The Mother of God of Hodigitria

Icon of the Mother of God Hodegetria of Chernihiv-Gethsemane, 19th/20th century. The Hodegetria icons are among the most popular images of the Mother of God with Child – see S.12677MŁ. The name of the image of the Hodegetria of Chernihiv-Gethsemane comes from the hermitage in Sergiyev-Posad near Moscow – see S.13013MŁ. However, its history dates back to the 11th century and began near Kiev in Chernihiv, one of the oldest historical cities of Ruthenia, destroyed by the Mongols, incorporated successively into Lithuania, the Duchy of Moscow and the Republic of Poland, and from 1654, after the Pereyaslav Agreement, annexed to Russia. Chernihiv, situated in north-eastern Ukraine remains to this day an important centre of religious worship for the Orthodox faith. The founder of the Pechersk Lavra in Kiev, a monk called Anthony of Pechersk, fleeing Kiev in 1069 from Prince Iziaslav, found shelter in Chernihiv, where he began his monastic life on the slopes of the mountain called Boldyna Hora. Prince Sviatoslav founded the Orthodox church of the Dormition of the Mother of God and the Yeletsky monastery, called after the fir forest that surrounded it. According to the tradition, it is here that the icon of the Mother of God, called Yeletska, after the circumstances of the revelation, was appeared to Anthony of Pechersk among the branches of a fir tree. After the original painting was lost in the 17th century, monk Gennadius from the monastery of the Holy Trinity and St Elijah wrote in 1658 in Chernihiv the icon of Hodegetria called, after St Elijah, the Ilinska Mother of God. She became famous for the miracles described by Dmitri Rostovsky. Her image was popularised in numerous copies throughout Russia. One of the copies, painted on canvas, was donated in the mid-19th century to the Gethsemane hermitage in the town of Sergiyev-Posad near Moscow, and the presented icon is its copy. There are three variants of the image of Hodegetria, called the Mother of God of Chernihiv, that can still be found today: Yeletska, Ilinska and Gethsemane. Teresa Bagińska-Żurawska https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9243-3967