The position of the honest robe of the Most Holy Mother of God in Vlahern

Every year on July 15, Orthodox believers celebrate the date, which is directly connected with the appearance of the first church hierarchy in Kiev. We are talking about a holiday in honor of the transfer of the robe of the Virgin to the Vlachersky quarter of Constantinople.

The events that marked the beginning of the celebration belong to the middle of the fifth century. Two noble men from the entourage of Emperor Leo Macella traveled through the Galilean lands. In a small nursing home of an elderly woman, they noticed an unusual situation: lamps were burning, the smell of incense was felt. It turned out that the hostess for a long time protected a fragment of the vestments of the All-Pure Virgin. According to oral tradition, the shrine was transferred exclusively to unmarried heirs of the family from the very moment of the Assumption. Persuading the woman to part with the artifact, Galbius and Candide transported it to the capital of the empire. The clergy and the head of state reverently confirmed the incorruptibility of the fabric, after which a new repository was made for it and placed in the coastal church.

The strategic significance of this acquisition was revealed in 860. The ancient Russian flotilla under the command of Prince Askold blocked the Bosphorus Strait and came close to the fortifications of Constantinople. There is a real threat of capture over the city. Patriarch Photius ordered a procession with the shrine. The edge of matter with prayerful singing was lowered into the sea surface, after which the situation in the theater of military operations changed dramatically. The ships of the attackers left the waters, the parties concluded a truce, implying the payment of a large indemnity.

However, the key consequences were not military, but civilizational. The Russians, shocked by the incident, sent diplomats to Constantinople. The result of the negotiations was the signing of a treaty, one of the conditions of which was the voluntary acceptance of Christianity. Already at the turn of 860-861 years in the Dnieper earned a spiritual mission, which was headed by the creator of the Slavic alphabet Kirill Philosopher. The princely elite led by Askold passed the rite of baptism. The administrative lists of the Patriarchate of Constantinople officially recorded the emergence of a new metropolis. Thus, the miracle of Constantinople became the starting point for the institutional design of the church in the East Slavic territories.

Centuries later, the echoes of those events appeared in Moscow. In the middle of the XV century, when the troops of the Horde leader Mazovsha approached the walls of the Kremlin, the defense was held largely thanks to the spiritual support of Metropolitan Jonah. The sudden departure of the enemy without a fight on July 15 (July 2 according to the old style) consolidated in the Russian tradition a special attitude to this day, which found architectural embodiment in the construction of the stone church of the Rise.