The Mother of God to the three hands

The history of the icon of the Mère of God to the three hands begins when the emperor Leon {{III}} Isaurien prescribes to destroy the holy images, in 730, Jean Damascène is opposed to it very vigorously. To eliminate this intelligent adversary, the emperor Leon {{III}} sends to the Caliph a letter written by forgers, according to whom Jean did not propose anything less than to deliver Damas to him. Jean Damascène served the caliph as minister.

Having taken knowledge of the forgery, the Caliph who thought that Jean had betrayed it with the profit of Constantinople returns it not without him to have made sliced the right hand; Jean recovers his cut hand and withdraws himself in his oratory to thus address to the Blessed Virgin: Very pure Virgin Mary which gave birth to my God, you know why me was cut the right hand, you can, please, return it to me and rejoin it with my arm. I ask you with authority this grace so that I employ it from now on to write the praises of your Son and yours. The Virgin appears to him during her sleep and says to him: You are now cured, compose of the anthems, write my praises, thus achieve your promise. . In thanks, Jean made place in ex-voto a third hand on this very particular icon which became thus the prototype of this kind of icon.

According to the tradition, Saint Sava brought the icon of the Mont Athos, in the Monastère of Hilandar, carrying out an old prophecy according to which this icon, one of the most crowned Orthodoxe Church, was to be given to a monk of royal blood. It was then transferred in the capital from the Emperor Stefan Uroš {{IV}} Dušan to Skopje, where it acquired the title of icon protrectrice of the Serbia and the people Serbe, title which it keeps still today. After the Turkish conquests , it was found again in the Monastère of Hilandar where it remains still today.

Sources

FPSL (Polytechnic school of Lausanne)
Dusan Batkovic, History of the Serb people

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