Case file · Apparition / miracle
The bomb that spared the Kursk Root icon
On the night of 8 March 1898 a bomb exploded beside the miracle-working Kursk Root icon in Kursk's Znamensky Cathedral, wrecking the shrine; the icon and its glass were reported undamaged, which believers hailed as a miracle.
1898 CE · 51.73, 36.19 · status: disputed
The account
The icon, said to have been found at the root of a tree in 1295, was carried to the Korennaya hermitage every year in a great procession painted by Ilya Repin. The bombing was the work of revolutionaries. The icon left Russia with the White armies in 1920 and is now kept by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad in New York.
The sceptical view
The explosion is documented; how intact the icon was is reported by church sources.