The summer of 1579: a girl, a dream and a ruins

It was the summer of 1579 in Kazan, the great city on the banks of Volga that the Tsar Ivan the Terrible had conquered the Tatars just 27 years earlier. The city still carried the scars of the siege: entire neighborhoods had burned, and among the rubble of what had been the Tatar heart of Kazan, the Russians were building their own city on the ruins.

In that newly conquered, newly Christian city on its Russian side, a modest family lived. The father was a streletz, one of the infantry soldiers who formed the backbone of the Moscow army. And in that family there was a nine-year-old girl named Matrona.

The Virgin came to Matrona in a dream. Not once: several times, insistently, with the accuracy of who knows that he has to give an exact address. The Virgin told her to go to a specific place between the ruins, to a place where there had been a house before the fire, and to dig. That I would find an icon there.

The mother didn't listen to him at first. A child's dream is a child's dream. But the Virgin came back. And he came back. And when Matrona started showing physical symptoms - fever, agitation, what we would call somatic stress today - the mother decided to take her to the place the girl described. They dug in the burned land. And there, wrapped in red cloth, they found the icon.

It was a small image: the Virgin represented front, the Child Jesus before her with her hand raised in a gesture of blessing. The style was that of the Eastern Greek icons, with the gold of the background symbolizing the divine light, with the figures stylized according to the canons of Byzantine tradition. He was in perfect conservation, like someone buried him yesterday.

"When we pulled the icon out of the earth, it shone like it was just painted. There was no stain, no sign that he had been under the earth. It was like they were giving it to us."
- According to the account of Archbishop Hermogenes, witness to the discovery, 16th century

The Archbishop of Kazan, Hermogenes - who years later would be canonized as a Russian martyr and national hero - went to the place. A solemn procession was held. The icon was taken to the Cathedral of the Annunciation of Kazan. And there began what history calls the "story of miracles" of the Kazan icon: a blind man who regained his sight, a lame man who began to walk. The Tsar Ivan the Terrible, when he heard the news, ordered to build in that same place a monastery dedicated to the Virgin of Kazan.

The art of the icon: what it represents and what it transmits

To understand the devotion to the icon of Kazan you have to understand some theology of the icon that is sometimes overlooked in the West. In the Eastern Christian tradition, an icon is not an illustration: it is a presence. The icon is a window between the visible and the invisible world. When a faithful Orthodox venerates an icon - when he kisses it, when he lights a candle before it, when he speaks to it in prayer - he is not venerating an object: he is in contact with the person represented.

The Virgin of Kazan belongs to the iconographic type called Hodegetria - "the one that shows the way" - though with its own variations. Mary appears from the front, with the Child Jesus before her. The characteristic of the Kazan icon is the intimacy of the position: Mary and the Child are not in the formal distance of the majesty, but in a closeness that transmits tenderness. She's a mother to her son. And at the same time it is the Theotokos - the Carrier of God - with the Logos incarnate.

This double dimension - the human and the divine, together and inseparable - has made the Virgin of Kazan the most loved icon of Russia over the centuries. It is not just a sacred object: it is a companion in the battles of history, a witness to what Russia has suffered and overcome.

1612: the icon that released Moscow

The first great historical moment of the Kazan icon came in 1612, in one of the most dramatic episodes in Russian history: the Time of the Tumours. Poland had invaded Russia. The Poles occupied the Moscow Kremlin. The country seemed to be on the brink of disintegration: there was no legitimate czar, the boyars were divided, foreign troops were plundering the cities.

At that time of total crisis, a butcher from Nizhni Novgorod named Kuzma Minin and a prince named Dmitri Pozharski organized a popular army to free Moscow. And that army was carrying a copy of Kazan's icon.

Legend says that before the decisive assault on the Kremlin, the soldiers fasted three days and prayed before the icon. That the archbishop of Archangel, a prisoner in the Kremlin, had a vision in which he was told that the liberation was near. That when the army of Minin and Pozharski entered the Kremlin on 4 November 1612 and the Poles capitulated, the Russian soldiers attributed the victory to the intercession of the Virgin of Kazan.

November 4 became a national festival of Russia - the Day of National Unity - forever associated with the icon of Kazan. It is one of the few religious parties that Soviet Russia could not completely eliminate, because it was too imformed in national identity. And when Vladimir Putin officially re-established November 4 as a festive day in 2005, he was recognizing, whether conscious or not, that the Virgin of Kazan remains an unchanging piece of Russian identity.

• 1579The girl Matrona of Kazan dreams of the Virgin, which tells her where the icon is buried. The discovery becomes a national event.
• 1579–1612The icon remains in the monastery of Kazan. Multiple miracles are recorded. It becomes the most venerated icon in the Volga region.
• 1612The army of Minin and Pozharski frees Moscow from the Poles. November 4 becomes a national party linked to the Kazan icon.
• 1721Peter the Great moved a copy of the icon to St. Petersburg, the new capital of the Russian Empire. The icon accompanies the transformation of Russia into European power.
• 1812Napoleon invades Russia. Marshal Kutuzov prays before the icon of Kazan in the Cathedral of St. Petersburg before leaving to the front. France is defeated.
• 1904Kazan's original icon is stolen from the monastery. He never shows up. The mystery of his whereabouts comes to this day.
• 2004Pope John Paul II returns to Russia the copy of Fatima from the Kazan icon. The Vatican gives it to the Patriarch of Moscow.

St. Petersburg and Napoleon: the icon in the great battles of Russia

Tsar Peter the Great, when he moved the capital of Russia from Moscow to St. Petersburg in 1712, also moved devotion to the icon of Kazan. A copy was taken to the new city, and in 1811 - just a year before the Napoleonic invasion - the magnificent Cathedral of Kazan was opened in St. Petersburg, specifically built to house the copy of the icon. The cathedral, with its semicircular columnate inspired by that of St. Peter of the Vatican, was a symbol of the new imperial Russia that Peter had dreamed of: powerful, European, but also deeply linked to his orthodox religious tradition.

And then Napoleon came.

In the summer of 1812, the French army crossed the Niemen River and began its march towards Moscow. It was the most powerful army the world had ever seen: six hundred thousand soldiers, artillery, cavalry, the strategic genius of the man who had conquered Europe. Tsar Alexander I and his generals were desperate.

Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov, appointed commander-in-chief of the Russian army, went to pray to the Kazan Cathedral of St. Petersburg before leaving for the front. The icon of the Virgin of Kazan was there. Kutuzov kneeled before him. Witnesses said he prayed for a long time, in silence.

What followed is history: the battle of Borodinó, Napoleon's entry into Moscow, the fire of the city, the desperate withdrawal of the French army from the snow and the cold of Russian winter. One of the most devastating defeats in military history. When the remains of the Napoleonic army crossed the Niemen back in December 1812 - with more than four hundred thousand casualties among the dead, wounded and prisoners - the Russians attributed victory, among other factors, to the intercession of the Virgin of Kazan.

"In front of this icon the Marshal Kutuzov begged before embarking on the 1812 campaign. The icon was consecrated the standards taken from the enemy. This icon accompanied our armies in their advance to Paris."
- Registration at the Cathedral of Kazan in St. Petersburg

The great mystery of 1904: the theft of the original icon

In the morning of June 29, 1904, thieves entered the Monastery of the Virgin of Kazan and stole the original icon - the one that Matrona girl had found in 1579. It was not a casual robbery: someone knew exactly where the image was, how to surprise the safety of the monastery, and also knew that it could make something of incalculable value disappear without leaving a trace.

The thieves were identified and detained shortly after: a certain Varfolomei Stoyan and his accomplices. But the icon didn't show up. Stoyan confessed to having destroyed it - burned to recover the gold and the precious stones of the riza, the metal cover that covered the icon - but many did not believe it. The confession seemed too convenient. Where was the original icon?

This mystery has been unresolved for more than a century, and has fed one of the most fascinating speculations in Russian religious history. Some theories claim that the thieves sold the icon to private collectors and that it still exists somewhere. Others suggest that the image that appeared in the 20th century in the hands of English collectors and that finally arrived in Fatima was the original, not a copy. No one knows for sure.

What is true is that the loss of the original icon of 1579 was lived in Russia as a spiritual catastrophe. The country was in 1904 on the eve of the war against Japan, at a time of growing social tension that three years later would erupt in the 1905 revolution. For many people, the icon theft was read as an omen.

The Fatima icon: the copy that traveled the world

In the 20th century, a copy of Kazan's icon had its own extraordinary history. In 1917 - the same year of the Russian Revolution - the image disappeared from St. Petersburg and began a perich that would take it to private collections in Europe. In 1953, she was bought by an English adventurer and explorer named F. A. Mitchell-Hedges. In 1965, he finished at the Shrine of Fatima in Portugal, donated by a religious congregation.

The coincidence did not go unnoticed: the most loved icon in Russia was in Fatima, the sanctuary where in 1917 the Virgin had asked for the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart. For the devotees, it was a sign of Providence.

Pope John Paul II - who had a special devotion to both Fatima and Russia - decided in 2004 to return the icon to the Russian people. In August of that year, on the occasion of Cardinal Kasper's visit to Moscow, the icon was given to Patriarch Alexis II. It was an extraordinary gesture of ecumenical approach: the Pope of Rome returned the Russian Orthodox Church to its most sacred icon.

A shared icon: Orthodox and Catholic before the same image

There is something extraordinary about devotion to the Virgin of Kazan that transcends the divisions between the Eastern and Western Christian Churches: the same icon - or its copies - is venerated with equal fervor by Orthodox and Catholic. The Orthodox see in him the deepest symbol of Russian religious identity. The Ukrainian Greek-Catholics, the Latin rite Catholics who knew the icon in the countries of Eastern Europe, the Fátima faithful in Portugal: they all recognize in that image of the Mother of God something that speaks directly to the heart.

John Paul II, who spent decades calling for reconciliation between Rome and Moscow, saw in the icon of Kazan a symbol of what the two great Christian traditions had in common. When he returned it in 2004, he said it was "a gesture of love for the Russian people and the Orthodox Church." It was one of the most exciting moments of his pontificate.

There is something that the theology of the icon - that tradition that says that the icon is a window between the visible and the invisible world - teaches about this phenomenon: that the Virgin represented in that icon does not belong to one Church or another. It belongs to all who contemplate it with faith. And that the human divisions - as important and painful as they may be - do not go as far as the look of Mary comes.

The feast of November 4: history and intertwined devotion

On November 4, when the army of Minin and Pozharski released Moscow in 1612, it was for centuries the main liturgical feast of the Virgin of Kazan on the Russian calendar. The Russian Orthodox Church celebrates it as the "Fall Kazan Festival," as opposed to the July 8 "Summer Kazan Festival," which commemorates the discovery of the icon.

In Soviet times, the religious feast was suppressed. But in 2005, President Vladimir Putin established November 4 as "National Unity Day," implicitly recognizing the historical event linked to the icon, not to mention its religious dimension. It is one of the most striking examples of how Marian history and devotion in Russia are, in substance, inseparable.

Today, the Icon processions of the Virgin of Kazan cross the streets of Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kazan on November 4. The Orthodox and the politicians share that day, each from their own perspective, the memory of a moment when Russia was saved - or saved itself, as it looks - with the Virgin of Kazan as a flag.

For today's pilgrim: Kazan, the city of Volga

The city of Kazan, the capital of the autonomous Republic of Tartaristan in the Russian Federation, is one of the most fascinating places in Russia: a city where Tatar Islam and Russian Orthodox Christianity have coexisted for five centuries, where the minarets and golden domes draw together the horizon. It is also one of the most important university cities in Russia, and a city with a story that no textbook can reduce to a few pages.

The Monastery of the Virgin of Kazan - where today the copy returned by the Vatican in 2004 is venerated - is in the historical heart of the city, next to the Kremlin of Kazan. The exact place where the Matrona girl found the icon in 1579 is marked. The well that tradition associates to discovery still exists.

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