St. Seraphim of Sarov's Umilenie Icon?

[LastMinute]

Just a very quick question - i’ve seen different versions of the Icon and wanted to know which on was the original “ Seraphimo-Diveyevskaya ” (Серафимо-Дивеевская) icon.

This one:

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Or

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which i happen to see in a lot of places for some odd reason.

Thanks for the help!

 

[HomeschoolDad]

This is a very nice image, and seems to incorporate both Eastern and Western concepts of idealism versus realism. It doesn’t really “look like a icon”, but it does have some of the features (elongated, narrow nose, tapered hands, etc.). Perhaps a testament to unity?

 

[Tis_Bearself]

It’s Russian Orthodox. Their icons tend to look more realistic.

Regarding the Umilenie of St. Seraphim of Sarov, this blog post with pictures should help.

Full of Grace and Truth: The uncovering of the relics of St. Seraphim of Sarov

 

[LastMinute]

Thanks for the link, i’ve read the article before and it kinda spurred the question i asked since it links…well link to different images.

I believe → Богоматерь «Серафимо-Дивеевская»: leonovvaleri — LiveJournal is probably the closest image of the venerated icon, with a gown/covering atop the original icon. If that guess is correct, i suspect the actual image has more in common with the 2nd one i posted, but underneath all of the dazzling garments, the -actual- image will probably look a little more like the first one including the words surrounding her head.

An approximation being:

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Again, this is kind of a stab in the dark since i’ve seen the 2nd Image venerated within the Church itself as

→ http://orthodoxmoscow.ru/ikona-bozhiej-materi-umilenie-serafimo-diveevskaya/#prettyPhoto/0/

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I am not quite sure how you are claiming that the article I posted links to “different images” when the page referenced, which is located on Omolenko website, seems to make clear that that photo in the article I posted is of St. Seraphim’s miraculous icon.

https://omolenko.com/spgm/index.php?spgmGal=1903 Sarov&spgmPic=39&spgmFilters=#pic

Or are you saying you’ve been to the Orthodox church in Diveevsk in person?

@ReaderT , as one of our resident Orthodox, can you please weigh in on this?

 

[LastMinute]

I am not quite sure how you are claiming that the article I posted links to “different images” when the page referenced, which is located on Omolenko website, seems to make clear that that photo in the article I posted is of St. Seraphim’s miraculous icon.

A link on the page you linked to us points to the image of the icon you posted and also the first image i posted → The Seraphimo-Diveevsk "Tenderness" (Umilenie) Icon of the Mother of God

Hence why i said, beginning of confusion.

Or are you saying you’ve been to the Orthodox church in Diveevsk in person?

Ah no - there were plans, but my Russian-Ukranian gal and i parted ways. She was really into Eastern European art and Iconography (yet not religious, more an apathist, “Or just Russian” as she would say), so we actually went through a number of videos on youtube/vimeo/etc. that took place at Diveevsk, particularly of people paying homage to St. Seraphim himself and the image.

…which only lead to further confusion.

an example → "ДИВНОЕ ДИВЕЕВО" - анонс фильма о Дивеевском монастыре on Vimeo

There have been a variety of renditions of the icon → Умиление Серафимо-Дивеевская икона Божией Матери («Радуйся Невесто Неневестная»)

I just wanted to know if an image of it existed “disrobed” so to speak.

При первой же возможности была сделана позолоченная риза. Еще одна драгоценная риза с камнями была подарена Государем Николаем II при прославлении Преподобного Серафима. Нимб на этой ризе был выполнен в виде расходящихся лучей сияния, состоящих из драгоценных камней и жемчуга. С иконы было сделано множество списков, некоторые из них тоже стали чудотворными.<<

My Russian is really rusty, but i believe the above states that a gilded robe and crown were added to the Icon after St. Seraphim had passed ownership of the it to the good sister of Дивеевской обители.

But it doesn’t appear that there is an image of it without its adornments. We see the Madonna/Theotokos’ face and hands, but not much else. And so i wonder for instance, in the images of the Umilenie if the line from the Akathist Hymn that encircles her head part of the Covering/Robe that was added (you can see it in the Halo I believe), or does it exist as the other images portray it.

 

[LastMinute]

This is a very nice image, and seems to incorporate both Eastern and Western concepts of idealism versus realism. It doesn’t really “look like a icon”, but it does have some of the features (elongated, narrow nose, tapered hands, etc.). Perhaps a testament to unity?

You aren’t the first person to make that comment. The more “Ultra-Orthodox” tended to have a suspicion that “baleful Western influences” can be seen in the Icon since it is a Madonna/Theotokos without the Child Jesus.

Of course - this is St. Seraphim. Its like taking a potshot at St. Francis or Padre Pio (although admittedly he took a good licking from his detractors when he was alive).

I do recall aspersions were cast on St. Seraphim for using a Rosary, which lead into a bit of back and forth about Rosary usage as an Orthodox form of prayer.

While that might all seem “nit-picky” to us, i do have to hand it to the Orthodox Churches for their willingness to question when something seems off. Of course… sometimes that kind of thinking can go down deep rabbit holes… (…toll-houses…)

 

[HomeschoolDad]

It’s Russian Orthodox. Their icons tend to look more realistic.

Regarding the Umilenie of St. Seraphim of Sarov, this blog post with pictures should help.

“Mil-” is the Polish (and, by extention, pan-Slavic) root for the concept of “love”, or, if you will, “niceness”, or here, “tenderness”. “Bardzo mi miło” means “it is nice [for me] to meet you”. And, being Polish, it has that funky “dark L” (slash through it, they have both “regular L” and “dark L”), pronounced “w”, which can be heard in such far-flung places as Chicago and, mirabile dictu, New Zealand English. I was studying something about NZ English last night, listening to news clips, and while I didn’t hear the “dark L” in “anchorman” NZ English, he did refer to “JacindaR Ardern” — the “intrusive R” found in Boston speech as well as Billy Joel’s ballad about “BrendaR and Eddie”.

English would be so boring if it were spoken one way, and one way only.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

При первой же возможности была сделана позолоченная риза. Еще одна драгоценная риза с камнями была подарена Государем Николаем II при прославлении Преподобного Серафима. Нимб на этой ризе был выполнен в виде расходящихся лучей сияния, состоящих из драгоценных камней и жемчуга. С иконы было сделано множество списков, некоторые из них тоже стали чудотворными.<<

Yaaaahhh!!! You’re making my brain hurt!

From 35+ years of picking up scraps of Russian here, scraps of Russian there, never formally studying it, just hacking through it based upon my very basic knowledge of Polish, I can make out the roots of about half the words there. And then there is the “speed bump” of using the Cyrillic alphabet, which I have about 90% memorized, have to stop and think about the other 10%.

 

[LastMinute]

Yaaaahhh!!! You’re making my brain hurt!

haha - i’m not even sure if i translated that correctly.

Keeping Chinese, Tagalog, and English with “street Spanish” straight in my head is hard enough. So i’m in the same boat as you!

 

[ReaderT]

So, a little clarification:

St. Seraphim of Sarov (1754-1833) was well known to pray before a copy of the “Tenderness” (in Russian “Umilenie”) icon of the Mother of God. This is one of several poses that the Mother of God was traditionally depicted in. He didn’t have the original “Umilenie” icon, but one made in its style. The original was probably painted in antiquity.

Before St. Seraphim died in 1833, he prophesied that his relics would finally rest not in Sarov (where he was a monk) but at the convent of Diveyevo. This was a well-known and well-published prophecy in Imperial Russia. But in 1917, when the communists came to power, his relics were lost and assumed destroyed, and in 1927 the Diveyevo convent was closed by the Soviets.

For the next 60 years, the Diveyevo nuns practiced “secret monasticism”, as did many monastics in Soviet times. One priest in the 1980s actually wrote an account the last living secret nuns who lived in the Diveyevo town and carried on their monastic duties:

I saw a dingy little room crowded by about a dozen elderly women, the youngest of whom could not have been younger than eighty, while the oldest were definitely more than 100 years old. All of them were dressed in simple old country maids’ clothes and wearing peasant kerchiefs. None of them was wearing a habit or any kind of monastic or ecclesiastical clothing. “Of course, these weren’t nuns—just simple old ladies”; that’s what anyone would have thought, including me, if I had not known that these old women were in fact some of the most courageous modern-day confessors of our faith, true heroines who had suffered tortures and decades in prisons and concentration camps for their beliefs. And yet despite all their ordeals, their spiritual loyalty and unshakable faith in God had only grown.

In 1991, after communism fell, St. Serphim’s relics were miraculously rediscovered after being hidden in a communist anti-religion museum for 70 years, and they were indeed brought to Diveyevo, thus fulfilling his prophecy.

So when you ask for the original Seraphimo-Diveyevskaya Icon, if you mean the icon belonging to St. Seraphim now housed in Diveyevo, I believe that’s the icon @Tis_Bearself posted, but to be honest I’m not 100% sure. You’re right that the video shows a different icon in Diveyevo with a lot of exaltation. To be honest neither my Russian nor my research is good enough to tell why that is, but I will keep looking.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Thanks, do fill us in if you find anything.

I love St Seraphim because he was friends with a bear and his relics flew in space. When I tell that to people they think I am making it up.

 

[LastMinute]

So when you ask for the original Seraphimo-Diveyevskaya Icon, if you mean the icon belonging to St. Seraphim now housed in Diveyevo, I believe that’s the icon @Tis_Bearself posted, but to be honest I’m not 100% sure. You’re right that the video shows a different icon in Diveyevo with a lot of exaltation. To be honest neither my Russian nor my research is good enough to tell why that is, but I will keep looking.

Thanks for your thoughts and welcome to my mad quest

So let me complicate matters a little more - (because if we’ve gone this far down the hole…we may as well go further).

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So here are two Icons of St. Seraphim…with his Seraphimo-Diveyevskaya Icon. The Theotokos is in her Umilenie pose, sans adornments. I take it that is what it really looks like beneath the “sleeve”, although again no clue of the Akathist hymn line is a later edition.

One of the old legends goes that St. Seraphim found the Icon we call the Seraphimo-Diveyevskaya in a forest of all places. And here’s a picture of the event as imagined.

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Pondering over the matter (and reading alot of websites in Russian), i’m guessing this is a more current photograph of the one @Tis_Bearself posted, bound in its “sleeve”. Note the Akathist Hymn in the Halo.

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I’m guessing that, putting face and hands aside, beneath the Sleeve the Theotokos looks more like the 1st photo i posted and is reflected in the “historical scenes” in the other Icons.

But… the 2nd Image i posted in this thread also shows up a lot, with certain websites proclaiming it to be the Seraphimo-Diveyevskaya.

So make of all that what you will

 

[ReaderT]

Yes, it’s definitely a mad rabbit-hole. And some people are now using “Seraphimo-Diveyevskaya” to refer to any rendition of his icon, so it all becomes a thick mess. But I will continue researching also.

 

[ReaderT]

Okay, here we go. The icon in the Diveyevo Vimeo is NOT the original.

The cell icon of Saint Seraphim did not disappear during the years of disbelief. The Diveyevo sisters who lived in Murom after the monastery’s dissolution, and later the Moscow priest Victor Shipovalnikov safeguarded the icon.

Nowadays, the icon stays at the Patriarchal Residence’s Vladimirskaya Church at Chisty Lane. Once a year, during the Great Lent, it is brought into Yelokhovo’s Epiphany Cathedral during the Patriarchal service there.

Source:
Tenderness Icon of The Mother of God - The Catalog of Good Deeds (obitel-minsk.com)

So it’s at the Russian Patriarch’s residence in St. Petersburg.

Unless anyone can find information otherwise, I’m going to conclude it’s the icon that Tis posted.

Also: according to the same source, the golden cover (“oklad”) was added in 1902, so there are likely no pictures of the icon in color without the cover, so we may unfortunately never know what it looks like…

In 1902, the holy emperor Nicholas II presented a precious gilded oklad (cover) and a decorated silver vigil lamp for the Tenderness Icon as a gift to the Diveyevo convent. In the year when Seraphim of Sarov was canonized, several exact duplications were made from the icon of the Mother of God, which were sent to various Russian monasteries.

 

[LastMinute]

Great work @ReaderT - thanks for the help! Hmm, so its with the Russian Patriarch these days… i guess due to its historical importance.

Also: SO that’s what the cover is called, an oklad. I’ve been coming up with a 1,001 euphemisms for it.

Now that i think about it, the one at Diveyevo holds the facial features of the Icon, but has the garments of the oklad, which i guess fulfills the effect.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

Yaaaahhh!!! You’re making my brain hurt!

No, you’re on a totally different boat, and if you’re halfway fluent in Chinese, your “boat” is an aircraft carrier, while my “boat” is a dinghy. I don’t speak any language besides English worth two hoots, true, my proficiency in those languages is better than probably 98% of Americans (who don’t have one of these as their native language to begin with), but that is not saying much.

The most difficult language I’ve studied is Polish, and it uses more or less the same alphabet as English. I studied two years at university level (USDA Graduate School, Washington DC) and can barely make my way through a simple newspaper article. It’s that hard. I can function satisfactorily in family or social situations, but that’s about it. It does help with Russian — the languages have some similarities, though are by no means identical or even mutually intelligible.

 

[LastMinute]

No, you’re on a totally different boat, and if you’re halfway fluent in Chinese, your “boat” is an aircraft carrier, while my “boat” is a dinghy.

Pssh… Ethnic advantage. Well that and losing your childhood Saturday’s to extra-school.

Aside from English, i tried learning a few romance languages…never really stuck in my head. And any Spanish i know is pretty much with a heavy Dominican-tinge due to co-workers/friends.

 

[rowlands]

The icon in Moscow (not Saint Petersburg).

Orthodox Patriarch Cyril blesses Moscow with the miracle-working Icon against Coronavirus - YouTube

It is possible the icon is one part of the Annunciation pair from the Holy Doors of an iconostas - hence the reason Christ is not shown with His Mother.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Thanks for posting that really interesting and nice video.

That does look like the same icon from the first article that I posted.

I also wondered if it might have been restored at some point? Is it permissible in the Russian Orthodox faith for icons to be restored if they are showing the effects of aging or wear? or is that not allowed?