Feodorovskaya Icon of the Mother of God

Since the Feodorovskaya follows the same Byzantine Eleusa (Tender Mercy) type as the Theotokos of Vladimir, pious legends declared it a copy of that famous image, purportedly created by Saint Luke.

The awestruck prince informed the citizens of Kostroma about the miracle he had witnessed and returned with a crowd of people to the forest.

One explanation is that, during Vasily's absence in the forest, several residents of Kostroma claimed to have seen an apparition of Saint Theodore come up to the city with an icon in his hands.

This dating seems to confirm the Novgorodian origin of the icon, as it was only in the 15th century that the veneration of Saint Paraskeva spread to other parts of the country.

According to Vasily Tatishchev, the only such princess known in the Rurikid family was Alexandra of Polotsk, the wife of Saint Alexander Nevsky of Novgorod.

[5] On these grounds, Byzantine expert Fyodor Uspensky concluded that the Feodorovskaya was presented by Alexander Nevsky to his wife on the occasion of their wedding in 1239.

[6] If this theory is correct, the revered image of the Theotokos could have been commissioned by Alexander's father, Yaroslav II of Russia.

Romanov lived in Kostroma with his mother, Xenia, who had been forced by the regent Boris Godunov to "take the veil" (join a convent and withdraw from public life).

At first the nun advised her only son to stay in Kostroma and decline the offer of the Monomakh's Cap, or the position of tsar.

He was commanded to go to Kostroma, procure a copy of the icon, bring it back to Yaroslavl and to build a church for its veneration.

As soon as he was cured of palsy, Pleshkov commissioned Gury Nikitin, the most famous wall-painter of 17th-century Russia, who hailed from Kostroma, to paint a copy of the miraculous icon.

[9] Western Christian women who married into the House of Romanov and converted to Russian Orthodoxy often took Feodorovna as patronymic in honour of the Feodorovskaya icon.

When the tercentenary of the Romanov dynasty was celebrated in 1913, Nicholas II of Russia commissioned a copy of the Gorodets icon, which he placed at the Royal Cathedral of Our Lady Saint Theodore, constructed to a design by Vladimir Pokrovsky in the town of Tsarskoye Selo.