Anecdotes about the Virgin Mary

"The icon of Vladimir and the unexpected retreat of Tamerlane"

Moscow (Russia)

El Vladímir's Mother of God icon is one of the oldest and most venerated in all of Russia. It's the type called Hodigitria, «la que muestra el camino», y la piedad le atribuye un origen muy noble: la tradición dice que fue pintado por la mano de Luke evagelist, although this is a devotional statement that cannot be verified. From Constantinople to Kiev, and from there to Vladímir and finally to Moscow, the icon was joined as few to the spiritual destiny of the Russian people.

En 1395, the fearsome conqueror Tamerlan (Timur), who had torn whole kingdoms from Central Asia, advanced with his army to Russian lands. The great prince of Moscow, facing a threat that seemed impossible to stop, commanded bring the Vladímir icon in solemn procession to the capital. As the people prayed before the image, the unexpected happened: Tamerlán se retiró without attacking Moscow, and liberation was attributed to the intercession of the Mother of God. The Orthodox Church conserves a liturgical feast in memory of that day.

Here it is appropriate to make a careful distinction. That Tamerlán did not get to take Moscow and that there was a retreat is something admitted by history; the reasons of a conqueror to change the course of a campaign can be many. That the withdrawal would coincide with the procesión del icono and read as the work of the Virgin clearly belongs to the Hagiographical and national-religious accountrepeated for centuries by ecclesial sources. A contemporary documentary test that causes and effects no consta; we are facing a pious tradition firmly settled, not a closed file data.

And yet what the people kept in their hearts was not a military chronicle, but a gesture: in the face of fear, go out to receive the Mother. They were not first in their weapons, but in their prayer. That is exactly the attitude of the Rosary: when life puts us before an enemy that overcomes us, not to be alone, but to take the hand of the Mother of God and walk with her, repeating the Avemaria as one who goes out in procession to meet Heaven.