The Icon of Our Lady of Kazan

On the Julian Calendar, today is July 8th, the day on which the Russian Church commemorates the miraculous rediscovery of one of its most revered icons, that of Our Lady of Kazan. The original icon is traditionally said to have been brought sometime in the 13th century from Constantinople to the city of Kazan, which sits on the Volga river, roughly 500 miles directly to the east of Moscow. In 1438, the city was captured by the Tartars, at which point, the icon disappeared; it was recaptured by Tsar Ivan the Terrible in 1552, but half-destroyed by fire in 1579. The Muslim Tartar population gloated that the devastation of the city was a divine punishment against the conquering Christians. The Virgin Mary is then said to have appeared in a dream three times to a 10 year-old girl named Matrona, revealing to her the location where the icon had been hidden 140 years before to save it from the Tartars. On July 8, 1579, the girl and her mother recovered it from the ruins of a destroyed house; the miracles attributed to it in the following years played a significant role in gradually converting the local Muslims. A secondary feast is kept on October 22 (currently Nov. 4 on the Gregorian calendar), originally instituted to commemorate the preservation of Moscow from attack during a Polish invasion, which was attributed to the icon’s protection.

A copy of the icon of Our Lady of Kazan, ca. 1850 (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

A number of churches were built in honor of this revelation, including cathedrals at Moscow, St Petersburg and Yaroslavl, and numerous copies of the icon were made. (In the East, it is not unusual for there to be more than one church recognized as a cathedral in a given city; Moscow and St Petersburg both currently have eleven of them.) Very sadly, the original icon was stolen on June 29, 1904, from the church dedicated to the Mother of God where it had long been kept. (The church itself was later demolished by the communists.) The thieves, who had taken it for its golden and jeweled frame, were captured several years later, and claimed that the icon itself had been cut up and burnt. The icon had long been thought of as a kind of palladium of Russia, and many Russians ascribed the disasters which beset their nation in the following years, the 1905 Revolution, the embarrassing defeat at the hands of the much smaller nation of Japan in the war of 1904-05, the catastrophe of World War I, and the incalculable miseries inflicted by communism, to its desecration.

A 16th-century copy which was stolen from St Petersburg in 1917 was brought to Fátima, Portugal, in 1970, and remained there until 1993, when it was gifted to Pope St John Paul II, who kept it in his study. In 2004, as a gesture of magnanimity to the Russian Orthodox Church, the Pope returned it to the Orthodox Church, and it is now venerated at the cathedral of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in Kazan. In Church Slavonic and Russian, the adjectival form of “Kazan” is “Kazanskaya” in the feminine; this copy is often nicknamed “Vatikanskaya.”

The rebuilt cathedral of the Mother of God in Kazan; image from Wikimedia Commons by Dmitry Sagdeev, CC BY-SA 4.0

I have often used videos from the YouTube channel of the Sretensky Monastery in Moscow to illustrate articles about the Byzantine liturgy, since their choir has and deserves a reputation as one of the best in Russia. Their singing at the All-Night Vigil yesterday evening (Vespers, Orthros and Prime) and the Divine Liturgy this morning was particularly good, which is what inspired me to share them here. These liturgies were celebrated in skete, a kind of smaller and semi-eremitic monastery, often dependent in some way on a larger one; I am unsure of the precise location, but the church is very beautiful. Even a cursory description of these ceremonies would take longer to write than to listen to, but you can read the proper liturgical texts in English at this link: http://www.st-sergius.org/services/Emenaion/07-08.pdf

Learning from the French Foreign Legion and the Story of Victor

In an article this past May, I suggested that the advice of an MIT professor on the need for a “new habit of mind” for modern Westerners fits surprisingly well with the habit of mind inculcated by participation in the traditional Latin liturgy.

Another article, of October 2018, looked at how the Marines recruit new members, and compared it with how the Church recruits seminarians. The Eastern Orthodox and the SSPX imitate the Marines’ appeal to challenge and radical self-donation, while the mainstream Catholics offer milquetoast vocational videos that would cause most straight young men with an ounce of idealism to wince.

I would like to offer another analogy from secular culture — this time, a video on the French Foreign Legion. The full video may be found here, but I am most interested in the closing 2-minute segment, which has been excerpted for this article. The clip concerns the crucial importance of time-honored rituals, “carved in stone” as it were, for maintaining the cohesion and integrity of the Legion. The ritual we see here is the receipt of the soldiers’ pay in their coveted kepis, which they drag with them all the way out to Afghanistan, for no other purpose but to carry out this ritual:

The commanding officer explains how such rituals bind Legionnaires together from all around the world. The minutely-prescribed choreography of the Legion’s rituals constitute a sort of common language, which they can all relate to, no matter what the member’s country of origin. (Sadly, the video cuts out just before the officer finishes his remarks.)

As I watched this, I was struck by the obvious parallel with the function of Latin in the traditional Mass, the value of the precise rubrics lovingly observed and cherished, and the ineffable importance of the full pleroma of accompanying rites and ceremonies and sacramentals. It isn’t just the meaning of the language or the “intellectual content.” It is the whole action as something to be performed, a thousand times always the same, and so deeply satisfying every time — a fixed star in the chaotic night of combat, to which eyes from all nations can turn. Doubtless, if Church officials had not stopped thinking of the Church on earth as the “Church Militant,” they would no sooner have abandoned her immemorial rituals and traditions than the French Foreign Legion would consider dropping its cherished customs.

When success really matters — as in, say, life-and-death situations — you stick with what has proven its worth. You do not change the slightest symbol. You don’t act like the Knights of Columbus, now completely altering their uniforms in an aggiornamento that has the membership divided. Those who love their identity love also the signs by which it is proclaimed, the rituals by which it is cemented.

The Knights of Columbus: their internal "Novus Ordo" moment

*          *          *

A friend sent me a video about Victor, a young man who grew up Russian Orthodox but converted to the Catholic Faith and was eventually ordained a priest. The video is in German, but those who don’t speak the language can still follow the beautiful videography and get a sense of what’s happening:

Victor’s first step was recognizing that the Catholic Church taught the truth and that he had to become Catholic. But when he saw the Novus Ordo liturgy he was confused by its worldliness, especially in contrast to the Orthodox liturgies he had known before. He was, in fact, utterly perplexed: how can the Church that teaches the truth worship in a manner so totally at odds with her doctrine? He might have remained frozen in this no man’s land had he not found the traditional Latin Mass through the SSPX.

Victor left his family and his fatherland to go to the seminary at Zaitzkofen in Germany. He was ordained according to the rite that developed without interruption from the time of the Apostles. In other words, he encountered a perfect unity between doctrine and symbol, idea and expression, truth and ritual.

How many other Victors are there who are kept from conversion, or from priesthood or religious life, or from a coherent and mature Catholicism, because of the jarring divorce of realities so obviously meant to be wedded and, in their wedlock, fruitful? “What God hath joined together, let no pope put asunder.”

Visit www.peterkwasniewski.com for articles, sacred music, and classics reprinted by Os Justi Press (e.g., Benson, Scheeben, Parsch, Guardini, Chaignon, Leen).

The Holy Passion-Bearers Ss Boris and Gleb

The Italians have a proverb that “Great sinners by repentance become great Saints”; one of the greatest examples of this was St Vladimir, in whose reign the people then known as the Rus’ began to be Christianized. The Primary Chronicle, an essential source for the history of Kyivan Rus’, records many acts of cruelty and violence before his conversion, and calls him “insatiable in vice”, comparing his desire for women to that of Solomon. (But where the latter “was wise, and yet came to ruin, … Vladimir, though at first deluded, eventually found salvation.”) Among his many children, his dearest were Boris and Gleb, whom the Chronicle says were born from a wife of Bulgarian origin; they are sometimes referred to by their baptismal names Roman and David. (It is disputed by modern historians whether Boris and Gleb were in fact sons of the same mother; many believe they were not, and that Boris was much older than Gleb.) Another son, Sviatopolk, was Vladimir’s son by a Greek woman who had formerly been the mistress of his brother Yaropolk, but before that, a nun; the Chronicle says of him “from a sinful root an evil fruit is produced”, and he is now distinguished from a later king of the same name by the epithet “the Accursed.”

A Russian icon of St Vladimir, and his sons, Ss Boris and Gleb. (ca. 1560.)

Already as a young prince, this Sviatopolk had been imprisoned by St Vladimir for plotting against him; released shortly before his father’s death, he would ultimately kill three of his brothers to secure his place on the throne, before being defeated in battle and overthrown by a fourth brother, Yaroslav I, called “the Wise.” Boris was popular as the former chief of his father’s bodyguards, and might have opposed his brother, but was unwilling to take the throne by violence, saying, “Be it not for me to raise my hand against my elder brother. Now that my father has passed away, let him take the place of my father in my heart.” He dismissed his supporters, and was soon killed by Sviatopolk’s men, along with several of his servants, as he prayed by the banks of the river Alta. The Chronicle records his prayer before he was set upon: “Lord Jesus Christ, who in this image hast appeared on earth for our salvation, and who, having voluntarily suffered thy hands to be nailed to the cross, didst endure thy passion for our sins, so help me now to endure my passion. For I accept it not from those who are my enemies, but from the hand of my own brother. Hold it not against him as a sin, O Lord!”

Sviatopolk then tricked Gleb into coming to him by sending a messenger that their father was dying, but Gleb was warned by Yaroslav that Vladimir was already dead and Boris murdered. He then prayed, again according to the Primary Chronicle, “Woe is me, O Lord! It were better for me to die with my brother than to live on in this world. O my brother, had I but seen thy angelic countenance, I should have died with thee. Why am I now left alone? Where are thy words that thou didst say to me, my brother? No longer do I hear thy sweet counsel. If thou hast received affliction from God, pray for me that I may endure the same passion. For it were better for me to dwell with thee than in this deceitful world.” He was attacked while on a boat, and slain by his own cook, who was forced to the murder by Sviatopolk’s men, “offered up as a sacrifice to God like an innocent lamb, a glorious offering amid the perfume of incense, and he received the crown of glory.”

Ss Boris and Gleb, depicted in a famous icon painted about 1340, now in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.

The deaths of the two princes took place very shortly after their father’s death in 1015. When Yaroslav had secured the throne five years later, Sviatpolk being now defeated and dead, he had the incorrupt bodies of his slain brothers brought to the church of St Basil in the town of Vyshgorod, the royal residence close to Kiev. The tomb at once became a place of pilgrimage, and the site of many miracles, such that Yaroslav asked the Church to formally recognize them as Saints. The metropolitan of Kiev (a Greek, since the hierarchy had only just been established out of Constantinople) was skeptical; Boris and Gleb were not martyrs, since they had not died for the Faith, nor were they ascetics, or bishops, or great teachers. But popular devotion would not be denied, and the brothers were officially recognized as the first of a new category of Saint, called “Passion-bearers” (страстотéрпецъ in Old Church Slavonic, ‘strastoterpets’); that is, Saints who, in imitation of Christ’s humility, have accepted suffering and death, even where they might have resisted it justly, for the sake of His name. By the end of the eleventh century, devotion to them had reached even to Constantinople itself, and an icon of them was exposed in Hagia Sophia.

Prince Igor of Kiev and Chernigov, a great-grandson of Yaroslav the Wise who was murdered in another round of dynastic struggles in the following century, is also called a Passion-bearer. More recently, the title has been accorded by the Russian Orthodox Church to the seven members of the Imperial family who were murdered by the Bolsheviks on July 17, 1918, exactly one week before the feast of Ss Boris and Gleb. A church has been built in the city of Yekaterinburg over the site of their murder, called “the Church on the Blood”, but their relics are interred in the cathedral of Ss Peter and Paul in St Petersburg. Sadly, the relics of Ss Boris and Gleb were lost when the church of St Basil in Vyshgorod was destroyed by Mongol invaders in 1240.

The Church on the Blood, completed in 2003 

The Troparion of Ss Boris and Gleb

O Passion-bearers and fulfillers of the Gospel of Christ, chaste Boris and guileless Gleb: you did not oppose the attacks of the enemy, your brother, when he killed your bodies, but could not touch your souls. Let him therefore mourn, while you rejoice with the Angels, standing before the Holy Trinity. Pray that those who honor your memory may find grace with God, and that all orthodox people may be saved.

The Kontakion

Today your glorious memory shines forth, o noble-born Passion-bearers of Christ, Roman and David, and summons us to glorify Christ our God. Those who come to the shrine of your relics receive healing through your prayers, for you are holy physicians.

Russian Paintings at St Peter’s Basilica

As I wrote yesterday, St Peter’s Basilica is currently hosting a very nice show of Russian artworks, a combination of historic icons and more modern (i.e. 19th and early 20th century) paintings. Many of these works come from one of the largest and most important art collections in Russia, the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, named for its founder Pavel Tretyakov. Prominent in his collection, which he donated to the city of Moscow in 1892, are the works of a Russian school of artists called “Передвижники (peredvizhniki) - ‘wanderers’, or ‘itinerants’ ”, realist painters who formed a kind of cooperative in rebellion against the methods and policies of the Imperial Academy of the Fine Arts. Their name derives from their traveling exhibitions, which they brought to many major cities of the Russian Empire; the acceptance of their style and preferred subjects was very much furthered by Tretyakov, who brought many of their pieces into his famous gallery. Here is a selection of just some of the paintings in the show, principally on religious subjects.

Christ’s Appearance to the People, by Alexander Ivanov. (Russian State Museum) This painting took the artist about 20 years to complete, from 1837-57; within this exhibition, Ivanov represents the neo-classical tradition of the Academy that the ‘wanderers’ were rebelling against.

“Quid est veritas?” - Christ and Pilate, by Nikholai Ge, 1890 (Tretyakov Gallery). Ge (whose non-Russian sounding family name derives from his French ancestry, originally “de Gay”) had several of his paintings on religious subjects, including this one, banned from public display and various exhibitions.

A Religious Procession in the Kursk Province, by Ilya Repin, 1884 (Tretyakov Gallery). Repin, an extremely productive painter, was one of the most successful of the ‘wanderers’, and very well-known outside Russia.

Before Confession, Ilya Repin, 1879-85 (Tretyakov Gallery)

Portrait of Fyodor Dostyevsky, by Vasily Perov, 1872, another major figure among the group. (Tretyakov Gallery. This famous portrait of the novelist has been used on the covers of countless editions of his works.)

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Russian Icons Displayed at St Peter’s Basilica

St Peter’s Basilica is currently hosting a really splendid show of artworks from Russia, entitled “Pilgrimage of Russian Art”, a combination of icons, including some fairly famous ones, and paintings from the mid-19th to early 20th centuries. A large portion of the artworks, especially the icons, come from the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, founded by Pavel Tretyakov (1832-98), a Russian businessman, in the mid-1850s; having amassed a very sizeable collection, he donated it to the city in 1892. (It has now expanded to 130,000 pieces, housed in several different buildings. In the descriptions below, I will only note the current home of the item if it is not from the Tretyakov.) The icons are mostly from the 16th and 17th centuries, some even older, and are therefore displayed, of course, behind protective glass, which does not make for optimal photography; tomorrow, I will post some of the more recent paintings on religious subject matters. The show runs until February 16th, and is free of charge, in the Braccio Carlo Magno, next to the basilica. (Mon., Tues., Thurs. Fri. 9:30-5:30, Wed. 1:30-5:30, Sat. 10-5.)

“In Thee All Creation Rejoices”, second half of the 16th century. This icon is based on the hymn to the Virgin Mary sung during the celebration of the Divine Liturgy of St Basil: “In Thee rejoiceth all creation, that art full of grace, the host of Angels, and the race of men; o hallowed temple, and rational paradise, glory of virgins, from whom God was incarnate, and born as a child, who was our God before the ages; for He made Thy womb a throne, and Thy body broader than the heavens! In Thee rejoiceth all creation, that art full of grace.”

Mother of God of Vladimir, Moscow, first half of the 16th century. (The Byzantine prototype from which this motif is taken, made in Constantinople ca. 1130, is one of the most revered icons in all of Russia, now also displayed at the Tretyakov Gallery.)

The Last Judgment, Novgorod, second half of the 16th century. The Gospel of the Last Judgment, Matthew 25, 31-46, is read on Meatfare Sunday, the second Sunday before the beginning of Lent (Sexagesima in the Roman Rite.)

St George Slaying the Dragon, 16th century

The Vision of Eulogius, 1565-96; from the Monastery of the Presentation in Solvychegodsk. Eulogius was a priest who, according to a traditional story, during the all-night vigil in church beheld a vision of angels who distributed to each monk a reward that expressed his degree of perfection in the ascetic life; the purpose of the icon is to encourage the distracted and lazy. In the middle of the lower part, Ss Sergei of Radonezh and Cyril of Belozersk, two of the great monastic founders of northern Russia, adore the Body of Christ in a chalice on the altar. The three cupolas of the church symbolize the Trinity; on the left, a monk rings bells mounted in a tower; on the right, another knocks a block of wood called a semantron with a hammer to call the monks to prayer, which is still done in many Eastern monasteries to this day.

The reception of the icon of the Mother of God of Vladimir; Moscow, mid-late 17th century.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

A Meditation after Epiphany: The Transfiguration Icon and What It Tells Us About Christian Culture

Here is a painting of the Transfiguration. It is a 16th-century Russian icon from the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery in Yaroslavl, which is to the northeast of Moscow.

Readers will be familiar with the scene. Christ is on the mountain flanked by the two prophets, and the three disciples are stunned by the sight of the transfigured Christ. This is a glimpse of his heavenly glory, hitherto unseen by the disciples. The nimbus that surrounds Christ in this picture is called a “mandorla”, the Italian word for “almond”, from its elliptical shape. The season of the Epiphany (also known as Theophany) is the time in which the first manifestations of God’s glory are commemorated, and especially the Baptism in the Jordan; in the East, the feast is wholly focused on the latter, and the Adoration of the Magi is commemorated at Christmas. As such, they all point to this moment as the fulfillment of all epiphanies.

The mandorla surrounding Christ usually shows concentric bands of shading which get darker toward the center, rather than lighter. It is painted in this way so as to communicate to us, pictorially, the fact that we must pass through stages of increasing mystery in order to encounter the person of Jesus Christ. This encounter, which takes place in the Mass with the Eucharist at its heart, is one that transforms me supernaturally, so that I can begin to grasp the glory of Christ more directly.

This encounter is made possible by my baptism, confirmation, and communion so that I have ‘put on Christ’ as St Paul says in Galatians. God’s actions are not in any way restricted by the Sacraments, of course, but as a general rule, until I become Catholic I am going to be dazzled into blindness by the transfigured Christ, and the mandorla will look like a jet-black envelope with a heart of darkness.

Nevertheless, prior to being fully part of the body of Christ, I was able to perceive, those outer rings of the mandorla. In this context they represent the Light of Christ reflected in the cosmos, and Christian culture and art. This tells me there is more to know and love and I yearn for it. This is the power of beauty, and of art in particular, and is why the rejuvenation of Catholic culture and Catholic art, in particular, are so necessary. We need them to speak powerfully to people today of Christ and draw people into the Church.

Beauty is a perceptible sign of something which we cannot see, Almighty God. It calls us to itself, and then beyond to Him who inspired it, and who is Beauty itself. Creation is beautiful because it bears the mark of the Creator; and the culture or any aspect of it, whether mundane, sacred or high art can speak of it too. Even everyday Christian activity is beautiful - graceful - if it is inspired by God and will draw people to God.

The Christian life well lived is one in which every discernible aspect our lives contributes to the brightness of the outer rings of the mandorla through inspired contributions to the culture. This is because we are part of the mystical body of Christ, the Church, which is the transfigured Christ of the painting above. Each of us is a pixel of supernatural light in the heart of darkness! The artist is called to contribute to the culture by his painting, but each of us contributes in our own way.

The most powerful formation that will enable us to be contributors to a beautiful Catholic culture that bears this cosmic beauty is the central activity of the Church, the worship of God. Christian culture permeates the life of the Church and of the world - the sacred and the profane - and so is an important part of the sign of Christ and of the world to come. It is a principle that potentially permeates all human activity.

Below is the Transfiguration mosaic from St Catherine’s Monastery, Mt Sinai.

Dostoyevsky on Prayer for the Dead

Young man, be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education.

Remember, too, every day, and whenever you can, repeat to yourself, ‘Lord, have mercy on all who appear before Thee today.’ For every hour and every moment thousands of men leave life on this earth, and their souls appear before God. And how many of them depart in solitude, unknown, sad, dejected that no one mourns for them or even knows whether they have lived or not! And behold, from the other end of the earth perhaps, your prayer for their rest will rise up to God though you knew them not nor they you. How touching it must be to a soul standing in dread before the Lord to feel at that instant that, for him too, there is one to pray, that there is a fellow creature left on earth to love him too! And God will look on you both more graciously, for if you have had so much pity on him, how much will He have pity Who is infinitely more loving and merciful than you! And He will forgive him for your sake.” (The Brothers Karamazov, book 6, chapter 3 (g) - Conversations of Fr Zossima: Of prayer, of love, and of contact with the other worlds)

The video above is a choral setting of the words “Eternal Memory” (Вѣчная Памѧть in Old Church Slavonic, from the Greek Αἰωνία ἡ μνήμη) from the Byzantine Rite’s equivalent of the Requiem service. The author of this setting, Pavel Chesnokov (1877-1944), was a remarkably prolific composer of sacred music, with over 400 pieces to his name; very sadly, when the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, where he has served as choirmaster, was destroyed in 1933, Chesnokov was so distraught that he stopped composing altogether. (The church was demolished to make way for a gigantic public building that was never realized, and reconstructed on the same site from 1995 to 2000.)

Although All Souls’ Day has passed, it has become a common custom to extend the special season of prayers for the dead through the whole of November. Rorate caeli recently published a useful reminder of the original intention of Pope Benedict XV, when in 1915 he granted all priests permission to say three Masses on November 2nd, a custom originally observed only in Spain and Portugal, namely so that they might pray for those who had been killed in war. We also ought to persevere in this holy intention, and remember especially to pray for the many Christians who were killed in the War-to-End-All-Wars, and the many wars that have happened since, for “it is ... a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.”

The Holy Passion-Bearers Ss Boris and Gleb

Since we mentioned the 1000th anniversary of the death of St Vladimir last week, it seems fitting to say a bit about his sons Ss Boris and Gleb, whose feast day is today.

The Italians have a proverb that “Great sinners by repentance become great Saints,” and of this St Vladimir was an outstanding example. The Primary Chronicle, an essential source for the history of Kievan Rus’, records many acts of cruelty and violence before his conversion, and calls him “insatiable in vice”, comparing his desire for women to that of Solomon. (But where the latter “was wise, and yet came to ruin, … Vladimir, though at first deluded, eventually found salvation.”) Among his many children, his dearest were Boris and Gleb, whom the Chronicle says were born from a wife of Bulgarian origin. (It is disputed by modern historians whether Boris and Gleb were in fact sons of the same mother; many believe they were not, and that Boris was much older than Gleb.) Another son, Sviatopolk, was Vladimir’s son by a Greek woman who had formerly been the mistress of his brother Yaropolk, but before that, a nun; the Chronicle says of him “from a sinful root an evil fruit is produced”, and he is now distinguished from a later king of the same name by the epithet “the Accursed.”

A Russian icon of St Vladimir, and his sons, Ss Boris and Gleb. (ca. 1560.)

Already as a young prince, this Sviatopolk had been imprisoned by St Vladimir for plotting against him; released shortly before his father’s death, he would ultimately kill three of his brothers to secure his place on the throne, before being defeated in battle and overthrown by a fourth brother, Yaroslav I, called “the Wise.” Boris was popular as the former chief of his father’s bodyguards, and might have opposed his brother, but was unwilling to take the throne by violence, saying, “Be it not for me to raise my hand against my elder brother. Now that my father has passed away, let him take the place of my father in my heart.” He dismissed his supporters, and was soon killed by Sviatopolk’s men, along with several of his servants, as he prayed by the banks of the river Alta. The Chronicle records his prayer before he was set upon: “Lord Jesus Christ, who in this image hast appeared on earth for our salvation, and who, having voluntarily suffered thy hands to be nailed to the cross, didst endure thy passion for our sins, so help me now to endure my passion. For I accept it not from those who are my enemies, but from the hand of my own brother. Hold it not against him as a sin, O Lord!”

Sviatopolk then tricked Gleb into coming to him by sending a messenger that their father was dying, but Gleb was warned by Yaroslav that Vladimir was already dead and Boris murdered. He then prayed, again according to the Primary Chronicle, “Woe is me, O Lord! It were better for me to die with my brother than to live on in this world. O my brother, had I but seen thy angelic countenance, I should have died with thee. Why am I now left alone? Where are thy words that thou didst say to me, my brother? No longer do I hear thy sweet counsel. If thou hast received affliction from God, pray for me that I may endure the same passion. For it were better for me to dwell with thee than in this deceitful world.” He was attacked while on a boat, and slain by his own cook, who was forced to the murder by Sviatopolk’s men, “offered up as a sacrifice to God like an innocent lamb, a glorious offering amid the perfume of incense, and he received the crown of glory.”

Ss Boris and Gleb, depicted in a famous icon painted about 1340, now in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.

The deaths of the two princes took place very shortly after their father’s death in 1015. When Yaroslav had secured the throne five years later, Sviatpolk being now defeated and dead, he had the incorrupt bodies of his slain brothers brought to the church of St Basil in the town of Vyshgorod, the royal residence close to Kiev. The tomb at once became a place of pilgrimage, and the site of many miracles, such that Yaroslav asked the Church to formally recognize them as Saints. The metropolitan of Kiev (a Greek, since the hierarchy had only just been established out of Constantinople) was skeptical; Boris and Gleb were not martyrs, since they had not died for the Faith, nor were they ascetics, or bishops, or great teachers. But popular devotion would not be denied, and the brothers were officially recognized as the first of a new category of Saint, called “Passion-bearers” (страстотéрпецъ in Old Church Slavonic, ‘strastoterpets’); that is, Saints who, in imitation of Christ’s humility, have accepted suffering and death, even where they might have resisted it justly, for the sake of His name. By the end of the eleventh century, devotion to them had reached even to Constantinople itself, and an icon of them was exposed in Hagia Sophia.

Prince Igor of Kiev and Chernigov, a great-grandson of Yaroslav the Wise who was murdered in another round of dynastic struggles in the following century, is also called a Passion-bearer. More recently, the title has been accorded by the Russian Orthodox Church to the seven members of the Imperial family who were murdered by the Bolsheviks on July 17, 1918, exactly one week before the feast of Ss Boris and Gleb. A church has been built in the city of Yekaterinburg over the site of their murder, called “the Church on the Blood”, but their relics are interred in the cathedral of Ss Peter and Paul in St Petersburg. Sadly, the relics of Ss Boris and Gleb were lost when the church of St Basil in Vyshgorod was destroyed by Mongol invaders in 1240.

The Church on the Blood, completed in 2003 

The Troparion of Ss. Boris and Gleb

O Passion-bearers and fulfillers of the Gospel of Christ, chaste Boris and guileless Gleb: you did not oppose the attacks of the enemy, your brother, when he killed your bodies, but could not touch your souls. Let him therefore mourn, while you rejoice with the Angels, standing before the Holy Trinity. Pray that those who honor your memory may find grace with God, and that all orthodox people may be saved.

The Kontakion

Today your memory shines forth, noble sufferers, and summons us to glorify Christ our God. Those who come to the shrine of your relics receive healing through your prayers, for you are holy physicians.

St Vladimir the Great

Today marks the 1000th anniversary of the death of St Vladimir the Great, Grand Prince of Kiev, who is honored by the Byzantine churches as one of the most important figures in the Christianization of the Eastern Slavs. Along with his grandmother St Olga, he is given the liturgical title “Isapostolos – Equal to the Apostles”, in imitation of the titles of the Emperor Constantine and his mother St Helena.

St Olga, princess of Kiev, converted to Christianity and was baptized at Constantinople in 957, when she was close to 70 years old, during the reign of her son Sviatoslav. The traditional account is that she was the first person among the people then known as the Rus’ to be baptized. Her son did not convert, however; his death in 972 was followed by war between his three sons, at the end of which the youngest, Vladimir, whom he had begotten with his housekeeper, was left as the prince of Kiev. Although Vladimir’s path to the throne was certainly a bloody one, (much of the family history reads like the plot summaries of Game of Thrones), and despite his truly Solomonic appetite for women, it was he who ultimately brought about the first conversion of the East Slavs and the Baptism of Rus’.

A Russian icon of St Vladmir, and his sons, the Passion-Bearers Ss Boris and Gleb, who were later murdered by a third son, called Sviatoplok “the Accursed.” (ca. 1560.)

The ancient Slavic chronicles record a famous episode that, when investigating which religion he and his people ought to embrace, Vladimir judged Islam altogether undesirable because of the prohibition on drinking alcohol, saying “Drinking is the joy of all Rus’. We cannot exist without that pleasure.” The envoys sent by him to visit the temples of various neighboring peoples reported that the Bulgar Muslim “bows, sits down, looks hither and thither like one possessed, and there is no happiness among them, but instead only sorrow and a dreadful stench. Their religion is not good.” Their report of the Latin Rite among the Germans was that “we beheld no glory there.” But they described the Divine Liturgy celebrated on a great feast in Constantinople in these terms: “(T)he Greeks led us to the edifices where they worship their God, and we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We know only that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations. For we cannot forget that beauty… If the Greek faith were evil, it would not have been adopted by your grandmother Olga, who was wiser than all other men.”

Shortly thereafter, Vladimir captured an important Greek city in the Crimea, and used his position to negotiate for the hand in marriage of the Emperor Basil II’s sister Anna, which would entail an alliance with Byzantium. At Basil’s insistence that his sister could not marry a pagan, Vladimir agreed to be baptized first; upon his triumphal return to Kiev he exhorted (and to some degree, it must be said, forced) the residents of the city to accept the new religion. A baptism en masse, the first of several, was held in the Dneiper river; this is now called “the Baptism of Kiev”, an episode whose 1000th anniversary was commemorated in 1988, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall. For the rest of his reign, more peaceable than the first part, Vladimir enthusiastically supported the evangelization of his people, and amended the irregularities of his earlier life.

The Baptism of Prince St Vladimir, by Victor Vasnetsov, 1890; made as preparatory image for a fresco in the Cathedral of St Vladimir in Kiev.

Let us take this occasion to pray for peace among the peoples converted by St Vladimir, especially for Ukraine, whose capital, Kiev, is the city where the Rus’ embraced the Christian faith.

The troparion of his feast: Holy Prince Vladimir, you were like a merchant in search of fine pearls. By sending servants to Constantinople for the orthodox Faith, you found Christ, the priceless pearl. He appointed you to be another Paul, washing away in baptism your physical and spiritual blindness. We celebrate your memory, asking you to pray for all orthodox Christians and for us, your spiritual children.

The kontakion: Most glorious Vladimir, in your old age you imitated the great apostle Paul: he abandoned childish things, while you forsook the idolatry of your youth. Together with him you reached the fullness of divine wisdom: You were adorned with the purity of holy baptism. Now as you stand before Christ our Savior, pray that all orthodox Christians may be saved.

Photographs from Valaam Monastery

I just stumbled across the website of Valaam Monastery, a Russian Orthodox foundation located on a large island in Lake Ladoga, the largest lake in Europe, to the north of St. Petersburg and the Karelian Isthmus. The monastery established a photographic studio in the 1850’s, and has evidently amassed an enormous archive; the website has a special section dedicated to photography, with links to eleven different collections. In addition to a section of historical images, the works of a number of talented individual artists are highlighted, including two members of the community. Here is just a tiny selection, made more or less at random; the site is very much worth perusing. Valaam is also the home of a special kind of liturgical music, and the website provides a number of links to recordings. (h/t P.A.G.)

More Icons from the Vatican Museums' Fabergé Exhibit

A few more of the icons from the exhibit at the Vatican Museums which was reported on last week.

The image of the Savior Not Made by Hands (Achiropita), with Saints Nicholas and George; studio of K. Gan, St. Petersburg, 1890-95. ca.

Another Savior "Achiropita", with Saints Sergei of Radonezh and Nicholas; studio of A. Makhalova, Moscow, 1904.

Our Lady of Iveron, (or Iver); the original is kept in the Georgian Iviron monastery of Mount Athos. This copy by the Ovchinnikov studio (Moscow, 1899-1908) is especially notable for the elaborate filigree work and semi-precious stones.

Two images of Our Lady of Kazan by two different craftsmen, (left, D. Smirnov; right, Sergei Zharov), both made in Moscow between 1908 and 1917. The extraordinarily high quality of the frames, which are encrusted with silver and pearls, may be taken as indicative of the great veneration for Our Lady of Kazan in Russia; both Saint Petersburg and Moscow have cathedrals dedicated to the Virgin Mary under this title.

Our Lady of Vladimir, by V. Guryanov. Moscow, 1898.

In this 1895 work of the Fabergé studio, a prayer is written in Old Church Slavonic in extremely small letters on the stone held by the angel.

Saints Mary Magdalene, Peter and Paul the Apostles, Sergei of Radonezh and Prince Alexander Nevsky; Tarabrov studio, Moscow, 1908.

Saint Seraphim of Sarov, by the Mishukov studio, Moscow, 1903-08.

The very first of the Fabergé Easter eggs, a present from Tsar Alexander III to his wife the Tsarina Maria Fedorovna for the Easter of 1885.

Icons by Fabergé at the Vatican Museums

Among the Christians of Eastern Europe, the custom of elaborately decorating eggs in a variety of styles is one of the most beautiful parts of the celebration of Easter. Each country has its own traditional types of decoration and traditional means of producing them; the Ukrainians, for example, have at least nine different techniques, and a Pysanka Museum in the western city of Kolomyia, which houses a collection of over 10,000 from various parts of that country and the world. (On the eggs pictured at right, the letters XB are the first letters of the two Russian words "Khristos Voskres - Christ is risen", the traditional greeting among Byzantine Christians of all languages in the Easter season.)

The most famous Easter eggs of all are of course those created by the house of Fabergé in the late 19th century. The first of these was made as an Easter present from the Tsar Alexander III to his wife, the Tsarina Maria Fyodorovna, in 1885, and pleased the Empress so much that it became a tradition to give a new one every year. Fifty such eggs, now known as the Imperial eggs, were produced for the Romanov family between that year and the fall of the monarchy in 1917, and more than a dozen others for a variety of wealthy clients. Most of the eggs are made to be opened, and contained a surprise of some sort, although many of these have been lost; the egg known as the Peacock, for example, contains a tiny mechanical peacock which walks around and opens and closes its tail.

The years of Soviet communism did incalculable damage to the cultural patrimony of Russia, whether through deliberate acts of destruction, the ravages of war, or the selling off of many artistic treasures to foreigners. A group of the Imperial Fabergé eggs were sold at Stalin's orders in 1927, and 14 more left the country in the early 1930’s. Several of these were acquired by the American magazine publisher Malcolm Forbes; after his death, the collection was bought en-bloc by Russian oil magnate Viktor Vekselberg, whose collection of fifteen eggs (including 9 of the Imperials) is currently the single largest. Vekselberg’s acquisitions are now in the hands of the Link of Times Foundation, created by himself to recover dispersed objects of Russia’s patrimony and return them to their native country. In 2007, for example, the foundation paid for a set of bells to be returned from Harvard University to the Danilov Monastery in Moscow; they had been saved from being melted down by the communists by American industrialist Charles Crane, and brought to Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1930. Not only were the eighteen bells restored to their original location, but the foundation donated copies of them to Harvard, which had kept the originals safe for so long. (One of the originals weighs 13 tons and has a 700 pound clapper!)

The foundation’s collection also includes a large number of late 19th and early 20th century icons, some of them the work of the same artists that crafted the famous eggs, others by artists of the same time, though not associated with the house of Fabergé, and in a similar style. A selection of these, along with a number of the eggs, and various non-religious objects (for example, a whole case full of snuff boxes), is currently being hosted by the Vatican Museums, in a show running until June 11th. Among these is the only one of the Fabergé eggs with an Easter theme to it, the Resurrection Egg, displayed in the same case as the Renaissance Egg, the last presented by Tsar Alexander to the Empress Maria, in 1894.

The Renaissance Egg (left) from 1894, and the Resurrection Egg. Recent research makes it seem very likely that the latter is really the "surprise" that originally came with the former.

An icon of a Guardian Angel, with frame by Carl Fabergé, 1908-17.

A folding triptych of Our Lady of Kazan, with the Mandylion, and Saints Nicholas and Catherine of Alexandria (the latter here hidden behind the left wing), by Carl Fabergé, 1894. This was a gift to the Empress Alexandra on the occasion of her marriage. (In the background, one can see a part of the famous Raphael tapestries, which were written about on NLM last July.)

A miniature Gothic reliquary, and other minatures by Fabergé, late 1890's.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Orthodox Antarctic

After reading the article mentioned in the post below, I recalled I had seen an item on Daniel Mitsui's weblog about an Orthodox church in Antarctica, specifically by the Russian station at King George Island off the Antarctic coast. Our Orthodox brethren undoubtedly prize beauty, even in the most remote locations, as these photos will show you. A recent foundation, the wooden, 5-meter high Holy Trinity Church's origins and short history are particularly interesting, as it is a fully-functioning, all-year church, whose monastic custodians, hieromonks of the famous Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra, have provided not just the usual round of Sunday liturgies, but also baptisms and even a wedding.



There is also a small chapel dedicated to St. John of Rila, less aesthetic but somewhat older, at the Bulgarian base on Livingston Island.

Images from Russia and the Byzantine Liturgy

Just prior to the news of the election of Metropolitan Kirill, I thought it would be of interest to share some of the liturgical scenes going on in Russia surrounding this event, and attach to them some explanations from one of our Eastern Catholic readers, as a means of further exploring the treasures of the Byzantine liturgical tradition.

"The bishop is reciting commemorations at the "Transfer of the Gifts or Great Entrance". He would be singing: "May the Lord God remember in His Kingdom [N.N.] always, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages." He is holding the chalice covered with a small veil. There are priests holding blessing crosses to the north and south of the holy doors and the trikirion and dikirion held by subdeacons, as well as subdeacons holding ripdia [fans] over the diskos. We see in the foregound two subdeacons. The one on the north is the candle bearer and the one on the south is the staff bearer [crozier]. The staff is not visible from our perspective but he should have it in this procession. Notice the icon on the analogion of the Baptism of Christ. The apodosis [leave taking] of the Feast of the Baptism is today."



"The completion of the opening of the antimension [yellow cloth] and the bishop is making the sign of the cross over it with the sponge which is used for wiping particles from the diskos into the chalice after the fraction and before communion, and again following communion. The bishop will kiss the sponge and then place it on the upper right side of the antimension. He does this at the ekphoneses [doxology] of the Litany for the Catechumens: "That with us they also may glorify Thy most honorable and majestic name, of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages." The cloth under the antimension is iliton which is unfolded completely during the Litany of Fervent Supplication [following the Gospel and homily]. The antimension is consecrated and contains relics, and is signed and dated by the bishop who consecrates it. It and the ilition function much like the corporal. The antimensia today usually depicit the deposition of Christ from the cross; His being laid in the tomb and around the edge is often written the troparion: "The noble Joseph having taken Thy most pure Body down from the Tree and wrapped It in pure linen and covered It with spices, laid It in a new tomb."



"The bishop is blessing with the trikirion [a triple branched canle symbol of the three persons of the most Holy Trinity] and the dikirion [a double branched candle symbol of the two natures in the one person of Christ] following the deposition of the unconsecrated holy gifts upon the holy table. The bishop says nothing at this blessing but the choir/assembly responds: "Eis polla eti, despota". [Many years, master.] He is wearing the small omophorion which originally was a folded great omophorion [pallium]."



"At the Trisagion when the clergy sing the second "Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us." the bishop makes the sign of the cross with the dikirion [a double branched candle symbol of the two natures in the one person of Christ] over the gospel book."

Source: http://www.mospat.ru/index.php?page=43983