Our Lady of Kazan

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For the Orthodox cathedral in Havana, Cuba, see Our Lady of Kazan Orthodox Cathedral.
Our Lady of Kazan
4 November

Our Lady of Kazan, also called Mother of God of Kazan (

Virgin Mary as the protector and patroness of the city of Kazan, and a palladium of all of Russia and Rus', known as the Holy Protectress of Russia. As is the case for any holy entity under a Patriarchate in communion within the greater Eastern Orthodox Church
, it is venerated by all Orthodox faithful.

According to legend, the icon was originally acquired from

Kazan Cathedral, St. Petersburg
, are consecrated to Our Lady of Kazan, and they display copies of the icon, as do numerous churches throughout the land. The original icon in Kazan was stolen, and probably destroyed, in 1904.

The "Fátima image" is a 16th-century copy of the icon, or possibly the 16th-century original, stolen from

St. Petersburg in 1917 and purchased by F. A. Mitchell-Hedges in 1953. It was housed in Fátima, Portugal from 1970 to 1993, then in the study of Pope John Paul II in the Vatican from 1993 to 2004, when it was returned to Kazan, where it is now kept in the Kazan Monastery of the Theotokos. Copies of the image are also venerated in the Catholic Church
.

Feast days of Our Lady of Kazan are 21 July, and 4 November (which is also the Russian Day of National Unity).

History

According to tradition, the original icon of Our Lady of Kazan was brought to Russia from Constantinople in the 13th century. After the establishment of the Khanate of Kazan (c. 1438) the icon disappeared from the historical record for more than a century.

Metropolitan Hermogenes' chronicle, written at the request of Tsar Feodor in 1595, describes the recovery of the icon. According to this account, after a fire destroyed Kazan in 1579, the Virgin appeared to a 10-year-old girl, Matrona, revealing the location where the icon lay hidden. The girl told the archbishop about the dream, but she was not taken seriously. However, on 8 July 1579, after two repetitions of the dream, the girl and her mother recovered the icon on their own, buried under a destroyed house where it had been hidden to save it from the Tatars.[1]

Kazan Monastery of the Theotokos, where the icon was kept until 1904, destroyed in 1932; rebuilt in 2016

Other churches were built in honour of the revelation of the Virgin of Kazan, and copies of the image were displayed at the Kazan Cathedral of Moscow (constructed in the early 17th century), at Yaroslavl, and at St. Petersburg.[2]

Russian military commanders

Napoleon's invasion of 1812
. The Kazan icon achieved immense popularity, and there were nine or ten separate miracle-attributed copies of the icon around Russia.

On the night of June 29, 1904, the icon was stolen from the Kazan Convent of the Theotokos where it had been kept for centuries (the building was later demolished by the communist authorities).

Revolution of 1905, as well as Russia's defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, to the desecration of her image.[3]

Fátima image

Our Lady of Kazan (Fátima image)
Annunciation Cathedral, Kazan (1561–62)
Procession to the site of the icon's recovery, 21 July 2015.

After the

Russian Revolution of 1917, there was speculation that the original icon was in fact preserved in St. Petersburg. Reportedly, an icon of Our Lady of Kazan was used in processions around Leningrad fortifications during the Siege of Leningrad (1941–1944) during World War II.[4]

Another theory proposed that the

Bolsheviks had sold the image abroad, although the Russian Orthodox Church did not accept such theories. The history of the stolen icon between 1917 and 1953 is unknown. In 1953 Frederick Mitchell-Hedges purchased an icon from Arthur Hillman. According to Yuri S. Soloviev, one of Joseph Stalin's bodyguards, and Selim Bensaad, Stalin's great grandson, Stalin owned an Icon of Our Lady of Kazan.[5][6] Although the status of the icon as the original Kazan icon remained disputed, Cyril G.E. Bunt concluded "that it is the work of a great icon painter of the 16th century [...] the pigments and the wood of the panel are perfectly preserved as exhaustive X-ray tests have proved, and have mellowed with age", suggesting that while it was a copy of the original icon, it was nevertheless the original icon carried by Pozharski in 1612. It was exhibited at the World Trade Fair in New York in 1964–1965. On 13 September 1965, members of the Blue Army of Our Lady of Fátima spent the night in veneration of the icon in the pavilion in New York. The Blue Army eventually bought the icon from Anna Mitchell-Hedges for US$125,000 in January 1970, and the icon was enshrined in Fátima, Portugal
.

In 1993 the icon from Fátima was given to the Vatican and Pope John Paul II had it installed in his study, where he venerated it for eleven years. In his own words, "it has found a home with me and has accompanied my daily service to the Church with its motherly gaze".

Mintimer Shaymiev, the president of Tatarstan, received it in the Annunciation Cathedral of the Kazan Kremlin.[10] This copy is sometimes nicknamed "Vatikanskaya".[2]

The icon is now enshrined in the Cathedral of the Elevation of the Holy Cross, part of the Convent of the Theotokos (re-established as a monastery in 2005), on the site where the original icon of Our Lady of Kazan was found, and plans are underway to make the monastery's other buildings into an international pilgrimage centre.

References

  1. ISBN 978-1-59337-713-7
    . Retrieved 7 July 2011.
  2. ^ a b c DiPippo, Gregory. "The Icon of Our Lady of Kazan", New Liturgical Movement, July 21, 2021
  3. ^ a b Alex de Jonge, The Life and Times of Grigorii Rasputin, 1993, Barnes and Noble Books, 45.
  4. ISBN 978-1-74175-514-5
    . Retrieved 8 July 2009.
  5. ^ "The Russian Orthodox Church during the Great Patriotic War". Presidential Library. Retrieved 2023-12-12.
  6. ^ "Stalin's great-grandson asks the Moscow Patriarch to exhume the body of the dictator: he is sure that he was poisoned". ForumDaily. 2021-11-29. Retrieved 2023-12-12.
  7. ^ "Liturgy of the Word in honour of the Icon of the Mother of God of Kazan – August 25, 2004". Retrieved 2008-10-13.
  8. ^ Gheddo, Piero. "John Paul delivers Our Lady of Kazan to the Russian church, July 18, 2005". Asianews.it. Retrieved 2014-03-06.
  9. ^ Marchesi, Giovanni (16 October 2004). "L'Icona della Madonna di Kazan Donata del Papa al Patriarca di Mosca". La Civiltà Cattolica (in Italian). pp. 167–76. Retrieved 31 May 2020.
  10. ^ Philip Coppens, A supernatural icon for Mother Russia, Atlantis Rising, Issue 87 (May/June 2011)

External links

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