Ilya Muromets, the Orthodox Church honors him as a saint, and the people - as the main hero of the Russian land. We remember Ilya Pechersky - Ilya Muromets.
Why is the hero holy?
We associate the word “hero” with remarkable strength and courage, but if we look closely at it, we can easily see something else there - the words “God” or “rich”. The Russian people chose words with care, so that even after many centuries they reveal important meanings to us. The word "hero" appeared in the chronicles in the XIII century and began to denote a person gifted with wealth, divine abundance of strength. Before him, the Slavs used more unambiguous words: "brave" or "horobr", that is, "daring". They say that the strength of the heroes by their origin is not only physical. They are superior to the enemy in that they stand on the side of the truth. And God, as you know, "is not in power, but in truth." And the thirty years that the hero spent "on the stove" should be understood not as years of idleness and idleness, but as a time of learning humility and preparation for service.
Why was he sitting on the stove?
From the epics it is known that Ilya Muromets spent all his childhood and adolescence on the stove. It is reported that at the age of 30 "Ilya did not have a walk in his feet." Scientists who examined the relics of the saint noted in the lumbar spine a curvature of the spine to the right and pronounced additional processes on the vertebrae. This means that in his youth the saint could indeed suffer from paralysis. "Kaliki perekhozhny", who appeared in the epic to Ilya, could be, according to one version, folk healers who set Ilya's vertebrae and gave him a medicinal decoction to drink. On the other hand, healing and strength are a miracle given to Elijah by God.
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Nickname Chobotok
“Ilya Muromets” sounds much more serious and impressive than “Ilya Chobotok”. Nevertheless, both of these nicknames belonged to the holy Reverend Elijah of the Caves. Chobotok is, as you know, a boot. This nickname was given to Ilya Muromets after he once had to defend himself from enemies with a boot, which he put on his leg at the moment when he was attacked. This is how the document of the Kiev-Pechersky Monastery tells about it:
“There is also one giant or bogatyr called Chobotka, they say that he was once attacked by many enemies while he was putting on his boots, and since in a hurry he could not seize any other weapon, he began to defend himself with another boot, which had not yet put it on and overpowered them all, which is why he got such a nickname."
But this was not the first time that Ilya had to defend himself with such a weapon. In one of the epics, a helmet helped the hero to break the robbers without number:
And he started here
wave the shellam, How to wave aside -
so here is the street, Ai will brush aside a friend -
duck lane.
Censored omissions
Not everyone associates the image of the epic Ilya of Muromets with Saint Elijah, whose relics rest in the caves of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. Such a division - into a fabulous Ilya and a real person - was largely due to the Soviet regime, which made great efforts to make a fairy-tale warrior out of the saint. It was necessary to secularize this image, de-Christianize it. For example, it was at this time that the episode of the epic was distorted, in which the "kaliki pedestrians" heal Ilya. In the pre-revolutionary edition of the epic, it was stated that Christ and the two apostles were "Kaliks". The Soviet edition is silent about this.
Descendants of Ilya Muromets
The village of Karacharovo is now part of the city of Murom. And in the place where the hut of Muromets stood, not far from the Trinity Church, where the hero dragged from the Oka to the mountain a bog oak that a horse could not drag, there is the house of the Gushchins sisters. Priokskaya Street, 279. The Gushchin sisters consider themselves the descendants of Ilya Muromets at the 28th generation.
The great-great-grandfather of the Gushchins' sisters, Ivan Afanasyevich, inherited the heroic strength of Ilya Muromets. He could easily pull a cart on himself if the horse could not cope. And the local authorities at one time forbade him to participate in fist fights because of the deadly force of the blow. According to another version, this person still participated in the battles, but with one limitation: his hands tied.
It is interesting that recently, when cleaning the Oka, they found several more ancient bog oaks, each with three girths. But they could not be pulled ashore!
Murom or Morovsk?
Not so long ago, passionate disputes were fought in the academic environment, and some of the opponents were convinced that the saint's homeland was not Murom, but the city of Morovsk (Moroviysk) in Ukraine.
“In a glorious city in Murom, in a village in Karacharovo” - this is how the epics tell us about the birthplace of the hero. More than once he himself recalls his native places, lost among dense forests and impenetrable and swampy swamps.
In the same Chernigov region as Morovsk, there is the city of Karachev, consonant with Karacharov. And even the village of Ninedubye and the Smorodinaya river.
However, now the place of origin of Ilya Muromets has been established precisely. This is the Russian city of Murom, the village of Karacharovo.
In the West
Surprisingly, Saint Elijah of Muromets is also known in the West, because he is the main hero not only of Russian epics, but also, for example, Germanic epic poems of the 13th century, based, of course, on earlier legends. In these poems, he is also called Ilya, he is also a hero, yearning, moreover, for his homeland. In the Germanic epic of the Lombard cycle, in the poem about Ortnit, the ruler of the Garda, the uncle of the ruler is Ilya the Russian (Ilian von Riuzen). He takes part in a campaign on the Sudera and helps Ortnit get a bride. Ilya did not see his wife and children for almost a year, and the poem speaks of his desire to return to Russia.
Another example is the Scandinavian sagas recorded in Norway around 1250: the Vilkina saga or Tidrek saga from the northern set of narratives about Dietrich of Berne. The ruler of Russia Gertnit had two sons from the lawful wife Ozantrix and Valdemar, and the third son from the concubine was Ilias. Thus, Ilya Muromets, according to this information, is no more and no less, and the blood brother of Vladimir - later the Great Prince of Kiev.
Ekaterina Oaro