onion domes often appear in groups of three, representing the holy trinity, or five, representing jesus christ and the four evangelists. domes standing alone represent jesus. vasily tatischev, the first to record such interpretation, disapproved of it emphatically. he believed that the five-domed design of churches was propagated by patriarch nikon, who liked to compare the central and highest dome with himself and four lateral domes with four other patriarchs of the orthodox world. there is no other evidence that nikon ever held such a view.