Celebration on July 21 and November 4
Appearing of the Icon of the Most Holy Mother of God in the Grad of Kazan (1579)
On October 1, 1552, on the feast of the Intercession of the Most Holy Mother of God, at night, John IV, the leader of the Russian soldiers preparing for a decisive assault on the Tatar Kazan, suddenly heard the chime of Moscow bells. The Tsar realized that this was a sign of God's mercy: through the prayers of the Chosen Voivode, the Lord wanted to turn the people of Kazan to Himself.
By subduing Kazan under the cover of the Most Holy Mother of God, the work begun in 1164 by Saint Prince Andrew Bogolyubsky (+ 1174; Comm. 4 July) was completed. The Volga, the main waterway of the country, became a Russian river. 60,000 Russian people were freed from Tatar captivity. The enlightenment of the Tatars with the light of the Gospel truth began. The first martyrs appeared - Saints Peter and Stephen (Comm. 24 March). The newly established Kazan diocese became part of the Russian Church and soon shone with its archbishops: Sainted Gurii (+ 1563, Comm. 5 December) and Sainted Germanus (+ 1567, Comm. 6 November).
But especially contributed to the rise of Orthodoxy among the Volga Mohammedans was the appearance in the city of Kazan on July 8, 1579 of the miracle-working icon of the Mother of God.
It was difficult to preach the Gospel in the conquered kingdom among the hardened Muslims and pagans. The Blessed Virgin Mary, the patroness of the preachers of the Word of God, who in her earthly life shared with the holy Apostles the works of evangelization, seeing the efforts of the Russian missionaries, did not hesitate to send them heavenly help by manifesting her miraculous icon.
On June 28, 1579 the terrifying fire which has begun near church of St. Nicholas of Tula, has destroyed a part of city and has turned in ashes half of Kazan Kremlin. The worshippers of Mohammed gloated, thinking that God was angry with the Christians. "The faith of Christ," says the chronicler, "became a parable and a scandal. But the fire in Kazan was an omen of the final fall of Islam and the establishment of Orthodoxy in the entire Golden Horde land, the future East of the Russian state.
The city soon began to rise from the ruins. Together with other survivors of the fire, the rifleman Daniel Onuchin was building a house not far from where the fire started. His nine-year-old daughter Matrona saw the Mother of God in a dream vision and ordered to retrieve Her icon buried in the ground under Muslim rule by secret confessors of Orthodoxy. The girl's words were not paid attention to. Three times the Virgin appeared and pointed out the place where the miracle-working icon was hidden. Finally, Matrona and her mother began to dig in the specified place and found the holy icon. Archbishop Jeremiah arrived at the place of the miraculous discovery at the head of the clergy and carried the holy icon to the nearby church in the name of St. Nicholas, from where, after a prayer service, they carried it with a procession to the Annunciation Cathedral, the first Orthodox church of Kazan, built by John the Terrible. During the procession two blind men, Joseph and Nikita, were healed.
A list from the icon revealed in Kazan, a statement of the circumstances of its discovery and a description of the miracles were sent to Moscow in 1579. Tsar Ioann the Grozny ordered that a church in honor of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God be built on the site of the apparition, where the holy icon was placed, and that a nunnery be founded. Matrona and her mother, who served to find the relic, took tonsure in this monastery.
In St. Nicholas Church, where the first prayer service before the Kazan icon was held, the future Patriarch Hermogenes, Sainted of Moscow (+ 1612, Comm. 17 February), was at that time a priest. Fifteen years later, in 1594, already being Metropolitan of Kazan, he compiled a tale of the sacred events of which he had been an eyewitness and participant: "The Tale and Miracles of the Most Pure Mother of God of the Honorable, Glorious Image of Her Appearance in Kazan". The tale describes with great factual accuracy many cases of cures performed by the miracle-working icon at the prayers of the faithful. The manuscript of the Tale, an autograph of His Holiness Patriarch Hermogenes, is reproduced in its entirety in the facsimile edition: Tale of the miracle-working Kazan Icon of the Most Holy Mother of God. With a foreword by A. I. Sobolevsky, Moscow, 1912.
The small icon found by the girl Matrona in the recently joined foreign suburbs of the Russian Empire soon became a national shrine, a sign of the Heavenly Protection of the Mother of God, manifested to the entire Russian Church, because the soul of the Orthodox people felt the special participation of the Most Pure Mother in the historical destinies of the Motherland. It is not by coincidence that the Kazan image is a replica of the ancient Blachernae icon (celebrated on July 7) and belongs by iconographic type to the icons called Hodegetria the Guide. Many times "Mother of Kazan" showed the way to victory to Russian Orthodox soldiers in the fulfillment of their sacred duty to God and Motherland.
In the year of her appearance in Kazan (according to other sources two years later) began the famous march " for Kazan" (beyond the Ural Mountains) of Blessed Herman, the Cossack ataman Ermak Timofeevich Povolsky (+ 1584), which culminated in the joining of Siberia. The gracious energy emitted by the miraculous image was enough for the Russian missionary explorers to travel many thousands of kilometers to the East, "to meet the sun" and on the Feast of the Intercession in 1639 they set out on the first voyage across the Pacific Ocean, preaching salvation to the surrounding peoples.
In the cathedral of the Kazan Maiden Monastery the icon was located until the beginning of the twentieth century, and in 1904 Russia was shaken by the news of the stealing of the relic. The sacrilegious event occurred on the night of June 28-29, 1904.
There were several vestments for the holy icon. The festive one was worn on Christmas, Easter and on the days of the Kazan icon, while the everyday one was worn on other days. The festive vesture was golden. On it was worn another vesture, strung with large pearls, diamonds, emeralds, jahontas and other precious stones. The everyday one, no less precious, of Moscow work, all threaded with pearls, had gold crowns with diamond roses, many other ornaments and precious stones. And in 1767 Empress Catherine II attached a diamond crown to the icon. Apparently, it was because of such an array of jewelry that the Kazan icon was stolen from the Kazan Maiden Monastery by a gang of 28-year-old Bartholomew Stoyan. The thieves were soon caught, and in November 1904 a trial was held in Kazan. However, what became of the miraculous icon, during the investigation was not finally clarified. At the trial it was suggested that the icon had been burned, as burnt remains of icons were found in the furnace in Stoyan's apartment. The mother of Stoyan's roommate Kucherova testified in court that both icons had been chopped and burned by Stoyan. Stoyan himself denied participation in both the theft and destruction of the icons, confessing only to buying the stolen jewelry. Stoyan and his accomplice Komov were sentenced to deprivation of all rights, property and exile to hard labor for 12 and 10 years respectively.
The loss of the original image does not reduce the gracious power of all the many copies of the Kazan icon, through which the Most Holy Mother of God helps us with Her intercession before Her Son in the flesh, and in hypostasis, the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ.