MAYTE VISITS BESALÚ, THE MEDIEVAL & JEWISH TOWN

Today, The Grandma has received wonderful news from Mayte, who has been visiting Besalú, a beautiful Medieval Catalan village in La Garrotxa.

Besalú is a town in the comarca of Garrotxa, in Girona, Catalonia.

The town's importance was greater in the early Middle Ages, as capital of the county of Besalú, whose territory was roughly the same size as the current comarca of Garrotxa but sometime extended as far as Corbières, Aude, in France. Guifré el Pilós, credited with the unification of Catalonia, was Count of Besalú. The town was also the birthplace of Raimon Vidal, a medieval troubadour.

Besalú was designated as a historical national property (conjunt històric-artístic) in 1966. The town's most significant feature is its 12th-century Romanesque bridge over the Fluvià river, which features a gateway at its midpoint. The church of Sant Pere was consecrated in 1003. The town features arcaded streets and squares and also a restored mikveh, a ritual Jewish bath dating from the eleventh or twelfth century, as well as the remains of a medieval synagogue, located in the lower town near the river.  

Besalú also hosts the Museum of miniatures created by jeweler and art collector Lluís Carreras.

The name Besalú is derived from the Latin Bisuldunum, meaning a fort on a mountain between two rivers. It is also the historical capital of the county of La Garrotxa. One key date is the year 894, when Besalú was converted to a county with its own dynasty. The county changed from L’Empordà to El Ripollès.

In the year 1111, Besalú lost its independence, for historical reasons in favor of the county of Barcelona. Centuries later, Besalú started a decadent period, worsened by the redemptions, wars with the French and carlists.

In 1966, Besalú was declared a site of historical and artistic importance.

The monument is circled by the ancient wall from the c. XII-XIV. Unfortunately only parts of the original walls still exist. The urban configuration of the site is almost identical to the original layout. Without a doubt, the Medieval bridge is the emblem of the town, of an angular design with seven uneven arcs and two towers. The part of the town nearest to the bridge there are many narrow streets that belong to the ancient Jewish quarter. It is in this area where you will find the Miqvé, the purification bath, which date from c. XII, and demonstrate the presence of an important Jewish community. The street from the medieval bridge leads to the Town Square Plaça Major, a square whose arcades date from c. XVI, and used to be the centre of the medieval town.

Important buildings are the Local Government Ajuntament dating from c. XVII, the Royal Curia Cúria Reial, dating from c. XIV, and the Casa Tallaferro. The street Tallaferro leads to the entrance to the Castle precinct. Inside the precinct there remains one of the towers from the ancient County Castle, and the apse of Santa Maria that dates from c. XI. Along with the street Portalet these are the remains which best retain the medieval appearance, along with panoramic views of the Roman Bridge.

Leading up from the main street Carrer Major, there are the Casa Romà (c. XIV) and the parish church of Sant Vicenç dating from c. XI-XII which has very sculpturesque doors and windows. Near to the main Town Square, there is the Prat de Sant Pere, wide and spacious which used to be the Cemetery of the Benedictine monastery of Sant Pere. Today there only remains the three-nave church and one apse, dating from the c. XI. Also there is the small chapel of Sant Jaume (c. XII) and the Casa Cornellà (Llaudes) dating from c. XII and which has a patio with three galleries. Behind the monastery there is the church of the hospital of Sant Juli”, with one nave and no apse, dating from c. XII, and an outstanding entrance portal.

More information: Catalunya Turisme

 So many of the fantasy stories I encountered growing up
were set in worlds that were largely modelled
on medieval Europe in one way or another.
Lots of white folks in feudal societies,
castles and kings, that kind of thing.

Chris Roberson

PATRICK STEWART, FROM ENGLISH STAGE TO STAR TREK

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Patrick Stewart, the English actor who was born on a day like today in 1940.

Patrick Stewart (born 13 July 1940) is an English actor. With a career spanning over seven decades of stage and screen, he has received various accolades, including two Laurence Olivier Awards and a Grammy Award, as well as nominations for a Tony Award, three Golden Globe Awards, four Emmy Awards, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1996 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to drama in 2010.

In 1966, Stewart became a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He made his Broadway theatre debut in 1971 in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

In 1979, he received the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his performance in Antony and Cleopatra in the West End. His first television role was in Coronation Street in 1967. His first major screen roles were in Fall of Eagles (1974), I, Claudius (1976) and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979).

In 2008 he reprised his role as King Claudius in Hamlet and received his second Olivier Award and his first Tony Award nomination for respectively the West End and Broadway theatre productions.

Stewart gained international stardom for his leading role as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994), its subsequent films and Star Trek: Picard (2020-23). He starred as Captain Ahab in the USA miniseries Moby Dick (1998), Ebenezer Scrooge in TNT television film A Christmas Carol (1999) and King Henry II in the Showtime made-for-television film The Lion in Winter (2003). He also became known for his comedic appearances on sitcoms Frasier and Extras for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series nomination. He also starred as the lead of Blunt Talk (2015-2016). He currently voices Avery Bullock on American Dad!.

Stewart's first film role was in Trevor Nunn's Hedda (1975) followed by roles in John Boorman's Excalibur (1981) and David Lynch's Dune (1984). He gained further stardom when he portrayed Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men series (2000-2014), Logan (2017) and an alternate version of Xavier in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). He has acted in films such as L.A. Story (1991), Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), Jeffrey (1995) and The Kid Who Would Be King (2019). He has also voiced roles in The Pagemaster (1994), The Prince of Egypt (1998), Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2001), Chicken Little (2005), Gnomeo & Juliet (2011) and Ted (2012).

Patrick Stewart was born in Mirfield in the West Riding of Yorkshire on 13 July 1940.

Stewart's first professional stage appearance was on 19 May 1959 at the Theatre Royal, Bristol (for the Bristol Old Vic Company), playing Cutpurse (a thief among the audience for the play-within-a-play) in Cyrano de Bergerac, directed by John Hale.

Over the years, Stewart took roles in many major television series without ever becoming a household name.

Stewart was picked for the role of Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994).

From 1994 to 2002, he also portrayed Picard in the films Star Trek Generations (1994), Star Trek: First Contact (1996), Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) and Star Trek: Nemesis (2002); and in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's pilot episode Emissary, and received a 1995 Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series.

More information: Instagram-Patrick Stewart

 You get all of your neuroses worked out on stage.
I haven't actually played very many nice characters,
certainly not on stage. It's not a quality that attracts me.

Patrick Stewart

MAYTE IS DISCOVERING AUVINYÀ IN SANT JULIÀ DE LÒRIA

Today, The Grandma has received wonderful news from Mayte, who has been visiting Auvinyà, an amazing Andorran village.

Auvinyà, also named Aubinyà and Albinyà in the past, is a village in Andorra, in the parish of Sant Julià de Lòria.

There is the Sant Romà d'Aubinyà Church in the township.

Sant Julià de Lòria is one of the parishes of Andorra, in the far south of the country. It is also the name of the main town of the parish, which at 908 m is the lowest settlement in Andorra. Other settlements in the parish include Bixessarri, Aixàs, Aixovall, Certers, Llumeneres, Nagol, Aixirivall, Auvinyà, Juberri, Fontaneda, and Canòlic. It is bordered by Andorra la Vella in the north, Escaldes-Engordany in the northeast and Catalonia in the south, east, west, northwest, southwest and southeast.

Andorra consists of seven communities known as parishes, in Catalan parròquies. Until relatively recently, it had only six parishes; the seventh, Escaldes-Engordany, was created in 1978.

Andorra la Vella is the capital of Andorra. Some parishes have a further territorial subdivision; Ordino, La Massana and Sant Julià de Lòria are subdivided into quarts (quarters), while Canillo is subdivided into 10 veïnats (neighbourhoods). Those mostly coincide with villages, which are found in all parishes.

Each parish has its own elected mayor who is the nominal head of the local government known as a comú in Catalan.

More information: Fem Turisme

 Keep close to Nature's heart...
and break clear away, once in awhile,
and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods.
Wash your spirit clean.

John Muir

KOKICHI MIKIMOTO OBTAINS THE FIRST CULTURED PEARL

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Kokichi Mikimoto, the Japanese entrepreneur who created the first cultured pearl on a day like today in 1893.

Kokichi Mikimoto, in Japanese 御木本 幸吉, 25 January 1858-21 September 1954) was a Japanese entrepreneur who is credited with creating the first cultured pearl and subsequently starting the cultured pearl industry with the establishment of his luxury pearl company Mikimoto. He was inducted into the House of Peers by imperial decree and posthumously awarded the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Sacred Treasure.

On 18 April 1985, the Japan Patent Office selected him as one of Ten Japanese Great Inventors.

The company was ranked as one of the world's most luxurious brands by Women's Wear Daily Magazine and Mikimoto was considered one of the best Japanese financial leaders of the 20th century by Nihon Keizai Shimbun. He is also known as the founder of Mikimoto Pharmaceuticals, a company specialising in beauty products containing pearl calcium. 

Mikimoto Pearl Island is named after him. In addition, the Phoenix Mikimoto Crown used by Miss Universe winners as well as the pageant crown used by Miss International is credited to his patented work.

Mikimoto was born 25 January 1858 in Toba, Shima Province (now Mie Prefecture). Mikimoto's father was an udon shop owner. Mikimoto was the eldest son.

At age 11, Mikimoto's father fell ill. He left school at the age of 13 and sold vegetables to support his family. Seeing the pearl divers of Ise unloading their treasures at the shore in his childhood started his fascination with pearls.

At the age of 20, Mikimoto noticed the many flaws of pearls as he judged a pearl exhibition in 1878. This began Mikimoto's search for the development of the perfect pearl.

Mikimoto began his search of an alternative method to produce pearls as the chairman of the Shima Marine Products Improvement Association. At this point the demand for pearls had severely outweighed the supply, prompting the consideration of an effort to protect the oysters.

In 1888, Mikimoto obtained a loan to start his first pearl oyster farm at the Shinmei inlet on Ago Bay in Mie prefecture with his wife and partner Ume.

On 11 July 1893, after many failures and near bankruptcy, he was able to create the hemispherical cultured pearls. The pearls were made by seeding the oyster with a small amount of mother of pearl. Despite this major discovery there were initially difficulties in selling his cultured pearls due to public confusion. To encourage sales, Mikimoto opened a jewelry boutique in Ginza where he was able to have workers educate the consumer on the nature of the cultured pearls. He introduced these pearls at a marine products exposition in Norway in 1897 and began an export business. However, it took him another 12 years to create completely spherical pearls that were indistinguishable from the highest quality natural ones, and commercially viable harvests were not obtained until the 1920s.

 More information: Mikimoto

Mikimoto had received a patent in 1896 for producing hemispherical pearls, or mabes, and a 1908 patent for culturing in mantle tissue, but he could not use the Mise-Nishikawa method without invalidating his own patents. Mikimoto then altered his patent application to cover a technique to make round pearls in mantle tissue, which was granted in 1916. However, this method was not commercially viable. Mikimoto finally made arrangements to use Nishikawa's methods after 1916, and Mikimoto's business began to expand rapidly.

The new technology enabled Japan's cultured pearl industry to quickly expand after 1916; by 1935 there were 350 pearl farms in Japan producing 10 million cultured pearls annually.

In 1899, the first Mikimoto pearl shop opened in the fashionable Ginza district of Tokyo selling natural seed pearls and half round pearls. The Mikimoto business expanded internationally, opening stores in London (1913).

By 1935, the Japanese pearl industry was facing oversupply issues and plummeting prices for Japanese cultured pearls. Mikimoto promoted Japanese pearls in Europe and the US to counteract falling prices. He publicly burnt tons of low-quality pearls as a publicity stunt to establish a reputation that the Mikimoto company only sold high-quality cultured pearls.

After World War II, Mikimoto opened stores in Paris, New York City, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Shanghai, and Bombay, and was thus one of the first Japanese brands to attain an international presence and recognition.

Mikimoto had to constantly fight allegations that his pearls were only imitations of real pearls, despite scientific reports to the contrary. Mikimoto took advantage of every opportunity to personally promote his pearls, and took part in the 1926 Philadelphia World Exposition in which he displayed a replica of the Liberty Bell covered with pearls.

In 2010-11, the company's estimated total sales were €300 million.

In June 2013, the company was chosen to design a five-piece parure consisting of a brooch, necklace, earrings, bracelet and the state diadem for Princess Kako of Akishino's 20th birthday anniversary, valued at ¥30 Million JPY (US$279,000). The illustrious tiara features both floral motif and national symbols of Japan.

On 21 September 1954, Mikimoto died at the age of 96. Mikimoto's personal memorabilia are displayed at Mikimoto Pearl Island Memorial Hall, a museum in Toba, Japan.

More information: Sothebys

My dream is to adorn the necks
of all women around the world with pearls.

Kokichi Mikimoto

THE 'OUT OF AFRICA' THEORY OF HUMAN EVOLUTION

Today, The Grandma has been reading about the Out of Africa theory, the most widely accepted model of the geographic origin and early migration of anatomically modern humans.

In paleoanthropology, the recent African origin of modern humans or the Out of Africa theory (OOA) is the most widely accepted model of the geographic origin and early migration of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens). It follows the early expansions of hominins out of Africa, accomplished by Homo erectus and then Homo neanderthalensis.

The model proposes a single origin of Homo sapiens in the taxonomic sense, precluding parallel evolution in other regions of traits considered anatomically modern, but not precluding multiple admixture between H. sapiens and archaic humans in Europe and Asia.

H. sapiens most likely developed in the Horn of Africa between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago, although an alternative hypothesis argues that diverse morphological features of H. sapiens appeared locally in different parts of Africa and converged due to gene flow between different populations within the same period. The recent African origin model proposes that all modern non-African populations are substantially descended from populations of H. sapiens that left Africa after that time.

There were at least several out-of-Africa dispersals of modern humans, possibly beginning as early as 270,000 years ago, including 215,000 years ago to at least Greece, and certainly via northern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula about 130,000 to 115,000 years ago. There is evidence that modern humans had reached China around 80,000 years ago. Practically all of these early waves seem to have gone extinct or retreated back, and present-day humans outside Africa descend mainly from a single expansion about 70,000-50,000 years ago, via the so-called Southern Route. These humans spread rapidly along the coast of Asia and reached Australia by around 65,000-50,000 years ago, (though some researchers question the earlier Australian dates and place the arrival of humans there at 50,000 years ago at earliest, while others have suggested that these first settlers of Australia may represent an older wave before the more significant out of Africa migration and thus not necessarily be ancestral to the region's later inhabitants) while Europe was populated by an early offshoot which settled the Near East and Europe less than 55,000 years ago.

More information: Science Daily

In the 2010s, studies in population genetics uncovered evidence of interbreeding that occurred between H. sapiens and archaic humans in Eurasia, Oceania and Africa, indicating that modern population groups, while mostly derived from early H. sapiens, are to a lesser extent also descended from regional variants of archaic humans.

Recent African origin, or Out of Africa II, refers to the migration of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) out of Africa after their emergence at c. 300,000 to 200,000 years ago, in contrast to Out of Africa I, which refers to the migration of archaic humans from Africa to Eurasia from before 1.8 and up to 0.5 million years ago. Omo-Kibish I (Omo I) from southern Ethiopia is the oldest anatomically modern Homo sapiens skeleton currently known (around 233,000 years old). There are even older Homo sapiens fossils from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco which exhibit a mixture of modern and archaic features at around 315,000 years old.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, the picture of recent single-origin migrations has become significantly more complex, due to the discovery of modern-archaic admixture and the increasing evidence that the recent out-of-Africa migration took place in waves over a long time. As of 2010, there were two main accepted dispersal routes for the out-of-Africa migration of early anatomically modern humans, the Northern Route (via Nile Valley and Sinai) and the Southern Route via the Bab-el-Mandeb strait.

Fossil evidence also points to an early Homo sapiens migration with the oldest known fossil coming from Apidima Cave in Greece and dated at 210,000 years ago. Finds at Misliya cave, which include a partial jawbone with eight teeth, have been dated to around 185,000 years ago. Layers dating from between 250,000 and 140,000 years ago in the same cave contained tools of the Levallois type which could put the date of the first migration even earlier if the tools can be associated with the modern human jawbone finds.

An eastward dispersal from Northeast Africa to Arabia 150,000-130,000 years ago is based on the stone tools finds at Jebel Faya dated to 127,000 years ago (discovered in 2011), although fossil evidence in the area is significantly later at 85,000 years ago. Possibly related to this wave are the finds from Zhirendong cave, Southern China, dated to more than 100,000 years ago. Other evidence of modern human presence in China has been dated to 80,000 years ago.

The most significant out of Africa dispersal took place around 50,000-70,000 years ago via the so-called Southern Route, either before or after the Toba event, which happened between 69,000 and 77,000 years ago. This dispersal followed the southern coastline of Asia and reached Australia around 65,000-50,000 years ago or according to some research, by 50,000 years ago at earliest. Western Asia was re-occupied by a different derivation from this wave around 50,000 years ago and Europe was populated from Western Asia beginning around 43,000 years ago.

Beginning 135,000 years ago, tropical Africa experienced megadroughts which drove humans from the land and towards the sea shores, and forced them to cross over to other continents.

By some 50-70,000 years ago, a subset of the bearers of mitochondrial haplogroup L3 migrated from East Africa into the Near East. It has been estimated that from a population of 2,000 to 5,000 individuals in Africa, only a small group, possibly as few as 150 to 1,000 people, crossed the Red Sea. The group that crossed the Red Sea travelled along the coastal route around Arabia and the Persian Plateau to India, which appears to have been the first major settling point.

The dating of the Southern Dispersal is a matter of dispute. It may have happened either pre- or post-Toba, a catastrophic volcanic eruption that took place between 69,000 and 77,000 years ago at the site of present-day Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia.

More information: The Guardian

I got interested in palaeontology and vertebrate history
-sparked by books on human evolution
-then vertebrate evolution.
Studying with palaeontologists kindled
my interest in fieldwork.

Greg Graffin

THE 1937 FOX VAULT FIRE, SILENT FILMS ARE DESTROYED

Today, The Grandma has been reading about the 1937 Fox vault fire that destroyed the silent film archives of Fox Film Corporation on a day like today in 1937.

A major fire occurred in a 20th Century-Fox film-storage facility in Little Ferry, New Jersey, on July 9, 1937.

Flammable nitrate film had previously contributed to several fires in film-industry laboratories, studios and vaults, although the precise causes were often unknown. In Little Ferry, gases produced by decaying film, combined with high temperatures and inadequate ventilation, resulted in spontaneous combustion.

One death and two injuries resulted from the fire, which also destroyed all of the archived film in the vaults, resulting in the loss of most of the silent films produced by the Fox Film Corporation before 1932. Also destroyed were negatives from several other studios. The fire brought attention to the potential for decaying nitrate film to spontaneously ignite and changed the focus of film-preservation efforts to include a greater focus on fire safety.

The early motion-picture industry primarily used film stock made of nitrocellulose, commonly called nitrate film. This film is flammable and produces its own oxygen supply as it burns. Nitrate fires burn rapidly and cannot be extinguished, as they are capable of burning even underwater.

Nitrocellulose is also subject to thermal decomposition and hydrolysis, degrading over time in the presence of high temperatures and moisture. This decaying film stock releases nitrogen oxides that contribute to the decay and allow the damaged film to burn more easily. Nitrate film can spontaneously combust, but considerable uncertainty exists about the circumstances necessary for self-ignition, partly because of wide variation in the production of early stock.

Risk factors include sustained temperatures of at least 38 °C, high humidity, poor ventilation, aging or decaying film and the storage of large numbers of nitrate films. Most such fires in film archives have occurred during summer heat waves and in closed facilities with limited ventilation, compounding several of these variables. Especially in confined areas, such fires can result in explosions.

Northern New Jersey experienced a heat wave in July 1937, with daytime temperatures of 38 °C and warm nights. The sustained heat contributed to nitrate decomposition in the film vaults, and the building's ventilation was inadequate to prevent a dangerous buildup of gases. At some time shortly after 2:00 a.m. on July 9, spontaneous ignition occurred in the vault at the building's northwest corner. Truck driver Robert Davison observed flames coming from one of the structure's window vents, and within five minutes used a municipal fire alarm call box to report the fire.

Little Ferry firefighters first arrived at 2:26 a.m., followed by companies from Hawthorne, Ridgefield Park, River Edge and South Hackensack. A total of 150 men employing 14 hose streams extinguished the fire by 5:30 a.m. All of the film in the facility was destroyed, with more than 40,000 reels of negatives and prints burned to ashes inside their film cans. The building was also badly damaged. Exploding vaults had destroyed segments of both the exterior walls and interior partitions and had deformed the structure's concrete roof. 

Total property damage was estimated at $150,000-200,000. Fifty-seven truckloads of burned film were hauled from the site in order to extract the remaining silver content. Each can contained about five cents' worth of silver, and the salvaged metal returned $2,000.

Although 20th Century-Fox officials at the time remarked that only old films were destroyed, the fire is now understood as a significant loss of American film heritage. Motion picture historian Anthony Slide called the destruction of the Fox vault the most tragic American nitrate fire.

The complete body of film work of some actors such as Valeska Suratt was destroyed. According to Museum of Modern Art film curator Dave Kehr, there are entire careers that don't exist because of the fire. Because some copies were located elsewhere, some of Fox's silent films survive as lower quality prints or fragments, but more than 75% of Fox's feature films from before 1930 are completely lost.

The destruction of the Little Ferry facility spurred an interest in fire safety as an aspect of film preservation. Investigators determined that the spontaneous combustion of decomposing film stock was responsible for the fire, a cause that had not been identified with previous large nitrate-film fires. They suggested that the older nitrocellulose film in the archive was of lower quality than that of their current film and was therefore more unstable.

Heavier reinforcement of film vaults was suggested in order to prevent fires in a single vault from destroying entire archival facilities. Film-storage cabinets with ventilation and cooling systems were also proposed, as was further research into improving the quality of cellulose acetate film to encourage its use as a safer replacement for nitrate film. By the 1950s, the use of nitrate film in the United States had been essentially eliminated.

More information: Cinematographomania

The blazing fire makes flames and brightness
out of everything thrown into it.

Marcus Aurelius

1579, OUR LADY OF KAZAN IS DISCOVERED IN TATARSTAN

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Our Lady of Kazan, the holy icon of the Russian Orthodox Church, that was discovered underground in the city of Kazan, Tatarstan, on a day like today in 1579.

Our Lady of Kazan, also called Mother of God of Kazan, in Russian Казанская Богоматерь, is a holy icon of the highest stature within the Russian Orthodox Church, representing the Virgin Mary as the protector and patroness of the city of Kazan, and a palladium of all of Russia and Rus', known as the Holy Protectress of Russia. As is the case for any holy entity under a Patriarchate in communion within the greater Eastern Orthodox Church, it is venerated by all Orthodox faithful.

According to legend, the icon was originally acquired from Constantinople, lost in 1438, and miraculously recovered in pristine state over 140 years later in 1579. Two major cathedrals, the Kazan Cathedral, Moscow, and the Kazan Cathedral, St. Petersburg, are consecrated to Our Lady of Kazan, and they display copies of the icon, as do numerous churches throughout the land. The original icon in Kazan was stolen, and probably destroyed, in 1904.

The Fátima image is a 16th-century copy of the icon, or possibly the 16th-century original, stolen from St. Petersburg in 1917 and purchased by F. A. Mitchell-Hedges in 1953. It was housed in Fátima, Portugal from 1970 to 1993, then in the study of Pope John Paul II in the Vatican from 1993 to 2004, when it was returned to Kazan, where it is now kept in the Kazan Monastery of the Theotokos. Copies of the image are also venerated in the Catholic Church.

Feast days of Our Lady of Kazan are 21 July, and 4 November (which is also the Russian Day of National Unity).

According to tradition, the original icon of Our Lady of Kazan was brought to Russia from Constantinople in the 13th century. After the establishment of the Khanate of Kazan (c. 1438) the icon disappeared from the historical record for more than a century.

Metropolitan Hermogenes' chronicle, written at the request of Tsar Feodor in 1595, describes the recovery of the icon. According to this account, after a fire destroyed Kazan in 1579, the Virgin appeared to a 10-year-old girl, Matrona, revealing the location where the icon lay hidden. The girl told the archbishop about the dream, but she was not taken seriously. However, on 8 July 1579, after two repetitions of the dream, the girl and her mother recovered the icon on their own, buried under a destroyed house where it had been hidden to save it from the Tatars.

Other churches were built in honour of the revelation of the Virgin of Kazan, and copies of the image were displayed at the Kazan Cathedral of Moscow (constructed in the early 17th century), at Yaroslavl, and at St. Petersburg.

Russian military commanders Dmitry Pozharsky (17th century) and Mikhail Kutuzov (19th century) credited invocation of the Virgin Mary through the icon with helping the country to repel the Polish invasion of 1612, the Swedish invasion of 1709, and Napoleon's invasion of 1812. The Kazan icon achieved immense popularity, and there were nine or ten separate miracle-attributed copies of the icon around Russia.

On the night of June 29, 1904, the icon was stolen from the Kazan Convent of the Theotokos where it had been kept for centuries (the building was later demolished by the communist authorities). Thieves apparently coveted the icon's gold frame, which was ornamented with many jewels. Several years later, Russian police apprehended the thieves and recovered the frame. The thieves originally declared that the icon itself had been cut to pieces and burnt, although one of them eventually confessed that it was housed in a monastery in the wilds of Siberia. This one, however, was believed to be a fake, and the Russian police refused to investigate, using the logic that it would be very unlucky to venerate a fake icon as though it were authentic.

The Orthodox Church interpreted the disappearance of the icon as a sign of tragedies that would plague Russia after the image of the Holy Protectress of Russia had been lost. Indeed, the Russian peasantry was wont to credit all the miseries of the Revolution of 1905, as well as Russia's defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, to the desecration of her image.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, there was speculation that the original icon was in fact preserved in St. Petersburg. Reportedly, an icon of Our Lady of Kazan was used in processions around Leningrad fortifications during the Siege of Leningrad (1941-1944) during World War II.

The icon is now enshrined in the Cathedral of the Elevation of the Holy Cross, part of the Convent of the Theotokos (re-established as a monastery in 2005), on the site where the original icon of Our Lady of Kazan was found, and plans are underway to make the monastery's other buildings into an international pilgrimage centre.

More information: Our Lady of Kazan

 No matter how much we may study,
it is not possible to come to know God unless
we live according to His commandments,
for God is not know by science,
but by the Holy Spirit.

Eastern Orthodox Quote