From Diocese of Sourozh
History of the Kursk-Root Icon
The Kursk Root icon of the Mother of God is one of the most ancient of the Russian Church. At the time of the Tatar invasion in the thirteenth century, when the whole of the Russian population was suffering extreme distress, in the neighbourhood of the town of Kursk which had been ravaged by the horde of Batu, this icon was discovered by a certain hunter. It was lying among the roots of a tree (hence the appellation “Root”), face to the ground. The newly discovered depiction was similar to the “Znamenie” (Sign) icon.
It was here that the first miracle occurred. As soon as the hunter picked up the icon, a spring of pure water broke forth in the very place where the icon had lain. The finding of the icon took place in 1259. The hunter built a small wooden chapel at the site of the discovery and there he placed the icon of the Mother of God.
Soon the inhabitants of the nearby town of Rylsk got to know about this. They began to visit the site to venerate the new holy object. The fame of the icon became so widespread that in 1597 a new church was built at the site of the discovery and the Kursk Root Hermitage was founded by the command of Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich.
The special help of the Mother of God through this icon is connected with important events in Russian history: the war of liberation of the Russian people during the Polish and Lithuanian invasion in 1612; and the Patriotic War in 1812. Many copies of this icon were made and these too were glorified.
Under the protection of the Kursk icon the Russian people overcame the effects of famine during the reign of Tsar Boris Godunov and repelled the incursions of the Crimean Tatars, the Lithuanians and the Poles. Over the course of centuries the icon was the protector and defender of the land of Kursk. In 1919 the wonderworking Sign icon was removed to Serbia. Since 1957 it has been in the Synodal Cathedral of the Mother of God of the Sign belonging to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in New York. It is rightly called the Directress of the Russian diaspora.
