Negotiating Sacred and Secular Space: The Church of Saint Nicholas on Sapozhok and the Moscow Manege in Late Imperial Moscow

The article examines the coexistence of sacred and secular space through the activities of the Church of St. Nicholas on Sapozhok, located next to the Moscow Manege in the second half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Constructed in 1817, the Manege originally served as a military training facility, however, in 1843 it acquired a regimental church, creating a unique spatial and institutional environment in which military, religious, and later cultural functions intersected. Drawing on administrative documentation, periodical publications and personal testimonies, the article reconstructs the relationships that developed between ecclesiastical authorities and the military administration. It focuses on conflicts that arose when the Manege increasingly hosted exhibitions, public entertainments, and other cultural events that lay beyond its original purpose. The article analyses objections raised by church representatives and explores the practical mechanisms through which sacred and secular functions operated within a shared architectural space. It argues that, despite periodic tensions, the two spheres generally coexisted successfully and developed workable forms of accommodation. The emergence of comparable arrangements elsewhere suggests that contemporaries regarded such experiments as effective and worthy of replication. By examining the interaction of military, religious, and civic institutions within an urban setting, the study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of church-state cooperation and the organisation of sacred space in late imperial Russia.

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