The Tikhvin Monastery of the Dormition of the Mother of God was founded in 1560 by order of Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible in Tikhvin, 220 kilometers from St. Petersburg. The Icon of the Virgin Mary of Tikhvin, one of the most revered icons of the Mother of God in Russian Orthodoxy, is kept there.
As legend has it, the Tikhvin Icon of the Virgin Mary was painted by Luke the Evangelist during the lifetime of the Virgin Mary, and it was kept in Constantinople for almost a thousand and a half years. However, at the end of 14 century the residents of many villages in the south of Lake Ladoga began to have visions of the icon until it reached the bank of the Tikhvinka River. Constantinople has not yet fallen under the blows of the Turks, but was already losing its status of the center of Orthodoxy.
In 1383 the first wooden church was built in the place of the finding of the icon. And 1510 the first stone Assumption Cathedral was built there by the order of Tsar Vasili III. Since that time all Russian tsars came on a pilgrimage to Tikhvin to worship the wonder-working icon. In 1560, after the start of the Livonian War with Sweden, Tsar Ivan the Terrible ordered to laid down the Tikhvin Monastery and to encircle it with strong fortifications.
In the Time of Troubles the Swedes led by Jacob Pontusson De la Gardie besieged the monastery. Sweden claimed the northern territories of Veliky Novgorod, but the monastery stood the siege and all Novgorod lands remained part of Russia by the Treaty of Stolbovo of 1617.
In 17 century nearly all buildings of the monastery were made of stone. There were made several copies of the Tikhvin Icon of the Virgin Mary, which are also highly honored. One of the copies is stored in St. Sophia Cathedral of Novgorod the Great.
In 1924 the monastery was closed. It was used as a prison, a subsistence warehouse, a hospital, a production facility before it was made a museum. Surprisingly, the icon continued to be kept in the Assumption Cathedral. In 1941 the Germans captured Tikhvin, and during the retreat they took the icon with them. In Riga the icon fell into hands of Bishop John. In 1949 Bishop John moved to the United States where he became Archbishop of Chicago, and he took the icon with him.
He bequeathed to give the icon back to the Tikhvin Monastery, as soon as it would be restored. In 2004 the Tikhvin Icon of the Virgin Mary was officially returned to the fully restored Tikhvin Monastery.
