Arrival at the Ruined Monastery (1951–52)

Freed at last by his sister’s marriage, Iakovos set out in 1951 intending to reach the Holy Land, but a visit to the half-ruined Monastery of Venerable David the Elder near Rovies in northern Evia fixed him there for life. He was tonsured a monk in November 1952 and, within days, ordained deacon and then priest by the Metropolitan of Chalkida, who is remembered to have prophesied his sanctity.

Tradition: Greek Orthodox (20th-c. elder; glorified 2017)

The Monastery of Venerable David the Elder

The Monastery of Venerable David the Elder (Ιερά Μονή Οσίου Δαυΐδ του Γέροντος) stands in the mountains of northern Evia, near the village of Drimona above the coastal town of Rovies, on the northwest of the island. It was founded in the early sixteenth century — the standard date is c. 1520 — by St. David of Evia (Hosios David the Elder, c. 1519–1589), a monk and wonderworker of the region who gathered a community and built the monastery with support from Christians across Greece and beyond (“Monastery of Saint David the Elder,” reference summary of the monastery’s history; on St. David see Veneration of Saint David and Saint John the Russian).

For four centuries the monastery lived the ordinary hard history of a Greek mountain monastery under Ottoman rule and after: in 1824, during the Greek War of Independence, it is recorded that the Turks killed the monks and burned the monastery; the main church, ruined again by an earthquake in 1870, was rebuilt by 1877 (“Monastery of Saint David the Elder,” reference summary). By the mid-twentieth century the community had dwindled almost to nothing and the buildings had fallen into serious disrepair. When Iakovos came to it around 1951, the monastery was, in the description that recurs in every account of his life, half-ruined and nearly deserted — a poor, remote, dilapidated house with only a handful of aged monks, exactly the kind of place the modern currents of Greek life were emptying (monastery biography, in The Garden of the Holy Spirit; the “ruined and nearly empty” condition is standard).

The Vision That Fixed Him There

Iakovos’s own first intention, the accounts agree, was not to remain in Evia at all but to travel to the Holy Land and become a monk there (monastery biography; the intended pilgrimage to Palestine is standard in the accounts). Before departing, he went to venerate at the Monastery of St. David, the great local shrine of his adopted island.

What he experienced there redirected his whole life. The tradition preserved by the monastery holds that during this visit Iakovos had a vision or vivid experience of St. David of Evia himself, together with a sense of the heavenly presences of the place, and understood that he was called to remain and to labor for the restoration of the ruined house rather than to seek the Holy Land elsewhere (monastery biography, in The Garden of the Holy Spirit; the founder’s appearance and the decision to stay are reported in the accounts). Per the repository methodology, this is reported as the tradition attests it — as an experience the biography ascribes to Iakovos — and not certified as documented event (cf. METHODOLOGY §3.5). Whatever its precise character, the outcome is plain fact: Iakovos did not go to Palestine, but entered the Monastery of St. David and never afterward left it for any other monastic home.

Tonsure and Ordination

Iakovos was tonsured a monk in late November 1952, taking (or retaining) the name Iakovos — the monastic profession that the soldiers of his conscription had mockingly anticipated (see Piety, Poverty, and the Army). [Disputed: the day of the tonsure is given in several popular sources as “31 November 1952,” a manifestly impossible date (November has thirty days) — a garbling that recurs across the derivative accounts; the reliable statement is that he was tonsured in late November 1952, and the collection does not repeat the erroneous day.]

Ordination followed almost immediately, a mark of how quickly the impoverished, priest-short monastery seized on its new and evidently gifted monk. He was ordained deacon on 17 December 1952 and priest on 19 December 1952 — two days later — by Metropolitan Gregory of Chalkida (Halkida), the diocesan bishop (Wikipedia summary of the monastery biography; Bousias, “Elder Iakovos Tsalikes,” trans. Sanidopoulos, 2014, giving the priestly ordination on 19 December 1952 by Metropolitan Gregory at Halkida). From that day Iakovos was a hieromonk — a priest-monk — and the celebration of the Divine Liturgy, which would become the defining act of his life, was now his daily office (see The Divine Liturgy of Elder Iakovos).

“You Will Become a Saint”

The ordaining bishop is remembered to have recognized what he was ordaining. The accounts preserve the words attributed to Metropolitan Gregory of Chalkida, who is said to have declared over the young hieromonk: “And you, my child, will become a saint” (Καὶ σύ, παιδί μου, ἅγιος θὰ γίνῃς) — a phrase that became the subtitle of a widely circulated account of the elder (OrthoChristian, “On Elder Iakovos (Tsalikis) of Evia: ‘And You, My Child, Will Become Holy,’” orthochristian.com/109373.html, attributing the words to Metropolitan Gregory at the ordination). The saying belongs to the same class as the deathbed prophecy of his mother and the army nickname: a prophecy of sanctity remembered and recorded by those who came to venerate him, reported here as the tradition attests it (cf. METHODOLOGY §3.5). Its historical interest is independent of its predictive force: it shows that even at the outset Iakovos struck those around him as a man of unusual holiness.

A Monk of One Place

With the tonsure and ordination of late 1952, the shape of Iakovos’s life was set. He was a hieromonk of the Monastery of Venerable David the Elder, and he would remain one — through decades of poverty and near-solitude, through the slow gathering of a community, through the abbacy and the fame of his last years — until his death in the same monastery in 1991 (see Rebuilding and the Eldership; Repose (1991)). The child of Livisi who had meant to go to the Holy Land had found, in a ruined monastery on a Greek island, the one place that would be his home on earth.

References

Bousias, Haralambos M. “Elder Iakovos Tsalikes, the Long-Range Star of Evia.” Trans. John Sanidopoulos. johnsanidopoulos.com, 20 November 2014. (Entry to the monastery near Rovies; ordination priest on 19 December 1952 by Metropolitan Gregory at Halkida.)
The Garden of the Holy Spirit: Saint Iakovos of Evia. Monastery of Venerable David the Elder, Rovies, Evia. (The intended pilgrimage to the Holy Land; the visit and the experience of St. David that fixed him at the monastery; the tonsure of November 1952.)
“On Elder Iakovos (Tsalikis) of Evia: ‘And You, My Child, Will Become Holy.’” OrthoChristian.com, orthochristian.com/109373.html. (Metropolitan Gregory’s prophecy at the ordination.)
“Monastery of Saint David the Elder” and “Iakovos of Evia.” Reference summaries used to locate the monastery’s history (foundation c. 1520; 1824 destruction; 1870/1877 rebuilding) and the ordination dates (deacon 17 December, priest 19 December 1952); followed to the monastery’s own accounts.