Feast of the laying down of the robes of Our Lady
The feast of the laying down of the robes of the Mother of God (also called the laying down of the robes of the Virgin Mary, etc.) is celebrated in the Orthodox Church on July 2nd.
According to Orthodox and Catholic beliefs, Mary was taken to heaven body and soul at the moment of her death . According to legend, only their clothes remained in the grave. Some cloth relics were venerated in Constantinople as these Marian robes and thus as invaluable evidence of God's incarnation , for which Empress Aelia Pulcheria had a chapel built in the Blachernae from 452 onwards. After the completion on July 2nd, the robes of Mary were ceremonially laid down here. From 473 further Marian relics and church buildings were added, and the Blachernen Palace was laid out here under the protection of Our Lady.
Similar to the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross , the Feast of the Deposition of the Robe does not originally present an event from the Gospel or the legendary life of Mary, but rather the finding and exposure of relics .
Two historical events later added weight to the day: on July 2, 860, an attack by ancient Russian tribes on Constantinople is said to have been successfully repulsed. On July 2, 1451 , after a violent attack on Moscow the day before, the Tatars withdrew surprisingly without a fight. Both events were attributed to the help of the Blessed Mother and her robes worshiped that day. In memory of this, the Church of the Deposition of the Virgin Mary was built in the Moscow Kremlin from 1484 to 1486 .