The Church of Kosma and Damian in Suzdal is clearly visible from the large city bridge over the Kamenka River. The hill on which the Kozmodemyansky temple is located has been called Yarunova Mountain since ancient times.
Short story
According to the research of art critic Alexei Dmitrievich Varganov, the mountain got its name from a pagan temple dedicated to Yarun (or Yarilo) that stood on it. Yarun was the supreme deity, the god of fertility, who was in charge of the harvest of the Suzdal lands. Since the end of the 12th century, there was a monastery on Yarunov Hill in honor of the unmercenary saints Kosma and Damian. In this monastery, Bishop John I, the confessor of the Grand Duke Vsevolod III the Big Nest, spent his last years.
It is to John that historians attribute the foundation of the Kozmodemyansky monastery in Suzdal. By the 17th century, the monastic monastery ceased to exist, and in its place only the wooden church of Kosma and Damian remained, which in the scribal book of Suzdal from 1617 was listed as “the building of parish people”. In 1725, the temple was replaced by the existing stone one in honor of the same saints..
Architecture of the Kozmodemyanskaya Church
The Kozmodemyanskaya church in Suzdal is distinguished by the asymmetry of the composition. The main volume-cube, devoid of a refectory and decorative decorations, is crowned with a bulbous cupola on a high drum. From the southwest, the church is adjoined by a bell tower, built in the form of an octagon on a quadrangle. The ringing arches end with keeled ceilings, over which a concave tent with platbands over the rumor windows and a miniature bulbous dome rises. On the south side, a low side-altar with one chapter, rectangular in plan, is attached to the main volume, made according to the model of the winter Suzdal temples.
Attraction rating:
