05 — From Prokopion to Evia
The journey of the cult across two centuries and one sea: the shrine at old Prokopion in Cappadocia, the 1832 fire from which the relics were reportedly delivered, and the church built for the saint in the late nineteenth century; and then the great uprooting — the 1923 Lausanne Convention and the 1924 population exchange that emptied Cappadocia of its Greeks and carried John’s relics west to the island of Evia, where the refugees founded Nea Prokopi.
Tradition: Russian Orthodox confessor (venerated across the Greek world; Pan-Orthodox)
These two files trace the cult from its Cappadocian home to its modern one. The first treats the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century shrine at old Prokopion — the growth of the veneration, the 1832 fire tradition, and the church consecrated for John in 1898. The second treats the 1923–1924 compulsory population exchange between Greece and Turkey, a well-documented and traumatic episode of modern history, in the course of which the Christians of Prokopion carried their saint’s relics to Evia and founded the village of Nea Prokopi. The population-exchange history is anchored in the scholarship of the exchange; the cult’s own details are pinned to the tradition and the shrine.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Cult at Old Prokopion | The eighteenth–nineteenth-century shrine in Cappadocia; the 1832 fire tradition in which the relics were reportedly delivered; the church built and consecrated for the saint (1886–1898); the veneration by Christians and Muslims. |
| The 1924 Population Exchange | The 1923 Lausanne Convention and the compulsory Greek–Turkish population exchange; the refugees of Prokopion carrying John’s relics to Evia; the founding of Nea Prokopi. |
See Also
- The Incorrupt Relics — the relics whose journey this section traces
- The Pilgrimage Church — the modern shrine at the journey’s end
References
- Holy Shrine of St. John the Russian, Nea Prokopi (Evia). “A Brief Life of Saint John the Russian.” oir.gr. (The old Prokopion shrine; the church of 1886–1898; the 1832 fire; the transfer of the relics in 1924.)
- Bruce Clark. Twice a Stranger: The Mass Expulsions That Forged Modern Greece and Turkey. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. (The 1923 Convention and the population exchange.)
- Renée Hirschon, ed. Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey. New York: Berghahn Books, 2003.