Author of the ancient story about the Feodorovskaya Icon of the Mother of God

There is no need to dwell on the motives that guided us when we chose the ancient story of the Theodore Icon of the Mother of God as the subject of our report. Almost everything that we know so far about the miraculous appearance of the most important shrine of our native city and the initial history of its main cathedral church, we owe to this very story. She also provided, in part, the content for the church service on the feast of the advent of the miraculous image, which is celebrated twice a year by citizens. And this is the reason why few researchers of local history and archeology have not used our story; but of the many who studied, only one, Fr. P.F. Ostrovsky, as far as we know, deliberately focused his attention on her. Having printed the first half of the story that interests us from the Milyutinsky Chet-Menya in his “Historical Description of the Kostroma Assumption Cathedral”, he placed in parallel with it from the Spaso-Zaprudensky Synodik and the beginning of the well-known, I believe, to our listeners “The Tale of the Miracle-Working Icon of the Most Pure Mother of God of Theodorov, How It Was Brought from the City of Gorodets to Kostroma.” Having accepted the story and legend for the same work, which only received a slight difference in presentation from time to time, the late worker noted about the copies of the story and legend that were in his hands that they, without a doubt, were not earlier than the first third of the 17th century and “were not written from manuscripts that book people had before the time of troubles in our fatherland”... Milyutin's chety-menaia were written in 1646–1654, according to the books of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, by the priest of the Nativity Church, which is still located with it to this day, John Milyutin and his three sons. Compiled by Fr. John in the August Menaion of the story about the Theodore Icon of the Mother of God, does not leave his reader completely bewildered about the sources and time of writing of his work. “... What should I say or what will we confess about this wonderful icon,” he asks himself and answers: “But I heard from many good people and those who had the scripture before the ruin of the Lithuanian and Polish people, and I talked with them many times, and asked them questions, and heard sweet things from them.” – Who is this compiler who so carefully tried to find out the truth about the Theodore Icon of the Mother of God and who were his knowledgeable interlocutors? We do not have direct data for a positive answer to the questions posed, but we think that the last were probably the book elders of the Sergius Monastery of the early 30s of the 17th century, and the compiler of the story, perhaps, was the priest John Milutin himself, in whose menaions we first meet her. To substantiate our opinion, we must first of all say, following others, that Fr. Milyutin was not only a copyist, a simple copyist, like his children, whom, “for the sake of haste,” undoubtedly partly helped with his “quick writing.” His enormous work was combined with diligent searches and a fairly reasonable selection of the most accurate lives and reliable stories from the Lavra manuscripts. In the Milyutinsky menaions “you can almost always find articles that are very rare in other lists; There are even one-of-a-kind instructions that are not found anywhere else.” It is clear from everything that their collector was a well-read and inquisitive man. The love of books probably brought young Ivan Milyutin in December 1631 to the Trinity Lavra with its “rich book guardian of divine scriptures.” A native of Nizhny Novgorod from Balakhna, Milyutin met here with his fellow countryman, the former cathedral archpriest, also of the city of Balakhna, the elder book guardian Joasaph Kiryanov, who, knowing Ivan as a young man from a wealthy and, apparently, spiritual family, and perhaps being partly related to him, did not fail to bring him together with the outstanding book writer of that time in the Sergius monastery - hierome German Tulupov, who was then working on the production of those same chety-minas from which, a decade and a half later, Milyutin had to copy so much. One elder, through an acquaintance, opened access to books to an inquisitive novice, and another, it seems, through his personal example, developed in his soul a penchant for hagiographical activities. It’s not for nothing that much later, Fr. John spoke more than once about his mentors and archimandrite. Dionysius, as “virtuous men and stewards of the divine scriptures,” in the vicinity of whom he pursued his moral improvement and mental education. Studying in the Lavra library of “book wisdom”, which at the end of his days he put above the “lordship of the sun”, Fr. John “asked a lot,” by his own admission, “from those who were superior in understanding and teaching.” And it’s easy to imagine now what his questions revolved around. Spiritual wisdom alone could not, of course, occupy all the time of the interlocutors. Both the new monk and the gray-haired elders were drawn to their dear homeland during hours of leisure and long conversations. The residents of Balakhon talked about Balakhna, about Gorodets located next door, about Kostroma saints, monasteries and monuments, and as bookish people, they went back into the past for places sacred to their memories. And in this past, as partly in the present, stood before their mind’s eye an equally dear and common shrine, the miraculous icon of the Mother of God, almost four centuries before, with the destruction of Gorodets by the Tatars, which did not want to remain in its empty place and took “the city of Kostroma and its borders into possession.” The elders, who “knew a lot of good things,” told the novice about the terrible Batu pogrom and about the misadventures they experienced then from the filthy people in their native places. The former Balakhonsky archpriest told, of course, his young co-questioner about the extraordinary circumstances that once accompanied the appearance of the icon of the Mother of God in Kostroma; he, one might guess, possessed, along with others, a written legend about this outstanding event in the local region, which was lost in the raids of the Polish-Lithuanian people. The circumstances of that time, and most of all, which began with the election of Romanov to the kingdom, the intensely reverent honoring of the Theodore Icon of the Mother of God in Moscow, especially at the top of the sovereign himself, gave our old fellow countrymen another reason to share their impressions of the incidents of their native land that involuntarily resurrected in their memory. These conversations with the elders, after twenty years, were remembered by Fr. John and gave him part of the material for the story we are now considering. Comparing the latter with the works that undoubtedly came from the pen of Fr. John Milyutin, with his prefaces, afterwords and various kinds of notes, scattered in significant numbers throughout his extensive hagiographic collection, it is easy to notice, striking at times, the similarity between them in literary techniques, in the style of not always correct, but always definite speech, in the word expression itself. Having set himself the idea of ​​collecting spiritually beneficial readings in his menaions, Milutin, like his glorious predecessors, Archbishop. Novgorod Macarius and Hierom. German Tulupov, tried in every possible way not to include in them the writings of renouncers, false or heretical articles, to correct what was wrong in the lives, to omit what was clearly sinful in the legends, to reconcile what was contradictory in the stories. Conveying the doubts circulating about this or that article whether to read it or not, Fr. John often writes: “Be aware of this also, for there is dissension among many; Oviy say this, Oviy otherwise, let the discord cease about this, and the truth will be known, and now I, priest Ivanishche, have found the truth in these books..., and then usually follows the result of his research, the reconciliation of differences. So the author of the story about the Theodore Icon of the Mother of God, mentioning at the beginning that he had to ask about it many times, talk well with people and those who know a lot, also notes: ... “and I say this and that, but I remember that this is the truth, about which I want to touch and write this story.” The similarity of the writing style and textual coincidences, like the one just cited, do not seem accidental to us and in connection with everything that has been said so far about Fr. John Milyutin, rather confirm our guess that the story being interpreted belongs to him. Whoever, however, is recognized in science as the compiler of the latter, justice requires that we say about him that he was a discerning writer and in every case more careful in conveying historical facts than his successors, the relatively later “storytellers.” Detached several centuries from the events narrated, he clearly dates Batu’s invasion, but is silent about the time of local incidents, for example, the appearance of the miraculous icon of Feodorovskaya, the construction of a stone church for it by Grand Duke Vasily Kvashnya; does not call the latter Georgievich instead of Yaroslavich and the grandson of the blessed prince Alexander Nevsky, as his interpolator, the author of the legend found in the Spaso-Zaprudensky Synodik, erroneously does.” The insufficiently clear passages noted in the story, such as: about the construction of wooden churches and the inaccuracy, understandable in the mouth of a 17th-century writer, in the name of Prince Vasily Yaroslavich, not only Kostroma, but also Galich, are redeemed from him by some, in my opinion, valuable and completely definite, instructions regarding the ancient topography and church archeology of the city. Let me draw your enlightened attention to one of them. Having said that “the miraculous icon of the Mother of God was brought from the City of the City to Kostroma by Theodore Stratelates,” the author of the story explains: “in those days there was a cathedral church in Kostroma in the name of the great. Theodore Stratilates, which is on the site.” In the above words, it is highly noteworthy to note the participation in the miraculous appearance of the icon of the powerful patron of the city and the exact location of the church dedicated to him and, perhaps, the oldest church in the city. They are not talking about the site on which the well-known Church of the Resurrection stands and not about the square in front of the current cathedrals or the old Kostroma Kremlin; The author of the story means the area where for almost six centuries the church of Theodore Stratelates was located, which is well known and the only one of all the city churches in the 13th–14th centuries is called the chronicles. Built, it is believed, in honor of his angel by Grand Duke Yaroslav Vsevolodovich in the vicinity of the current Church of God, where for a long time city life was in full swing and for the sake of the crowded population, most of the churches of God were erected, it served for centuries as the religious center of the city, and was the main church in it. As such, St. Theodore was the subject of the warmest concerns of the inhabitants and, among them, the princes themselves, the place of their prayers and exceptional church and civil events. Not without reason, it, and not any other church, received the honor of becoming the first village of the icon of the Mother of God revealed at Zaprudna. Vel. Prince Vasily Yaroslavich, after the wooden church of Theodore Stratelates burned down twice not long after, decided to “erect a stone cathedral church” in a new place, “inside the city,” - in the Kremlin, “in the name of the Most Holy Theotokos, her honorable and glorious Dormition” with a chapel, in its deaconry, in honor of the Great Martyr Theodore Stratelates and transfer the miraculous work into it icon of the Mother of God. It was within his means and strength to carry out the planned enterprise in practice, to build a new church, to fence it with ditches and earthen scree, to create from the Kostroma Kremlin, exemplary for that time, a fortress, behind the walls of which in the XIV-XV centuries, the collectors of Rus' themselves - the Moscow princes - hid from enemies and among their own strife, and in the XVI-XVII centuries. the best people, noble and rich, had their own siege houses in case of hard times. But it was not in the power of Kostroma, even the Grand Duke, to immediately move the center of church and social life of an entire city, not a small one, to force the inhabitants, including their council members, to suddenly and without reason leave their ancestors’ homes, to forget the centuries-old shrine. It took more than one century for part of the inhabitants of the gradually growing ancient settlement to naturally flow from the mouth of Kostroma in the direction of the city founded by the princes and boyars; so that connected with the church of St. Theodore, - with this old palladium of the city, the sacred memories themselves passed into the new stone “Cathedral of the Most Pure Mother of God of the Wonderworking Icon of Theodore.” Being, at first, a branch office of the church of St. restored after the fire. Theodora, the latter for a long time was essentially a kind of exhibition church, did not have primary ecclesiastical and liturgical significance in the city. Even in the second half of the 16th century. and at the very beginning of the 17th century, royal grants and various kinds of holy letters were still being written and sent to Kostroma in the name of the archpriest of the “Cathedral Church of Theodore Stratelates.” There are no words, since the end of the 16th century, occasionally it is already called Prechistensky or Bogoroditsky, but in addition to the reverence of the inhabitants for the icon of the Queen of Heaven, some outside and strong influence was needed to place the Assumption Cathedral next to Feodorovsky, and even higher than it. And such powerful support was undoubtedly provided to him by Moscow, more precisely by Tsar Mikhail Feodorovich, who, “for the sake of the mercy of the Most Pure Mother of God, the miraculous icon of Feodorov”, shown to his house, began to show him clear preference and in his letters to Kostroma wrote to the archpriest “of the cathedral church of the Most Pure Mother of God and Theodore Stratelates.” Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, departing, of course, from the Moscow order, called the Kostroma Assumption Cathedral a “big” cathedral. He had, of course, in mind both its high, gradually growing religious and social significance and its dominant role, at that time, among other cathedrals in the city. We must not forget that the Kostroma churches with a fairly large clergy attached to them, like the churches of all other more or less large ancient Russian cities, in liturgical and administrative terms were divided into the so-called soroki in Moscow, each having its own cathedral church. Documentarily, I know the cathedrals in Kostroma: Trinity, Ascension, and then the Assumption Cathedral, which took its place. The ancient cathedral church of St. Theodora Stratelata on Mshanskaya Street behind Sula, which had become dilapidated over time and gradually lost its former significance, not abandoned only by its clergy, who still continued to live near her and from here go to serve in the Kremlin, in the 30s of the 17th century, stood without singing, even without icons and utensils, which, of necessity, had to be given over to the Assumption Cathedral, and then, after some three decades years and almost completely disappeared from people's memory, and from the entire city. And it falls to the lot of the church archaeologist, I will not say that it is a rewarding task, in the management of monuments in the kind of story we have briefly examined, to now look for the place where the cathedral church stood for several centuries, to guess even about the very square on which the life of our God-protected city was once concentrated 2. Abstract read on historical and archaeological. congress in Kostroma in 1909. For objections raised by the abstract, see “News of the IV Regional Historical and Archaeological Congress in Kostroma” No. 7, pp. 8–9 (evening meeting June 26, 1909). – Sl. also some comments on the issues discussed in the abstract, expressed by the late professor shortly before his death in a review of the candidate’s work of the priest. O. Dim. Lebedeva, - “Journal. Council of Moscow spirit. Academy for 1911”, meeting on June 7. You might be interested in: