AS he prayed, John heard a voice reminding him of the icon of Christ’s mother Mary kept in the Church of the Transfiguration on Ilyina street.* Next morning, he sent his deacon to bring it first to the Cathedral and then to the gaol. Prayers continued until the morning of February 25th, the fourth day of the siege, when, with arrows raining over the city walls, Mstislav attacked.
Two things then happened at once. One was that John noticed tears rolling down Mary’s cheeks; gently he used his vestments to dry them. The other was that Mstislav’s men wavered, and began stumbling about blindly, fighting amongst themselves. At that, the Novgorodians remembered their courage, and running out of the city gates took some of their enemy prisoner and slew others; the rest fled in panic.
John immediately proclaimed a public holiday. A monastery was built on the site of the gaol,* and the icon remains to this day, in the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom.
A church still stands on the site, though the building is fourteenth century. See a picture at Wikimedia Commons. It is decorated with icons by Theophanes the Greek (?1340-1410), an artist born in Constantinople but living in Novgorod and subsequently Moscow, who was the tutor of Andrey Rublev.
The Desyatinny Monastery, or Monastery of the Tithes, thought to be have been founded soon after the miracle. It was considerably enlarged and developed over the centuries, but like so many monasteries it was evacuated and vandalised by the Communists, and is now no longer in use. See a picture at Wikimedia Commons.
