Description of the attraction
The Sretenskaya church is located in Murom, on K. Marx Street, 55. It was built in 1795 with donations from the merchant of the 1st guild Ivan Nikiforovich Zvorykin instead of the former wooden temple of Demetrius Solunsky with the Sretenskaya "warm" church. In the place where the old couple of churches were built, there are residential buildings today.
The Dimitrievsky temple has been known at this place, in the west of ancient Murom, since 1574. Sources of 1624 indicate that the construction was carried out at the expense of merchants from Moscow, who are referred to as "Smirnov and Tretyak Mikitin Sudovshchikov". At the end of the 18th century, a temple in the name of the Presentation of the Lord was erected at the Church of Demetrius Thessaloniki, which later gave the name to the new brick church.
The Sretenskaya Church has one chapter and is distinguished by simple decor typical of provincial architecture. Built in the style of classicism. Figured platbands with late Baroque details adorn the windows of the temple. The cupola is especially beautiful. She is small, she is decorated with oblique stripes, reminiscent of the heads of the Moscow Cathedral of St. Basil the Blessed. The bell tower was also built in the classicism style and has 3 tiers.
In 1829, the chapel of the Archangel Michael appeared in the church, since in 1801 the parish of the church of the same name was attributed to the church, which had been located in the Murom Kremlin for a long time (the church has not survived). In 1888-1892, the temple underwent changes, the refectory was significantly expanded. It was designed not in the classic style, but in the “neo-Russian” style, which was fashionable at that time.
The temple became famous thanks to its main shrine - the Life-giving Cross of the Lord, nicknamed by the inhabitants "Sretensky". Currently, the cross is kept in the museum. A legend is connected with this shrine, which tells about the miraculous healing of many Murom residents during a terrible plague in the 17th century. One of the sick residents saw a vision in which he was supposed to arrive at the Dimitrievsky temple and venerate the cross located there. This man was no longer able to move, therefore, having gathered his last strength, he crawled to the church and received healing at the cross. The news of this miracle spread instantly, and a large number of the sick went to the temple. Almost all people were crawling, hence the name of the street where the church stands - Vypolzova (before the revolutionary events it was called Sretenskaya). Every year, on the feast of the Presentation of the Lord (February 15), the priests and believers of Murom perform in the museum in front of the cross a prayer service for water with the singing of an akathist.
During the Soviet years, the Sretensky temple was abolished and plundered. Under the pretext of helping the starving people in the Volga region, all valuables were removed from it. In 1929, a sports club was set up in the building. After some time, the bell tower suffered from a lightning strike, and it was dismantled into bricks up to the 1st tier. In a crippled cubic building without a chapter and a bell tower, it would be difficult to recognize the church. The temple basement was repeatedly flooded with sewage, which seriously damaged the foundation.
In the 1980s, an office for the manufacture of monuments was set up here, and only in 1998 the temple was handed over to believers. His condition was very grave - a crack ran along the entire northern wall, and the building collapsed. The rector of the church Peter (Kibalyuk) began work on the reconstruction of the building, but there were very few forces and funds for this.
Later, the courtyard of the Murom Spaso-Preobrazhenskaya monastery was located in the Sretensky temple. Already in 1998, a chapel was opened in the side-chapel, the chapter was gradually restored, and more recently the bell tower. Currently, the temple has been almost completely restored; regular services are held in it.
