The Virgin of Vladímir and the withdrawal of Tamerlán
Vladímir · Moscú, Rusia · 1395
The conqueror who came to the gates of Moscow
In the summer of 1395, Timur - the conqueror known in the West as Tamerlán - was moving towards Moscow at the head of an army that had thrown everything in its way: Persia, the Caucasus, the Golden Horde. No one had stopped him. The Great Principality of Moscow was its next objective, and Russian forces could not offer military resistance of any kind. The people lived in a state of collective terror.
Prince Vasili I and the Moscow boyars then made a decision that revealed their last hope: they ordered to transfer from the city of Vladímir to Moscow the most sacred icon of Russia, the image of the Virgin of Vladímir.
The sacred icon arrives in Moscow
The Virgin of Vladímir - attributed by tradition to St Luke the Evangelist, although modern experts date it in the 12th century in Byzantium - had been the protective icon of Russia for centuries. He represented the Virgin and the Child in a gesture of extraordinary tenderness: the Child supports his cheek on his Mother's cheek, and he wraps it with a look that mixes the love and the presence of future pain.
On August 26, 1395, the procession with the icon reached the doors of Moscow. According to the chronicles, he was received throughout the city on his knees, with the people praying and the monks singing. The icon was installed in the Cathedral of the Kremlin Sleep.
La retirada inexplicable
What happened next challenged all military logic. Tamerlán, at the time his explorers were already advancing over the territory of Moscow, ordered to stop the march. He was in camp for two weeks. And then, without combat, without negotiation, without apparent cause, he ordered the withdrawal to the south. Moscow had survived.
The Russian chronicles collect a story according to which Tamerlan himself would have had in his dream a vision of a luminous woman surrounded by heavenly warriors, who ordered him to withdraw. Whatever the historical explanation, the fact is that the greatest conqueror of his time withdrew from Moscow without attacking it, and that that same day the icon reached the city.
An icon that defines a nation
The Virgin of Vladímir was invoked at all critical moments in Russian history during the following centuries: the Mongolian invasion, the war with Poland, the battle of Borodino. The original icon is preserved today at the Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow, where the faithful continue to veneration before him. The feast of August 26, established in memory of the salvation of 1395, is held to this day in the Russian Orthodox Church.
intercede for those who are today in war on those same lands
where your icon was taken in procession six centuries ago. Amen.