Case file · Apparition / miracle
The icon in the spring at Zarvanytsia
A monk fleeing the Mongol sack of Kyiv in 1240 is said to have fallen asleep by a spring near the Strypa river; the Virgin appeared to him, and on waking he found her icon by the water and built a chapel.
1240 CE · 49.22, 25.37 · status: legend
The account
Zarvanytsia, in Ternopil oblast, became the main Marian shrine of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Pilgrimages were banned in the Soviet period and resumed at scale after 1989; the shrine now draws hundreds of thousands of pilgrims a year.
The sceptical view
A foundation legend recorded long after the date it describes.