Virgin Mary Portaitissa Icon – Arched Engraved Silver, Gold & Wood

Description

The Virgin Mary Portaitissa, or Panagia Portaitissa, is a miraculous icon accredited to Saint Luke the Evangelist. Icons depicting the Panagia Portaitissa are the most famous icons of the Theotokos, or Virgin Mary. According to tradition, the original icon belonged to a widow in Nicaea, where it was kept in her personal chapel. This was during the reign of Byzantine Emperor Theophilus, who was a known iconoclast, meaning he wanted to destroy any images of religion (including icons). As part of the Emperor’s war against religious imagery, her sent soldiers to destroy the icons in the widow’s private chapel, but when the soldier attempted to destroy the icon of the Virgin Mary with his sword, he began to bleed profusely from his cheek – in the exact spot where he struck the face of the Virgin Mary. The other soldier immediately began to repent, and renounced the iconoclasm of Emperor Theophilus, advising the widow to hide the icon in order to keep it safe.

The widow prayed to the Theotokos for guidance before putting the icon in the sea. But the icon did not sink, instead it stood upright and began to float west. At the same time, her son was fleeing persecution and upon the advice of his mother decided to go west. He later joined the Monastery of Clement, where he became a monk and recounted the story of the Holy Icon floating upright in the sea.

Several years later, the icon was found on the Holy Mountain by monks of the Iveron region. The Virgin Mary appears to one of the monks – Gabriel – and instructed him to share with the abbot and other monks that she wanted them to keep her icon. The monks installed the icon in the church, but would often wake to find it above the gate of the monastery. The Virgin Mary again appeared to Gabriel and told him that she had chosen the spot above the gate for her icon so that she could protect the monastery and the monks. For this reason the icon is called the Portaitissa, or “keeper of the gate.”