Our Lady Derzhavnaya

Description

Our Lady Derzhavnaya (“The Sovereign”, “The Reigning Icon”) is a Russian icon believed to date from the 18th century. According to Irina Yazykova, the Reigning Icon, “remains one of the most revered both inside Russia and in Russian emigre circles. Copies of the Reigning Icon of the Mother of God can now be found all over the world.The icon was originally venerated in the Ascension Convent, in the Chertolye neighborhood near the Moscow Kremlin. In 1812, as Napoleon Bonaparte’s Grande Armée approached Moscow during the French invasion of Russia, the icon was taken to the village church in Kolomenskoye for safekeeping and subsequently forgotten until 1917.
At the end of the “February Revolution” of 1917 (February in the Old Russian Calendar), on 2 March (Julian Calendar)/ 15 March (Gregorian Calendar) 1917, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia abdicated the throne after riots in Petrograd spiraled out of control. That same day, Evdokia Adrianova, a peasant woman in the village of Pererva in Moscow Province, dreamed that the Blessed Virgin appeared and spoke to her.[3] She was instructed to travel to the village of Kolomenskoye, where she would find an old icon which, “will change color from black to red.
Upon her arrival, the parish priest took Evdokia at her word and together they searched until they found, in an old storage room, an icon covered with candle soot. But as they took the icon outdoors, the sunlight revealed that the Mother of God was wearing the scarlet robes of a monarch. She also wore the Imperial crown and held a sceptre and globus cruciger — the symbols of regal authority.