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This paper dwells upon the fall of the demons from heaven in Russian iconography. It covers the key concepts concerning the origin of the demons transmitted in medieval Russian booklore and their visualization in icons, fresco paintings and miniature paintings. The most important visual themes reflecting the idea of the angels’ transformation into demons as an outcome of a battle in heaven are as follows: a defeat from the heavenly host / Archangel Michael, falling into a river of fire, falling down to the Earth, etc. Russian iconography of the Final Judgement, finally emerging by the second half of the 15th century, came to be the visual compilation of these motifs. In Judgement scenes, demons are playing a wide spectrum of roles: losing the battle in heavens and falling down to the Earth in the beginning of times, fighting for human souls (waiting for the souls at the stations of ordeal, adding scrolls of a soul’s sins to the scale of righteousness, pursuing the angels that carry saved souls away and pushing the condemned into the hellfire), tormenting the sinners in various segments of hell and, finally, being themselves the eternal prisoners of the pit of hell. In the 17th century all these motifs, including that of the angels’ fall from heaven, will be elaborated upon in illuminated collections.

The paper considers the votive practices and gifts known in the Russian religious tradition. The author gives an overview of individual and collective vows common in medieval and imperial Russia, as well as the main types of votive gifts: buildings (churches, chapels), crosses, icons, reliquaries, icon salaries, church embroidery, fabrics, anatomical weights, precious gifts to icons, etc. Votive actions were the most important social tool for creating a variety of religious objects, from monumental (like monastery buildings and city cathedrals) to small (like shawls, towels or pendants in the form of a diseased organ). At the same time, the action of making, bringing, using the votive object and the material object itself were inextricably linked – the word ‘vow’ in Russia meant not only a promise, but also a monetary contribution to a monastery or church, and a votive object, and animals fattened for a sacrifice to a saint (holiday), and any other kind of gift, material or actional. As the author notes, a review of these traditions helps to better understand modern votive practices that have actively spread in Russia in the last decade.