Unique icon returns

Volyn Oblast — Very soon, after a 10-year restoration, the unique miraculous icon of Our Lady of Kholm, dated 10th or 11th century, will see the light of day. The Kholm icon is considered the most ancient sacral image in Ukraine and one of the earliest in the world.

After World War II the icon was found in Ivano-Frankivsk oblast, where it was secretly kept until 1996. Later, it was transported to Volyn and handed over to the renowned restorer Anatolii Kvasiuk. Now that the miraculous image is ready for display, it is decided that it should go to the Lutsk Icon Museum. The significance of this event is worldwide: the Kholm icon, one of the so-called apostolic icons, is one of the most hallowed Christian relics.

“If you go to the forest from the center of the village of Striltsi, where I was born and which is 30 kilometers away from the city of Kholm, you’d have to climb up a hill. On a fine day, despite all the distance, you could see from there the domes of the Prechystensky Cathedral (Cathedral of Purest Virgin Mary) on Danylo’s Hill.

That’s where the icon was kept. All my ancestors — my grandfather, my great-grandfather, and my great-great-grandfather — would get a cart ready and go to Kholm to bow down before the holy image. I was told that I’d also been taken there as a toddler, but I can’t remember that.”

Yosyp Strutsiuk, a Volynian poet and prose writer, has just turned 75. He was to leave his village of Striltsi (once Prince Danylo’s outpost) at the age of 10. Striltsi was one of the first villages in the Kholm and Pidliashia area to suffer from the fratricidal massacre on Nov. 1, 1944. The village was burned down on that very day, and its residents were the first to be deported.

Strutsiuk began his quest for the lost Kholmian relic in his student years. Rev. Oleksii Vyslotsky, a priest at the Lutsk Cathedral, told him that the icon had been hidden in a wall in Lublin, but no one knew for sure where exactly it was.

In the early 1990s, Kholmshchyna, an association of former residents of the Kholm region, was formed in Volyn. At one of its meetings Strutsiuk hinted that he might know the whereabouts of the relic.

“After the meeting Nadia Horlytska came up to me and said with a playful smile, ‘No, you don’t know where the icon is! Now it is in Galicia.’”

The miraculous icon of Our Lady of Kholm is one of the most hallowed and famed in the Christian world. Princes, kings, and even popes would kneel down to worship it. Ukraine is known to have had four major relics, miraculous icons of the Holy Mother and Child. They are the Vyshhorod (Vladymyr) icon, which is now in Moscow and worshipped as the chief relic of Russia; the Belzian (Czestochowska) icon, the greatest relic of Poland today; the Assumption of Virgin Mary, from the Assumption Cathedral of the Kyiv Cave Monastery, destroyed by the Bolsheviks together with the Cathedral in 1941 — and the Kholm icon.

It is traditionally believed that the icon was painted by the gospel author Luke, but this is just a beautiful legend, as scholars date it to the 11th century. Yet the Lutsk restorer Kvasiuk does not rule out that it could be a copy made from the apostolic icon even earlier, in the 10th century, and blessed with divine grace just like the original. In any case, the holy image from Kholm is the earliest one in Ukraine and one of the most ancient in the world.

The icon might also have traveled to Kyivan Rus’ during Prince Volodymyr’s reign. It was rumored that it might have been a part of the dowry of his fiancee. Princess Anna. But it was due to Prince Danylo that the holy image ended up in Kholm (thence its name): he built a church on the top of a high hill and placed there the image which he had brought from Kyiv. According to chronicles, this happened around 1223, and exceptional powers and divine grace have been attributed to the icon even since.

The icon is also believed to have saved the city of Kholm from Batu Khan’s hordes in 1240. Yet several decades later Tartars did plunder the church, stripping the icon of its valuable plating. The image still bears the traces left by a sword and arrows. It was buried in the debris of the ruined church for a century. Then it fell into the hands of the Uniates; for some time it was an object of worship for Roman Catholics. However, the icon eventually returned to the Orthodox Church.

Its last big trip, which might have turned out a one-way trip, was during World War II. The train carrying the valuables and utensils from the Cathedral of Kholm suffered severe bombing near Lublin. But the icon was saved by Ilaria Bulgakova, a cousin to the famous writer Mikhail Bulgakov. She was on the train together with many other people. Those who were in charge of the church property thought that the icon had been destroyed in the fire. But Ilaria Bulgakova happened to stumble across the undamaged image. She abandoned her own belongings and hauled the icon far into the field, protecting it with her body.

Then she carried the heavy, 20-kilogram icon as she sneaked along some secret paths into Lublin. There she handed the treasure to an Orthodox priest. The latter sent word to Rev. Havrylo Korobchuk in Kholm (Nadia Horlytska’s father). Father Havrylo dispatched his daughter Liuba and one of the wardens of the church in Kholm to deliver the relic. They were able to do that and later, to bring the icon to Ukraine (though it had to be taken apart). Since then, the icon had been kept by the members of the Korobchuk family.

When Father Havrylo died, his eldest daughter took the icon to her home in Ivano-Frankivsk oblast, where it remained until her death in 1996. Then Strutsiuk and the other initiated Kholmians talked Nadia Horlytska into moving the icon to Lutsk, because most deported Kholmians live in Volyn and revere the holy image of Kholm.

“In Ivano-Frankivsk an amateurish artist ‘restored’ the icon beyond recognition. It had to be saved. First, we were going to take it to Kyiv for restoration, but then had cold feet about it. We were not sure if we would be able to get it back. We even didn’t venture to give it to the cathedral or any other church in Lutsk, as it might have vanished into thin air from there.

“And then Mykola Chereniuk, who was in charge of the arts department of the local history museum, had a brainwave. ‘You know, there’s a nice restorer in Lutsk, Anatolii Kvasiuk,’ he said. So, we went to see him,” said Strutsiuk.

RESTORER’S GOLGOTHA

The future top restorer Anatolii Kvasiuk painted his first icon when he was just 15.

“I was always attending all sorts of exhibits — I was interested in art — and there was a thing called ‘art lottery’ at that time. I paid 50 kopecks for a ticket, and won the book Masterpieces of Ancient Russian Painting. I especially liked one of the icons there, St. Paraskeva, so I copied it.”

Then he became a student at the department of restoration, the Kyiv Art Institute, where a typical group of students would comprise no more than five persons. Back then he heard about the icon of Our Lady of Kholm from Liudmyla Miliaieva (now member of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts): that there used to be such a relic, now lost without trace. So, what was his first impression of the icon, when he first set eyes on it at Horlytska’s place?

“The three of us, Chereniuk, Strutsiuk, and myself, came to her place, a small cottage on Volodymyrska Street, next to St. Feodosii Church. First they made me promise that I wouldn’t let out what I was going to see, no matter if I agreed to restore the icon or not. Otherwise, I wasn’t going to see anything at all.

“Horlytska kept the icon in her bedroom, and when you opened the door, it shielded the image. No sooner had we stepped in than I froze in amazement. I might have expected to see anything — but when I spotted those gold plates, the cypress boards, and other details, I knew instantly that this was a very, very old icon (experts from Kyiv, including Professor Miliaieva, later confirmed that it was Our Lady of Kholm – Auth.). But it was in such a miserable shape!”

For four consecutive years, 1996 to 2000, in his restoration shop in the former building of the Volynian Icon Museum, Kvasiuk was working to rescue the icon of Our Lady of Kholm. That was the restorer’s virtual Golgotha, and not only because he had to do everything secretly, after work or on weekends, with a handful of initiated friends who indeed knew to hold their tongues. He progressed at a snail’s pace. But, working on the priceless relic, he always felt the colossal weight of responsibility.

Why did you have to start restoration in secret? What were you afraid of?

“Given that a few precious icons had already been stolen from the safety of the Lutsk Cathedral? Our Lady of Iver among them. That was a unique icon, a gift from Emperor Alexander III, and executed by the best icon painters (by the way, it was known for an unbelievable aura and divine grace – Auth.). Not one color reproduction exists, so it’s lost for good.

“By the way, the Kholm icon was to be kept in the Cathedral of Lutsk, according to the will of its warden, the Rev. Korobchuk. They even had the setting ready for it. But a church is not a museum; it cannot ensure the necessary safety measures and temperature conditions. That is why I kept asking Strutsiuk, who was a sole authority for Horlytska, to persuade her to hand the icon over to the museum.

“I would work on the icon when everyone had left the museum and I was alone. Then I would take it out of my cabinet where it was hidden. The cabinet had a secret compartment, just like some suitcases have false bottoms. Even if someone had looked inside, they wouldn’t have seen the icon.”

Yet you believed that the time would come when the icon would be on display for people to worship it?

“Of course I did, and I knew that this day would come. This is too great a shrine to be kept behind a bedroom door or in a restorer’s cabinet. I was aware of all the responsibility resting on me. It is such an invaluable icon! And I had to make sure that later, when it was displayed to the public, I didn’t get crucified.

“When in the early 1990s we were able to show the icon to people, we simply couldn’t resume the restoration for several years because we didn’t have a penny.

“There are some 160 political parties in Ukraine, but only the Ukrainian People’s Party donated an equivalent of USD10.000, so we were able to go on. I’ve always been grateful to these people and I never fail to mention them. Horlytska eventually gave her treasure over to the state, and the government also helped with the restoration.”

Didn’t Poland claim the icon, as the ancient city of Kholm is now on the Polish territory? What about the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and Kyiv?

“You know, there was a moment when Rev. Korobchuk sent his relatives to the Pochaiv Monastery to ask if they would accept the icon. But one of the holy fathers there warned him not to do that or the icon would end up in Moscow, sooner or later!

“Poland hasn’t made a single claim to the icon. The Poles are happy that the icon is safe and continues its existence.

“Volyn was the home of yet another icon, that of Our Lady of Volyn. It used to belong to the ancient Pokrova Church (Church of the Intercession), and now it is the major item on display at the National Museum in Kyiv. It goes without saying that no one is going to return it to our museum, leave alone the church. It is a unique icon of unbelievable beauty; you can’t take your eyes off it.”

What do you feel now, as you are going to let go of the icon? You’ve spent so many years with it... What are you up to now?

“Well, actually, the icon will be close at hand, right here in the museum, in a room designed specially for it. A thousand-year-old icon is like a patient who requires the doctor’s constant attention. Besides, I’m working on a couple more interesting icons and two iconostases. For example, there is a totally unique thing, the icon of Our Lady ‘The Unfading Blossom,’ delivered from an ordinary village church in the Rozhyshche district. This is an old and beautiful object: there is no other icon in Ukraine painted with the same plot. In a short while up to 10 restored icons are going to appear on display at our museum.

PILGRIMAGE TO... A MUSEUM

On Sept. 19, 2000, Our Lady of Kholm was shown to the broad public for the first time in the Volynian Icon Museum. The visitors were the participants of the Fourth World Congress of Kholmians in Lutsk. Such was the will of Nadia Korobchuk-Horlytska, who was then sick and anxious to make sure that more of her countrymen might worship the holy image. Among them there were still a lot of people who had seen the icon before and remembered it.

After that, the icon’s location alternated between the restoration shop and the museum. It is shown to people on major religious holidays and always at the Nativity of Virgin Mary.

“As soon as the word about the icon spread, crowds of pilgrims started to arrive from every corner of Ukraine and even from abroad. This holy image has always been an object of worship, as Our Lady of Kholm was used for virtually all significant state events in the Principality of Galicia-Volhynia. People tend to perceive the icon primarily as a miraculous image and only then as a historical monument,” says Tetiana Yeliseieva, director of the Volynian Icon Museum. “It has always worked miracles. Suffice it to remember the miraculous salvation of Kholm from the Tatars or 700 wonders that were registered by Ukrainian Greek Catholics near the icon. The very fact that Pope crowned it with gold crowns (although it has never officially belonged to the Catholic Church) also testifies to the icon’s miraculous powers. On The Day of its worship, the Nativity of Virgin Mary, several thousands of pilgrims would gather in Kholm, imperial families among them.

“Nowadays, there are numerous cross processions to the icon of Our Lady of Kholm on its worship day, held by various denominations. On this day small-scale services are allowed in the room where the icon is exhibited. And this is perhaps the only case in Ukraine when a cross procession heads for a museum,” says Yeliseieva.

The Volynian Icon Museum is also the only one of a kind in Ukraine. It came into being due to... a massive close-down of churches. In the 1970s and the 1980s, about 80 percent of churches in Volyn were not operating. The priceless samples of icon painting and the works of famous masters were decaying in cold churches, destroyed by the rain and snow that penetrated through the ruined roofs. That was the time when rescue expeditions began. In Volyn, they were masterminded by a scholar from Lviv, Pavlo Zholtovsky, Ph.D. in Art Criticism. Yeliseieva, who had just graduated from the history department of the Lutsk Teacher Training Institute, was one of the first members of those quests. As she recalls now, it was a priceless school which no formal course could provide: “Dr. Zholtovsky taught us to intuitively recognize each icon’s age and school of painting.”

The holy images weren’t just collected and taken to the museum; a relevant record was always left in the local government office. So, when churches were re-opened again, a lot of utensils and sacral objects were returned to their proper places. It certainly was not the case with genuine pieces, for example, Yov Konzelevych’s work — in these cases copies were made.

The staff of the Volyn Museum of Local Ethnography have saved hundreds of objects of sacral art. Today, the visitors to the Volynian Icon Museum cannot even imagine the condition in which these specimens were received. The peeling and bulging gesso and paint, the mold and the dirt...

Now the Museum’s eight exhibit rooms hold over 80 works of icon painting dated to the 16th and 17th century, which represent the Volynian school of icon painting. The masterpieces include Savior in Glory (16th century), St. George the Dragon-Fighter (1630), Savior the Pantocrator (first half of 17th century), and the works by Yov Konzelevych.

The miraculous icon of Our Lady of Kholm is by far the most precious item.

“Every time I bring an umpteenth group of tourists to see the original icon, I always feel the divine grace streaming from it. My voice quivers with emotion. The others also feel the grace — and start to weep, brimming over with feelings. This happens to any group and audience, whatever the visitors’ age or origin,” reveals Yeliseieva.