The Iberian Virgin
Radziwill, Catherine
448 THE COMMONWEAL September 4, I929 THE IBERIAN VIRGIN By CATHERINE RADZIWILL HE emotion which the Bolsheviks' destruction of the famous Iberian chapel in Moscow will produce among...
...And what has become of the ikon itself...
...One hopes that no sacrilegious hand has been found to deface the sacred image before which so many ardent supplications have been poured out, the image that has brought peace to so many broken hearts, blessed so many weary souls, given courage to so many downtrodden creatures, who have received from it strength and courage to go on with the struggle of existence...
...The Iberian chapel destroyed...
...Wilson dismissed with the single reference as to the sheer vulgarity, uttexly inconceivable, which would attach to Uncle Sam being arrayed in the habiliments of a bartender...
...Will Russia really disappear, destroyed by the ruthless rulers who think that by annihilating an object of universal reverence, they will achieve anything but their own ultimate ruin...
...It seems hardly possible...
...The Iberian chapel was perhaps the holiest spot in Russia, and its entire existence was associated with that of the czars so intimately that perhaps only now will Russians realize that the empire has actually disappeared forever...
...Dr...
...James A. Ryan in an article entitled The Evolution of an Anti, appearing in The Commonweal of June 26, puts down his reasoned and seasoned opinion in this wise: "Concerning the unwisdom of national prohibition and the...
...It was the palladium of the town and of the country...
...They are setting at defiance not only the prohibition law, but every other law of honesty and decency in their nefarious traffic...
...448 THE COMMONWEAL September 4, I929 THE IBERIAN VIRGIN By CATHERINE RADZIWILL HE emotion which the Bolsheviks' destruction of the famous Iberian chapel in Moscow will produce among Orthodox Russians is akin to what Catholics would feel if the sacred Grotto of Lourdes or Saint Peter's in Rome were deliberately pulled down...
...And now it has been destroyed...
...COMMUNICATIONS THE MORALITY OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC Bristol, Pa...
...O the Editor :--The writer of these lines had the opportunity of hearing the debate on prohibition between Messrs...
...but that if she were ever removed to some other place, it would mean the end of the country and of its rulers...
...His successors bent their knee before it when they made their solemn entry into the venerable city previous to their coronation...
...Ivan the Terrible had prostrated himself before it...
...No emperor ever came to Moscow without stopping on his way to the Kremlin before the tiny chapel, and lighting a candle in honor of the patron of the city...
...This pilgrim, whose identity remained a mystery, but who was supposed to have been one of the Apostles sent by the Mother of God to the patriarch, disappeared just as suddenly as he had come...
...It stood at the gate of Moscow's famous Red Square, and was a marvel of Byzantine architecture...
...The Iberian chapel was built in 1648 to house an image of the Virgin and Child which had been brought to the patriarch of Moscow, Varsanofy, by an unknown pilgrim...
...For instance, the question as to the ethical validity of the home manufacture of intoxicants for home consumption he never so much as alluded to...
...Hardly twenty people could stand together within its four walls, but it was never empty...
...The patriarch (who had the reputation of being a real saint, and was later canonized) always referred to his strange visitor as a messenger of the Almighty, dispatched to reveal to him "many things unknown to others...
...The sole and whole burden of his argument consisted in a sweeping condemnation of the liquor traffic and its ultimate dispensary, the saloon, as irredeemably wicked...
...Again, the suggestion of federal control and distribution of liquor Mr...
...the Polish invaders who conquered the city after his death, respected it...
...Crowds of worshipers came to pray, if only for a few minutes, and no Russian would have visited Moscow without prostrating himself before the famous ikon, a glorious thing glistening with precious stones, to which new ones were added every day...
...For example, the usually staid and temperate True Voice, in an editorial of June 28 thus gave expression to its vigorous antipathy: "We have no sympathy with bootleggers and other violators of the law...
...The Iberian chapel itself was a small gem, in its way...
...Napoleon reverently bared his head when he visited it...
...This studied silence respecting a muchdiscussed situation at the present day, and in its stead the playing up to the popular disfavor of the old-tlme saloon showed the same shrewdness, if not downright deception, which was so adroitly employed in putting over complete prohibition in the first place...
...Clarence Darrow and Clarence True Wilson in Washington recently...
...The several important phases that have developed since its enactment he preferred to ignore entirely...
...The ikon was associated with Russia's most glorious and most terrible days...
...One of the landmarks of the Russia of the czars has disappeared...
...Has it really been sent to another church, or has it been also destroyed, done away with as a "relic of outworn superstition...
...We belong to thee, gracious czar," said the head of this deputation, "and thou canst kill or torture us at thy will, but the Iberian Virgin belongs to Moscow, and in Moscow it shall remain 1" The ruthless sovereign for once was awed, and the ancient city remained in possession of its most sacred shrine...
...By the latter's account, it was a faithful copy of one in the Iberian monastery on Mount Athos, and it had been given to him by Our Lady herself who wanted it to become the patron ikon of Russia...
...It has followed the Romanovs into history, and into the grave...
...It is somewhat strange, therefore, that similar statements should be occasionally voiced by Catholic writers...
...Will Russia ever forgive the cruel tyrants under whose rule she has fallen this act of desecration and vandalism...
...Such an attitude was of course to be expected from an official of the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals, whose sense for the fitness and fairness of things is sufficiently evidenced by the bold assumption of the comprehensive term "public" on the part of a private organization...
...Alexander I prayed there before starting to repulse the victorious French armies...
...Among these things was a prophecy that so long as the Iberian Virgin remained in the chapel she wished to be built for her on a spot which the pilgrim designated, no real harm could happen to Russia...
...The old Muscovites firmly believed in this prediction, and when Peter the Great built the city which he made the new capital of his empire, and desired to remove the Iberian Virgin to it, a deputation of all classes of the population of Moscow waited on him to declare that this would never be allowed...
...One wonders whether the prophecy of the mysterious pilgrim who brought the holy image to the saintly patriarch Varsano/y is about to be fulfilled...
...Wilson delivered himself of a typical anti-saloon attack in favor of the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Enforcement Act in the approved fashion of pre-prohibition days...
Vol. 10 • September 1929 • No. 18
