The Church of Holy Wisdom
St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev combined Greek myth and philosophy with Jewish literature in New Jerusalem.
St. Sophia, or the Church of the Holy Wisdom, in Kiev was accurately named. It's original floorplan has since been altered.
Not only did the Kievans take over the Orthodox faith, but they also looked to Constantinople for their architecture. The cathedral that was best suited to the Orthodox ritual was the cross-domed church (Nickel, 122).
St. Sophia was founded in 1037. While it has been extensively altered since the time of its construction, its original form boasted thirteen domes, twelve piers, a nave with an apse at its eastern end, and eight aisles that also terminated in apses (Nickel 123). This differed greatly from the central basilican plan of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, which may be explained by the fact that it was used both as a royal chapel and a central meeting place for the local people; (Nickel, 133).
There is some suggestion that the architectural traditions of Rus and the standards set by Constantinople were combined to create the plan for St. Sophia in Kiev, because the Slavs of that area had developed a long tradition of wooden churches-one of the elements in St. Sophia (the architectural elements converging, in graduated fashion, towards the central dome) can be found in these local architectural traditions (Nickel 133).
In honor of the great cathedral in Constantinople, the Kievan cathedral was also named Sophia, or "wisdom." Not only did the idea of wisdom hearken back to the days of Greek philosophy, but it could also be applied religiously since Solomon, who wrote the biblical books of Wisdom, also built the Temple of Jerusalem.
Kiev, as New Jerusalem, had its own temple in which the Divine Wisdom dwelled, as is in evidence by the orant Virgin figure in the apse-the Virgin, who is the temple of the "incarnate God" and a temple of Wisdom. (Meyendorff, 392) John Meyendorff, in "Wisdom-Sophia: Contrasting Approaches to a Complex Theme," expands this idea of Wisdom as protectress:
. . . the concept of Divine wisdom was seen as a synthesis of many elements that reflect the Byzantine religious identity: the legacy of the philosophical wisdom of Antiquity and the wisdom literature of the Jews (both understood as being fulfilled in Christ), including even the feminine image of Athena, goddess of Wisdom and protectress of both Athens and Constantinople (and, by association, of any Christian city, like Kiev).(Meyendorff, 393)
Meyendorff, John. "Wisdom-Sophia: Contrasting Approaches to a Complex Theme," Dumbarton Oaks Papers, No 41. 1987.
Nickel, Heinrich L., Medieval Architecture in Eastern Europe, trans. Alisa Jaffa. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1981
Reid, Anna, Borderland: A Journey through the History of Ukraine. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000.
