The sash of the Theotokos

  • Tomor­row in Orthros, you may hear a lit­tle about the depo­si­tion of the sash of the Theotokos (depend­ing on what trans­la­tion you use, that might also be ‘belt,’ ‘gir­dle’ or ‘cinc­ture.’) It’s rare for the synaxar­ion to be read dur­ing the ser­vice, so I thought I’d quote it just in case any­one was as curi­ous as I was about that:

    Today in the Holy Ortho­dox Church we com­mem­o­rate the plac­ing of the holy Sash of the Theotokos in Constantinople’s Halko­prateia dis­trict dur­ing the reign of the emperor Theo­do­sius the Younger.  At her Dor­mi­tion (August 15), the most holy Mother of God left her Sash to the holy Apos­tle Thomas.

    This Sash was later taken to Con­stan­tino­ple and kept there in a sealed cas­ket in the church of the Mother of God at Blach­er­nae.  This cas­ket was never opened until the time of the Emperor Leo the Wise (886–912). Leo’s wife, the Empress Zoë, was taken sick in soul and, as the result of a mys­te­ri­ous vision, desired that the Sash of the holy Theotokos be placed upon her.  The Emperor asked the Patri­arch, who opened the cas­ket and found the Sash com­pletely whole and undam­aged by time.  The Sash was taken out and placed upon the sick Empress, who imme­di­ately recov­ered.  They sang hymns of thanks­giv­ing to the Most Holy Theotokos, and then returned the ven­er­a­ble Sash back into the cas­ket and resealed it.


    Related posts:

    1. Sun­day after­noon and a feast about a robe
    2. It is truly meet
    3. The scary Mary prayer
    4. Just another failed church
    5. St. Euphemia

    August 30th, 2008 | Grace | 5 Comments |

5 Responses and Counting...

  • Mimi 08.30.2008

    This didn’t load for me yes­ter­day, I’m so glad it did today. Fas­ci­nat­ing. The 31st is my birth­day, but I’d never heard much about the sash, so I appre­ci­ate it very much.

  • Grace

    Sorry about that. I had done a cut and paste straight from a Word file, and it threw in a bunch of stu­pid for­mat­ting junk I didn’t need. I didn’t notice it until yesterday.

    On the sash, our church bul­letin had a lit­tle addi­tional info. Appar­ently, part of the sash is still around, in a church in Geor­gia. A daugh­ter of another Byzan­tine emperor was healed with the sash, and when she was betrothed to a Geor­gian emperor, she was allowed to take a por­tion of the sash with her. (I’m assum­ing that the por­tion that stayed in Con­stan­tino­ple dis­ap­peared, as so many reli­gious trea­sures did, when the city fell to the Turks.) Later on, Russ­ian emperor Alexan­der I ordered that a spe­cial church be built in Zug­did, and that por­tion of the sash is still there.

    So there you go — pil­grim­age des­ti­na­tion! Ortho-road-trip! Well, maybe we’ll wait till things calm down in Geor­gia a lit­tle bit, right?

  • Mimi

    Yes, I’d totally be in on that! I’d love to go to Geor­gia (after the cur­rent cri­sis calms, naturally)

  • Suraj Iype

    Yes the sash or the gir­dle of the Theotokos is still around. A cas­ket with the gir­dle was dis­cov­ered dur­ing the ren­o­va­tion of a Syr­iac Ortho­dox Church (Ori­en­tal Ortho­dox) in Homs, Syria.

    Parts of the blessed relic were then brought to India ( con­sid­er­ing the asso­ci­a­tion of St Thomas both with the gir­dle and India) and deposi­tied in mul­ti­ple churches in India. I hapenned to ven­er­ate the relic in 3–4 churches in India.

  • Grace

    What an amaz­ing thing that would be to be able to do!

Leave a Reply

* Name, Email, and Comment are Required