The Miracle-Worker Blessed Simon of Yuryevets: Tradition of Veneration and Iconography

Abstract

In early modern Russia, church officials who validated cults sought to curb the authority of parishes which owned profitable, miracle-working icons. Nadezhda Pivovarova examines the investigations into the icon of Simon of Yuryevets, a holy fool whose image was banned in the early eighteenth century. This act of censorship reversed almost a century of devotion at the saint’s shrine. Nevertheless, Simon’s icon continued to be venerated by local parishioners until his cult was finally revived by scholars in the late nineteenth century, winning him immense fame. Through a meticulous reading of archival documents, Pivovarova elucidates the steps taken by the Holy Synod to authenticate Simon’s cult. Pivovarova’s study provides valuable insight into the church’s thinking when rejecting a popular icon. Moreover, her essay excavates the events that led to a reimagining of the vita icon—one of Byzantium’s most enduring artistic forms—which still ranks among the most widespread icon types in Orthodoxy.

Keywords:

• Icons
• Vita
• Holy Fool
• Orthodox Church
• Canonization

Acknowledgements

*I am grateful to Christine Worobec, David Salkowski, and the journal’s anonymous reviewers for commenting on the introduction and translation.

Notes

1 The key chancellery archive is St. Petersburg, Russian State Historical Archive (RGIA), fond 796.

2 Andreas Xyngopoulos, Katalogos tōn eikonōn: Mouseion Mpenakē (Athens: Hestia, 1936), cat. no. 38 (pp. 57–59); Thalia Gouma Peterson, “The Survival of Byzantinism in 18th Century Greek Painting,” Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin 29, no. 1 (1971): 11–59, at 36–37 fig. 8.

3 Vita icons only proliferated after a restructuring of the menologion and burst of hagiographic creativity prompted widespread innovation in the visual arts. See especially, Nancy Patterson Ševčenko, Illustrated Manuscripts of the Metaphrastian Menologion (Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Pavle Mijović, Menolog: istorijsko-umetnic˘ka istraz˘ivanja (Belgrade: Arkheolos˘ki Institut, 1973).

4 The two most important English-language studies are Paroma Chatterjee, The Living Icon in Byzantium and Italy: The Vita Image, Eleventh to Thirteenth Centuries (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014); and Nancy P. Ševčenko, “The Vita Icon and the Painter as Hagiographer,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 53 (1999): 149–65. For the Russian literature, see Natal’ia Komashko and Elena Saenkova, Russkaia zhitiinaia ikona (Moscow: Knigi WAM, 2007); and A. S. Kostsova and A. G. Pobedinskaia, Russkie zhitiinye ikony XVI – nachala XX veka (St. Petersburg: State Hermitage Museum / ‘Slaviia’, 1999).

5 Theodorus Paphi Episcopus, Vita sancti Spyridonis, 20; P. Van den Ven, La légende de S. Spyridon évêque de Trimithonte (Louvain: Publications universitaires, 1953), 81* (intro), 89–90. See, on the text, Maria Zoubouli, L’image à Byzance: une nouvelle lecture des textes anciens (Athens: Éditions de l’Association Pierre Belon, 2013), 194–95.

*[Translator’s note: In the body of Pivovarova’s essay and in her discursive notes, I have tried, wherever possible, to facilitate reading for an English-speaking audience with simplified spellings of Russian names. In the notes, I have followed the modified Library of Congress transliteration system for authors’ names and the titles of books and sources.]

6 The icon is published in N. V. Pivovarova, “Otvergnutye tserkov’iu: zametki po ikonografii russkikh sviatykh,” in Stranitsy istorii otechestvennogo iskusstva, vol. 19 (St. Petersburg: Gosudarstvennyi Russkii Muzei, 2011), 91–103.

7 Iz kollektsii akademika N. P. Likhacheva: katalog vystavki (St. Petersburg: Seda-S., 1993), appendix 1 (otd. 5, p. 263; No. 38).

8 [Pivovarova’s note concerns her transcription—Translator.] In the reproduction of the inscription the author’s titla and inserted letters (enclosed by parentheses) are retained; punctuation marks absent from the text and the capital letters following them are supplied.

9 E. Golubinskii, Istoriia kanonizatsii sviatykh v Russkoi tserkvi, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Universitetskaia Tipografiia, 1903), 199–200.

10 See, for example, Opisanie dokumentov i del, khraniashchikhsia v arkhive Sviateishego Pravitel’stvuiushchego Sinoda (1722 g.) (St. Petersburg: Sinodal’naia Tipografiia, 1879), Tom 2, chast’ 1, cols. 356–57.

11 Among the latest work on Archbishop Pitirim, see A. V. Morokhin, “Missionerskaia shkola Nizhegorodskogo arkhiepiskopa Pitirima,” in Nizhegorodskie issledovaniia po kraevedeniiu i arkheologii, vol. 10 (Nizhny Novgorod: Nizhegorodskii Gumanitarnyi Tsentr, 2006), 102–5.

12 In every publication devoted to the history of the de-canonization of Simon of Yuryevets, the year 1722 features prominently. However, in one of the archival documents discovered by us—a report to the Synod from the clerk of the city of Yuryevets-Povolzhsky, Matvey Astafyev (1767)—another date is adduced, namely 1719. See Russian State History Archive (RGIA), fond. 796, op. 48, d. 126, fol. 1r (Po donosheniiu Nizhegorodskoi gubernii goroda Iur’evtsa Povolskogo dvortsovoi Elnatskoi volosti kantseliarista Matfeia Ostafieva o vozobnovlenii v Bogoiavlenskoi onago goroda Iur’evtsa tserkvi nad grobom Simona Iurodivago grobnitsy i o proslavlenii moshei ego).

13 Protop. I. Pospelov, Blazhennyi Simon Iur’evetskii Khrista radi iurodivyi (Kostroma, 1877), 17–18; Protop. I. Pospelov, Blazhennyi Simon Khrista radi Iurodivyi, iur’evetskii chudotvorets, 3rd ed. (Kostroma: Tipo-Lithografiia M. Kh. Fal’ke, 1892); Golubinskii, Istoriia kanonizatsii sviatykh v Russkoi tserkvi, 199.

14 A. S. Lavrov, “Iurodstvo i ‘reguliarnoe gosudarstvo’ (konets XVII–pervaia polovina XVIII v.),” Trudy otdela drevnerusskoi literatury 52 (2001): 432–47.

15 Russian State History Archive (RGIA), fond. 796, op. 48, d. 126, fol. 1r.

16 Ibid., fols. 15v–16r.

17 Ibid., fol. 17v.

18 Ibid., fol. 13r.

19 Russian State History Archive (RGIA), fond. 796, op. 22, d. 713 (Po poslannomu iz Sviateishego Sinoda v Dukhovnuiu dikasteriiu trebovaniiu o prisylke izvestiia … [sic] o Pleskiia desiatiny v sele Delevom obraze Simona Khrista radi Urodivago).

20 [This term indicates the area covered by “six leaves” of gold, or approximately 20 x 30 cm.—Translator.]

21 Ibid., fol. 2r–v.

22 Ibid., fol. 3r.

23 Ibid., fol. 3r, 3v.

24 Ibid., fol. 3r.

25 Golubinskii, Istoriia kanonizatsii sviatykh v Russkoi tserkvi, 126–27 n.2.

26 Russian National Library (RNB), sobr. M. P. Pogodin, No. 757, fol. 2v. For a description of the manuscript, see Rukopisnye knigi sobraniia M. P. Pogodina: Katalog (St. Petersburg: Russkaia Natsional’naia Biblioteka, 2004), vol. 3, p. 132. According to an owner’s inscription, the manuscript once belonged to the sacristan of Epiphany Church in Yuryevets-Povolzhsky, Andrey Ivanov, son of Popov. In 1775 it was the property of the Novotorzhsky merchant Hilarion Porisov, son of Sishcheskov (?) [sic]. The codex came to M. P. Pogodin by way of I. F. Tarkhov in December 1847.

27 State Russian Museum, inv. no. DRZh-979. Published in Sviatye zemli Russkoi: Al’manakh (St. Petersburg: Palace Editions, 2010), 333–34, cat. no. 291 (CD-ROM).

28 The story of the icon’s life is traced in detail in the exhibition catalogue: Obrazy i simvoly staroi very: Pamiatniki Staroobriadcheskoi kul’tury iz sobraniia Russkogo muzeia: Al’manakh, ed. N. V. Pivovarova (St. Petersburg: Palace Editions / Graficart, 2008), 223, cat. no. 196.

29 V. O. Kliuchevskii, Drevnerusskie zhitiia sviatykh kak istoricheskii istochnik (Moscow, 1871 [reprint: Nauka, 1988]), 344 n.1.

30 The assumption expressed by the author was affirmed by E. M. Iukhimenko, who put the text itself at our disposal, for which we offer her sincere thanks.

31 See Obrazy i simvoly staroi very, 82–85, cat. no. 70; and ibid., 72, cat. no. 62.

32 E. M. Iukhimenko, “Agiologicheskie razyskaniia Vygovskikh staroobriadtsev i obraz Vsekh Sviatykh Rossiiskikh chudotvortsev,” in XIV nauchnye chteniia pamiati I. P. Bolottsevoi (Yaroslavl: Iaroslavskii Khudozhestvennyi Muzei, 2010), fig. 1 (commentary on Simon of Yuryevets’s icon at p. 163).

33 Russian State History Archive (RGIA), fond. 796, op. 118, d. 750, fol. 1 (O proiavlenii v gorode Iur’evtse kakogo-to blazhennogo Simona za sviatogo i ob otpravlenii tam zhe bogosluzheniia pred ikonoiu, nakhodiashcheiusia v piteinom dome). An analogous report was sent to the chief procurator of the Synod N. A. Pratasov by the secretary of the Kostroma Church Consistory Ivan Ukhanov. Russian State History Archive (RGIA), fond. 797, op. 5, d. 17986, fol. 1r (Ob obvalivsheisia mogile v g. Iur’evtse mnimogo Simona Blazhennogo i o iavlennoi iakoby ikone v piteinom dome).

34 The document provides the icons’ measurements. The first: 1 arshin, 4 ½ vershka high x 1 arshin, ½ vershka wide (∼92 × 72 cm); the second: 1 arshin, 8 vershkov high x 1 arshin, 2 vershka wide (∼ 107 × 81 cm), “in a colored and gilded frame, before which hangs a white-painted copper lamp and a local (saint’s) candle”; the third: 9¼ vershka high × 7½ vershka wide (∼41 × 33 cm), “in a silver and gilded revetment of ancient manufacture.” (Ibid., fol. 4r–v). The explanations of the priest Ioann Agapitov permit one to elucidate the iconographic details of the second icon: “A lamp with a candle hangs in front of his (i.e. Simon’s) image not for him but for the icon of the Mother of God depicted there, before whom he (Simon) is painted praying.” (Ibid., fol. 6v). The text is speaking about a composition similar to that which is presented on the icon from N. P. Likhachev’s collection.

35 [Literally “in black ink.”—Translator.]

36 Russian State History Archive (RGIA), fond. 796, op. 118, d. 750, fol. 6v.

37 Ibid., fols. 1v–2r.

38 Ibid., fols. 11r–23r.

39 Ibid., fols. 25v–26r.

40 Pospelov, Blazhennyi Simon Khrista radi Iurodivyi.

41 The author is indebted to N. I. Komashko for this information.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nadezhda Pivovarova

Translated from Russian by Justin Willson Originally published as “Blazhennyi Simon Iur'evetskii chudotvorets: traditsiia pochitaniia i ikonografiia,” in Russkaia agiografiia: issledovaniia, materialy, publikatsii, ed. T. R. Rudi and S. A. Semiachko (St. Petersburg: Pushkinskii Dom, 2017), 337–44.