In the seventeenth century, the fertile area along the Amur River to the north of China was a point of contention between Russian frontiersmen and cossacks and the Chinese of the Manchu empire. The Russians had built a frontier town and fort called Albazin on the Amur River. In 1665, a priest, the Elder Hermogenes, brought an icon of the Mother of God “The Word Made Flesh” to Albazin from the Holy Trinity Monastery of Kirensk. The icon became popularly known as the Albazinsk Icon. The Albazinsk Icon shows a figure of Christ as a child standing in a mandorla before his mother’s breast.