№2-2020-04
Ismailova Z. A.
SAINTS-MIRACLE WORKERS
This article discusses the miraculous healings that occurred at the tombs of the Moscow metropolitans St. Peter and Alexey from 1348 to 1520. From a medical point of view, the nature of the diseases of the healed and the methods of treatment of such diseases are explained. Attention is drawn to the Church environment in which healings took place and which had a great psychological impact on parishioners and sick people. The conclusion of the study is that the miraculous cures mentioned in the chronicle were quite possible from a medical point of view. Miracles were of great importance for the Moscow Grand Dukes and metropolitans, asserting their capital city-Moscow-the status of the Church capital of all Russian lands. When this status became indisputable, then the mention of miracles in the chronicle stopped. This happened in 1520. In the middle of the XVI century, the cult of Moscow saints Peter and Alexei was replaced by the cult of the all – Russian Saint-Nikola the Wonderworker, whose image also began to undergo miraculous healings. Thus, for medieval man, religious miracles had a very practical significance, linking faith and politics together.
Keywords: miracles, St. Peter and Alexey, relics of saints, blindness, deafness, paresis, neurology, healing, «Black death», Vasily III.
Academician I.G. Petrovskii Bryansk State University (Russia)
