Protection of the Most Holy Theotokos

The vision commemorated is set at the Blachernae church in Constantinople in the tenth century, during an all-night vigil. Tradition holds that Saint Andrew the Fool-for-Christ, a Slav by birth, beheld the Theotokos entering the church through the air, radiant with light and surrounded by an assembly of saints, among them Saint John the Baptist and the Apostle John the Theologian. She knelt in prayer with tears for the faithful and then spread her veil over the people as a protection; Andrew's disciple Saint Epiphanius, standing beside him, confirmed that he too saw the vision. The account links the Mother of God's protection to a threat then facing the city.

The Blachernae church was itself a principal shrine of the Theotokos, housing her robe, veil, and part of her belt, said to have been brought from Palestine in the fifth century, which grounds the feast's association with her sheltering garment.

The feast took root and flowered especially in the Slavic churches, in part because Saint Andrew was reckoned a Slav. Its celebration in the Russian Church dates to the twelfth century; tradition attributes its establishment to Prince Andrew Bogolyubsky around 1164. Churches dedicated to the Protection multiplied across the Rus' lands: the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl near Vladimir (built about 1165), Novgorod's Zverin (Intercession) Monastery in the same century, and later the Cathedral of the Intercession on the Moat in Moscow, built under Tsar Ivan IV in the mid-sixteenth century and popularly known as Saint Basil's. Veneration of the Pokrov spread through the lands that became Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, where the Sutkivtsi Intercession church of 1476 is reckoned among the oldest.

In Greece the feast followed a distinct path. Originally kept on October 1 as elsewhere, it was transferred by decision of the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece in 1952 to October 28. The move honored the protection of the Theotokos over the Greek nation, especially the many miracles reported by soldiers during the Greco-Italian War of 1940-1941. October 28 is also Ochi ('No') Day, marking Greece's refusal of the Italian ultimatum of 1940, so that in Greek usage the feast and the national commemoration are kept together.

The feast teaches the intercession of the Mother of God as a living, present help to the Church. In the vision she is seen not distant in glory but kneeling in prayer amid the assembly and drawing her own veil over those who pray, an image of protection that is personal, maternal, and continual.

The veil spread over the faithful expresses the Church's confidence that the Theotokos, standing before Christ her Son, shelters those who call on her name and turn to her in danger. The feast gathers under this one image the whole Orthodox sense of her as intercessor and refuge.

That the commemoration arose from her deliverance of a threatened city, and was later bound in Greece to a nation's wartime rescue, underlines how the Church has read the feast: as a testimony that her protection reaches into the concrete perils of peoples and communities, not only the private soul.

The festal icon shows the Theotokos standing above the faithful with her arms outstretched in prayer, draped with or holding the veil that she spreads over those below, flanked by angels. Around and beneath her the icon gathers the witnesses of the vision and figures associated with the Blachernae church.

Saints Andrew the Fool-for-Christ and his disciple Epiphanius are commonly shown in the lower portion, Epiphanius gesturing in astonishment at the appearance. Many versions also include Saint Romanus the Melodist, whose feast is also October 1, depicted as a young deacon holding an open scroll, together with the emperor, empress, and patriarch, so that the composition draws together events separated by centuries at the same holy place.

The feast is served with hymns that celebrate the Theotokos standing in the midst of the Church and praying invisibly to God for the faithful, and that ask her to encompass her people beneath the shelter of her protecting veil. The hymnography develops the twin themes of the feast: her unceasing intercession before her Son, and the veil as the sign of her sheltering care.

In the Slavic churches (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus) the Pokrov is a major autumn feast, marked by dedicated churches and popular devotion.

In the Church of Greece the Protection (Agia Skepi) is observed on October 28, kept together with the national Ochi Day commemoration in thanksgiving for the deliverance of Greece in 1940.

The feast is celebrated with an All-Night Vigil, sharing many elements with the Great Feasts of the Theotokos, though it has no afterfeast.