A thin tongue of multilane highway runs into town, gleaming with cars, as a cloud of smoke rises in the distance from agricultural spraying. Directly below is a nest of new apartment buildings. And, just peeking out in the right corner, about 100 feet from where you stand, is the Dormition Cathedral–built in the 12th century.
This is the view at the edge of Vladimir: Old Rus and its storied history nestled in a major hub of contemporary Russia. This contrast–in the former capital of the Old Rus, no less–is certainly strange, even jarring. Not shown in the panorama is what I considered the most surprising contrast; directly facing the front of the cathedral is a McDonald’s.
Within are distinctive frescos by Andrei Rublev, painted in the 15th century. Of special note is his Last Judgement, painted just above the exit to remind believers of the consequences of sin as they leave the church. Rublev’s work is much tamer than most (compared with Michelangelo’s work, being weighed up by God looks like a breeze), but his muted blues and grays are equally arresting. As I began to leave the church, I saw it and froze, and I found it difficult to push myself back out into modern Vladimir.
The Dormition, sitting smack dab in the middle of a modern city, was our last stop on our excursion. We started just outside town at the Svyato-Bogolubovskoye Women’s monastery, where the appearance of modernity is less pronounced. The newest buildings are from 19th century, including the blue-domed church, but within are the remains of the palace of Andrei Bogolyubsky, the prince responsible for raising the city to the capital of the northern Rus.
The palace itself is now a reminder of a much less triumphal history: in a still-extant staircase, Bogolyubsky had his arm cut off by restive nobility before being dragged into the street to die. Though grisly, such an end might not have been wholly unanticipated; Bogolyubsky himself had not lived a peaceful life. What brought Vladimir to prominence was his 1169 sack of Kiev, which had been the heart of Old Rus. Despite overthrowing Kiev, the city where the Rus were baptized in 988, Bogolyubsky eventually became a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church. It was a vision of the Mother of God that inspired him to found the monastery, and the icon within became the central miracle working icon of the Russian state. Here, as I watched the nuns file by, I felt less the contrast between ancient and modern–with the exception of the Soviet era, Bogolyubovo has been in continuous operation–and more the contrasting but inseparable forces of violence and Christianity in the world of the Old Rus.
Between our visits to the monastery and the Dormition cathedral, we saw the last of our three churches: the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl, about a 20-minute walk from Svyato-Bogolubovskoye through an idyllic field. Thick-walled to keep it warm or cool as needed–cool enough to see your breath on the hot day we visited–the church both within and without appears distinctly solid, its squat simplicity a reminder that not all Orthodox churches aspire to the theatrical onion domes of Saint Basil’s on Red Square. The interior is simple, just white walls with a couple of mosaic icons in the Byzantine style.
Seeing the history of the Rus today is not a straight look at the world recorded in the Chronicles but a collision between Old Rus and new Russia. One day in Vladimir wasn’t enough to take it all in, but seeing these three churches taught me to be a bit less confident I already know what there is to know about the rich heritage of Rus’ religion and culture. I’ll end with an image I took just two days ago in Moscow on Tverskoi Boulevard. It’s a monument to Yuri Dolgoruky, the founder of Moscow–and none other than the father of Andrei Bogolyubsky. Even here, amidst the hustle and bustle of downtown Moscow, Old Rus and new Russia collide, and the history of Vladimir is never far away.
