Minsk Icon of the Mother of God
Kept 13 August — The appearance of the icon on the Svisloch at Minsk, 1500
The Minsk Icon is the chief wonderworking image of Belarus and the one whose history joins the beginning and the end of the medieval Rus': by tradition it is one of the icons brought from Korsun (Cherson) in the Crimea by Prince Vladimir at the baptism of Rus' and set in the Church of the Tithes at Kiev, where it stood for more than five hundred years. When Kiev was sacked in 1500 by the horde of Mengli Girey, a Tatar stripped the icon of its silver riza and threw the board into the Dnieper; and on 13 August 1500 it was found floating in the Svisloch at Minsk, in a great light, and was carried into the castle church of the Nativity of the Mother of God. It is a large Hodegetria, more than four and a half feet high, and it rests today in the cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul — the Holy Spirit cathedral — in Minsk.
From Korsun to Kiev
The tradition of the icon's origin is the one attached to several of the oldest images of the Russian land: that it was among those which Saint Vladimir brought back from Korsun in the Crimea after his baptism there in 988, and that he placed it in the Church of the Tithes (Desyatinnaya) at Kiev, the first stone church of the city. There it is said to have stood for over five centuries. The tradition cannot be verified — the Church of the Tithes was destroyed by Batu in 1240 and the continuity of any object through that destruction is a matter of pious memory rather than record — but it is the tradition the icon carries, and it is the reason the image is spoken of as the oldest in Belarus.
The sack of Kiev and the coming to Minsk
In 1500 the Crimean khan Mengli Girey fell upon Kiev. In the plundering of the churches, the account says, a Tatar soldier tore the riza and the adornments from the icon for the silver and threw the bare panel into the Dnieper.
On 13 August 1500 the people of Minsk — some three hundred miles upstream and on a different river system, which is the whole marvel of the story as it is told — saw the icon floating on the Svisloch beneath the castle, surrounded by an extraordinary light. It was taken from the water and carried into the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God within the Minsk castle, and that day became its feast.
Under the Union and after
The later history of the icon runs through the confessional history of the Belarusian lands. In 1616 it was taken into the church of a monastery that had passed to the Uniates, and remained in Greek-Catholic hands for more than two centuries; it was returned to the Orthodox in 1839, at the reunion of the Uniates of the western provinces. The monastery church became the Orthodox cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul. A new silver riza was made for the image in 1852.
Through the upheavals of the twentieth century — the closure of the cathedral, the war, the museum years — the icon survived, and it stands now in the Holy Spirit cathedral at Minsk, where an akathist is sung before it weekly and where the record of healings continues to be kept.
Feast and commemoration
The feast is August 13, the day of the appearance on the Svisloch in 1500 — civil August 13 on the New Calendar, civil August 26 on the Old. It coincides with the leavetaking of the Transfiguration and falls within the Dormition Fast (August 1–14).
The observance is Belarusian and Russian; the icon is the patronal image of the city of Minsk and, since the restoration of the Belarusian exarchate, of the Belarusian Church, whose primates keep the day as one of the principal feasts of the cathedral. It is not in the Greek books.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4
Come, ye faithful, let us keep the radiant feast of the Mother of God; for lo, her holy image, cast into the waters by the hands of the ungodly, came to us shining upon the river, and abideth with us as a fountain of healing. O Sovereign Lady, deliver from every affliction those that flee to thee.
Original translation from the Slavonic
Kontakion — Tone 6
The waters bore what the impious cast away, and the light upon the Svisloch declared it; and the city that received thee, O Mother of God, hath thee for its wall and its rejoicing unto this day.
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 Minsk icon is a large panel — the accounts give it as more than four and a half feet high and about three feet wide — of the Hodegetria ("she who shows the way") type: the Mother of God upright and frontal, the Child seated on her left arm, blessing with his right hand and holding a scroll in his left, while her right hand is raised toward him in the gesture of indication that gives the type its name. The monograms МР ѲУ and ΙС ХС stand in the upper field.
The panel has been repainted more than once in its long history and is now largely covered by the silver riza of 1852, so that in most photographs only the faces and hands are visible; the crowns and the ornament belong to the metal cover, not to the painting. Because the visible surface is a nineteenth-century revetment over a much-restored board, no confident statement can be made about the age or school of the original painting from the image alone.
No public-domain reproduction of the icon has been located for this collection, and none is stored with this entry; a pre-1900 photograph or lithograph of the image in its riza would be the natural candidate.