Description of the attraction
The Church of the Holy Martyr Blasius is the only one in Moscow that bears the name of this saint. One of its chapels was consecrated in honor of Vlasiy of Sevasti, who lived in the 3rd century, and was revered as the patron saint of domestic animals. In past centuries, grooms and coachmen on the day of the veneration of St. Blasius brought decorated horses to the church and walked around the temple with them three times. The priest sprinkled the animals with holy water and read a prayer service.
The temple, named after him, is located in Starokonyushennaya Sloboda, at the corner of Gagarinsky and Bolshoy Vlasyevsky lanes. The first church on this site was built in the 16th century and was called Vlasyevskaya on the Goat bog. Closer to the middle of the 17th century, it was already made of stone and four chapels were added to it. The main altar of the church was consecrated in honor of the feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord, but everyone continued to call the church Vlasyevskaya, although only one of the side-chapels bore the name of Vlasiy of Sevasti.
During Napoleon's invasion of the capital in 1812, the Church of Blasius, like many other churches in Moscow, was plundered and desecrated. For the next three years, it was empty until a new consecration in February 1815. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, several reconstructions were carried out in the church - in particular, a new refectory was built, the iconostasis was updated.
Already during the years of Soviet power, one of the chapels of the church was consecrated in the name of Seraphim of Sarov. In the 1930s, the temple was occupied by the "renovationists" (priests who accepted the ideas of the new government). However, the "renovationists" were persecuted by the Soviets, and in 1939 the church was closed, the building was stripped of the attributes of a church and converted into school workshops.
In the second half of the last century, musicians, its temporary owners - members of the Boyan musical group, which had been housed in one of the buildings since the early 1980s, when the church belonged to Rosconcert - drew attention to the problem of restoring the church building. The building was returned to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1993, and towards the end of the century they began to hold services again. The building was recognized as an architectural monument.
