The Church of Hetimasia
His history
Built in wood in the pure tradition of the 17th and 18th centuries in Russia, it rises 27 meters high from its base to the ground, covering an area of 300 m². It emerges in its monumentality in the heart of a mountain cirque, in the middle of the forests.
For the initiated it is there like a "little sister" of the churches of Kizhi, challenging them only by the vastness of its ground surface!
From the very beginning of its foundation, the "Center for Spiritual and Cultural Meetings" of the Abbey of Sylvanès has given an important place to Russian culture and its Orthodox tradition.
At the favorable time of "perestroika" a French friend of Russian origin, Basil Solnychkin, helped the founders of the Center, Father André Gouzes and Michel Wolkowitsky, to go to Russia and establish privileged ties with Mgr Alexandre Moghilev, Bishop of Kostroma. Many exchanges took place: fraternal mutual assistance, visits, receptions of young Russians, invitations of artists and intellectuals, which sealed a faithful and deep friendship.
And so it was that during a trip to France, Bishop Alexandre Moghilev, impressed by the beauty of the site of the "Prieuré des Granges" and its surroundings, proposed to build us a beautiful wooden church in the pure Russian tradition, a sign and bridge of a new era between our countries and our churches.
Father Serge de Beaurecueil was its patron, and the work was entrusted to a team of young Russian builders from the Kirov region. It was therefore built from scratch in Russia before being dismantled for a long journey.
In 1993 this magnificent church was transported by rail to France, under the aegis and patronage of the SNCF. It arrived in July of the same year at Millau station in Aveyron.
For six months, seven young Russians, artisans and peasants of the country, collaborated in a climate of exceptional friendship in the rebuilding of this monument.
"I dream of one day,
where Sylvanès being definitively assured in her future...
I will be able to climb higher in the mountain.
There, among the oaks and box trees, is a slight promontory of land from which the view extends to infinity,
over ravines and forests.
I would build a small chapel of logs there, opening onto the valley.
And there, like on the happiest day of my eleven years,
where the beauty of the world embraced my chest
and clouded my childish eyes,
I will look the sky in the face,
for an eternity of praise."
André Gouzes - Sylvanès, story of a passion
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