Learn how to implement Pinterest Rich Pins on your website. I have hundreds of Byzanatine and Russian history images on Pinterest.
Written, under the order of Prince Odoievsky-Maslov, Chief of Administration of the Imperial Court in Moscow, by S. de Bartenev
Church of the Catacombs
The Church of the Deposition of the Robe of the Holy Virgin, or Church of the Catacombs.
This is the eastern-most of the churches described earlier here, and it leads to the Catherdral of the Assumption.
Principally, this church served as the personal church for the house of the Patriarch. After their consecrations, the metropolitans and patriarchs would leave on its portico.
After 1653, under Patriarch Nikon, this church became a Palace church. Its portico began to serve as the passage between the Terems and the Cathedral of the Assumption.
The Church of the Deposition of the Robe of the Holy Virgin was built by Metropolitan Iona in memory of the end of the invasion by the Tsarevich of the Masovche Horde.
They appeared below Moscow on 2 July 1451, the Feast Daty of the Disposition of the Robe of the Holy Virgin, but they fought and retreated the very same day, and it was thus that they called his expedition "the rapid disappearance of the tartars".
Of note in this church:
1. The large chandelier in the middle; the work of master coppersmith Svertchkov in 1624.
2. Four large wooden chandeliers, covered in colored wax, with inscriptions on them telling usthat they were the gift of Patriarch Joseph in 1643-1645.
On the south side of the church is a small covered stair leading from the square of the Cathedral to of the Chapel of the Virgin of the Catacombs which is found on the first story of the church and is connected to the Palace by passageways. On the wall of the Chapel is a painted image of the Mother of God which has been for a very long time the object of a very strange cult.
