Many believe that the Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord was originally built in the famous village of Voynovo. In fact, it was originally constructed, still wooden, 1 km from the village, where there was a churchyard—a cemetery long known as Preobrazhenskoye.
The first mentions of the church appear in documents from 1628. From them, we learn that Voynovo was the estate of the renowned boyar Feodor Ivanovich Mstislavsky—the same man who, during the Time of Troubles of the early 17th century, headed the government known as the "Seven Boyars" and invited the Polish prince Vladislav to the Russian throne. After the expulsion of Polish troops from Russia, Feodor Ivanovich retained the favor of the new Romanov dynasty, being the first to sign the charter recognizing the new Tsar, Mikhail, and even holding the sovereign's crown during his coronation.
The next mention of a modest church in the cemetery dates back only to 1815, when it was rebuilt as a stone church by two benefactors: merchant V.I. Vodovozov and peasant Yakov Vasiliev.
Of the two donors, the first, Vasily Iustinovich Vodovozov, is the more famous. He was a member of perhaps the most renowned Vyazniki merchants, who were engaged in the production of linen fabrics. Shortly before the Preobrazhensky Church, he built another church in 1794, also for the cemetery, the Vozdvizhensky Church, in Yaropolchenskaya Sloboda, a suburb of the nearby town of Vyazniki.
Despite the fact that the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries was a time of widespread Baroque styles, with their ornate stucco work, and later, strict classicism, the style of the Preobrazhensky Church is defined as "pseudo-Russian," that is, based on ancient Russian architectural traditions.
Translated by Google •
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