01 — Foundations

Patmos, the island of the Apocalypse, and the boy Athanasios Makris; the great fortress-monastery of St. John the Theologian, into which he entered as a youth and was tonsured a monk.

Tradition: Greek Orthodox (20th-c. elder; Ecumenical Patriarchate)

This section establishes the two foundations of the elder’s whole life: the island of Patmos on which he was born and died, and the Monastery of St. John the Theologian into which he was received as a young man. Both are treated soberly, with the well-attested facts of his origins distinguished from the pious embellishments that gather around the childhood of a saint.

Files

File	Description
athanasios-makris-of-patmos.md	Born in 1889 on Patmos as Athanasios Makris; the island of the Apocalypse; his family and youth, and the devotional traditions of his childhood pinned to their source
the-monastery-of-saint-john-the-theologian.md	Entry into the great eleventh-century fortress-monastery in 1906; his rassophore tonsure and the name Amphilochios; his early formation

See Also

• 02 — Monastic Formation — the years that made him a monk
• 08 — Sources and Repose — how his early life is documented