Trubezh Cliff and the Church of the Saviour-on-the-Ravine

At the edge of Trubezh Cliff stands the five-domed Church of the Saviour-on-the-Ravine. Here, Spas means Jesus Christ, while a yar is a steep riverbank. That is how the Ryazan name of the church arose: the Church of the Saviour-on-the-Ravine. Below lies the old Trubezh riverbed.

In the seventeenth century, beside the Kremlin stood an ostrog, a fortified residential district. In sixteen twenty-six, fifty parish households were recorded here. They were home to staff of the metropolitan chancery, church singers, and scribes: their service at the bishop's court supported them. A wooden church was built by the priest Peter specifically for this small settlement.

In sixteen eighty-five, the church burned down. In the same year, its rector Gavriil was killed by a lightning strike. The documents do not allow us to state that the lightning caused the fire: the two misfortunes merely appeared side by side in the parish record. The residents immediately put up a new wooden church, and Metropolitan Pavel managed to consecrate it before the end of the year. Ten years later, the building was already falling apart from dilapidation.

Then Ivan Ivanovich Verderevsky, a local landowner and stolnik, took charge of the parish; stolnik was the name of a court service rank. His wealth consisted of hereditary estates with peasant households in Ryazan Uyezd. Verderevsky paid for the construction himself and replaced the crumbling church with a stone one. By sixteen ninety-five, the church, its five domes, and its tent-roofed bell tower were complete. The parish received a building that no longer had to be raised anew after every misfortune.

Verderyevsky died in December seventeen oh one. The main body of the church he paid for was hardly rebuilt. Services are now again held inside it, and above the old Trubezh riverbed stand the very stone walls with which he replaced two vanished wooden churches.