Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior in Peredelkino
The Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior is located in the territory of the Patriarchal Metochion, northwest of the Peredelkino platform of the Kyiv direction of the Moscow Railway. At the moment these territories are part of Greater Moscow.
The first information about the existence of the Transfiguration Church in the village of Lukino – the patrimony of I.F. Leontiev – dates back to 1646. At that time the village belonged to the Leontievs. In 1729 it was sold to Prince M.V. Dolgorukov. In 1791 Prince V.V. Dolgorukov sold the village of Okulovo and Lukino to Varvara Petrovna Razumovskaya, née Sheremeteva. During the war of 1812, the lands of the area suffered greatly from the devastation of French troops. According to data from 1813, the wooden church in the village of Lukino stood “ruined and unconsecrated, but the building was intact.” Instead of a wooden church Razumovskaya decided to build a new one – a stone church. The new church had two heated aisles – one in honor of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, the other – of the great martyr Barbara, and a bell tower. During the construction the services were held in the old wooden church standing nearby. In April 1820 two heated aisles of the new church were consecrated, and services began to be held there. In 1821 the Holy Synod gave its blessing for the consecration of the main altar of the stone church in the name of the Transfiguration of the Lord, and ordered to dismantle the wooden church. From the inventory of that time, it is known that the church was covered with iron and painted green. The domes of the church and the bell tower were covered with white tin with gilded stars, and the church was surrounded by a stone fence with wooden bars. The walls were painted with compositions with scenes from the Gospel parables. In 1853 Mikhail Lvovich Bode acquired the estate from Colonel’s wife K.S. Kovalevskaya, the former owner since 1850. In January 1854 the new owner asked the Synod’s permission to carry out repairs to the church, which had fallen into disrepair, namely to replace the main church’s iconostasis with a five-tier one, repair the interior and exterior plaster, paint with oil paints, cover the domes with white tin, gild the crosses, and replace the broken bell. There was an old estate nearby, which the new owner rebuilt, incorporating the church into its territory. The work was carried out using the funds from Lev Karlovich Bode and his son Mikhail Lvovich Bode. An important role in the creation of the church ensemble of the Kolychev estate was played by the artist, restorer, historian and archaeologist F.G. Solntsev, one of the theorists of the Russian-Byzantine style in national art. (Lev Karlovich Bode supervised the construction of the Grand Kremlin Palace in the Moscow Kremlin, where Solntsev was the chief artist.). In memory of Mikhail Lvovich’s journey to the Solovetsky Monastery, a chapel in the estate park was built from large cobblestones delivered from Solovki and consecrated in the name of Saint Philip (Kolychev), Metropolitan of Moscow, who had been the abbot of the Solovetsky Monastery for many years before being elected to the Moscow primatial throne. In 1867, M.L. Bode received permission to transfer the ashes of his mother, Natalia Feodorovna Bode (née Kolycheva) from the village of Meshcherskoye to a stone chapel in Lukino. Later in 1883-1884, a burial temple for Saint Philip of Moscow was built to the southwest of the Transfiguration Church, connected to it by a covered gallery. According to the clergy register for 1882, the Transfiguration Church was built in 1819 as a “stone building with three altars and a bell tower.” In 1883, the diocesan authorities gave permission to build a fourth altar – a stone, one-story side chapel in the name of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker. This is probably the current side chapel of Saint Philip, Metropolitan of Moscow. As a result of the renovation work in the Transfiguration Church in 1860s-80s a northern side chapel (Philippovsky) and a southern porch with a chapel were added to the main quadrangle, two extensions were erected on either side of the bell tower, and a porch with cube-shaped columns was built at the entrance to the bell tower, covered with a tent in the spirit of the 17th century with a small cupola. The southern extension contains a staircase to the second tier of the bell tower. The construction of the dome above the main altar, above the bell tower, and the change in the shape of the old domes should be attributed to this time. Four domes on blind cylinders of small drums were placed at the corners of the quadrangle. The Philippovsky side-chapel is crowned with multi-colored domes: two twisted and one smooth checkered, reminiscent of the domes of the Cathedral of the Intercession on the Moat (St. Basil’s Cathedral on Moscow’s Red Square). A covered gallery staircase led from the eastern wall of the southern porch to the church of Metropolitan Philip, which can be seen in the photographs of the 1920s. After the death of Mikhail Lvovich in 1888 the estate was managed by his widow, Baroness Alexandra Ivanovna Bode-Kolycheva. Later it passed to their daughter, Countess Natalya Mikhailovna Sollogub, who owned the estate until 1917. After the death of the church builder M.L. Bode-Kolychev, the clergy began to experience difficulties in maintaining the temple. Therefore, in 1903 the clergy of the church with the permission of the Moscow Spiritual Consistory began to lease the church land. The clergy concluded two lease agreements for 12 years with Mr. F.I. Belmer and the tradesman E.I. Smirnov. At the same time the lessees pledged “not to open any taverns or drinking establishments” on the church land. In the second half of the 19th century, according to the Land Survey Office, the Transfiguration Church had more than 26 dessiatines of arable and hayfield land. In 1901, the Moscow Archaeological Society raised the issue of restoring the royal gates and icons of the 16th-17th centuries in three chapels of the church. In 1902 the Construction Department requested permission to install a wind turbine heating system. The porch under the northern wall of the refectory, covered with monier vaults and brass doors of the channels in the church and refectory, apparently date back to that time. Before, the refectory room was considered warm and was heated, apparently, by the stoves located in the western part of the chapels. In the storm of revolutionary events and the civil war the estate in the village of Lukino, like many other noble estates, suffered greatly. The main two-story house of the estate burned down, the home museum of the Kolychev family with a unique collection of historical relics was almost destroyed. The same fate befell the Kolychev family archive under the Soviet power. Most of the art objects were taken away and distributed to various state storage facilities, thereby violating the integrity of the Bode-Kolychev collection. Much of the nationalized estate was stolen or destroyed, and the estate territory was divided for plowing and development, including part of the historical park. The Kolychevs’ house housed a children’s colony of the Khamovnichesky District of Moscow. The Church of St. Philip, as a house church, was closed by the January decree of 1918, and later demolished. The Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior remained an active parish church in the territory of the Kozlovskaya volost, later the Kuntsevo district of the Moscow region. In the 1920s, when a boarding school for old Bolsheviks was created in Peredelkino, there was a danger of closing the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior, which was decided by the Kuntsevo district executive committee, but the church was never closed. Only 10 years before 1949, services in the church were not held regularly. Fortunately, during these years, the church was not looted. During the hard times, the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior remained one of the few operating churches in the Moscow region. In 1948, the old buildings and the church were examined by M.V. Dyakonov – the architect of the Department of Architecture under the Executive Committee of the Moscow Regional Council. The interior decoration and paintings were lost, but most of the icons, including the royal doors of the 17th century from the main iconostasis, were preserved. After the opening the church was reconstructed. In 1952, the USSR government allocated the Lukino estate for the country residence of Patriarch Alexy I. After that large-scale repairs were carried out. The monument’s passport provides a description of the work carried out: “a second-light window was cut through in the southern extension to the bell tower. Niches were chosen in the pedestals of the western porch, into which the tiles were inserted. The shape of the western window of the second tier of the bell tower was changed to a round one. A baluster-shaped fence was made on the bell tier. All the chapters were made anew, some of them changed in shape. They are equipped with newly made crosses, stylized as 17th century; new valances are made under the heads. The main dome is covered with an oblique checker, under it there is a valance. All the heads (except for the twisted ones) and crosses are gilded. In the interior the painting was done anew, under the direction of the artist L.V. Mantel. New iconostases were assembled, using the surviving icons, and utensils. In the main room of the church, choirs and a staircase to them from the Philippovsky side-chapel were arranged. One of the windows was used for this. Changes in the shape of the window openings of the northern and southern walls of the refectory part of the church were also most likely made at this time. In the photographs and plan of M.V. Dyakonov of 1948, the window openings are single, and in the photographs of 1973, before the beginning of the next repair work, they are already triple. From 1952 to 1975 the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior in Peredelkino was a dependency of the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius. The splendor of the church, the statutory service, and the clergy-monks of the Lavra attracted many parishioners from both the surrounding villages and Moscow. The Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior was visited by outstanding representatives of Russian culture, many of whom lived in dachas in the writers’ settlement of Peredelkino. Impressed by the splendor and beauty of the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior in Peredelkino, B.L. Pasternak wrote a remarkable cycle of poems, which were included in the novel Doctor Zhivago, for which the author received the Nobel Prize. In April 1975, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church decided to transfer the church to the Russian Monastery of St. Panteleimon on Mount Athos as a dependency. The next renovation and restoration works began. The gallery at the northern Philippovsky aisle was remodeled, glazed, the roof was remodeled, and the columns were decorated with ceramic decor. The northern extension of the bell tower was enlarged. After the renovation and restoration works the church was painted in two colors – the lighter one began to indicate the original structure, and the darker ones showed the later extensions. In January 1991 the Athos metochion was transferred to the center of Moscow to the Church of the Great Martyr Nikita on Shvivaya Gorka, and the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior in Peredelkino received the status of a Patriarchal metochion. In the 1990s with the support of the government and the Moscow Patriarchate, restoration of the church and surrounding buildings began. Currently, the project to preserve and develop the territory continues, and Peredelkino has become an important spiritual and cultural center. From 2019 to 2021, a thorough scientific restoration of the temple was carried out, and now the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior is fully improved. In August 2021, after the restoration, the temple was consecrated
Address: Moscow, 7-ya Lazenki str., 42
