorn on November 14, the day of the holy Apostle Philip; and he died the same night."[4] He took the monastic name Alexei.[2] His body was taken to Vladimir and on 23 November buried in the Monastery of the Nativity of the Mother of God, in the presence of Metropolitan Kirill, all the bishops and "all the people of Suzdal".[4] Hearing of his death, the metropolitan is said to have exclaimed: "The sun of the Suzdal land has set!"[3]

His sons divided his lands: the eldest, Dmitry, received Pereslavl and the right to the throne of Vladimir; the middle son, Andrei, received Gorodets; the youngest, Daniel, received Moscow. Under Andrei the Principality of Gorodets, first mentioned by that name in 1282, stretched from Nizhny Novgorod to the Unzha; Andrei, often called "Gorodetsky" in the chronicles, twice became Grand Prince of Vladimir and was buried in Gorodets in 1304.[3]

The Feodorovsky Monastery

Local church tradition holds that Alexander took his vows and died in the Feodorovsky Monastery of Gorodets. In 1700 the peasants of the Upper Sloboda of Gorodets asked Patriarch Adrian for permission to rebuild a monastery "on the old cemetery, where of old there was the monastery of the Most Holy Mother of God of Feodorovsk, in which the blessed and great prince Alexander Nevsky took the vows and passed away". The patriarch approved, with a side chapel dedicated to the prince, and the monastery became the main place of his veneration in the town; in 1798 a church of St Alexander Nevsky was built there. In the 19th century the monastery opened the first school in Gorodets (1867), an Alexander Nevsky religious and educational brotherhood (1869), a girls' school and a hospital.[3]

The monastery was closed in 1927; its church of St Alexander Nevsky, the last to remain open, was closed on 7 October 1934.[3] Its revival began with the laying of the foundation stone of a new cathedral of the Feodorovskaya Icon on 7 April 2008. On 12 September 2009 Patriarch Kirill consecrated it; the ceremony was the climax of the first "Alexander Days", conceived as an annual celebration to be held each year in a different region; the Nizhny Novgorod region was chosen to open the series because the prince had died there.[3][5] On 6 December 2013, for the 750th anniversary of his death, a monument by the sculptor Pyotr Dobaev was unveiled at the monastery — the first in Russian monumental art to show the saint not as a warrior but as a humble monk.[3]

Memory in Gorodets

In 1942, when the Soviet government revived the names of great Russian commanders and founded military orders bearing them, Gorodets renamed its Krasnoarmeyskaya Street after Alexander Nevsky.[3] Townspeople had long wanted a monument to him, and in the 1980s even opened a bank account for donations. It was unveiled on 11 September 1993, in the year of the 730th anniversary of his death; the statue of the prince as a warrior is the work of the Nizhny Novgorod sculptor Ivan Lukin, paid for by the Nizhny Novgorod businessman Yevgeny Mamontov and other sponsors.[3] It stands at the top of the steps from the Volga landing stage, at the start of the town's museum quarter.[6]

Beside it are a memorial stone laid in 1995 over capsules of earth brought by delegations from Pereslavl-Zalessky, Vladimir, Pskov, Novgorod and St Petersburg — the cities linked with his life — and a memorial, opened in 2000, to the eighteen holders of the Order of Alexander Nevsky from Gorodets.[3] Since 2012 Gorodets has held an annual gathering, "Alexander Nevsky — the Glory, Spirit and Name of Russia", between the dates of his death and burial (27 November – 6 December, New Style), ending with a procession from the monastery to the monument on the Volga embankment.[3]

The Alexander Nevsky Museum in the Gorodets Museum Quarter has seven halls devoted to his time and to the history of Gorodets. Its archaeological collection includes a genuine hanging lead seal of Alexander Nevsky and a 13th-century princely helmet, and the last halls show scenes from Eisenstein's film.[6]

The cathedral on the Strelka

The tallest church in Nizhny Novgorod, about 80 metres (260 feet) high, stands on the Strelka, the spit at the confluence of the Oka and the Volga where the Nizhny Novgorod Fair was held; it is visible from both banks and from the rivers.[7] The fair's merchants asked for a new church in 1856. On 24 August 1858, the day Emperor Alexander II and Empress Maria Alexandrovna visited the fair, the merchants decided that its main altar would be dedicated to St Alexander Nevsky, the emperor's patron saint. Building began in 1867, and on 15 July 1868 Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich laid the first stone; the church was handed over to the diocese in 1880. It had no parish of its own — its congregation was the merchants who came to the fair.[7]

In the Soviet years its iconostases were burnt as firewood, its spires were dismantled in the late 1930s, and during the Second World War an anti-aircraft battery stood on its central drum. Restoration began in 1983; in 1991 a brotherhood of Alexander Nevsky was founded, and on 30 December 1998 the main altar was consecrated again.[7] Today it is the cathedral of the Nizhny Novgorod diocese.[8]

The prince on screen and in St Petersburg

In 1938 Sergei Eisenstein made the film Alexander Nevsky, his first completed sound film. Nikolai Cherkasov's portrayal in the title role did much to shape the modern image of the prince, and Sergei Prokofiev's score, recast as a cantata, was first performed in Moscow in May 1939.[1] His relics did not stay in Vladimir: after the Great Northern War, Peter the Great ordered them moved to his new capital, St Petersburg, and on 30 August 1724 they were received at the new Alexander Nevsky Monastery there, now the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.[2][3]

See also

Sources

  1. Los Angeles Philharmonic Association (Hollywood Bowl) — Laurel E. Fay, programme note to Sergei Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky (with film) (archive)
  2. Orthodox Encyclopedia — "Alexander Yaroslavich Nevsky", vol. 1, pp. 541–544 (online 29 October 2007) (in Russian) (archive)
  3. Administration of the Gorodets municipal district — "Alexander Nevsky and Gorodets" (in Russian)
  4. Internet Archive — The Chronicle of Novgorod, 1016–1471, translated by Robert Michell and Nevill Forbes (London: Camden Society, 1914), entries for 1240, 1242, 1262 and 1263
  5. Rossiyskaya Gazeta — "Patriarch Kirill will consecrate the Feodorovsky Monastery in the Nizhny Novgorod region", 10 September 2009 (in Russian) (archive)
  6. Russian Geographical Society — "The modest charm of the merchant class: a tour of the museums of Gorodets" (in Russian) (archive)
  7. Nizhny Novgorod Metropolis — "From the history of the cathedral of the holy right-believing Grand Prince Alexander Nevsky" (in Russian) (archive)
  8. Nizhny Novgorod Metropolis — "Cathedral of the holy right-believing Prince Alexander Nevsky", page of the cathedral (in Russian)