- Saint Patapios
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Saint Patapios icon
Saint Hipomoni (St Patience) icon
Monastery of Saint Patapios, Loutraki, Greece, September 2006
His Reverence Archbishop Christodoulos visits Saint Patapios monastery. September 2006
Sister Patapia, 2008
The nunnery of Saint Patapios, November 2010
Father Nectarios,the establisher of the nunnery of Saint Patapios; Saint Patapios monastery, October 2010Saint Patapios of Thebes (fl. 4th century AD) is the patron saint of dropsy. Saint Patapios’ memory is celebrated on 8 December (main celebration) and also at the Tuesday 2 days after the Sunday of Easter (in memory of the day that his relic was discovered). His relic is kept at the female monastery of Saint Patapios at Loutraki, a spa town near Athens, Greece.
Contents
Biography
St. Patapios was born in the 4th century A.D. in Thebes, Egypt to wealthy Christian parents. Patapios, at a young age, lived the life of a hermit in the desert. Many visited him to take his advice and to listen to his preaching. Later in his life, Patapios left Thebes and the desert for Constantinople. There he met two other ascetics, Varas and Ravoulas which both became saints. Saint Ravoulas was hermit at the gate of Romanos. Saint Varas built the monastery of St John the Baptist at Petrion.
St. Patapios lived at the area of Blachernae at the Xero Oros (dry mountain) and he established a monastery, the Monastery of the Egyptians, where he eventually died.
Veneration of his relic
St. Patapios' relic after the destruction of the Monastery of the Egyptians in 536 AD was transferred by Saint Varas to the Monastery of Saint John at Petrion, which during the last centuries of the Byzantine Empire was under the protection of the royal family of Constantinople, the Palaiologoi, and especially the Augusta Helena Dragaš, the mother of the last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos, who became a nun and a saint under the monastic name of Hypomone ("patience").
After the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire in 1453, a relative of the Palailogos emperors and nephew of the Augusta helena, Aggelis Notaras, in order to protect the relic of Saint Patapios from the Ottomans, transferred it to Mount Geraneia in southern Greece, near the town Thermai (Loutraki). There he hid it in a cave and a hermitage was established, but some centuries later it was abandoned. It has to be mentioned that the cave where the relic of Saint Patapios was transferred had actually funcitoned as a hermitage since the 11th century AD. It is located at a height of 650 meters (2132 feet).
Establishment of the nunnery
The cave with the saint's relic was discovered in 1904 by citizens of Loutraki. Some visitors of the cave took pieces of the saint's relic as an amulet. Soon, a priest from Loutraki, Konstantinos Sousanis, took the relic of Saint Patapios and kept it at his house, with the church’s permission, to keep it safe.
In 1952, Father Nektarios (real name Kyriakos) Marmarinos, a priest from Synoikismos of Corinth, established a monastery at the site of the cave and the relic of the Saint was returned to the cave where it had been found. The first mother superior was sister Synglitiki. Sister Patapia helped at the establishment and building of the monastery. She was mother superior from 1963 to 1970, when she resigned because of health problems. The next and current mother superior is sister Isidora.
Father Nektarios, the founder of the monastery, is still visiting the monastery. He has a rich Christian work and has established other monasteries as the male monastery The 3 Hierarchs (near the village Perachora) and a summer camp for children (called Bethlehem). He has also created a female nursing home in Loutraki (where nuns serve the elderly women). Today Elder Nektarios has retired. He has received numerous awards from the Church of Corinth which was chief officer. Even today, though in old age, every Sunday in the settlement of Corinth makes it even lectures on Christian content and Sunday school.
The monastery includes the hostels, cells for the 40 nuns, a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary, the cemetery (with the chapel of St. Mary of Egypt) and the katholikon of the Holy Trinity. Finally there is an exhibition room for the visitors. The Cave of St. Patapios is beside the church. There they keep the holy relic of the saint, covered with a robe (that changes every year in the day if the saints' celebration). In the cave there are Byzantine icons (including St. Patapios and St. Patience) by an unknown artist, which have painted probably in 15th century. Many visitors take as a single amulet from the cave a bit of cotton soaked with holy oil (from the hanging oil - lamp burning in the cave of the Saint) and also take holy water from a source adjacent to the cave. The skull of Saint Hypomone is also kept at Saint Patapios' nunnery.
Miracles
Saint Patapios is well known for the miracles that he did in the past and still does nowadays, which are recorded with full details in the historical archives of the monastery which maintains a large library.
Reference
- "Agiologio of Orthodoxy," [Christos Tsolakidis, Athens, 2001 edition]
- «O Megas Synaxaristis of the Orthodox Church" Saint Patapios, p. (254) - (261) [m Victoras Mattheos, 3rd edition, Metamorfosi Sotiros Monastery, Athens, 1968]
- "Saint Patapios" [Stylianos Papadopoulos, professor of the University of Athens, Holy Monastery of Saint Patapios, Loutraki, Greece, edition 2006).
- "St. Patapios and his miracles," [Dr. Charalambos Busias, edition of Holy Monastery of Saint Patapios Loutraki 2004]
- "Life, akolouthia, paraklitikos kanonas and egomia of the holy mother ‘’Saint Hypomone" [Dr. Charalambos Busias, edition of Holy Monastery of Saint Patapios, Loutraki 1999]
- "Deltos of Miracles of our miraculous father St. Patapios" [Dr. Charalambos Busias, edition of Holy Monastery of Saint Patapios 4th Edition, Loutraki 2011]
External links
Categories:- Eastern Orthodox saints
- 4th-century Christian saints
- Roman Egypt
- 4th-century Byzantine people
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