The history of the Feast Day of the Icon of the Mother of God of Kazan
The image of Our Lady of Kazan is said to have come to
Russia from Constantinople in the 13th century. After the Tatars besieged Kazan
and made it the capital of their khanate in 1438, the icon disappeared, and it
is not mentioned again until the 16th century, some years after the liberation
of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible in 1552.
After a fire destroyed Kazan in 1579, the Virgin
appeared in a prophetic dream to a 10-year-old girl named Matrona and told her
where to find the precious image again. As instructed, Matrona told the
archbishop about her dream, but he would not take her seriously. After two more
such dreams, on July 8, 1579, the girl and her mother themselves dug up the
image, buried under the ashes of a house, where it had been hidden long before
to save it from the Tatars. The unearthed icon looked as bright and beautiful
as if it were new. The archbishop repented of his unbelief and took the icon to
the Church of St. Nicholas, where a blind man was cured that very day.
Hermogen, the priest at this church, later became Metropolitan of Kazan. He
brought the icon to Kazan's Cathedral of the Annunciation and established July
8 as a feast in honor of the Theotokos of Kazan. It is from Hermogen's
chronicle, written at the request of the tsar in 1595, that we know of these
events. |
| Preview Icons of the Mother of God of Kazan |
By 1612, when Moscow was occupied by Polish invaders,
Hermogen had become Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia. From prison, he called
for a three-day fast and ordered the icon of Our Lady of Kazan to be brought to
Princes Minin and Pozharsky, who were leading the resistance to the occupation.
This icon—possibly the original, but more likely a copy—was carried before
their regiments as they fought to regain the capital from the Poles. When the
Polish army was finally driven from Moscow on October 22, 1612, the victory was
attributed to the intercession of the Mother of God, and the Kazan icon became
a focal point for Russian national sentiments. Later that year, when Tsar
Mikhail Feodorovich came to the throne, he appointed both July 8 and October 22
as feasts in honor of Our Lady of Kazan.
The victorious Prince Dmitry Pozharsky financed the construction of a small wooden church dedicated to the Virgin of Kazan in the Moscow Kremlin. The icon was kept there until the small church burnt down in 1632. The tsar ordered the construction of a larger brick cathedral to replace it. After its completion in 1638, the icon remained there in Moscow's Kazan Cathedral for nearly two centuries. It was regularly borne in solemn liturgical processions along the city walls as the protectress of Moscow. The intercession of Our Lady of Kazan was successfully invoked against a Swedish invasion in 1709, and again when Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812. To commemorate this latter victory, the Kazan icon was moved to the new Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg in 1821.
The victorious Prince Dmitry Pozharsky financed the construction of a small wooden church dedicated to the Virgin of Kazan in the Moscow Kremlin. The icon was kept there until the small church burnt down in 1632. The tsar ordered the construction of a larger brick cathedral to replace it. After its completion in 1638, the icon remained there in Moscow's Kazan Cathedral for nearly two centuries. It was regularly borne in solemn liturgical processions along the city walls as the protectress of Moscow. The intercession of Our Lady of Kazan was successfully invoked against a Swedish invasion in 1709, and again when Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812. To commemorate this latter victory, the Kazan icon was moved to the new Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg in 1821.
By this time, the Kazan icon had achieved immense
popularity, and there were nine or ten separate miracle-working copies of the
icon around the country. There is considerable disagreement about which of
these, if any, was the original. Some claim the original remained housed in
Kazan, while others hold that the one moved from Moscow to St. Petersburg was
the original. Many experts, however, believe the original was lost and both of
the venerated Kazan icons were early copies. In any case, both icons
disappeared in the early 20th century. The one in Kazan was stolen in 1904 and
probably destroyed by the thieves, who were more interested in its jeweled gold
covering. The one in St. Petersburg disappeared after the October Revolution of
1917. Some say it was smuggled out of the country to protect it from the
Bolsheviks, while others suggest the Communists themselves hid it and later
sold it abroad. But during World War II, an icon of the Virgin of Kazan surfaced
in Leningrad to lead a procession around the fortifications of the
Nazi-besieged city.
The wonderworking icons Our Lady of Sitka and Our Lady
of Soufanieh are both of the Kazan type.
