Patriarch Photius lowers a garment said to have belonged to the Virgin Mary into the Black Sea, in the face of the invasion from Kievan Rus’. This painting is a fresco in the Kremlin in Moscow, where the Church of the Laying of Our Lady’s Robe stands.
Part 1 of 2
IN around 866,* Kiev’s Viking founders, Askold and Dir, crossed the Black Sea with many ships to lay siege to Constantinople, mighty capital of the Roman Empire, while Emperor Michael III was away dealing with an Arab assault on the eastern border. Michael raced back into his capital and his palace, the Blachernae, and at once summoned Patriarch Photius to join him for urgent prayer in the nearby church, where the robe, mantle and belt of the Virgin Mary herself had been kept since the fifth century.
After a long night’s vigil, at which the assembled citizens sang again a hymn to Mary that had helped drive off the Arabs a generation earlier, the Patriarch and his clergy bore her mantle down to the Black Sea, and with the utmost reverence dipped it into the gently lapping waters.* At once, a lively wind picked up, the waters skipped, and soon Askold’s fleet, two hundred strong, was being helplessly tossed and splintered on the shore.
The story and dramatis personae as given here follow ‘The Tale of Past Years’ fairly uncritically; the reader should be aware that scholars today are sceptical. However, some kind of an assault on the City in 866 or so, emanating from Kievan Rus’, seems reasonably well-established.
The sources do not state precisely which item of clothing was used.
Précis
Shortly after founding Kiev, the pagan warlords Askold and Dir attempted to take Constantinople, capital of the Roman Empire, with a fleet of two hundred ships. However, the clergy of the Christian city touched the waters of the Black Sea with a sacred relic, the mantle of the Virgin Mary, triggering a storm that destroyed the invading fleet. (58 / 60 words)
Part Two
Detail of an icon of the Protection (Pokrov) of the Theotokos, dated to 1399. The events described here, when St Andrew of Constantinople saw the Virgin Mary cast her mantle over the congregation in the Blachernae church in 907, are commemorated every year on October 1st. In Greece, however, the feast is now kept on October 28th to coincide with ‘Ohi Day’, the day when in 1941 the Greek people refused to side with the Axis Powers in the Second World War. See The Day of ‘No’.
FORTY years later, in 907, the Viking warrior Oleg, ruler of Kievan Rus’, swept once again over the Black Sea to Constantinople. He marched up to the city gates, fixed his shield to them proprietorially — and then unexpectedly left, with just a trade deal in his pocket.
Perhaps not entirely unexpectedly, at least not for monk Andrew,* himself a Russian, and his friend Epiphanius. They had crowded with other citizens into the Blachernae church near the city gates to implore the Virgin Mary’s aid, when suddenly Andrew saw Mary herself enter, accompanied by flights of angels who sang her to the heart of the church, where she stopped, knelt, and prayed with tears in her eyes. Then she took the mantle* from her head and shoulders, and seemed to cast it over the congregation. “Do you see, brother, the Holy Theotokos* praying for all the world?” whispered Andrew, and Epiphanius answered in wonder that he did, even as mantle and Virgin dissolved into light, and vanished.
The word ‘mantle’ has been chosen rather than the more usual ‘veil’ because the latter gives the wrong impression. Roman ladies of the first century AD did not wear face-coverings, only head-coverings, a sign of being married.
St Andrew of Constantinople, who died in 936.
‘Theotokos’ means ‘God’s birth-giver’, a title officially recognised at the Council of Ephesus in 431 and again at Chalcedon in 451, but originally much older.
Précis
In 911, Oleg of Novgorod brought Constantinople to its knees, but did not pursue his advantage. It was said that the Virgin Mary appeared to the beleaguered citizens as they prayed to her for deliverance, and cast her mantle over them as a sign of her protection, a miracle still celebrated every year, especially in Russia. (55 / 60 words)