Marian Anniversaries

March 16

Vladimir Mother of God, Volokolamsk, Volokolamsky District, Moscow Oblast, Russia

In 1571, when Khan Devlet I Giray burned Moscow, Ivan the Terrible's henchman Malyuta Skuratov vowed to build a church to the Mother of God of Vladimir, held to have defended the city from Tamerlane two centuries earlier. Metropolitan Cyril III of Moscow blessed this undertaking, which may have been partly an act of penance for the many murders Skuratov committed at the Tsar's behest, including the strangulation of Cyril's predecessor only two years before. Shuratov ordered an exact copy of the Vladimir icon, which on March 2, 1572 arrived at the Dormition Monastery of St. Joseph in Volokolamsk, some 80 miles northwest of the capital, in advance of the building of the new church there. The next day the icon's first miracle occurred: after prayers before it, Shuratov's servant, Deacon Peter, was healed of a head injury. After several more miracles, the Russian Orthodox Church reconized the Volokolamskaya as a wonder-working icon. It was honored there until the 1917 revolution, when the monastery was turned into a museum and its icons taken to Moscow. The Vladimirskaya of Volokolamsk is now in the Central Museum of Ancient Russian Culture and Art of Andrei Rublev in Moscow. The icon shows the Virgin with two saints who brought the original Vladimir icon to Moscow: St. Cyprian, Metropolitan of Moscow in 1395 during Tamerlane's seige, and St. Gerontius, Metropolitan of Moscow in 1480 when the Vladimir icon moved there permanently. Most Orthodox calendars list the feast day of the Mother of God of Volokolamsk as March 3 (Julian) or 16 (Gregorian).

Sources include:

	The Orthodox Church in America, www.oca.org
	The Monastery's website, iosif-vm.ru/saint/volokolamskaja
	The Central Museum's website, www.rublev-museum.ru (image)

Also commemorated this date:

	Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, Dahouët, Pléneuf-Val-André, Côtes-d'Armor, Brittany, France. Statue blessed, 1874. Pardon August 15.
	Virgen del Sufragio, Benidorm, Alicante, Valencia, Spain (Virgin of Help). Statue found, 1740.