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The Story about the Vision of Cyril Belozersky in the North Russian Lives of the Monasteries’ Founders: The Lives of Cyril Belozersky and Alexander Svirsky

The story about the vision of Cyril Belozersky is the first description of the Virgin’s appearance, indicating the place of the monastery’s foundation, in Russian hagiography. The text of this story is read in the North Russian Lives of the monasteries’ founders: Therapont Belozersky’s, Alexander Svirsky’s, Ephraim of Perekom’s, Cyril Novoezersky’s, Philip of Irap’s. From our point of view, there is a process of mastering by hagiographers the episode of the vision from the Life of Cyril Belozersky as a literary device for constructing the situation of the ascetic’s religious retreat in the listed monuments. In them the story of the vision is introduced by the authors in the narrative when the title character for some reason cannot make religious retreat, and this vision helps him to achieve what he wants. There is a similar plot schemes in these Lives, but the borrowed episode is used differently by their authors. They use it in accordance with the characteristics of the ascetic’s holiness. From this point of view, we have already examined the using of the plot fragment from the Life of Cyril Belozersky in the Life of Therapont Belozersky. The author of Therapont’s Life introduces Cyril and almost literally replicates description of the saint’s religious retreat from his Life without making Therapont the visionary. The story about the vision of Cyril Belozersky in the Life of Alexander Svirsky is used otherwise. In this article the analysis episodes of Cyril and Alexander’s religious retreat reveals the role of a similar story in the concept of two different Lives. In the Cyril’s biography, the observed vision marks the stage of the ascetic’s transition to the foundation of the monastery. This is the main achievement of Cyril. In the Life of Alexander, a similar story marks only one stage of the ascetic’s spiritual path. Alexander, like Cyril, became the founder of the monastery. But above all, he is known as the visionary of the Holy Trinity. This vision is the most significant in the concept of his Life. The most important stories of the visions in the Cyril and Alexander’s Lives had influenced the iconography of the saints becoming the basis for popular iconographic versions of compositions “The Apparition of the Virgin to Cyril Belozersky” and “The Apparition of the Holy Trinity to Alexander Svirsky”.