The Cathedral of the Feodorovskaya Mother of God in St. Petersburg was built with public money for the 300th anniversary of the reigning family, which was celebrated in 1913. But, as we usually do, they did not have time to complete the construction directly by the date. Only on January 15, 1914, in the presence of Emperor Nicholas II and members of his family, the upper church of the cathedral was consecrated.
The lower one, which was conceived as a temple of Saint Prince Alexander Nevsky and Saint Equal-to-the-Apostles Mary Magdalene, the heavenly patrons of Emperor Alexander III and his wife Empress Maria Feodorovna, was not even remembered at that time, it did not yet have any design. Therefore, during the restoration of the cathedral, nothing prevented our contemporaries from realizing their ideas for decorating the church.
The interior design of the lower church was developed by the icon painter - Archimandrite Zinon. He painted with his own hand the frescoes in the altar and some of the icons. According to the sketches of Zinon and with the approval of the rector, Father Alexander, a labyrinth was placed here, and the altar space was made open, which is also unexpected for church culture, with a throne under a marble canopy.
The labyrinth is laid out of black and white marble in the center on the floor - an image of the human path to God.
Fedorovsky Cathedral is the only one in Russia with a labyrinth in its very center. The labyrinth in Chartres Cathedral (France) was taken as a sample - one of those that adorned temples in medieval Europe. This labyrinth exactly repeats the Chartres pattern, but four times less.
Promotional video:
The idea is this: moving along the white line, you need to come to the center. Once you start moving, you quickly find yourself in the immediate vicinity of the center, but do not get into it. Moving further, you move more and more away from the center until you find yourself at the farthest radius. And here, in a situation of maximum distance, it suddenly turns out that it only remains to make very few turns and you are in the center.
The meaning is simple - starting a spiritual search, a person quickly falls into the illusion that he has already reached the goal. However, there is a long, winding path ahead. And when, it would seem, all hopes are lost, it turns out that we have entered the last straight segment to the center - to comprehend spiritual truth.
In France, in Chartres, the symbolism of eleven concentric circles and a central rosette with six petals - an ancient religious motif - is subtle but significant. According to the official version, the labyrinth here symbolizes the pilgrim's wanderings on the way to the Holy Land. However, according to some scientists, the length of the path in the labyrinth coincides with the time the baby is in the womb and can symbolize the path to a new birth, the renewal of a person. According to other researchers, the labyrinth symbolizes the alchemical Great Work, during which gross matter is transformed into inner light and golden wisdom, the true philosopher's stone.
And K. Crich-Lowe believes that the Chartres-type labyrinth is a model of the world, and the path in the labyrinth is nothing more than the journey of the soul from God (outer circle) to the Earth (in the center) and back.
It is worth noting that similar images in cathedrals began to appear in Europe in the 12th century. It was the labyrinth of Shartsky Cathedral that became the prototype for the subsequent ones.
But the labyrinth itself is certainly not an invention of the Chartres masters. A lot of them have been known since Egyptian and Greek times. But their secrets have not yet been revealed by science …