The Meeting of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God :the Clebration of the Event and its Historical and Liturgical Origins

The tale of Temur Aksak tells of how the Mother of God saved Moscow from Tamerlane. One of the most ambitious works of Muscovite ideology, it can be seen as a secondary effect of the liturgical and historical situation in the Orthodox world in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in which the Mother of God was venerated on a grand scale throughout the month of August, a practice deriving from the late Byzantine tradition (the reform of Emperor Andronik) and the catastrophic encroachment of Moslems in the late fourteenth century. The celebration of the Dormition in August became linked to prayers for defense from the Ishmaelites. In order to concretize the Russian context August 1st was linked to the story of Andrei Bogoliubskii's campaign against the Volga Bulgars and his victory with with aid of the image of the Mother of God. The completion of the feast on August 26th was created as the meeting of the Vladimir Mother of God icon in Moscow and linked to the story of the defeat of Temur Aksak, otherwise known as Tamerlane. Although the Muscovite state cult of the Vladimir Mother of God, as it developed in the latter half of the fifteenth century, was already a major departure from the original liturgical and historical situation, more archaic forms (or their traces) were preserved in written sources and in non-Muscovite liturgical practice.