Two Churches

James H. Billington, in the Wall Street Journal, contrasts two famous churches of the Eastern Schism, identifying in the architecture of St. Basil’s, in Moscow (above) the centralizing impulse of the Muscovite despotism, and finding -—by contrast—- in the design of the Church of the Transfiguration at Kizhi in Karelia the echo of the very different individualistic culture of Hanseatic Novgorod.