The liturgical ordo however is not connected to the popular feast but to the celebration of the Holy Mandylion which Vespers and Divine Liturgy.

The image was considered an acheiropoieta icon "not made by the hand of man" similar to the Shroud of Turin, with which it is sometimes associated.

During the Arab occupation of the city in 944, Emperor Constantine VII bought this image from the Emir and with great honors transferred to Constantinople, the Church of the Blessed Virgin.

The cloth disappeared when Constantinople was sacked in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade, and is believed by some to have reappeared as a relic in King Louis IX of France's Sainte-Chapelle in Paris.

[4] On this day, Slav Orthodox Christians honor the physician and martyr Diomedes of Tarsus, who is prayed for with various ailments and illnesses.

[5] In most villages in Russia, there were no big holidays on this day, as preparations began for the completion of summer field work before the onset of rains.

[7] After years of atheistic communism, renewing such popular religious feasts was part of recovering the soul of Holy Russia according to dissident authors such as Andrei Sinyavsky.