October 22 — Korsun Icon of the Mother of God: the history of the shrine and the Belgorod sourcetranslated

With the blessing of Metropolitan John of Belgorod and Stary Oskol, on October 22, the Russian Orthodox Church honors the Korsun Icon of the Mother of God. For the Belgorod region, this holiday is special: not far from the city, in the Monastery Forest, there is a spring, which, according to legend, flowed at the site of the miraculous discovery of this shrine. We tell you where the icon came from and why people still go to the spring. It is not known for certain how exactly the image came to Rus' - there are two legends, and the Church accepts both as possible. According to the first, the icon was painted by the Evangelist Luke, and for a long time it was kept in the city of Ephesus. In 988, Prince Vladimir, who baptized Rus', brought a copy of this image from Korsun (now Sevastopol) to Kyiv - hence the name. Later, the icon ended up in Novgorod, and under Ivan the Terrible it was transferred to Moscow, to the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin, where it remained behind the throne until the revolution. The second legend is connected with the Venerable Euphrosyne of Polotsk. In the 12th century, she asked the Byzantine emperor to send her an icon painted by the Evangelist Luke.

The image was transported through Korsun, and local residents begged to leave the shrine with them for a year - this is how the name “Korsun” stuck. Later the icon...