The Monastery of St. John the Theologian

In March 1906, at about seventeen, Athanasios Makris entered the great fortified Monastery of St. John the Theologian on Patmos, founded in 1088 by St. Christodoulos; by that August he was tonsured a rassophore monk and given the name Amphilochios. This file treats the monastery, his entry, and his first tonsure, noting the sources’ variation over the stages of his tonsure.

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

The Fortress-Monastery on the Hill

The Monastery of St. John the Theologian crowns the highest point of Patmos, a battlemented stone fortress visible from far out at sea. It was founded in 1088 by the monk St. Christodoulos, to whom the emperor Alexios I Komnenos granted the whole island by a golden bull for the establishment of a monastery, on the site associated with the Apostle John and, according to local tradition, over an earlier temple of Artemis and a basilica (the monastery’s own tradition and the standard histories of Patmos; Ecumenical Patriarchate, Synodal Act, 29 August 2018, on the setting). For more than eight centuries it had been the heart of the island’s life — a great house of prayer, a repository of one of the richest monastic libraries and treasuries in the Greek world, and, under Ottoman and then Italian rule, a guardian of Greek learning and Orthodox identity in the Aegean. Into this ancient community the young Athanasios was received.

By the early twentieth century the brotherhood was aged and much reduced, as were many Greek monasteries under the pressures of the age; the arrival of a fervent young novice was welcome (the Sisterhood of the Annunciation, biography of the elder, on the state of the brotherhood at his entry; retold in Sanidopoulos, “Elder Amphilochios Makris of Patmos,” 2010). The monastery he entered was thus at once immensely old and, in its living membership, thin — a community that would come to lean on the gifts of the young man it had received.

Entry and First Tonsure

Athanasios received his parents’ blessing and entered the monastery in March 1906, at about seventeen years of age (the Sisterhood of the Annunciation, biography; OrthodoxWiki, Amphilochios [Makris] of Patmos, following the sisterhood, on the month and his age). Later that same year, in August 1906, the brotherhood tonsured him a rassophore — the first grade of the monastic state — and gave him the monastic name by which he would be known, Amphilochios (OrthodoxWiki, following the sisterhood’s biography, on the August 1906 rassophore tonsure and the name).

The name is significant. Amphilochios of Iconium (c. 340–after 394) was a fourth-century bishop, a friend of St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory the Theologian and a defender of the divinity of the Holy Spirit; to give a novice this name was to place him under a patristic and pastoral patron. The young monk would grow into the pastoral dimension of the name in full measure.

[Disputed: the stages and dating of his tonsure. The sisterhood’s biography, as followed by OrthodoxWiki, distinguishes two moments: a rassophore tonsure with the name Amphilochios in August 1906, and the tonsure to the Great Schema (the highest monastic grade) on Mount Athos in March 1913 at the hands of an Elder Antoniadis. Several secondary summaries collapse these and speak simply of his being “tonsured” or “tonsured to the Great Schema in 1913,” which has led some accounts to date the name Amphilochios to 1913. The more detailed record — name at the rassophore tonsure of 1906, Great Schema in 1913 — is followed here; the discrepancy is one of compression in the shorter sources, not a genuine conflict of witnesses. See The Making of a Monk for the Athonite tonsure of 1913.]

Early Formation

The young monk Amphilochios threw himself into an austere ascetic life. The sisterhood’s biography records a strict rule of fasting — a small fixed number of mouthfuls at each meal, and only a handful of olives on fast days — and long hours of prayer, the ordinary discipline of a fervent Athonite-style monasticism as it was lived on Patmos (the Sisterhood of the Annunciation, biography, on his early asceticism; Sanidopoulos, 2010, following the sisterhood). This period of formation is treated in detail in the next section; what belongs here is simply that the man who would become one of the gentlest of elders began as one of the most severe of ascetics, and that the gentleness was the ripened fruit, not the absence, of that severity (see The Making of a Monk).

His formation was not confined to Patmos. In 1911 his abbot sent him to Mount Athos to be trained in wood-carving, and it was there, in 1913, that he received the Great Schema — so that the making of the monk of Patmos passed through the Holy Mountain, the common source of the whole modern Greek monastic renewal (the Sisterhood of the Annunciation, biography, on the Athonite period; see The Making of a Monk). From that formation he returned to Patmos, was ordained deacon in 1919 and priest soon after, and began the ministry of confession that would make him famous (see The Confessor of Souls); in 1935 the brotherhood would elect him its abbot (see Abbot of Patmos).

The Cave and the School

One further detail of his early years on Patmos deserves mention, because it shaped the ministry to come. From 1926 the monastery assigned him to the Cave of the Apocalypse — the very place of St. John’s vision, midway down the hill — where the island’s Patmias Ecclesiastical School had long stood, and there he served and mentored the students of the school (the Sisterhood of the Annunciation, biography, on his years at the Cave of the Apocalypse from 1926; Sanidopoulos, 2010). To spend years at the place of the Apocalypse, among the young men being trained for the Church’s service, was a fitting apprenticeship for the elder of the “religion of love”; and it was from this base, and later from the abbacy, that his work of confession, catechesis, and the founding of the convent would grow (see Founding the Evangelismos Convent).

See Also

References

  • The Sisterhood of the Holy Monastery of the Annunciation (Evangelismos), Patmos. Biography and counsels of the Elder Amphilochios Makris. Patmos: Holy Monastery of the Annunciation. (Entry in March 1906; rassophore tonsure and the name Amphilochios in August 1906; early asceticism; the Cave of the Apocalypse from 1926.)
  • OrthodoxWiki. “Amphilochios (Makris) of Patmos.” (Following the sisterhood’s biography: the two-stage tonsure — rassophore 1906, Great Schema on Athos March 1913 under Elder Antoniadis.)
  • Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. Synodal Act for the canonization of St. Amphilochios of Patmos, 29 August 2018. (The monastery and the setting.)
  • Sanidopoulos, John (Mystagogy Resource Center). “Elder Amphilochios Makris of Patmos,” 2010. (Aggregator translation following the sisterhood; used to locate, not as terminal citation.)