Establishing Orthodox churches in Estonia and their architecture Jaanus Plaat
The Church of Our Lady of Kazan in Tallinn. Completed in 1721
The first contacts of people inhabiting the territory of Estonia with the Russian Orthodox Church probably occurred in the 11th century. Orthodoxy is the oldest form of Christianity to reach Estonia, as the first representatives of the indigenous people were christened into Orthodoxy around the 11th–12th centuries, hence before the Teutonic conquest and the arrival of the Roman Catholic Church. The first Christian church in Estonia may have also been established by the Russian invaders in the 11th century in Jurjev (Tartu). Orthodox churches definitely existed in Tartu and Tallinn in the 14th–15th centuries. The oldest surviving Orthodox churches in the Estonian territory determined by the 1920 Tartu Peace Treaty are located in Russian part of Setomaa (Petserimaa). The oldest of them, the Irboska St Nicholas Church, which is connected with the Seto Orthodox people, was built in the 1340s. The contacts of the ancestors of the Seto people with Orthodoxy may have also started in the 11th century and strengthened since the 16th century due to the activity of the Petseri Monastery. There are a total of 11 stone churches currently in Petserimaa (including four churches of the Petseri Monastery) that were established before the 18th century, but they have changed considerably in the course of centuries through reconstruction. The oldest surviving wooden sacral buildings in the mainland par t of today ’s Republic of Estonia are also located in Setomaa: the Mikitamäe and Uusvada tsässons (village chapels of the Seto people), built in the 1690s. The oldest wooden Orthodox
church in Estonia is the Church of Our Lady of Kazan in Tallinn (completed in 1721). The earliest Orthodox stone chapel surviving in ruins may be the 13th century St Mary’s Chapel in Viru-Nigula, with its ground plan in the shape of a Greek cross, but this is not certain. Several Orthodox churches and monasteries, no longer surviving today, were established in Estonia in the 16th century during the Livonian War, as a result of Russian invasions. By the end of the subsequent ‘Swedish era’, the only Orthodox church that continued to operate was St Nicholas Church in Tallinn.
The Church of St Nicholas in Irboska
The Church of St Nicholas in Irboska, Pechory County, nowadays Pechory Raion of the Pskov Oblast of the Russian Federation. Built in the 1340s
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