The Hodegetria Icon: History and Types of the Most Famous Image

Our Lady of Hodegetria, or “The Lady of Guidance” in Greek, is one of the most famous and revered icons in Christian culture. The oldest mention of the Mother of God icon under this name is found in the 12th century in a Latin manuscript describing the main sacred places of Constantinople. Among other venerated sites of the Byzantine capital, it describes the ancient monastery of Odigon and its famous miracle-working icon. The same text gives the history of the name of the image of the Mother of God: it was called “Lady of Guidance” after the miracle of bringing two blind people to the church. Following more ancient sources (the oldest of which is Theodore the Reader’s “Church History” created at the turn of the 5th-6th centuries), the text calls the Hodegetria icon not just a miracle-working image, but a portrait of the Mother of God, painted by the Evangelist Luke.

The Hodegetria Icon: History and Types of the Most Famous Image

It is significant that the icon was widely venerated in the 12th century during the reign of the Byzantine dynasty of the Comneni. Members of the imperial family brought rich gifts to the icon: veils embroidered with precious threads, elements of its frame, crowns, etc. By the end of the 12th century, the Hodegetria icon was perceived by the Byzantines as the patroness of the imperial power and Constantinople as a whole. The first such evidence is connected with the rebellion of 1187 when Emperor Isaac the Second Angelos ordered to take the icon to the city wall for the protection of its inhabitants.

However, one of the main events in the life of the icon was the so-called Tuesday processions. Every Tuesday, the clerics of the Odigon monastery, together with the citizens, carried the heavy icon from its permanent place to another church in Constantinople for the divine service. The second type of Tuesday procession is described in the book “On the Departure of the Danes to the Holy Land” from the end of the 12th century. The author of the text stated that in addition to the transfers to the city temples, which he erroneously called a daily procession, every Tuesday, there was a ceremony of taking the icon to the square where “it circled with its bearer” in the “angelic movement.” However, in the 13th–14th centuries, such evidence completely disappeared, which indicates the discontinuation of the tradition of Tuesday processions. An echo of memories of this religious practice can be found in the frescoes of 1300 of the narthex of the Virgin of Vlachernitissa in Arta (Epirus Despotate, Greece).

Virgin Hodegetria. Early 13th century. Cyprus

Quite early, locally venerated Hodegetria icons, which were not directly related to the Constantinople image, began to appear in the most diverse regions of the Byzantine Empire and beyond. The main feature of this iconographic type was the Infant Christ solemnly seated on Our Lady’s left arm, with her right hand pointing at Him; the other elements and specific poses could vary. Thus, the iconographic type of the Hodegetria icon rather quickly ceased to be associated with the icon from the monastery of Odigon: modern historians generally separate the copies going back to it and the general iconographic type of the Hodegetria, which is often associated with local religious realities. In the Old Russian tradition, direct replicas primarily included the Smolensk icon of the Mother of God.