Icons of Mary holding her Son Jesus have been popular since the Council of Ephesus which in 431 solemnly declared Mary to be the Theotokos or Mother of God.
St. Luke was the first one who painted the "Theotokos", "Mother of God", while she was still alive. He is credited with three icons of the "Panagia", in one case using the wooden table where Mary and St. John ate their meals.
Throughout history, many Icons of the Most Holy Mother of God have had miracles attributed to them.
In addition, there are those Icons which may not have been miracle working, but still been venerated with the hope of intercession from the Mother of God.
St. Luke was the first one who painted the "Theotokos", "Mother of God", while she was still alive. He is credited with three icons of the "Panagia", in one case using the wooden table where Mary and St. John ate their meals.
Throughout history, many Icons of the Most Holy Mother of God have had miracles attributed to them.
In addition, there are those Icons which may not have been miracle working, but still been venerated with the hope of intercession from the Mother of God.
Georgian Icon
of the
Mother of God
of the
Mother of God
In 1622 the Persian Shah Abbas conquered Georgia. Many Christian holy things were stolen, and many were sold to the Russian merchants in Persia. Thus, the Georgian Icon of the Mother of God came to a certain merchant named Stephen, who piously kept it.
In Yaroslavl, the merchant George Lytkin, on whose business Stephen was in Persia, received a revelation in a dream about the holy object found by Stephen, and he was commanded to send it to the Chernogorsk monastery in the Arkhangelsk diocese, founded in 1603.
When Stephen returned home in 1629 and showed the icon to George Lytkin, he remembered his vision and he set off to the Dvina outskirts to the Chernogorsk monastery (so called because it was built on a hilly and somber place. From of old it had been named Black Hill, but afterwards the monastery changed the name to Pretty Hill.
The icon was glorified there by miracles. In 1654, during the time of a pestilential plague, the icon was transferred to Moscow, and those praying before it escaped the deadly plague. The numerous copies of the icon testify to its deep veneration.
In 1658, with the blessing of Patriarch Nikon, there was established an annual feastday of the Georgian Icon of the Mother of God. The service was written in 1698 under the supervision of Theodore Polykarpov of the Moscow.
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