Чудото на Св. Никола с килима в Боянската църква
The Miracle of St. Nicholas with the Carpet in the Boyana Church

Summary/Abstract: The scene known as the Miracle with the Carpet is painted on the eastern edge of the south wall of the narthex of the Boyana Church. Gustav Anrich has already noted that the text of the miracle appears „only in old Slavic renditions.“ The text of the Miracle with the Carpet appears for the first time in the manuscript Hlud. 215, which dates from the end of the 13th century and belongs to the Novgorod tradition. In Byzantine monuments, the Miracle of St. Nicholas with the Carpet is not found. The only example of the scene in the post-Byzantine period that we are aware of appears in a small church in the village of Brezovo in western Serbia, whose frescoes date to the 1630s. Unlike Byzantine and post-Byzantine art, in Russian icon painting of the 14th century onward it can be said that the Miracle with the Carpet is mandatory in life cycles of St. Nicholas. The exactitude of the reproduction of the decoration of the cloth, as well as the manner of its „display,“ points towards information from the Russian traveler Antonii Novgorodski that St. Nicholas’ carpet was revered as a relic in Constantinople, which is the only reference to it. This circumstance corresponds to the fact that the Miracle with the Carpet is familiar only in the Russian literature and receives its widest distribution in Russian icons; how- ever, this also complicates the main question: how and from where did the Miracle appear in the Boyana Church? Indeed, the first half of the 13th century was a period marked by the particularly active presence of Russians on the Bulgarian historical scene. Perhaps Bulgarian-Russian relations during the 13th century were more active than we currently imagine? As a symbol of a ruler’s power and might, precious fabrics played an important role in court culture and ideology in Byzantium. The high ideological, social and sacred status of expensive textiles in Byzantine circles forces us to pay particular attention to the placement of the scene „St. Nicholas’ Miracle with the Carpet“ in the Boyana Church – it is located on a vertical space between images of the Bulgarian Tsar Konstantin the Quiet and Tsaritsa Irina Laskarina in the first register and a scene of „St. Nicholas Appearing before Emperor Constantine.“ That which connects them is the idea of kingly power, and in that sense the Miracle with the Carpet is yet further proof of the complexity of the iconographic program of the wall paintings in Boyana, which were the work of educated patrons and talented icon painters.

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