The icon of Bugabashskaya Godmother is delivered for Ufa

The icon of Bugabashskaya Godmother is delivered for the Christmas-Godmother Cathedral in Ufa. This intagliated icon is the only of the miraculous icons in Ufa eparchy, preserved in the original form. Besides, it is considered the only non-man-made icon in Russia.

According to the legends the icon heals fr om many serious diseases, including blindness, and helps people to get rid of the drug and alcoholic dependence. The icon traveled through many regions of Volga and Ural and believers fr om Yekaterinburg, Orenburg, Nizhniy Novgorod and other Russian cities could watch and touch it.

The icon of Bugabashskaya Godmother was called after the name of the Chuvash village of Bugabash, near which it was discovered in the second half of the XIX century. There are two legends about appearance of the icon. According to the first one it was found by the soldier Tit Tabakov, who returned to his native village of Bugabash after the Russian-Turkish war in 1877-1878. Going by the place, wh ere the icon laid, he took a stone from the river just for a memory. When he had got tired to carry it, he threw it away and immediately became blind. He recovered his sight only after he had picked it up again. Later he laid the stone into a box and kept it there for many years. After he had taken it out again he has seen that the image of the Godmother appeared on the stone surface. Tit came to Ufa and told the local bishop about this phenomenon. The bishop invited the stone-cutter and he cut the spacious icon on the stone, having added the images of the saint Basil the Great and Nicholas Miracle-Man.

The second story about the icon’s origin is close to the first one but Tit Tabakov was not a soldier but the 16-year old youngster, who took the stone from the river during his pilgrimage.

For many years the icon was kept by one of the women in the village of Bugabash Taisia Philippova. During the visit of the Archbishop of Ufa and Sterlitamac Nikon to the town of Tuimazy, to the local church, wh ere the woman had brought the icon for the all-night vigil, she agreed to present the icon to Ufa eparchy.

The icon will stay in Ufa till the middle of February and all believers may touch it every day from 9 to 19 o’clock.