Abbot of Patmos

In 1935 the brotherhood of the Monastery of St. John the Theologian elected Amphilochios its abbot (hegumen), in circumstances shaped by the Italian occupation of the Dodecanese and by a demand for reform from the Ecumenical Patriarchate. His abbacy was brief and consequential: from it grew the convent he founded and the catechetical work that led to his exile.

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

The Election of 1935

By 1935 Amphilochios had been a monk of Patmos for nearly thirty years and a confessor of growing reputation across the Dodecanese for over fifteen. In that year the brotherhood of the Monastery of St. John the Theologian elected him abbot (hegoumenos) (the Sisterhood of the Holy Monastery of the Annunciation, Patmos, biography of the elder, on his election as abbot in 1935; OrthodoxWiki, Amphilochios [Makris] of Patmos, following the sisterhood, on the 1935 abbacy). The Ecumenical Patriarchate’s own summary at his canonization records that he “served as Abbot of the Monastery of Saint John the Theologian on Patmos” as a central fact of his life (Ecumenical Patriarchate, Synodal Act, 29 August 2018).

The election came in a charged setting. Patmos and the whole Dodecanese had been under Italian rule since 1912, and by the mid-1930s the Fascist administration of the islands was pressing hard on Greek institutions, including the monastery, both for administrative control and for the italianization of island life (on the Italian occupation and its pressures, see Patmos Under Italian Rule). The sisterhood’s biography relates that the abbacy came to Amphilochios in part through a demand from the Patriarch of Constantinople for reform of the monastery’s governance under these pressures, the brotherhood turning to their most respected member (the Sisterhood of the Annunciation, biography, on the circumstances of the 1935 election; Sanidopoulos, “Elder Amphilochios Makris of Patmos,” 2010, following the sisterhood). [Disputed: the precise administrative circumstances of the 1935 election. The sisterhood’s biography and the accounts following it connect it to a Patriarchal demand for reform amid the Italian pressure; the shorter secondary summaries give only the year and the fact of his election. The date (1935) and the fact are secure; the surrounding administrative detail rests on the sisterhood’s record and is reported as such.]

Leadership and the Convent

As abbot, Amphilochios did not exchange the confessor for the administrator; he made the office an instrument of the pastoral and catechetical work that was already his. It was as abbot, and out of the monastery’s resources, that he set in motion the two enterprises for which his abbacy is remembered.

The first was the founding of a women’s monastic community. He established, on the western side of the island, the seed of what would become the Holy Monastery of the Annunciation (Evangelismos) — beginning, according to the sisterhood’s own account, as a workshop for knitting and weaving, a practical trade for the young women of the island, which served at once as a genuine handicraft and as the nucleus of a convent (the Sisterhood of the Annunciation, biography, on the origins of the convent as a workshop under his abbacy; see Founding the Evangelismos Convent). The formal founding of the convent is generally dated to 1937 (Ecumenical Patriarchate, Synodal Act, 29 August 2018, on the founding of “the women’s Monastery of the Annunciation in 1937”).

The second enterprise was inseparable from the first and would prove costly: the workshop was also, in the sisterhood’s frank telling, “a guise under which to teach the children Greek” — a covert continuation of Greek-language education under an occupying power that was suppressing it (the Sisterhood of the Annunciation, biography, on the workshop as a cover for teaching Greek; Sanidopoulos, 2010). This is treated fully in the section on the occupation (see Patmos Under Italian Rule); here it is enough to note that the abbot’s leadership was, from the first, a leadership under pressure — pastoral, educational, and quietly resistant.

The Cost of the Abbacy

The abbacy was brief. When the Italian authorities discovered the true purpose of the workshop — the teaching of Greek to the island’s children — they moved against Amphilochios, and in 1937 he was exiled from Patmos to mainland Greece (the Sisterhood of the Annunciation, biography, on his exile in 1937; OrthodoxWiki, on the 1937 exile). His years of exile (1937–1939), his hospitality among the Zoe brotherhood in Athens, and his labours as a confessor across mainland Greece and Crete are treated in the section on the occupation (see Shepherd of His People).

He was permitted to return to Patmos in 1939, but — significantly — he did not resume the abbacy. The sisterhood’s biography records that on his return he declined to take up the office again, devoting himself instead to the monastery’s dependencies, to the convent he had founded, and to his ministry of confession and spiritual direction (the Sisterhood of the Annunciation, biography, on his declining to resume the abbacy after 1939; Sanidopoulos, 2010). Here again is the mark of the reluctant office-holder seen in his early refusal of ordination (see The Making of a Monk): the abbacy had been thrust on him by the brotherhood’s need and the Patriarch’s demand, and once the immediate crisis had passed he laid it down, preferring the ministry of souls and the care of his nuns to the governance of the great house.

Assessing the Abbacy

The abbacy of 1935–1937, then, was short in tenure but long in consequence. It was the platform from which Amphilochios founded the Convent of the Annunciation, the community that would carry his spirit for the rest of the century (see Founding the Evangelismos Convent); it was the occasion of his stand for the Greek language and his exile, the most public act of resistance in his life (see Patmos Under Italian Rule); and it revealed the pattern of a man who accepted authority only under obedience and relinquished it as soon as he could return to the work he loved. The rest of his life — from 1939 to his death in 1970 — he lived not as abbot but as elder: a confessor, a spiritual father, and the guide of his sisterhood (see The Confessor of Souls).

See Also

• The Making of a Monk — the formation and reluctance to hold office that preceded the abbacy
• Founding the Evangelismos Convent — the convent that grew from his abbacy
• Patmos Under Italian Rule — the occupation, the Greek-language work, and the exile
• The Confessor of Souls — the ministry to which he returned after the abbacy

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. (Election as abbot in 1935; the workshop-convent as a cover for teaching Greek; exile in 1937; return in 1939 and declining to resume the abbacy.)
• OrthodoxWiki. “Amphilochios (Makris) of Patmos.” (The 1935 abbacy and the 1937 exile.)
• Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. Synodal Act for the canonization of St. Amphilochios of Patmos, 29 August 2018. (His service as abbot; the founding of the Convent of the Annunciation in 1937.)
• Sanidopoulos, John (Mystagogy Resource Center). “Elder Amphilochios Makris of Patmos,” 2010. (Aggregator translation following the sisterhood; used to locate, not as terminal citation.)