According to the Sacred Tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church, at the time of her Dormition, the Theotokos was buried by the Twelve Apostles in Jerusalem. Three days later, Thomas the Apostle, who had been delayed and unable to attend the funeral, arrived and asked to have one last look at the Virgin Mary. When he and the other apostles arrived at Mary's Tomb, they found that her body was missing. According to some accounts, the Virgin Mary appeared at that time and gave her belt (cincture) to the Apostle Thomas.[2]
Traditionally, the cincture was made by the Virgin Mary herself, out of camelhair.
Location and changes
Placing of the Cincture of the Most Holy Theotokos (Russian icon)
In 2011, pilgrims gather in Ekaterinburg to venerate the Cincture of the Virgin Mary exposed at the city's Trinity Cathedral
In the fall of 2011, the venerated object was brought to Russia to allow Russian Orthodox Christian pilgrims to reverence it in different cities. In St. Petersburg[4] it attracted a 2 km-long line of people to the Resurrection Nunnery on Moskovsky Prospect virtually blocking automotive traffic on adjacent streets,[5] totalling 200,000, with Vladimir Putin being among the first ones. The second city was Yekaterinburg where about 150,000 people from nearby territories came, including regional governor Alexander Misharin.[6] The next cities were Norilsk (50 thousand, a quarter of Taymyr Peninsula population) and Vladivostok; the relic's further voyage continued until the end of November.
See also
Monastery (nunnery) of Kato Panagia Xenia on Mount Othrys in Magnesia, Greece, where part of the cincture is held since 1522
^Serfes, Father Demetrios; Constantinidis, John (Tr.) (1 March 1999), The Holy Belt of the Theotokos, archived from the original on 31 January 2010, retrieved 15 January 2010
