Researchers are looking for a mysterious icon
Have you gone to the monastery of the two brothers of Saint Cosmas and Damian to the village of Kuklen, in the Rhodope Mountains? The place is special – with the power fueled for centuries there. Nature has taken care to provide healing ice-cold water that calms the nerves of the sick people who went there to visit the first hospital in Bulgaria in practice. In the pasture of the monastery, in the last 9 years, the open-air summer festival “Wake up!” Is already taking place, which is probably not a coincidence – that they gather young eco-minded people to discuss ideas how to live more environmentally friendly and better , in sync with the surrounding world and using the elements. In fact, on the spot – in the monastery years ago it became clear that over the centuries these couple of brothers were actually two – with the same names – Kozma and Damian. Both brothers were brothers-healer, but some lived during the Roman period of the 5th century and the second in the 10th-11th centuries. Similar fates and too many strange coincidences …
This icon of the holy Kozma and Damian is today among the exhibits exhibited at the Historical Museum of Perushtitsa. It has survived miraculously after the April 1876 Muslim and Gypsy hordes of the surrounding area burned the monastery “St. St. Teodor Tiron and Teodor Stratilat “in the Rhodope Mountains, before they came to a rebellious village at the foot of the mountain.
The icon of this icon is unknown, and the miracle of how this wooden icon was not covered by the flames after the holy cloak is burned to the ground. There are traditions left with the same icon – in one of them (recorded by the young Prof. Mihail Arnaudov and published in 1930) it is clear that the “kuna” came out of the church and went to the stone where the cross is. They went to take her, but she was not given to anyone. One bride, two days married, managed to take her, and took her down – a flat place where the monastery was. There are now four steps on the horse of St. Todor “.
Above the monastery there is an impressive rock wreath on a megalith sanctuary of high menhirs. In the people’s memory it has remained like the “Monastery Rocks” … Maybe it will ever tell us.
Prof. Arnaudov has published another similar legend from the region: “Two hours from Krichim there is a monastery in the name of St. Virgin Mary burnt in the rebellion of 1876. At that place shepherds and hunters heard many years ago that a voice was crying. The voice came from a height above the river where there was an iron cross. The bishops and kings went out, and they read prayer in the place, and here the voice called from a dogwood. They surrounded this place and built the monastery there. When the feast of the church came, everyone was running here and taking part in the struggle to grab the icon of the Virgin Mary and run through gaffers without a road running – because the icon itself drove them, blasted (as if the bubble blasted them). They fled violently, while others persecuted them – until all returned to the church. Some believe that the icon itself rolled and went to the cross where it was heard before the voice. She was usually tied with a chain of wood for the wood in the church. ”
More details can be found at the IT in Perushtitsa
The material was prepared on an idea by Hristo Bukovski