Purekh is a historic village in the Chkalovsky District of Nizhny Novgorod Region.
Purekh, or Makary-Purekh, was a small settlement in the 17th century and was called Makaryeva Poluslobodka; the village of Purekh was granted to Pozharsky as early as 1610 by Tsar Vasily Shuisky, along with other villages.
Origin of the name
The village lies on the great Suzdal — Balakhna road, 40 km from Balakhna, that is, at the distance of a single day's journey for a horse-drawn cart.
Purekh was the first stop, the night's rest in one's native land for a local trader returning from the trades, and the last for one setting off to the trades on the Volga. And how, in such a case, could one not drink a cup or two of ″Pure (drink)″ at the coaching inn. Good luck in trade, or a loss, drew one to the cup just the same. Purekh, in our opinion, means a place of mead and brew.
Thus, out of the deep Merya antiquity, geographical names bring down to us news of honey drinks and of good honey harvests, since making ″pure″ required a great deal of honey.
Pozharsky's estate
After the liberation of Moscow, in 1621 Pozharsky received a charter of grant from Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich, which documented his rights to the Purekh land. On it, in 1622-1625, Prince D. M. Pozharsky founded and built a stone monastery for men in honour of the Transfiguration of Christ. Here is how this is recorded in the scribal “separate Nizhny Novgorod books”: “Under No. 134, the 8th day of December. The Sovereign Tsar and Grand Prince Mikhailo Feodorovich of all Russia and his sovereign father, the great sovereign, His Holiness Filaret Nikitich, Patriarch of Moscow and of all Russia, granted to the boyar Prince Dmitry Mikhailovich Pozharsky and his children the surveyed land which, according to the present writ and measure, is held by the boyar Prince Dmitry Mikhailovich for his service; and whereas the boyar Prince Dmitry Mikhailovich set upon his own patrimonial waste land a monastery of Makary Zheltovodsky the Wonderworker, so to the monastery, to the abbot and the brethren and the servitors, he gave for their sustenance, out of his patrimonial holding, villages and waste lands apart from the old church lands…”. In this monastery, the injured heroes of the war of liberation of 1612 prayed for forgiveness of their sins and healed their wounds.
The name of the church's builder is also known — the stonemason journeyman Filipp Ivanov.
The cathedral stands in the old village of Purekh, 80 kilometres from Nizhny Novgorod and about 35 kilometres from Balakhna. Formerly Purekh belonged to the Balakhna Uyezd, but under the new administrative division it is now in the Chkalovsky District. Chkalovsk is the renamed Vasilyova Sloboda, which is mentioned in historical sources in connection with the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Saviour. The construction of the Nizhny Novgorod Hydroelectric Power Plant and the formation of the Gorky Sea greatly changed the geography and the landscape of the area. In the old days the Yaroslavl highway, on which the village of Purekh stands, ran along the bank of the Volga, and Vasilyova Sloboda was a major Volga-side trading centre.
The cathedral rises in the centre of the village, in a vast old cemetery overgrown with centuries-old trees. Purekh has partly preserved buildings from the end of the 19th century, which, unfortunately, are not looked after by the local authorities at all. New rural houses are being built intensively on the sites of demolished ones. Next to the cathedral, on its eastern side, a club building was erected in 1986-88. Purekh, having grown in recent times, has absorbed the village of Krapivino as well (on the western side). In it, three churches built at the end of the 19th century survive to this day (they house warehouses and factory premises). On the northern side, about a kilometre from the church, stands the village of Ostapovo, separated from Purekh by the winding little river Kolesenka. The river's floodplain is boggy even now, and, as in the old days, a small dam stands on it.
From that time there remains the church built by D. M. Pozharsky in memory of the liberation of Moscow from foreign invaders; it corresponds to the rare type of church plan with two internal pillars instead of the usual four supports beneath the central dome.
Details relating to the initial period of construction cannot be made out today because of later annexes that have surrounded the ancient core of the building on all sides. The modest old church is especially overwhelmed by the tall and spacious refectory built in 1879 with its large tented bell tower, in which a tower clock was installed in 1903. The fence on stone posts and the stone gates lend a romantic mood to this picturesque corner of Purekh, which preserves the memory of the heroic events of the past. It was here that D.M. Pozharsky handed over the banner of the 1612 militia.
It was kept here until the government of Nicholas I decided in 1827 to move it to the Armoury Chamber in Moscow.
Construction
Many stages can be discerned in the rebuilding of the church.
Stage one – the beginning to the middle of the 17th century. In 1647 there existed on the Pozharsky estate a monastery of Macarius of Yellow Waters and Unzha the wonderworker, and in it "… a stone church of the Transfiguration of Christ, with porches, with five domes, not consecrated. In the church there are two side chapels: of Euthymius of Suzdal the wonderworker, not consecrated, and a chapel of Macarius of Yellow Waters and Unzha the wonderworker, not consecrated; and below, a church with a refectory of the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God, and a chapel of Alexander of Svir the wonderworker, consecrated, and a stone bell tower with a tented top is attached to the church…".
The cathedral, begun under Dmitry Mikhailovich, continued to be built under the prince's son Ivan Dmitrievich. Under him the chapel of John the Forerunner (in honour of his patron saint) was added. A study of the church's plan made it possible to establish the location of the altars, the most ancient ones, which have survived to our day: the main Transfiguration altar – in the church; that of Euthymius of Suzdal – in the apse of the first tier, on the right side; Macarius' – in the south-eastern volume; the Dormition altar in the lower heated church; Alexander of Svir's – beneath the chapel of Macarius; John's – on the north-eastern side.
The original location of the bell tower has been determined – in the north-western corner of the church. This is confirmed by a publication of L. Dal in the journal "Зодчий" No. 5 for 1873: "…for the first time the octagonal tented bell tower becomes a constant companion of the church, often in the north-western corner of the church as, for example, in the church of the Georgian Mother of God in Moscow, in the church of the village of Purekh built by Pozharsky". The roofing of the church and of the chapel of Macarius followed the zakomary, although the vault construction did not correspond to this, and the roofing was carried out on a wooden rafter system.
Stage two, the 17th – early 19th centuries. Apparently, at the end of the 18th century the original bell tower – the belfry – was rebuilt. A similar structure of the same period – the 1630s – has survived in the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin – low, square in plan, covered by a tent (octagonal). A drawing in the journal "Нива" (issue not established) depicts the church in Purekh: in the foreground is the Kolesenka river with a small dam. Beyond the roofs of the wooden houses rises the five-domed church, with the chapels at the eastern corners. On the north-western side a tall octagonal tented bell tower rises on a cubic volume.
The church is covered by a hipped roof. By the character of the image the drawing can be dated to the 1830s–1840s. It was probably in this state that the church was found by the Chernetsov brothers, who travelled along the Volga in the 1830s–1840s. "Last summer we had occasion to be, while passing through, in the village of Purekh, situated 15 versts from here on the right bank of the Volga. Purekh is considered the birthplace of Prince Pozharsky. The most beautiful church existing in it, with a tented bell tower beside it…"
Stage three, the middle of the 19th century. In 1854 the church suffered severely from a fire. The report on the incident gives a detailed description of the church: judging by the record, the church still has six altars (in the undercroft, instead of the altar of Alexander of Svir, an altar in honour of the Resurrection of Christ is mentioned). But for the first time the existence of two bell towers is noted. In Gatsissky's notes "Statistical Description of the Village of Purekh" we read: "The church is of stone, two storeys, with two bell towers, one of which was built in more recent times". Thus the construction of the second bell tower can be assigned to the period between the 1840s and 1850s. The church existed in such a form until 1873, for which there is historical evidence: 1871 – "In its building of stone, two storeys, with two bell towers…"; 1873 – the same.
Stage four – the 1870s, 1880–1883. In 1874 a major rebuilding and enlargement of the church began. In the clergy registers for 1874 it is written: "In its building of stone, two storeys, having with it three bell towers likewise: a new three-storey one and two middle ones". The enlargement proceeded as follows: in 1875 the three-tier bell tower was finally built, then the two existing bell towers and the upper gallery were pulled down. A spacious four-pillared refectory joined the bell tower to the church. It was erected in 1879. But the rebuilding of the church did not stop there. The income and expenditure books for 1880 to 1883 record fairly large sums spent on repairs to the church.
Physical investigation showed that the newly built refectory had a facade different from the present one: the small central windows on all sides were widened and took on a "Byzantine" appearance. On the southern facade, on the first tier, the remains of the original gallery were walled up, and in the resulting space one more altar was arranged. By 1883 the architectural appearance of the monument had finally taken shape, and it has in the main survived to our day. The domes on the church were replaced, and their silhouette cannot be called a success. All the window openings were widened, the perspective portals were walled up, and the chapel of John the Baptist was completely rebuilt.
In general the greatest changes to the facade occurred on the northern side: the outer wall of the ancient gallery was dismantled and a considerably larger chapel was made. The finials above it and the dome were made of wood with subsequent metal sheathing. The building was plastered with durable cement plaster, the 17th-century brick decoration having first been chipped away, and painted the colour of light ochre, with the decoration and details picked out in white. On the drums, which after the repairs received new "Russian" decoration, painting was executed in the space between the moulded plaster half-columns. The field of the archivolts was also filled with narrative painting.
The interior also changed over the course of the cathedral's existence. Above all, the church was renowned for the holy objects kept in it and donated by Prince Pozharsky and members of his family. In the "Church Antiquities" of Nizhny Novgorod province, particular note is made of the icon of the Vladimir Mother of God, which was with Pozharsky on his campaigns; the icon of the Kazan Mother of God, embroidered on satin by the prince's first wife Praskovya Varfolomeyevna; and a wooden Crucifixion of Christ, faced with a silver setting – "three arshins in length". According to tradition this cross was brought by Dmitry Mikhailovich from the Solovetsky Monastery on the occasion of a pestilence.
Perhaps of greatest value was the standard of the Nizhny Novgorod militia of 1612, which in 1826, at the request of Nicholas I, was handed over by the owner of Purekh, Countess Marya Alexandrovna Dmitrieva-Mamonova (daughter of Catherine II's favourite), to the Moscow Armoury Chamber. At her request a copy was made of the standard. The Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Saviour was widely known far beyond Purekh. This was helped by the holy objects and national relics kept in it. Thus the Life-Giving Cross from the Solovetsky Monastery, especially venerated by the prince, was for the duration of the Nizhny Novgorod fair brought first to the church of the village of Gordeyevka, and then to the newly built church of Alexander Nevsky, designed by Lev Dal, which belonged to the Fyodorovsky Gorodets monastery.
Remnants of the interior decoration created after the major rebuilding could still be observed at the end of the 1970s. The walls and vaults were abundantly adorned with heavy plaster mouldings. The walls and vaults of the church, the refectory and the chapel of Macarius of Yellow Waters were covered with painting. It was very ornate in the chapel of Macarius – on a gold ground of the vault, carefully executed refined figures of saints. The walls of the lower church apparently had a plaster finish with subsequent whitewashing. The numerous service rooms in the undercroft were also finished modestly. In the lower church the floors were not relaid and remained of brick, laid in a "herringbone" pattern from large-format brick.
In the upper rooms the floor level in the refectory and the church was levelled and paved with very durable ceramic tiles by the firm "Bergenheim". No traces at all remain of the iconostases in the lower church, in the chapels of Macarius and John, in the new altar in the gallery and in the refectory. In the most ancient chapel, that of Euthymius of Suzdal, the tyabla of a two-tier iconostasis have survived, along with the small columns and the finial of the royal doors and three icons of the Deesis tier; all the elements are original, with fairly large fragments of painting from the beginning of the 17th century.
In the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour fragments of a tyablo iconostasis have survived, remade, but incorporating horizontal tyabla also from the beginning of the 17th century. An idea of the royal doors of the ancient iconostasis can be given by a drawing by Lev Dal, made by him from life in the 1870s. (It was also Dal who first introduced the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Saviour into scholarly circulation: in 1870 he drew up a design for rebuilding the church, which was, however, not carried out.) The drawing is kept in the archive of the Academy of Arts in Leningrad, in a folder of Dal's sketches and measured drawings.
The royal doors depicted can be dated by their character and architecture to the first half of the 17th century. They consist of a finial, paired carved columns, and infill with a semicircular top. The cornice of the finial and the arch had a fairly developed profile, and it may be supposed that they were painted. On the fragment of infill drawn alongside it is described in detail how they were made: into a wooden frame were set images of a church made of applied gilded tin, as on icon frames. The images were painted on the reverse side of mica. The type of drawing is very similar to the painting of the tyabla.
Another type of doors is sketched on the drawing. It is very difficult now to establish which altar they came from. During the rebuilding of the church in the 1880s the royal doors were replaced, since in a photograph from the photo collection of the Donskoy Monastery they differ from those recorded by Dal. In the newly finished building the refectory was heated. A stokehold was arranged in the undercroft, and in the lower part of the pillars on the first tier of the refectory there were grated openings. The chapel of John was also heated – a calorifer room has survived in the space beneath it.
In the 1880s the cemetery territory surrounding the church was enclosed with a stone fence (partly with metal infill), including four gates with wickets and a stone chapel in memory of Alexander II built in 1884.
The newly finished, well-appointed church survived in the form it had acquired until services in it were discontinued at the end of the 1930s.
Devastation in Soviet times
During the years of Soviet Power the church in honour of the Transfiguration of the Lord underwent great changes. These included damage from the action and influence of the weather, and also by the efforts of human hands, directed not at building up spirituality and cultural heritage in Russia, but at trampling upon and consigning to oblivion the foundations of the life of the Russian Orthodox person, of his spiritual life in Christ our Lord. Like many churches in Russia, the church of the village of Purekh, founded by Prince Dmitry Mikhailovich Pozharsky, was used for many purposes, but not as a House of God.
From 1935 no services were held in it and no prayers were raised to the One Who can hear and create; instead a kapron workshop was vainly set up, and in the lower chapel of the church the goods of human hands were stored. The first thing the devil, with people's help, strove for was to remove the Cross of the Lord from the church. Grace departed with the removal from the church of the village of Purekh in 1935 of one of its chief holy objects, the Life-Giving Cross of the Lord, which had been in this church for more than 300 years and to which people came from all over Russia for healing.
After this the barbaric plundering of the whole church began. Icons and utensils, carved parts of the iconostasis and church materials were dragged away. The glass from the icons and the materials were used for technical needs. Old residents, telling of it, marvelled how local people could go so far as to heat their stoves with carved columns from the iconostasis and even with icons. L. P. Moiseyeva, the daughter of one of the repressed priests, Archpriest Pavel, told us that whoever encroached upon the holy things and treated them blasphemously did not live even to the age of 40. Truly it is said: "Sinners shall not live out half their days".
Some of the icons ended up in museums in the city of Gorky and in Moscow. Some of the icons were preserved by God-loving residents and returned to the churches of the village of Purekh, the town of Balakhna and other churches. The main bell of the Transfiguration church and of the whole district, weighing 740 poods (≈12 tonnes), was thrown down from the western side of the bell tower and smashed. The clock on the bell tower, which amazed people with its melodiousness, fell from it after one of the fires. Everything that could be carried off or destroyed was carried off or barbarously destroyed. Even the cast slabs of the floor of the lower church were dragged away, as were the wrought sections of the fence. By 1991 only ¼ of its total length around the perimeter remained. The cemetery surrounding the whole church was levelled with machinery, and the crosses and monuments were taken away no one knows where.
The godless authorities, probably sensing that this building had a lawful owner and that sooner or later it would have to be vacated, did not try to spend money on its repair. Snow, water and wind would probably have completed this work of destruction, had not the Ministry of Culture, by God's providence, recalled that the church of the village of Purekh has enormous historical and cultural value and can still amaze people with its antiquity and former beauty.
In 1988 the restoration of the church began. The bell tower and the domes of the church were restored. The entire church was completely re-roofed. The church of the village of Purekh faced the unenviable fate of a lifeless building housing displays of museum finds. Had it not been, once again, for God's providence, which inspired the believing people of the village to write to the government with a petition to give this holy building over to its lawful purpose.
From 1991 church singing and prayers to the One Lord, Who is able to hear us and to help us for our good, again resounded in the church of the village of Purekh.
A new breath for the church
The Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Saviour in the village of Perekh is of great importance for the spiritual life of the people of Purekh, the residents of the Chkalovsky district and all believers of the Nizhny Novgorod Diocese. Moreover, it is a church-monument of all-Russian significance.
The revival of this majestic cathedral was begun back under Metropolitan Nikolai of Nizhny Novgorod and Arzamas (now deceased and ever remembered by us).
The first document on the return of the church to the Orthodox faithful is dated 1991.
The first service in the church was celebrated at Easter 1991. This was, as it were, a new breath for this cathedral and for the whole of Purekh.
Further on, the gradual revival of the church can be traced stage by stage as far as it lies within our power.
The fence
The restoration of the fence around the Transfiguration Cathedral was begun in 1998 and completed in 2000-2001 with church funds and with donations from the Governor of Nizhny Novgorod Ivan Petrovich Sklyarov (now deceased). Since the fence includes three large and two small gates, this presented a certain difficulty. The metal sections of the fence were lost when the church was destroyed, or were carried off over time. Roughly a quarter of them were manufactured at the Zavolzhsky Motor Plant in the town of Zavolzhye. The eastern metal gates were made there as well.
Church shop
The church shop at the corner of the fence has interesting architecture in the form of a chapel. In Soviet times kerosene was sold in it. The roof and masonry of the chapel were badly damaged and were not restored from 1937 until 1997. Through the labours of the church activists and local residents the chapel has been almost fully restored.
Bell tower
According to the recollections of old residents, the belfry of the cathedral in the village of Purekh was very rich until 1935. The largest bell, the "Blagovest", weighed about 12 tonnes and could be heard even in the town of Gorodets, 20 kilometres from the village of Purekh.
This bell was thrown down from the bell tower on its western side. The openings sealed with brick, which were technically required in order to drop the large bell, are still visible on the upper tier of the belfry.
The "Blagovest" bell, 230 kg
This is the largest bell of the Purekh cathedral in use. The bell was made at the "Vera" bell-founding works (the city of Voronezh), one of the finest makers of tolling bells.
This beautiful bell was acquired with donations from Ivan Petrovich Sklyarov in 2007. He had a special feeling for the Purekh church and for Purekh itself.
The raising of the bell was carried out by the Purekh administration, with the active participation of its head Vasily Gennadyevich Shinin.
Interior of the church
The splendid appearance and warm atmosphere of the church were created, with God's help, by local craftsmen between 1998 and 2007. The hereditary cabinetmaker Nikolai Koloshin worked especially hard here.
The Royal Doors of the Exaltation of the Cross chapel were also made by him and given to the church free of charge.
Interesting facts
- When the Banner of the Nizhny Novgorod Militia was forcibly taken away by tsarist officials in 1827, 25 local residents who put up what resistance they could were sent to penal servitude.
- The names Pure, Purekh and Purekhka have a "honey
origin". The territory of the present-day Yaroslavl, Ivanovo, Nizhny Novgorod and some other regions was in the past inhabited by the Merya tribe, related in language to the Erzya, Mari, Komi, Estonians and Finns. In early history the Merya were known under their own name, and later under the names of the people of Suzdal, Rostov and Beloozero, according to the territory where they lived. Here are geographical names left by the Merya: the rivers Oka, Klyazma, Nerl, Lukh, Teza, Lake Nero, the towns of Kostroma, Puchezh, Shuya and others. Under the influence of Russian statehood, culture, the written word and the Orthodox Church the Merya lost their language and became part of the Russian people, joining it with their customs, way of life and order, their farming and craft-and-manufacturing habits, with their industriousness, staunchness and patience.
Address
Postcode 606552 Nizhny Novgorod Region, Chkalovsky District, village of Purekh, Lenina Street.
Administration telephone 8 (83160) 3-22-85