Andrej Toporkov (Rossijskij gosudarstvennyj gumanitarnyj universitet, Moscow)
The tradition of Russian Orthodox iconography has a subject of ‘Archangel Michael defeating seven (or twelve) fevers’. Our forthcoming article deals with this subject in Russian art, its origins, history and social functioning. This seems to be the only case in Russian tradition where a charm’s influence upon an icon can be immediately seen. One may wonder what the mechanism of such influence was. The emergence of this particular image type was rooted in a combination of three factors: 1. the narrative and thrilling nature of the text, not unlike apocryphal narration; 2. widespread perception of such texts as seemingly proper prayers and even parts of a church ordinary against fever; 3. matches between the charms’ imagery and that of popular beliefs about fevers.