The Renaissance robbed architecture of this essentially mystical note. The Christian faith began to contend with scepticism, the Gothic spire with the Greek fa�ade, religious sanctity with worldly beauty. This is why St Peter's at Rome is so insignificant ; in that colossal erection Christianity is struggling to come alive ; the Church turns pagan, and Michelangelo uses the walls of the Sistine Chapel to depict Jesus Christ as a brawny athlete, a Hercules in the flower of youth and strength.
After this date church architecture fell into utter decadence, till it became a mere reproduction, in varying proportions, either of St Peter's or of ancient Greek temples. There is one Parthenon at Paris which is called the Church of the Madeleine, and another at New York, which is used as the Exchange.
Without faith and without special circumstances, it was hard to build anything with life about it. All modern churches are misfits and pretentious anachronisms, like those angular Gothic churches with which the English ornament their towns and offend every artistic eye.
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But the circumstances in which Vitberg drew his plans, his own personality, and the Emperor's temperament, all these were quite exceptional.
The war of 1812 had a profound effect upon men's minds in Russia, and it was long after the liberation of Moscow before the general emotion and excitement subsided. Then foreign events, the taking of Paris, the history of the Hundred Days, expectations and rumours, Waterloo, Napoleon on board the Bel!erophon, mourning for the dead and anxiety for the living, the returning armies, the warriors restored to their homes - all this had a strong effect upon the least susceptible natures. Now imagine a young man, an artist and a mystic, endowed with creative power, and also an enthusiast spurred on by current events, by the Tsar's challenge, and by his own genius.
Near Moscow, between the Mozhaysk and Kaluga roads, a modest eminence dominates the whole city. Those are the Sparrow Hill� of which I spoke in my early recollections. They command one of the finest views of all Moscow. Here it was that Ivan the Terrible, still young and unhardened, shed tears at the sight of his capital on fire ; and here that the priest Sylvester met him and by his stern rebuke changed for twenty years to come the nature of that monster and man of genius.
Napoleon and his army marched round these hills. There his strength was broken, and there his retreat began. What better site for a temple in memory of 1812 than the farthest point reached by the enemy ?
But this was not enough. It was Vitberg's intention to convert the hill itself into the lowest part of the cathedral, to build a colonnade to the river, and then, on a foundation laid on three sides by nature herself, to erect a second and a third church. But all the three churches made one ; for Vitberg's cathedral, like the chief dogma of Christianity, was both triple and indivisible.
The lowest of the three churches, hewn in the rock, was a parallelogram in the shape of a coffin or dead body. All that was visible was a massive entrance supported on columns of almost Egyptian size ; the church itself was hidden in the primitive unworked rock. It was lighted by lamps in high Etruscan candelabra ; a feeble ray of daylight from the second church passed into it
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through a transparent picture of the Nativity. All the heroes who fell in 1 8 1 2 were to rest in this crypt ; a perpetual mass was to be said there for those who had fallen on the field of battle ; and the names of them all, from the chief commanders to the private soldiers, were to be engraved on the walls.
On top of this coffin or cemetery rose the second church, in the form of a Greek cross with limbs of equal length spreading to the four quarters, a temple of life, of suffering, of labour. The colonnade which led up to it was adorned with statues of the Patriarchs and Judges. At the entrance were the Prophets ; they stood outside the church, pointing out the way which they could not tread themselves. Inside this temple the Gospel story and the Acts of the Apostles were represented on the walls.
Above this building, crowning it, completing it, and including it, the third church was to be built in the shape of the Pantheon.
It was brightly lighted, as the horne of the Spirit, of unbroken peace, of eternity ; and eternity was represented by its shape.
Here there were no pictures or sculpture ; but there was an exterior frieze representing the archangels, and the whole was surmounted by a colossal dome.
Sad is my present recollection of Vitberg's main idea ; he had worked it out in every detail, in complete accordance at every point with Christian theology and architectural beauty.
This astonishing man spent a whole lifetime over his conception. It was his sole occupation during the ten years that his trial lasted ; in poverty and exile, he devoted several hours of each day to his cathedral. He lived in it ; he could not believe that it would never be built; his whole life - his memories, his consolations, his fame - was wrapped up in that portfolio.
It may be that in the future, when the martyr is dead, some later artist may shake the dust from those leaves and piously give to the world that record of suffering, those plans over which the strong man, after his brief hour of glory had gone out, spent a life of darkness and pain.
His plan was full of genius, and startling in its extravagance; for this reason Alexander chose it, and for this reason it should have been carried out. It is said that the hill could never have supported such a building ; but I do not believe it, especially in view of all the modern triumphs of engineering in America and
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England, those suspension-bridges and tunnels which a train takes eight minutes to pass through.
Miloradovich advised Vitberg to have granite monoliths for the great pillars of the lowest church. Someone pointed out that the process of bringing these from Finland would be very costly.
'That is the very reason why we should get them,' answered Miloradovich ; 'if there were granite quarries on the Moscow River, where would be the wonder in erecting the pillars ? '
Miloradovich was a soldier, but h e understood the element of romance in war and in other things. Magnificent ends are gained by magnificent means. Nature alone attains to greatness without effort.
The chief accusation brought against Vitberg, even by those who never doubted his honesty, was this, that he had accepted the post of director of the works. As an artist without experience, and a young man ignorant of finance, he should have been content with his position as architect. This is true.
It is easy to sit in one's chair and condemn Vitberg for this.
But he accepted the post just because he was young and inexperienced, because nothing seemed hard when once his plans had been accepted, because the Tsar himself offered him the post, encouraged him, and supported him. Whose head would not have been turned ? Where are these sober, sensible, self-controlled people ? H they exist, they are not capable of constructing colossal plans, they cannot makes stones speak.