The Life-Giving Cross of the Lord is a historic, healing Orthodox shrine of the Nizhny Novgorod land.
Background of the Question
The article was published in October 2006 in the journal ″Nizhegorodskaya Starina″ (Nizhny Novgorod Antiquity), issue 12
Few people know that for more than 300 years the Nizhny Novgorod land was home to one of the remarkable shrines of the Russian Orthodox Church — the miracle-working Life-Giving Cross of the Lord.
According to tradition, this Cross was brought by Prince Prince Pozharsky in 1606 from the Solovetsky Monastery "… to the Petrovsky Monastery for deliverance from plague and the invasion of the Hetman, which to this day stands in the Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord and grants healing abundantly to all who come to it with faith".
This refers to the Life-Giving Cross (three arshins in size) — one of the principal shrines of the Transfiguration Church in the village of Purekh, Balakhna uyezd, Nizhny Novgorod province, which was an object of veneration for the surrounding population and for all believers who came to it from more distant places. The largest number of pilgrims to the Life-Giving Cross came from Gorokhovets uyezd of Vladimir province, from Kostroma province, from the Unzha, and "… the greatest influx of worshippers occurred from late May to July".
For many years the Purekh Life-Giving Cross of the Lord was brought annually to the village of Gordeyevka for the Nizhny Novgorod Fair (it was also carried to Gorbatov, Pavlovo, Gorodets and Khokhloma Village), "… but then, it seems in the early 1870s, a rather "delicate" matter began in the Nizhny Novgorod Ecclesiastical Consistory, arising from a dispute between the Purekh clergy and the monks of the Gorodets Fyodorovsky Monastery, which ended with the carrying of the Purekh cross being forbidden by the Synod on 23 May 1881. Since then it has stood permanently in the Purekh church".
The Life-Giving Cross itself stood in the refectory of the Exaltation chapel, measured 3 by 2.5 arshins, the total weight of silver on it was 2 poods 10 pounds; the cross was valued at 1,800 rubles. A note to item 119 reads: "The shrine-case was made with church funds." The copy-cross in the church stood near the main altar, measured 3 by 2.5 arshins, its silver adornment weighed 10¼ pounds; the cross was valued at 275 rubles. The copy-cross in the chapel had no silver and was valued at 10 rubles; its dimensions are given in item 247 of the inventory as 3 by 2⅛ arshins, i.e., it was 0.375 arshin narrower than the crosses in the church.
Let us try to answer the questions: why were there three Crosses, and why was the copy-cross in the chapel smaller? Let us return to A.S. Gatsisky's account of the Purekh Cross. Gatsisky says that for many years the Purekh Life-Giving Cross was brought annually to the village of Gordeyevka for the Nizhny Novgorod Fair. It was also carried to other settlements of Nizhny Novgorod province. Therefore, so that one of the Crosses would always remain in the church, an exact copy of the Life-Giving Cross of the Lord was made, though less richly decorated. And for frequent carrying out for local church needs, a somewhat smaller (lighter) second copy of the Cross was created, not adorned with silver.
When the copies of the Life-Giving Cross were made can only be surmised. The processional copy of the Cross kept in the chapel could have been made immediately after the Life-Giving Cross itself was placed in the Transfiguration Church, still during Prince D.M. Pozharsky's lifetime. And before the chapel was built within the churchyard enclosure, it could have been kept in the church. It cannot be ruled out that this copy-cross was made several times, as it wore out. The copy kept in the church was evidently made in the early 19th century, when the need arose to carry the Life-Giving Cross itself out to other settlements of Nizhny Novgorod province.
Let us now turn to the printed inventory of 1926. Seven years had passed — what had changed? We read the inventory (spelling preserved):"… 4. At the south-eastern corner of the enclosure a chapel is attached, in which stands a cross, a copy of the liv[ing] cross located in the church of the village of Purekha. … 43. Behind the right kliros on the back side of the column, in a gilded carved shrine-case with matching carved columns, stands a copy [carved] of the Holy Cross in a copper frame without crown or vestment. … 117. Next to this iconostasis, by the arch, [is a] carved gilded iconostasis, in the middle of which stands the locally venerated Holy Life-Giving Cross of the Lord.
The body is carved. In the shrine-case the lower side is copper gilded, the sides and top silver gilded with a matching crown, weighing 2 p. 10 f. the attendant figures in copper gilded vestments, their crowns silver, unhallmarked". According to the 1926 inventory, the copy-cross in the church was already without silver. The dimensions of the Crosses are not given anywhere here. The valuation of the Crosses at 1926 prices is as follows: the copy-cross in the chapel was not valued, the copy-cross in the church was valued at 40 rubles, the Life-Giving Cross at 25,171 rubles, and the carved gilded iconostasis in which the Cross stood — at 15 rubles.
Thus, to sum up, there were three Crosses in the Transfiguration church of the village of Purekh in 1919 and 1926: the Life-Giving Cross of the Lord itself, its copy of the same dimensions, and a smaller copy kept in the chapel within the church enclosure. At the same time, the Life-Giving Cross itself had, by 1926, retained its silver adornment weighing 2 poods 10 pounds.
Let us now turn to the photographs. Three photographs of the Crosses are known today: two of them have already been mentioned above, and each was published in its own time. The third photograph of the Cross, taken by one of the authors in the Trinity Church, is presented here for the first time.
Let us first consider the first two photographs, taken in 1912, the year of the 300th anniversary of the liberation of Moscow from foreign invaders by the people's militia led by Minin and Pozharsky. Careful study of the details of the Crosses in these photographs shows that the photographers photographed two different Crosses. This is evidenced by a number of significant differences between the Crosses, namely: 1) The crowns above the Savior's head have different ornamentation; 2) The ornamentation on the Crosses themselves also differs, and in Sokolov's photograph it is clearer and more carefully executed; 3) In Dmitriev photograph the Savior has four ridges of hair on the shoulders, in Sokolov's photograph only three; 4) The "gloves" on the Savior's hands in Dmitriev's and Sokolov's photographs are worked differently and are bevelled at the wrists at different angles; 5) The Savior's facial expression differs, but the facial features are more clearly and carefully worked in Sokolov's photograph; 6) The rib cage is also more clearly worked in Sokolov's photograph; 7) The inner ridges of hair on the shoulders in Sokolov's photograph are arranged symmetrically relative to the chest hollow, while in Dmitriev's photograph they are asymmetrical; 8) The loincloth in Dmitriev's photograph is carved, while in Sokolov's photograph it is of fabric, with ornamentation along the bottom edge matching the ornamentation along the edge of the Cross itself; 9) The "toes" on the Savior's feet differ — in Sokolov's photograph the toes of the left foot are worked more carefully; 10) The Savior's right foot in Sokolov's photograph is positioned symmetrically between the lower crossbar of the Cross and the lower end, while in Dmitriev's photograph it is asymmetrical, closer to the lower end; 11) The ratio of the arm span to the distance (height) from the top of the head to the right heel differs between the crucifixes: 0.95 in Dmitriev's photograph, 1.02 in Sokolov's photograph (in a human being this ratio is, as a rule, greater than 1.0). If, then, these are two different Crosses — and this is quite obvious — one of them is a copy, and the other the original. But which one? Let us try to answer this question within the source material available to us today.
Let us first consider the tasks set before the photographers. M.P. Dmitriev photographed the Life-Giving Cross on assignment from the NGUAK for the anniversary collection, which was published in volume XI of the NGUAK proceedings in 1912. He should, of course, have photographed not a copy of the Cross but the original. But the caption under Dmitriev's photograph reads: "Cross in the church of the village of Purekha, Balakhna uyezd, Nizhny Novgorod province, according to tradition brought by Prince Dmitry Mikhailovich Pozharsky from the Solovetsky Monastery." The caption contains neither the word "Life-Giving" nor "of the Lord." This gives grounds to suppose that, for some reason, Dmitriev, or one of his students, photographed not the original after all but a copy of the Life-Giving Cross of the Lord.
That is why the photograph was labelled in the NGUAK proceedings simply with the word "Cross." A.A. Sokolov photographed the Life-Giving Cross either on assignment from the rector of the Transfiguration church in the village of Purekh, or with the blessing of the diocesan authorities, for the production of a postcard in honor of the 300th anniversary of the people's militia's victory over the foreign invaders. And since the purpose of the postcard was to give the believer a blessing from the Life-Giving Cross of the Lord (the postcard is indeed titled: "Blessing from the Holy Life-Giving Cross of the Lord located in the village of Purekh, Balakhna uyezd, Nizhny Novgorod province"), Sokolov was simply obliged to photograph the Life-Giving Cross itself, not its copy. This postcard was subsequently sold or simply distributed among the parishioners of the Transfiguration church and its guests. We have the original of this postcard, preserved by one of the residents of the village of Purekh.
And one more significant circumstance speaks in favor of the fact that Sokolov's photograph depicts the Life-Giving Cross of the Lord itself, and not its copy. According to the tradition already mentioned, the Life-Giving Cross would have turned 432 years old in 1912 — a very great age even for so sturdy a wood as pomegranate, from which it was made. And, of course, time must have left its mark on it. Looking carefully at Sokolov's photograph, one can see that the Cross depicted in it has been quite heavily affected by time, which is especially visible in the Savior's hands. They appear as if "eaten away" by time — knobby, covered in pockmarks and small lumps. In Dmitriev's photograph the Savior's hands look far better, almost as if polished. And this does not contradict the logic, since the copy of the Life-Giving Cross could have been made, as already mentioned, in the early 19th century, and therefore should have been preserved considerably better than the original.
A final decision as to which of these two photographs depicts the Life-Giving Cross of the Lord itself and which its copy can only be made once it becomes possible to carry out carbon and X-ray structural analysis of the wood from which the Savior's crucifix is made, determining its species and the probable year the Cross was made.
Now let us try to answer the question: which crucifix of Jesus Christ is located in the Trinity Church of Vysokovo in Nizhny Novgorod? As already mentioned, the parishioners of the village of Purekh are convinced that the Purekh Life-Giving Cross of the Lord is located in the Trinity Church. This was written about in his time by the Purekh local historian and artist A.D. Terentyev, now deceased10. The opinion of the Purekh residents and of Terentyev was in its time supported by one of the authors of this work11. But is the Cross there really the Purekh one, and which of the three? The fact is that before the study of the inventories of church property, it had not occurred to anyone that there had been three Crosses in the Transfiguration church: the original and two copies. And only our work with the archival documents made it possible to clarify this.
Comparing the photograph of the Cross from the Trinity Church with the photographs of Dmitriev and Sokolov, and having studied the features of the elements of the carved crucifix in all three photographs in relation to one another, as well as comparing the proportions of the crucifixes' dimensions, one can conclude that all the elements and dimensional parameters of the crucifix from the Trinity Church are identical to the elements and dimensional parameters of the crucifix in Dmitriev's photograph, with one exception. In Dmitriev's photograph the Savior has four ridges of hair on the shoulders — two on each side of the head — while in the photograph from the Trinity Church there are only three ridges: one ridge on the right shoulder is missing, which can, however, be explained by its loss due to the absence of proper storage conditions for the crucifix in the 1930s-1940s12.
Unfortunately, we can say nothing about the cross itself on which the crucifix from the Trinity Church was mounted. It has not survived, in view of which the clergy of the Trinity Church placed the crucifix in a newly made wooden shrine-case in the shape of a cross. Therefore we can compare only the elements and dimensional parameters of the crucifix itself.
The identity of the crucifix in Dmitriev's photograph and the crucifix in the Trinity Church is confirmed by the following features: 1) the ratio of the arm span to the distance (height) from the top of the head to the right heel is 0.95 for both crucifixes; 2) the proportions of the other dimensions of both crucifixes likewise coincide; 3) the carving on the loincloths coincides down to the smallest details; 4) both crucifixes have a crack on the abdomen running from the middle of the right side of the chest through the navel to the groin. The two cracks are absolutely identical. In our opinion, the presence of the above identical features indicates the complete identity of the crucifix in the Trinity Church with the crucifix depicted in M.P. Dmitriev's photograph.
Thus, a preliminary conclusion can be drawn that the Trinity Church of Vysokovo in Nizhny Novgorod holds a copy of the crucifix of the Life-Giving Cross of the Lord, formerly located in the Transfiguration church of the village of Purekh, Balakhna uyezd, Nizhny Novgorod province. A final conclusion can be reached only after wood-science analysis is carried out to determine the species of wood from which the crucifix is made and the year of its manufacture.
Notes
1. A.S. Gatsisky. Nizhegorodsky Letopisets (Nizhny Novgorod Chronicler). Nizhny Novgorod, 2001, p. 419.
2. Ibid., p. 423.
3. Ibid., p. 424.
4. V.E. Shmatov. Purekh, Kirov, 2004, pp. 93-101.
5. Ibid., p. 54.
6. Ibid., p. 54.
7. Trudy NGUAK (Proceedings of the Nizhny Novgorod Provincial Archival Commission), vol. XI. N. Novgorod, 1912, p. 320.
8. State Institution GANO No. 3, Balakhna. Fond No. 106, inventory 1, file 87, sheets 98-107.
9. State Institution GANO No. 3, Balakhna. Fond No. 118, inventory 1, file 195.
10. A. Terentyev. Krest Gospoden (The Cross of the Lord). District newspaper "Znamya," 25.05.1991. Chkalovsk.
11. V. Shmatov. Svyatynya zemli Nizhegorodskoy (A Shrine of the Nizhny Novgorod Land). District newspaper "Znamya," 02.11.2004. Chkalovsk.
12. After the Transfiguration church was closed in 1937, all its church property was removed, and after the Trinity Church reopened in the 1940s, the Cross from the village of Purekh ended up there. But the year of its arrival at the Trinity Church is unknown. It is also unknown where the Cross came from.
V.E. Shmatov, L.N. Vares