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Our Lady’s Mantle Shortly after Askold and Dir founded Kiev in 862, they launched a brazen but ill-fated assault on the capital of the Roman Empire.

In two parts

?866
Roman Empire (Byzantine Era) 330-1453
Music: Alexander Arkhangelsky and Thomas Tallis

From Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain. Source

About this picture …

Patriarch Photius lowers a garment said to have belonged to the Virgin Mary into the Black Sea, in the face of the invasion from Kievan Rus’. This painting is a fresco in the Kremlin in Moscow, where the Church of the Laying of Our Lady’s Robe stands.

Our Lady’s Mantle

Part 1 of 2

In the 860s, just as the Great Army led by Vikings Ingwaer and Halfdan was swarming over England, Viking warlords Askold and Dir were establishing the great cities of Novgorod and Kiev as the foundations of Rus’. Almost at once the pagan settlers set their sights on the greatest prize of all, Constantinople, capital of the Roman Empire.

IN around 866,* Kiev’s Viking founders, Askold and Dir, crossed the Black Sea with many ships to lay siege to Constantinople, mighty capital of the Roman Empire, while Emperor Michael III was away dealing with an Arab assault on the eastern border. Michael raced back into his capital and his palace, the Blachernae, and at once summoned Patriarch Photius to join him for urgent prayer in the nearby church, where the robe, mantle and belt of the Virgin Mary herself had been kept since the fifth century.

After a long night’s vigil, at which the assembled citizens sang again a hymn to Mary that had helped drive off the Arabs a generation earlier, the Patriarch and his clergy bore her mantle down to the Black Sea, and with the utmost reverence dipped it into the gently lapping waters.* At once, a lively wind picked up, the waters skipped, and soon Askold’s fleet, two hundred strong, was being helplessly tossed and splintered on the shore.

Jump to Part 2

The story and dramatis personae as given here follow ‘The Tale of Past Years’ fairly uncritically; the reader should be aware that scholars today are sceptical. However, some kind of an assault on the City in 866 or so, emanating from Kievan Rus’, seems reasonably well-established.

The sources do not state precisely which item of clothing was used.

Précis

Shortly after founding Kiev, the pagan warlords Askold and Dir attempted to take Constantinople, capital of the Roman Empire, with a fleet of two hundred ships. However, the clergy of the Christian city touched the waters of the Black Sea with a sacred relic, the mantle of the Virgin Mary, triggering a storm that destroyed the invading fleet. (58 / 60 words)

Part Two

© Janter, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0. Source

About this picture …

Detail of an icon of the Protection (Pokrov) of the Theotokos, dated to 1399. The events described here, when St Andrew of Constantinople saw the Virgin Mary cast her mantle over the congregation in the Blachernae church in 907, are commemorated every year on October 1st. In Greece, however, the feast is now kept on October 28th to coincide with ‘Ohi Day’, the day when in 1941 the Greek people refused to side with the Axis Powers in the Second World War. See The Day of ‘No’.

FORTY years later, in 907, the Viking warrior Oleg, ruler of Kievan Rus’, swept once again over the Black Sea to Constantinople. He marched up to the city gates, fixed his shield to them proprietorially — and then unexpectedly left, with just a trade deal in his pocket.

Perhaps not entirely unexpectedly, at least not for monk Andrew,* himself a Russian, and his friend Epiphanius. They had crowded with other citizens into the Blachernae church near the city gates to implore the Virgin Mary’s aid, when suddenly Andrew saw Mary herself enter, accompanied by flights of angels who sang her to the heart of the church, where she stopped, knelt, and prayed with tears in her eyes. Then she took the mantle* from her head and shoulders, and seemed to cast it over the congregation. “Do you see, brother, the Holy Theotokos* praying for all the world?” whispered Andrew, and Epiphanius answered in wonder that he did, even as mantle and Virgin dissolved into light, and vanished.

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The word ‘mantle’ has been chosen rather than the more usual ‘veil’ because the latter gives the wrong impression. Roman ladies of the first century AD did not wear face-coverings, only head-coverings, a sign of being married.

St Andrew of Constantinople, who died in 936.

‘Theotokos’ means ‘God’s birth-giver’, a title officially recognised at the Council of Ephesus in 431 and again at Chalcedon in 451, but originally much older.

Précis

In 911, Oleg of Novgorod brought Constantinople to its knees, but did not pursue his advantage. It was said that the Virgin Mary appeared to the beleaguered citizens as they prayed to her for deliverance, and cast her mantle over them as a sign of her protection, a miracle still celebrated every year, especially in Russia. (55 / 60 words)

Source

Based on ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’, Volume V, Chapter 55 by Edward Gibbon, and ‘The Tale of Past Years’, traditionally ascribed to Nestor (?1056-?1154).

Related Video

According to tradition, this is the very hymn (composed after an Arab assault in 826) sung in Constantinople that day in 866, when Askold’s fleet was speeding over the Black Sea. Here it is at the re-opening of the Rotunda in Thessaloniki in 2015, a fourth-century pagan temple which subsequently became a church.

Further information

Suggested Music

1 2

To Our Leader in Battle (from the All-Night Vigil)

Alexander Arkhangelsky (1846-1924)

Performed by the Sacred Music Ensemble ‘Kant’, directed by Lyudmila Arshavskaya.

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Transcript / Notes

TO thee, our leader in battle and defender, O Theotokos, we thy servants, delivered from calamity, offer hymns of victory and thanksgiving. Since thou art invincible in power, set us free from every peril, that we might cry to thee: Hail, Bride without bridegroom.

Translated by Isabel Hapgood

We Praise Thee O God

Thomas Tallis (1505-1585)

Performed by the Sixteen, directed by Harry Christophers.

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