Pilgrims once crossed entire countries to venerate miraculous relics. In contemporary Russia, the relics themselves go on tour, while believers endure hours-long queues for a brief encounter with the sacred. What at first appears to be an extravagant form of mass devotion reveals something larger: the transformation of relics into instruments of political influence.
DOI: 10.17613/akyfa-ntc47
Moscow, November 2011. The weather is the kind of late-autumn misery that feels almost deliberate: for weeks now, the sky has been a solid, impenetrable gray, heavy clouds pressing down from above, a cold wind slipping under your jacket, supplemented by an alternating mix of rain and snow that kills off whatever fragile desire you might have had to go outside. I am twelve years old, walking with my grandfather to the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, where paintings by Caravaggio have just arrived from a sunny, distant, almost unreal Italy.
We get there by metro, arriving at Kropotkinskaya station – a fine model of restrained triumph, with its spacious vestibule and rhythmic rows of marble columns that look like oversized vases and set a serious tone to our undertaking – and emerge by the gigantic (suppressing even by its sheer size) Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, the capital’s main church. Already at the exit, we see an enormous line. I stare at this endless chain with dread and think: can all these people really be going to the museum? If the line starts here, we will be standing until tomorrow morning, at least.
My grandfather reassures me: «Do not worry, they are queuing for the church». Squeezing past the line, which seems to begin nowhere in particular but clearly ends at the cathedral, we make our way to the museum without much trouble. After a bit of jostling in the cloakroom, my grandfather and I finally partake in beauty – those dramatic plays of light and shadow.
At the time, I had absolutely no interest in what had caused such excitement and crowding. People were lining up for the church – so what? Christians are generally a bit odd anyway. Along with the glorious, inherited Soviet tradition of standing in line, give these people any excuse to queue, and they will find one.
Much, much later, do I learn that the believers were standing there, freezing, suffering, even dying, for the sake of a very important relic: the Belt of the Mother of God. It was brought to Russia from Mount Athos at the initiative of the Foundation of St. Andrew the First-Called.[1] A group of Athonite monks accompanied the relic on a specially chartered aircraft, visiting fourteen cities over forty days. In Moscow alone, approximately one million people venerated the Cincture; across Russia, the total number of pilgrims reached around three million.
As the legend goes, the apostle Thomas was away at the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, while the other apostles gathered to bid her farewell. The Virgin Mary, aware of Thomas’ skeptical nature, appeared to him individually and dropped her girdle, which she was wearing, down onto him, to give him a physical proof of what he had seen. The belt was eventually donated to the Holy Great Monastery of Vatopedi on Mount Athos in the 14th century, where it remains to this day, kept in a silver reliquary. The feast of the deposition of the girdle is celebrated on September 13. The relic is believed to have the power to heal illness, help with infertility, and ensure safe childbirth.
Mount Athos is a unique place in Christian and, more broadly, world history. It is often described as a repository, a source, a treasure trove, a passive container of whatever the seeker happens to be looking for: a Christian will find countless relics to suit any need, a historian will find Byzantine documents recording donations of property to monasteries, an art historian will find ancient icons and frescoes, an archaeologist will find the remains and layered traces of the many structures that have covered the peninsula’s slopes over the past millennium, a botanist will find remarkably well-preserved plant species and soils untouched by cars and other achievements of technological progress.
Yet, Athos is not just a place, or rather, not only that. Athos is also the people who inhabit it and defend its values and interests. Some of them, despite their nominally «eremitic» status, are not averse to taking part in international relations, exchanging the grace stored in their vaults for hard cash (or, more politely) for voluntary donations in favor of particular monasteries. In this sense, Athos is an active socio-political agent. As a self-governing religious federation, the Holy Mountain does not stand in direct subordination to secular authorities in its internal affairs. This autonomy grants it a distinctive position within the European Union. Combined with restricted access and a strictly male environment, it creates a space where seemingly Orthodox political and economic actors may interact away from public scrutiny. Athos operates both as a religious center and as a subtle participant in broader geopolitical processes.
Traditional Christian veneration of a relic, whether a miracle-working icon, saints’ relics, or other sacred objects, takes the form of pilgrimage: people travel long distances, overcome obstacles along the way, undergo a spiritual experience, and change internally before encountering the sacred. Around especially revered objects of devotion, entire infrastructures of veneration are built, capable of sustaining whole towns through the services that support them. The movement of relics, historically, was extremely rare and usually signaled a change in their permanent location due to extraordinary circumstances.
The translation of a relic happens only with the consent of the relic itself – it is a subject, not an object. Relics and other sacred objects are understood to possess their own will; if they are stolen or relocated, this is taken to mean that the saint has given their active consent; otherwise, nothing would have worked.
In the twenty-first century, the demand for saints remains high, while means of acquiring them have become limited: no new martyrs are being produced naturally, inventing new ones has ceased to be an option, and even «licensed» acquisition does not guarantee success, as the relic market is saturated with forgeries. So, what is to be done when there is still demand? Rental. Rental relics and shrines are brought into a country and perform a circuit, which resembles the tour of a highly successful music band.
The delivery of sacred artifacts from distant lands has become another mass practice for Russians who believe in miracles and a visible marker of the Russian Orthodox Church’s influence on society. The central religious act of standing in a line for hours has effectively replaced traditional pilgrimage. For the first time, this kind of queue emerged as a media phenomenon in October 2011. When the reliquary containing the Girdle of the Most Holy Mother of God was brought to St. Petersburg, the Athonite monks were greeted by Vladimir Putin and many other VIPs.
Fragments of this Belt are kept in various Moscow churches, where they can be venerated at any time without difficulty or fuss. Lists of such places were published in several outlets at the time, yet this did nothing to reduce the number of people willing to stand for ten, sometimes even eighteen hours, in the hope of entering the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, which during those cold days remained open around the clock. Demand, generated by a large-scale media campaign, did not subside.
Announcements echoed through the Moscow metro, warning the passengers that the line begins seven kilometers away from the Cathedral. The police were forced to block roads, while pilgrims arriving from other regions parked in multiple rows along the streets, paralyzing the city center with constant traffic jams. Scandals broke out over the sale of places in line and special passes that allowed certain pilgrims to bypass the queue. Moscow’s mayor was eventually forced to address the faithful, warning that one must measure one’s strength and capabilities, as standing for dozens of hours in cold weather is a serious strain on the body and health.
What makes Mount Athos so attractive to Russia? Through Athos, one accesses the Greek Orthodox (read: Byzantine) heritage. As Veronica Dora puts it: «While modern technology seemed to annihilate physical distances and chances for new geographical discovery, Byzantine history was rediscovered as a third dimension».[2] The past is not a «safe space» for scholars to unravel and to care for, but a resource, utilized by state-like agents for personal purposes and status gains. Athos is not only a physical place but also an orientation – an ideal to be imitated and a tradition to be appropriated.[3] Holy Mountain functions simultaneously as territory, symbol, and model, shaping Orthodox identity across centuries and regions.
Beyond that, Athos serves as a platform for intra-EU communication among Russian and pro-Russian actors, including politicians and organizations. Everything happens behind closed doors, in an exclusively male environment of the powerful, where one can cloak things in spirituality. The state flirting with religion is hardly a new or original story. Yet, by the 2010s, the Russian Orthodox Church had become an important ally of the state and the principal custodian of the phantom of the Soviet Union: for more than thirty years of post-Soviet history, it has remained an institution centered in Moscow, operating within the old imperial boundaries, guarding and embracing them. Relics are brought not only to Russia, but across the «canonical territory» of the Russian Orthodox Church, into former Soviet states, marking out a unified sacred space of «Holy Rus».
The conclusion is simple: if you ever come across an absurdly long line, do not be lazy – find out what’s going on. There might be something interesting behind the display.
[1] Vladimir Yakunin has served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the St. Andrew the First-Called Foundation since 2011. A close associate and business partner of Vladimir Putin since the mid-1990s, he was appointed in 2005 by decree of the Government of the Russian Federation as President of the state-owned company Russian Railways, the national railway monopoly and sole operator of rail transport in the country. For an investigative report in English, see Anastasia Kirilenko, “From the KGB to Russian Railways: The Long and Winding Road of Vladimir Yakunin. Part 1”, The Insider, December 16, 2021, “https://theins.ru/en/corruption/247201”>https://theins.ru/en/corruption/247201
[2] Dora della Veronica, Imagining Mount Athos: Visions of a Holy Place from Homer to World War II, 201.
[3] After Vladimir Putin visited Mount Athos in May 2016, numerous representatives of the Russian elite, including government officials, philanthropists, and business leaders, began undertaking similar pilgrimage-style journeys to the Holy Mountain. See “Moda na Afon: kak rossiiskie politiki i biznesmeny ezdili na goru” [The Athos Trend: How Russian Politicians and Businessmen Traveled to the Holy Mountain], RBC, October 16, 2018, https://www.rbc.ru/photoreport/16/10/2018/5bc59ba09a7947d0940782fc. For a historical overview of Russian-Athonite connections, see Fennell, Nicholas and Speake, Graham. Mount Athos and Russia: 1016-2016, Oxford, United Kingdom: Peter Lang Verlag, 2018.
Liudmila Eramova is a PhD candidate in History at the University of Vienna. Her research interests include, but are not limited to, cultural, social, and religious history, Christian iconography, and the cult of saints, particularly those with complex or problematic reputations. Her dissertation examines «The Synaxis of the Three Hierarchs Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, and John Chrysostom: a long journey from Byzantium to Russia».
All pictures used are distributed under the Creative Commons 4.0 International License. The cover image reproduces Aleksei Sundukov’s 1986 painting «Line», held in the collection of the Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia. The photograph of the painting was taken by the author in December 2019.
Posted on May 27, 2026 (c) the Author & Public History Studies in Vienna.
This article was written as part of a seminar organised by the Doctoral School of the Faculty of History and Cultural Studies at the University of Vienna. See more articles.
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