Holy Trinity Gate Church, Pechersk Lavra Monastery, Kyiv, Ukraine

Troitska Nadvratna Tserkva (literally Holy Trinity, the one above the gate, Church) was built in 1106-1108 over the main entrance (western) gate of the Pechersk Lavra Monastery in Kiev. The church was originally founded by Chernigov Prince Sviatoslav, who later became a monk at the monastery under the name of Nicholas the Saintly (St. Nicholas Svyatosha; commemorated 14 October).

The church was built to a cross-in-square plan. However, for practical and defensive purposes it was necessary to locate the entrance inside the walls of the monastery, so the designer chose to build the narthex along the north side of the church (see figure below). In terms of floor space, it is a small building, with each side of the square formed by the church proper (narthex and sanctuary) being on the order of twenty to twenty-five feet (7 meters) in length. Each of the east-west aisles of the nave is terminated on the east side by an apse (although this can only be seen from the inside, the outside wall being flat).

At the end of the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth centuries the original ascetic look of the church went through a considerable change when it acquired its present Ukrainian Baroque appointments. The changes introduced the onion-shaped dome, new decorations and new artwork. The tempera and oil wall paintings and the Icons in evidence today were painted in the 1730s-1740s by a group of painters (A. Galik, et al.) from the monastery's icon school.

However, before viewing the artwork, a short history lesson is in order. After the Baptism of the Kievan Rus in 988, Orthodoxy had roughly 250 years to spread and become established across what is now basically Ukraine, Belarussia and Eastern Russia. Then in 1240 the Mongols sacked Kiev. Following a century of living under Tartar rule, Ukraine and Belarussia experienced a change of overlords when Lithuania expanded into the Kiev region ca. 1345-1377, while Poland and Hungary took over western Ukraine. This ushered in the beginning of what would become a centuries-old struggle between the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic church in these lands (consider, e.g., the Union of Krevo, 1385, the Union of Lublin, 1569, and the Union of Brest, 1596); a struggle that, in fact, continues to this day. In 1648, the Great Revolt took place when Cossacks, under the leadership of Bodan Khmelnytsky, threw out the Poles. When Khmelnytsky returned in triumph to Kiev in January 1649, he was hailed by Orthodox hierarchy as “the second Moses” who had “liberated his people from Polish slavery.” In 1653, under the Pereiaslav Agreement, Khmelnytsky and the Cossack elite made a decision to accept the Tsar’s overlordship of Ukraine. (In the longer term, this turned out to be the Left Bank or Eastern Ukraine plus Kiev and its immediate surroundings on the Right Bank; by the late 17^th c. Poland had regained the other lands of the Right Bank or Western Ukraine.) Shortly thereafter the Ukrainian Orthodox Church accepted the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Moscow. At some point after it began to administer the Russian Orthodox Church in 1721, the Holy Synod accused the Ukrainians of being ‘contaminated’ with Latin influences. In order to try to root out ‘heretical deviations’ the Holy Synod took measures to oversee and control printing, Icon writing, and church construction according to acceptable norms.

The paintings and Icons of the Holy Trinity Gate Church serve, I believe, as a visible example of some of the deviations brought about by the long-standing, strong influences of Western Europe (and perhaps Ukrainian folk art traditions as well). This will be recognized by those familiar with art history through the general compositional nature of the works. It is also evident in the multiple attempts to portray God the Father. "Why do we not describe the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? Because we have not seen Him… But if we saw and knew Him as we did His Son, we should try to describe and depict also Him (the Father)…" said the fathers of the VII^th Oecumenical Council (Act 4). The fathers of the Great Council of Moscow (1666-1667) wrote "…we command to cease all false and sophistical reasoning, according to which every man has grown accustomed to paint ikons by himself which are without attestation: that is, the ikon of the Lord Savaoth in diverse forms…" (for a more complete treatment of this issue, see The Erroneous Practice of Making Icons of God the Father).

The narthex ("click" on image for further detail):
The entrance into this church is painted in a way that is intended to symbolize the road that takes one to God. The paintings depict the march of the Righteous into Paradise. They are led by the flying and trumpeting Angels and God Himself (with attempts to depict not only the Son, but the Father as well). Paradise is shown as an imaginative landscape through which peacocks, elephants, camels, and other exotic animals roam freely.

The nave ("click" on image for further detail):

The east wall of the main nave is devoted to the First Council of Nicaea (325) which established the Nicene Creed and opposed Arianism. Note also the stacidia (a chair with a fold up seat with arm rests high enough to be used while standing) running along the bottom of the west wall (several are also located near the entrance to the nave in the narthex as shown above). The dominant themes of the other wall paintings are major events of the New Testament. The pictures shown here include the expulsion of merchants from the Temple, Jesus with the Apostles, and the Baptism of the Ethiopian by the Apostle Philip. Multiple attempts to portray the individual Persons of the Holy Trinity can be found in the nave.

The Holy Trinity Church above the Gate