The Church of the Introduction, or, as it is also called, Vvedenskaya, was built by local landowners Photius and Peter Salov on the site of an ancient wooden church. This is the only surviving monument of the ancient Peter and Paul (Petrovsky) Monastery, founded in the second half of the thirteenth century. In the 19th century, it was rebuilt several times. In 1930, the domes of the temple and the bell tower were dismantled, later an extension was made from the west. The walls and vaults of the building are made of large-sized bricks, plastered on the outside, plastered on the inside, and the extension is wooden. According to the project of V.N. The Gorodkov monument was restored in 1987-1988. During the study, the remains of a very spectacular ancient completion of the church, which consisted of three genera of kokoshniks, which were mentioned in the documents, were discovered hidden under the later roof. “Such completion, together with other architectural details,” noted Vasily Nikolayevich, “allows us to classify the architectural monuments of Moscow of the last quarter of the 17th century, which influenced the creation of the architectural image of the Bryansk Vvedenskaya (now Peter and Paul) Church.”

The oldest monastery in the Bryansk region - the Peter and Paul Monastery in the city of Bryansk - can be compared with the cornerstone of the Orthodox faith in the Bryansk land.
The monastery was founded in 1275 and was revered by believers for centuries, especially due to the presence in it of the Holy relics of its founder, the Reverend Prince Oleg of Bryansk, who combined the service of a statesman with monastic asceticism, and having retired from reigning, he took care of his people with prayer and charity. Under Empress Catherine II, the monastery was deprived of all estates and lands, gradually fell into decay and was abolished in 1830. However, at the request of the city's Bryansk society and the petition of local merchants Ivan and Kozma Semykin, who donated funds for the restoration of the monastery, for widows, girls and orphans, the monastery was restored as a women's dormitory.
The Bryansk philanthropists, the Mogilevtsev brothers, did a lot for the monastery. By 1917, there were two churches in the Peter and Paul Convent - the Cathedral of the Presentation of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Church and the gate of the Holy Prophet of God Elijah, seven stone buildings with a wooden top (including a hospice and a hospital) and 30 wooden wings-cells. The economy was considerable and consisted of an orchard, barnyard, meadows, allotments and forest land. There was a needlework, icon-painting and chased workshops, a parochial school. There were about 200 sisters in the monastery at that time.

In June 1923 the monastery was closed. A working club was set up in the Ilyinsky Church, then a cinema named after Demyan Bedny. In the mid-70s, this temple was destroyed, and the Bryansk Hotel now stands in its place. The Vvedensky temple was plundered and occupied by the provincial archive. The fence and almost all the buildings of the monastery, including the fountain, arranged by the Mogilevtsev brothers, were destroyed. The building of the monastery hospital, which occupies a dermatovenerological dispensary, and several houses-cells have been preserved. From the cemetery, where famous residents of the city were buried, only a few graves survived. It is not known where the shrines of the monastery are located: two wooden carved images of St. Nicholas and the same image of the Great Martyr Paraskeva.
In 1944, parish worship resumed in the Vvedensky Church. In the early 1930s, with the blessing of Archbishop Daniil (Troitsky) of Bryansk, the relics of the Reverend Prince Oleg were found and buried again under the Altar of the Vvedensky Church in order to avoid desecration from the godless authorities.

Bryansk. Churches of the Introduction. 18th century

Vvedenskaya Church (Peter and Paul) Bryansk, Kulkova st. 14
The only surviving monument of the ancient Peter and Paul Monastery, founded in the second half of the 12th century by the Bryansk prince Oleg Romanovich

Artist E. Sakalo-Kondrashova, watercolor on paper

Church of the Introduction, beg. 18th century It is located in the upland part of Bryansk over a steep cliff. The only surviving monument of the ancient Peter and Paul Monastery.

The Vvedenskaya Church was erected at the expense of the landowners Salovs as a cathedral church in 1702-05. Pillarless temple with a hipped bell tower.

The most famous Vvedenskaya Church in Moscow, distinguished by its glorious history, was located on Bolshaya Lubyanka in front of a gray house at the corner with the Kuznetsky Bridge, next to the ridiculous monument to Vorovsky. Unfortunately, it was destroyed by the Bolsheviks and entered the mournful list of churches destroyed at the very beginning of the Soviet era - one of the first in Moscow.
The area where the church stood, according to legend, is the oldest in the capital. Once upon a time, the entire territory between the current B. Lubyanka and Sretenka was called the Kuchkov field. And as if it was here that the possessions of the legendary boyar Kuchka, who was executed by Prince Yuri Dolgoruky for inhospitality and a tough temper, were located: he took the rich villages of Kuchka for himself and founded the city of Moscow in their place, named after the main river. And in the Moscow "gray old times" for a long time, the death penalty of political criminals took place on the Kuchkov field.
In 1510, Grand Duke Vasily III settled here the transported Novgorodians and Pskovians in order to weaken the hostility of these previously independent "republican" cities to Moscow. From them came the ancient name of this area - Lubyanskaya, which was given to it by the Novgorodians in memory of the street of their native city - Lubyanitsy. (In old Moscow, for a long time the current Bolshaya Lubyanka was called Sretenskaya and was the beginning of Sretenka from the center.)
According to another version, popular popular prints in Russia were sold here - cheap popular prints, or there were bast shops in which they made carts and sleighs covered with popular prints and sold them right there. Or in some "bast huts" they traded vegetables and fruits here.
The Vvedenskaya church was more connected with Pskov. Its old name "in Pskovychi" is due to the fact that the same settlers from Pskov erected the temple here, and also because the first Pskov courtyard was here.
One way or another, this church was only built by the personal decree of the Moscow sovereign Vasily III, who ordered either to rebuild the stone (!) Church already standing here for the settlers, or to build a new one.
And he built it in 1514-1518. not a Moscow or Pskov master, but the Italian architect Aleviz Novy, the builder of the Archangel Cathedral in the Kremlin, the Baptist Church in Zamoskvorechye and the Vladimir Church on Ivanovskaya Gorka - all three were commissioned by the highest order. This means that in the construction of the Lubyanka church, the Moscow authorities had their own political plan in order to pacify the inhabitants of the disgraced cities and establish official relations with them.
And in 1551, the Vvedenskaya Church even became one of the seven Moscow cathedrals established by the authorities to resolve the spiritual affairs of each of the seven church magpies, into which Orthodox Moscow was then divided by the Stoglav Cathedral - the Kremlin, Kitaigorodsky, Zamoskvoretsky, Prechistensky, Sretensky, Nikitsky and Ivanovsky. The clergy, numbered among the Sretensky Magpie, have since turned here, to the Vvedensky Church, with various petitions.
This church became famous for the fact that in the first half of the 17th century it was the parish church of Prince Dmitry Pozharsky, and it was in it that from 1612 until the construction of the Kazan Cathedral on Red Square there was the miraculous Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, which saved Moscow during the war with the Poles.
Prince Dmitry Pozharsky lived right opposite the church, in miraculously preserved chambers (house N14) along Bolshaya Lubyanka, and then, in his time, still Sretenskaya Street. Back in the 19th century, local historians searched for his house for a long time, and when they discovered that the Lubyanka chambers were the prince's permanent residence, and not just his Moscow property, it was a whole historical sensation.
Shortly after the death of False Dmitry II, known by the nickname "Tushinsky Thief", the Poles who were in Moscow waited from hour to hour for a popular uprising and prepared for defense - the squads of the first people's militia were already approaching Moscow. The first battle was expected on Palm Sunday - March 17, 1611, but it broke out two days later and, according to legend, by pure chance. As if the Poles began to beg the Moscow cab drivers to help them drag heavy cannons onto the towers of the Kitaigorod wall. They refused, and a squabble began. The foreigners, who did not understand the Russian language, decided that this was the beginning of a popular uprising, and attacked the Russians with weapons first.
Then the fight started. It was especially strong in the White City, where crowds of people who had time to arm themselves rushed to the Poles. Soldiers under the command of Prince Pozharsky came to the aid of the townspeople: he pushed the Poles back to Kitai-gorod and set up a fortification near his house near the Church of the Introduction - a "small prison", something like a barricade. But on that day, the prince was badly wounded and taken away from the battlefield to be cured in his fiefdom. Having recovered from his wounds, in 1612 he, together with the Nizhny Novgorod merchant Minin, led the II Russian militia.
And the miraculous Image of the Mother of God from Kazan was also sent to Prince Dmitry Trubetskoy, the head of the first people's militia. Having kept the Kazan icon for some time, Trubetskoy released it back to Kazan. Along the way, the icon arrived in Yaroslavl on the same day when the troops of the Second Militia, led by Prince Pozharsky, arrived there from Nizhny Novgorod. “So unexpectedly blessed meeting,” as one old Moscow historian called this event, was taken as a good omen, and they decided to take the icon back to Moscow, where it remained forever.
During the war, the Vvedenskaya Church was burned down and robbed by the Poles. Rumor attributed its restoration to Pozharsky himself: on October 26, 1612, immediately after the victory, the prince placed the Kazan icon in his Vvedensky church on Lubyanka, where it remained until the construction of the Kazan Cathedral was completed. And it was there, to the Lubyanka, twice a year - on July 8, on the feast of finding the Kazan image, and on October 22, on the feast of the victory of the Russian army and the miraculous salvation of Moscow - they went from the Kremlin with a procession.
And when the icon was solemnly transferred to the newly built Kazan Cathedral - Prince Pozharsky carried it in his arms from the Lubyanka to Red Square - then in memory of the miraculous icon's stay in the Vvedenskaya Church, Patriarch Filaret set up a special procession to Lubyanka, and Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich on the eve holiday went to the Vvedensky church for Vespers.
It is noteworthy that the courtyard of the boyar Nikita Zyuzin stood opposite its bell tower, who later suffered for having thoughtlessly decided to reconcile Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich with Patriarch Nikon.
Prince Pozharsky himself tried a lot for the splendor of the Vvedensky Church: he presented it with a richly decorated list of the Kazan icon in a gilded riza with pearls, and in the temple there was an image of the Savior with the image of Saints Peter and Alexei, embroidered by the hands of one of the daughters of the prince.
In the same temple, the grateful Pozharsky placed the image of the Sign that belonged to him, and the list from it was placed on a stone pillar near his house. Near this pillar with the icon the great Moscow fire of 1737, called Trinity fire, because it happened on Trinity Day, stopped. This fire is infamous - it was in it that the Kremlin Tsar Bell died in a foundry pit.
Later, this pillar with the icon was included in the manor fence, and after the revolution, the icon was removed from it and transferred to the Vvedensky Church. There it was kept until the demolition of the temple.
And yet Pozharsky arranged a chapel in the name of St. Great Martyr Paraskeva Pyatnitsa - in memory of her first wife, who died in 1635. The patriarch himself buried her in this church, and pre-revolutionary historians assumed that Pozharsky's wife was buried here, and the Pyatnitsky chapel was founded and built over her grave.
And until 1771, glorious and wealthy parishioners were buried in the Vvedenskaya Church. Among them were the descendants of Pozharsky, and his brother-in-law Prince Khovansky. Pozharsky himself died on April 20, 1642, the second week after Easter, and was buried in the Spaso-Evfimiev Monastery in Suzdal.
And in 1722, according to the then issued special decree of Peter the Great, the feast of the Introduction was included in the list of church and state holidays, on the days of which it was forbidden to work (including state institutions, for example, government offices) and trade. In this, Peter's policy developed a previously existing tradition: even under Alexei Mikhailovich on Sundays and holidays it was impossible to work, "judge" and trade - only the sale of food and horse food was allowed.
In the middle of the 18th century, the Vvedenskaya Church on Lubyanka was rebuilt by the architect Postnikov and the diligence of the parishioners. It was consecrated by the Moscow archbishop Platon (Levshin), the future famous metropolitan himself.
And during the invasion of Napoleon, in the former house of Pozharsky, there was the estate of the commander-in-chief of the Moscow militia, the famous mayor of Moscow, Count F.F. Rastopchin, the author of popular anti-Napoleonic "posters". They were hung at the Kazan Cathedral on Red Square, along with caricatures of the French, to keep the spirit of Muscovites alive. Rastopchin is often considered the initiator of the Moscow fire of 1812.
General Bagration, mortally wounded on the Borodino field, was brought here, to the Lubyanka. This house made it onto the pages of Leo Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace": in the courtyard of the estate, angry Muscovites really did massacre a young man named Vereshchagin, a merchant accused of aiding the enemy for distributing Napoleonic proclamations.
It was a confusing story. The Vereshchagin family had their own brewery in Moscow. The young merchant's son was exorbitantly educated for that time, knew French and German and read foreign newspapers in Moscow coffee houses. Apparently, sometimes out loud.
At that time, French spies were very much feared in Moscow, and it quickly began to spread from the Hamburg Vedomosti a translation of Napoleon's proclamation, announced by the emperor in Dresden before going to Russia.
On this charge, on June 26, 1812, Vereshchagin was arrested and sentenced to exile to hard labor in Nerchinsk. Prior to his departure, he was kept in the "pit" - the city prison.
However, in the early morning of September 2, just before Napoleon entered Moscow, Rastopchin demanded the prisoner to his house on Lubyanka and shouted to the people crowding in the courtyard that Vereshchagin was "a traitor, villain, the destroyer of Moscow" and was subject only to the death penalty. The quarter guards guarding the house hit him with their sabers, and the crowd tied Vereshchagin's body to the horse's tail, "seeing in him the voice of Napoleon," as Rostopchin later wrote in his report to the Minister of Justice.
In 1826, Count Rostopchin was buried in the Vvedenskaya Church, and later an ordinary Moscow gymnasium was located in the famous house on Lubyanka.
In 1920, the ceiling collapsed in the refectory of the Vvedenskaya Church, but everything was restored. And already in 1924 the church was demolished as a "hindrance" to automobile traffic. Its decoration was transferred to the nearby Church of the Ascension of the former Varsonofevsky Monastery in the alley of the same name, but then it was also demolished.
On the Lubyanka, on the site where the Vvedensky Church stood, Vorovsky Square was formed, and in the courtyard of the house where the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs then worked, on February 2, 1924, an ugly monument by the sculptor Katz was erected to the revolutionary - one of the rarest monuments in Moscow of the early Soviet era that has come down to our time.
And still on the site of the Vvedenskaya Church - a parking lot.
The current Church of the Presentation in Barashy is located in Podsosensky Lane near the Resurrection Church, which we wrote about on September 26 of this year.
In ancient times, there was a tract (area) "under the pine trees", which gave the name to the lane, which was previously called Vvedensky by the church.
The Barashi area itself was associated with the activities of the sovereign's servants. From 1410, sheep settled here - that was the name of the shaterniki, who carried tents on campaigns for the great princes, and then the kings, and who knew how to put them in the field. In the Barashevsky Sloboda there were state-owned warehouses, where both the tents themselves and the materials for their manufacture were stored.
There is another version - the tenants of the land were originally called rams, who had to pay dues for it, and then, perhaps, they were entrusted with the activities of tent workers.
They built their parish church here. For the first time, a wooden temple on this site was mentioned back in 1476, then consecrated in the name of Elijah "under the Pine". And in 1620, the Podsosenskaya church was already Vvedenskaya, with the Ilyinsky chapel, but still wooden. When she stood a side church in the name of Longin Sotnik, who was considered the patron of the Moscow royal family - and the highest persons were present at the festive mass in the Barashevsky sovereign settlement.
Apparently, therefore, already in 1647, the Vvedenskaya Church was first rebuilt in stone, with side chapels of Elijah the Prophet and Longin Sotnik. In the 60s of the 17th century, an elementary school was opened under it, arranged by the priest I. Fokin at his own expense.
And soon, at the turn of the 17th-18th centuries, a new restructuring of the Presentation Church followed - then its current building was erected in the style of the Naryshkin baroque. One hundred thousand burnt bricks were issued for the renewal of the Longinus chapel, consecrated already in 1698, and the main altar was consecrated in 1701.
The Podsosensky temple was closed in 1932 at the request of the staff of the Russolent factory. And in the same year it was intended for demolition for the construction of a multi-storey building on that site. Many icons from it were transferred to the storerooms of the Tretyakov Gallery, and the icon of the Virgin "Softener of Evil Hearts" of 1713 was sent to the Novodevichy Convent, at that time a branch of the State Historical Museum.
But for some reason the temple survived. In its basement, graves with ancient tombstones were preserved for a long time. And the old-timers said that, as if in 1948, they found here three skeletons walled up in a niche with golden crosses on their chests and with golden crowns on their heads, which the NKVD immediately took away - an obviously fabulous legend of the Soviet era, sustained in Moscow traditions: both mystery and gold , and immured skeletons, crowns, crosses...
In the 60s, the building of the temple housed ... an electrical products factory, which greatly disfigured the appearance of the church. A century later, the slow restoration of the temple began, and in 1983 a cross was already erected on its bell tower. There are services going on right now.