The Mother of God of Hodigitria

Mother of God Hodegetria of Tikhvin icon Cast from brass alloy, topped with a decorative 'kokoshnik', the personal use icon shows the popular in Russia depiction of the Tikhvin Mother of God Hodegetria, whose image, painted on a board, appeared above Lake Ladoga in the 14th c. - see S.12387MŁ. In the years 1613-1614, when the Swedes occupied Veliky Novgorod, located to the south, they tried to capture and plunder the Tikhvin monastery in several expeditions. Its effective defence, led by the monks and local inhabitants, was credited to the intercession of the painting of the Mother of God housed in the monastery. After the end of the war, the Tsar's envoys made a copy of the miraculous icon, and in its presence, a peace treaty with the Swedes was signed in the nearby Stolbovo on the 9th of March 1617 (February 27 in the Julian calendar). This strengthened the fame of the image of the Tikhvin Mother of God, considered the defender of the northern borders of the Russian tsardom. The copy from Stolbovo was first placed in Moscow's Uspensky Cathedral but, at the request of the veterans of the war with the Swedes, it was given to the St. Sophia Cathedral in Novgorod. The feast day of the icon was established for the 9th of July (June 26 in the Julian calendar) at this time. The oldest icon from Tikhvin underwent full conservation before the 1917 revolution, but in communist times the monastery was closed and the icon was incorporated into museum collections. After the German occupation of Tikhvin in 1941, the painting was transferred to Pskov, from where it was moved to Germany, along with the German troops retreating through Latvia. There, it found itself in the American occupation zone. After the war, the icon was transported to the USA, and from 1950 it had been housed in the Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral in Chicago. It only returned to Russia after the reopening of the Tikhvin monastery in 1995, given back in 2004. Teresa Bagińska-Żurawska https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9243-3967