Kolochsk Icon of the Mother of God
The Kolochsk Icon of our Most Holy Lady the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary
Kept 9 July — The appearance of the icon at Koloch near Mozhaisk in 1413
The Kolochsk Icon appeared in the year 1413, in the reign of the Grand Prince Basil I, some fifteen versts from the town of Mozhaisk in the western marches of Muscovy, near the village of Koloch on the river of that name. A peasant called Luke found the image and carried it home; a paralysed member of his household was healed at it, and the healings that followed drew the whole district. Luke bore the icon first to Mozhaisk and then to Moscow, where the Metropolitan Photius came out with the clergy and the people to meet it and where the sick were healed as it was carried through the city. It was returned to Mozhaisk, a church was raised on the spot of the appearance, and with Luke's offerings and those of others Prince Andrew Dmitrievich built there the monastery called the Kolochsk or Mozhaisk monastery. The sequel — the finder enriched and ruined by his own icon, and restored by a bear — is one of the sharpest moral tales in the Russian icon-literature.
The finding, 1413
The account belongs to the reign of Basil I Dmitrievich (1389–1425), son of Dimitri Donskoy, and is dated 1413. The place is the region of Mozhaisk, then a frontier principality of the Moscow lands facing Lithuania, held by Basil's brother Andrew Dmitrievich; the icon is named from the Koloch, a small river of the district, and from the village on it, about fifteen versts from the town.
A peasant of that village named Luke found the holy icon — the account does not say where, and the later Tale says in a tree — and took it into his house. One of his household lay paralysed; the sick man laid his forehead against the image with faith and was completely healed. The report of it went through the surrounding country, and the sick began to come, and they received help from the Mother of God.
The progress to Moscow
Luke then carried the icon to Mozhaisk, and from Mozhaisk to Moscow. There the Metropolitan Photius — the Greek hierarch who then governed the Russian Church — came out to meet the image with a gathering of the clergy and a multitude of the people, and as it was borne through the city many of the sick were healed of their infirmities. The reception of a newly appeared provincial icon by the metropolitan and the capital is what turned a local wonder into a commemoration of the Russian Church.
The icon was then returned to Mozhaisk. On the place where it had appeared a church was built in honour of the Mother of God and the image was housed in it; and with the offerings the finder had gathered, together with those of other Orthodox, the prince Andrew Dmitrievich built on the site a monastery, called from the river the Kolochsk, and from the town the Mozhaisk monastery.
The tale of Luke
The Russian tradition did not stop there. The sixteenth-century Tale of the Kolochsk Icon carries the story on into a moral of great severity. Luke, it says, grew rich on the offerings brought to the icon he had found; he built himself a great house, lived in luxury and violence, kept a household after the manner of a lord, and among his beasts a bear. The bear at last mauled him almost to death. Broken in body, he came to himself, repented of what the wonderworking image had made of him, gave what he had to the monastery, and ended his life as a monk in the house his own offerings had built.
The Tale is a piece of frank ecclesiastical self-criticism: the peasant is ruined not by the world but by the wonder-working icon itself, or rather by what he made of it, and the monastery is the place where the damage is repaired. Russian writers have read it ever since as a warning against the traffic in holy things.
The monastery afterwards
The Kolotsky monastery stood on the Smolensk road, the western highway into Moscow, and its later history follows that road. It lies within a few versts of the field of Borodino, and in 1812, on the eve of the battle, it served as the headquarters of the Russian command; the buildings suffered in that campaign and again in the twentieth century. The monastery has been restored in recent decades and the commemoration of the appearance is kept there.
Feast and commemoration
July 9 (church date; New Calendar civil July 9, Old Calendar civil July 22), a Russian commemoration kept also in the American calendar; it does not stand in the Greek books. On this day it is the only Theotokian commemoration of the fixed calendar besides the Cyprus Icon, with which the Russian day-lists pair it, and it falls the day after the great Russian Theotokian feast of the Kazan Icon (July 8) — two consecutive days of appearing icons, which is a coincidence of the calendar and not a connection of the images.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of an icon of the Mother of God)
Today the faithful keep radiant festival, overshadowed by thy coming, O Mother of God; and looking upon thy most pure image we cry with compunction: shelter us beneath the precious veil of thy protection, and deliver us from every evil, entreating thy Son, Christ our God, to save our souls.
Original translation from the Slavonic
Kontakion — Tone 6
Thou didst show forth thine image in a poor man's house at the river Koloch, O Lady, and the palsied rose up before it; the city of Moscow came out to meet thee with its hierarch, and where thou wast found a house of prayer was raised. Wherefore we cry to thee: forsake not them that seek thee.
Original translation from the Slavonic
Appointed readings
Epistle — Philippians 2:5–11
5Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: 6Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: 7But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: 8And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. 9Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: 10That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; 11And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Gospel — Luke 10:38–42; 11:27–28
38Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. 39And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus’ feet, and heard his word. 40But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me. 41And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: 42But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her. 27And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked. 28But he said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.
Iconography
The Kolochsk image is of the Hodigitria type in the Russian recension — the Mother of God upright, half-length, the Child seated on her left arm, blessing with his right hand and holding a scroll in his left, her right hand raised toward him in the gesture that points the way — and the accounts of the appearance describe a small panel of the kind a peasant could carry. In the developed Kolochsk composition the central image is set within a border of scenes of the appearance: the finding, the healing of the paralytic, the meeting of the icon at Moscow by Metropolitan Photius, and the building of the monastery.
No storable image has been located. No file of the Kolochsk icon exists on Wikimedia Commons under any of its Russian or transliterated names, and the photographs of the icon now venerated at the restored monastery are modern and carry no free licence of the underlying panel. Nothing pre-1900 has been found, and no image is stored; the entry is listed under wanted icons.