The church of Sts Boris and Gleb

The coin is round. The rim is raised on both sides of the coin. The edge of the coin is corrugated.

Obverse

within the circular geometric ornament – the relief of the State Coat of Arms of the Republic of Belarus; beneath – year of issue, silver coin – fine silver content and alloy standard; inscriptions along the rim – at the top: "РЭСПУБЛIКА–БЕЛАРУСЬ" (REPUBLIC OF BELARUS), at the bottom: "ДВАЦЦАЦЬ РУБЛЁЎ" (TWENTY ROUBLES) on the silver coin and "АД3IН РУБЕЛЬ" (ONE ROUBLE) on the copper–nickel coin.

Reverse

in the center – the relief effigy of the Borisoglebsk (Kolozha) Church; a plate in the shape of an ancient seal features the date: XII, on top – inscription in three lines: "ПОМНIКI АРХIТЭКТУРЫ БЕЛАРУСI" (BELARUSIAN ARCHITECTURAL MONUMENTS), at the bottom – inscription: "БАРЫСАГЛЕБСКАЯ ЦАРКВА ГРОДНА" (BORISOGLEBSK CHURCH GRODNO).

Borisoglebskaya Church, (Kolozha Church, Kolozha) is one of the oldest surviving churches of Ancient Rus', a unique monument of Chernorussian architecture. Located on the territory of modern Belarus in Grodno, on the high bank of the Neman River. The exact date of construction has not been established; the church was presumably built in the 1180s. Consecrated in honor of Boris and Gleb. The church is made of plinth and is distinguished by a unique decor of the facades - the unplastered walls are decorated with inserts of polished colored boulders and glazed ceramic tiles. The walls of the temple are double; in the inner layer between the bricks there are numerous jugs-voices embedded, giving the room special acoustic properties.

The church was destroyed several times during wars, but the greatest damage was caused by landslides in the mid-19th century. Then the southern and partially western walls were lost; during the restoration of 1896-1906 they were replaced with wooden ones. The last restoration cycle took place in 2017-2019.

Together with the complex of monuments, Castle Hill was declared a historical and architectural reserve. It is among the sites proposed by the government of Belarus as candidates for inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Construction

A detailed work on the construction and history of the temple was left by Ignatius Kulchinsky, archimandrite of the Kolozhsky Monastery in 1736-1747. Researchers rely on his book “Inventory of the Grodno Kolozha Basilian Monastery,” published in 1748, as the main source about the history of the church. According to Kulchinsky, it was erected around the same time as the St. Sophia Cathedral in Polotsk, around 1200. He came to this conclusion based on inspection and analysis of the plinth brickwork at both temples. Modern historians, however, having a large number of tools for analysis, distinguish two different methods: the Polotsk Sophia is built with a typical 11th-century square plinth opus mixtum, while the Kolozha Church uses elongated row masonry, common in the 12th century[1]. The bricks retain marks from the master manufacturers: images in the shape of fish, keys, stars[2].

Presumably, the Kolozha Church became the third stone church in Grodno and was built during the reign of the Grodno princes Boris and Gleb Vsevolodkovich (the first died before 1166, the second in 1170) and consecrated in honor of their heavenly patrons, Boris and Gleb. According to another version, the temple was built in the 1180s by the children of Boris and Gleb. Legends attribute the construction of the church to local architect Peter Milonega[3]. The construction of the temple was carried out on the site of the Kolozhan tract (the name “Kolozhan, Kolozhan” means a place where numerous springs flow), which was revered by local pagans. According to other studies, the name of the tract comes from the inhabitants of the Pskov fortress of Kolozha, whom Grand Duke Vitovt took prisoner during the attack on Pskov in 1406 and resettled to the territories adjacent to the Boris and Gleb Church[4]. After the devastating fire of 1184, which destroyed the cathedral church of ancient Goroden, the Boris and Gleb Church became the main city church. The oldest church in Novogrudok had the same dedication to Boris and Gleb, probably built at the same time as Kolozhskaya and, possibly, with the participation of Grodno craftsmen[5].

Architecture

Majolica on the facade, 2015

The Kolozha Church is a unique building that has no analogues in world architecture. Due to the fact that the temple has numerous analogies with the Lower Church in Grodno, scientists tend to identify an independent school of architecture, which partially absorbed Romanesque features[3][5]. Structurally, the Kolozhskaya Church is a cross-domed church with three semicircular apses, the altar is traditionally directed to the east. The length of the building is 21.75 m, the width is 13.25 m, the height of the surviving part of the walls is about 9 m[6]. The church has unique double walls. The outer walls are 1.2 m thick, in the lower part they are made of plinth, into which large boulders were placed, processed from the outside to a flat edge. As we moved upward, the number and size of boulders decreased[7]. The plinth is equal-layer - the thickness of the mortar is equal to the thickness of the bricks. There is a narrow corridor between the inner and outer walls of the temple. The internal walls are remarkable for the voices first described in Kulchinsky’s “Inventory”: “many holes that seem small and narrow, because only a hand can be put into them, but inside the walls they expand into large and wide pots.” Vocalists facilitate the construction of the temple and create a special sound resonance[7][1][8][5].

On the outside, the unplastered facades were decorated with glazed majolica panels, mainly in the shape of crosses, as well as decorative inserts made of polished granite and gneiss boulders of different colors (red, brown, dark crimson, gray-green, olive)[6][7]. The roof and domes were also covered with colored glazed tiles[9]. The cintron included a bench 38 cm wide, extending to the shoulder blades of the apse wall, inside which stood the bishop's throne[10]. The church had one main and four side altars, made of carved wood “Snitser work”, that is, carved not by a carpenter, but by a cabinetmaker[11]. The floor was made of shield-cruciform tiles[10].

Already in the first half of the 18th century, Kulchinsky noted that the place for the church was chosen extremely poorly: the sand mountain began to crumble already in antiquity, and by the middle of the 18th century the temple was under threat of complete destruction[6].

XV-XVI centuries

In Kulchinsky’s work “Chronicle of abbots, archimandrites, ktitors and patrons of the Grodno Kolozha Monastery”, Kalist, who ruled Kolozha from 1480 to 1492, is named the first abbot. It is also known that in 1480, the ancestor of the Volovich family, Grynka Chodkavich Volovich, ordered an annual supply of food supplies from his possessions. Legends mention that during the war with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1487-1494, cannons were placed on the walls of the temple.