The wooden cross of Novgorod

I have already written – which would not be conclusive in itself, but the literature also writes – that from the late 1200s, after the Tatars occupied the southern Russian city-states and blocked the commercial route from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, Novgorod’s icon painting, isolated from Byzantium, begins to rely more heavily on local folk art. I want to present an example of this: the crucifix of Lyudogoshch from 1359.

This richly carved wooden crucifix was kept since its creation in the church of St. Florus and Laurus in Novgorod. The church was built near the kremlin, on Lyudogoshch Street, in 1348 from wood and in 1379 from stone. During the Swedish occupation of 1611-1617, it suffered serious damage, so it was rebuilt in 1674. Finally, in 1942, the German occupiers demolished it, to use its stones for road construction. The crucifix was returned from the German spoils of war to the icon museum of Novgorod, where it can still be seen in the room of carved icons.

It is a startling feeling to enter this room and face for the first time with this huge crucifix, every square inch of which is covered with naive depictions and irregular tendrils. After the hundreds of sophisticated icons seen in the previous rooms, it is as if you have  now encountered a gigantic totem pole, a survivor of pagan times with tattoos from head to toe.


The huge, 2.30×1.87-meter crucifix is a stylized version of a cross whose cross-pieces are connected by a circle. This type, which resembles Celtic crosses, was the characteristic medieval “Novgorod cross”. We see medieval examples of it in stone, built into the walls of local churches, and on the mural “The arrival of the Varangians” on the wall of a Socialist housing estate in the city center, on the sail of the Viking ship, even though the Vikings were still gentiles – and further, the St. Sophia Cathedral and the Church of the Transfiguration in the background were also built two hundred years later. Chronology is less interesting than the parade of identity elements.

The so-called Aleksy Cross (ca. 1360-1380) in the St. Sophia Cathedral

Such large crosses, on which many secondary scenes and saints were depicted in adition to the crucified Christ, were very popular in Russian folk orthodoxy. They were made in portable forms, such as on Illarion Pryanishnikov’s Procession (1893) in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg,



or as standing roadside or votive crosses, several of which are preserved in the Novgorod Icon Museum.

The Lyudogoshch cross has a total of eighteen carved scenes, each in a medal. Only three of them are actually the Crucifixion and its proximal scenes: the others consist of a deesis and the depictions of various popular saints. Among the medals, the entire surface of the cross is richly filled with ornamentation, which Novgorod folk art may have inherited from Scandinavian ribbon decoration. This kind of surface-filling decoration, as shown in the small number of surviving relics, may have been common in contemporary folk wood carving:

on a 14th-c. box top in the Medieval exhibition of the Novgorod museum

on the late 15th-c. royal gate of the St. John Chrysostom Chapel of the Church of St. Nicholas

or on the 15th-c. crucifix in the Novgorod Museum, where the ribbon pattern creeps up and opens like a rose next to Christ.

In the Lyudogoshch crucifix, ornamentation begins to proliferate from the bottom, where we also read a text.



This text is published in Boris Rybakov’s Русские датированные надписи XI-XIV веков (1964):


“В лета 6867 (1359) июня 12 дня поставлен бысть сей крест… Господи помилуй всех христиан, на всяком месте молящиася тобе верою и чистым сердцем… Помоги поставившим крест сей людогощичам и мне написавшему…”

“This cross was erected in the year of 6867 (1359), on the 12th day of June… Lord, have mercy on all Christians, wherever they pray to you with faith and clean heart… Support those of Lyudogoshch who erected this cross, and me, underwritten…”

The last line contains in hidden form the name of the maker or patron of the cross, which Rybakov reads as Jakob Fedosov.

The two parts of the text, coupled with the year, have resulted in two theories about the origin of the crucifix. The first one was published by Viktor Lazarev, the great master of Russian icon research, in his Византийское и древнерусское искусство (1978). In 1359, in Novgorod, during the election of the judges, tensions arose between the various boyar factions, which lead to bloody clashes. The unrest was calmed with the help of Archbishop Moysey and the archimandrite of the St. George Monastery. According to Lazarev, the inhabitants of Lyudogoshch Street, living on the Sophia side, which first lost, but then, by using force, was victorious in the conflict, later erected this cross as an atonement for their sins, as the second half of the text states.

For the other theory, we must first know the scenes, because it refers to many of them. So let’s look at each scene, juxtaposed with icons, of which they were the popular “abbreviations”.

At the top, beneath the figure of a painted angel added in the 16th century, is the bust of Christ Pantocrator with IC XC monogram, which (alternating with the icon of Christ painted not by human hand), is a common element of multi-scene crucifixes. Below, horizontally, three medals depict the Crucifixion of Christ. In the middle, Christ on the cross, with Mary and St. John the Evangelist below; to the left the centurion who recognized the deity of the dead Christ, and to the right a group of three Roman soldiers.

Christ’t Crucifixion from the late 15th-c. “tablets” of the St. Sophia Cathedral

Under the Crucifixion, a medal depicts St. Florus and Laurus, the patron saints of horses. Their central location shows that the crucifix was originally intended for this church, and that they were highly venerated by the donor. To their left and right, Samson and the lion, and the Archangel St. Michael, who, in fact, already belongs to the deesis line below.

St. Florus and Laurus in a 15th-c. Novgorod icon in the Tretyakov Gallery

Samson and the lion. Kargopol, 18th c.

Archangel St. Michael from the iconostasis of the Kozhevniki church, 16th c. Novgorod, Museum

Below, on the horizontal stem of the cross, the most important axis of the crucifix, the three middle medals depict the deesis (ʻsupplication’): Christ Pantocrator, sitting on the throne as the world’s judge, is asked by the Mother of God and St. John the Baptist as his closest human relatives, to be merciful in his judgement of mankind. These images, which condense the central deesis series of the iconostasis, express in pictorial form the plea of the donor’s text. The two angels, Michael one line up and Gabriel one line down, actually belong to this series.

The deesis series of the St. Blaise church in Novgorod, 15th c. Novgorod, Museum

At the two ends of the deesis row, there are Prophet Elijah with the raven who fed him in the wilderness, and St. Theodore Tiron, as he kills the dragon which held his mother captive. Below the latter medal the apocryphal story continues: St. Theodore accompanies his mother home.

Nikifor Istomin Savin: St. Theodor Tiron kills the dragon which kept his mother captive, and leads his mother home. Early 17th c., Stroganov school. St. Petersburg, Russian Museum

To the left of Theodore and his mother, the other dragon-slayer, St. George is doing his job. To his left, the Archangel Gabriel, holding a small, stylized lily.

St. George from Manihin (Novgorod), 15th c. St. Petersburg, Russian Museum

Annunciation from the biographical scenes of the icon of Our Lady of Tikhvin. Novgorod, Malo-Kirillov Monastery, late 15th c. Novgorod, Museum

The three lowermost saints are St. Simeon Stylite, the holy doctor brothers Cosma and Damian, and St. Gerasim, a Palestinian monk who pulls a thorn from a lion’s paw – a story we know more about St. Jerome of Bethlehem.

St. Simeon Stylite and St. Daniel Stylite. Mid-16th. c., private collection

St. Cosma and Damian, above on a 17th-c. Greek, below on a 15th-c. Novgorod icon

“St. Gerasim’s monastery at the Jordan, where the lion served him”

We can now turn to the other theory, put forward by Rybakov, who also published the inscription. He proposes that the crucifix was erected by the followers of the first known Russian heresy, the Strigolniks, who had come from Pskov to Novgorod, where they were popular with traders and lower clergy throughout the 14th century. The first part of the text of the crucifix coincides with their teaching that Christians must turn to God with a pure heart and outside the church, without the mediation of the ecclesial hierarchy. Most of the saints depicted are also those who were in direct contact with God. And the year 1359 was that of the death of their great opponent, Archbishop Moysey: perhaps they erected the crucifix as a sign of their relief.

This is, however, contradicted by the fact that the crucifix was set in a church, and the saints and archangels pleading before the Pantocrator also evoke a deesis series of a church iconostasis. The style of the medals and figures is also reminiscent of the carved stone chalice ordered by Archbishop Moysey in March 1329.

The medals on the chalice of Archbishop Moysey from Rybakov’s book

The most likely explanation is that Lyudogoshch Street, as its name (люди+гостить) suggests, was the street of inns and foreign merchants, and they erected the cross for their fortunate return, with special respect to the patron saints of horses, and to the fact that until then, they must pray in unpredictable places. And the year may coincide by accident with the two events in Novgorod.

Many miracles are preserved in the churches and collections of Novgorod. We’ll be back here again.