Monastery In The Snow

Title

Monastery In The Snow

Artist

Elias Pentikis

Medium

Photograph - Photograph

Description

Note: The Fine Art America watermark where is present will not appear on the final print.

The "Panagia Ikosifinissa" nunnery dedicated to the Virgin Mary, laying on a beautiful position in Pangeo or Paggaio mount in East Macedonia region, near the city of Kavala in Greece. At this place, the divine energies are running so high. If you find yourself here you can definitely feel it.

This is a quick hand-held panorama of four horizontal shots, stitched together and presented as a black and white image. I sense that the specific approach delivers some of the divinity of this site.

The monastery has a very rich history. Around this place, a bishop called Sozon built a temple and a small monastery in 450 A.C. Then the buildings were abandoned until the 8th century and around 718 A.C. when saint Germanos builds anew the monastery. So, saint Germanos is considered the founder of the monastery of Ikosifinissa.

During the Ottoman era and on the 25th of August 1507, Turks slaughtered all the 172 monks. They had been angry because the monks were trying to retain and preserve the faith and the Greek language of the local populations in the area. After 3 years of that destruction, monks from Agio Oros (the Holy Mount in Chalkidiki) came and re-established the monastery.

The monastery also suffered damage from an earthquake in 1829, burned down in 1854 and hit by a plague in 1864 which decimated the monks.

During the first Bulgarian occupation of East Macedonia and among the other atrocities was the murder of the abbot Makarios on the 3rd of October 1916. On the 27th March 1917, Bulgarian soldiers under the rule of the arch-commissar Panitsa, attacked the monastery and stole most of its valuable curios. At that time the monastery had more than 1300 hand-written books of which 400 were written on membranes. Now, most of the valuables that were stolen are still kept in the National Historical Museum of Sofia in Bulgaria while others were sold to collectors in Europe and in the US.
In June 1917 the monks were imprisoned by the Bulgarians. Some of them died due to the harsh conditions. Those who survived returned to revive the monastery after the defeat of Germany and Bulgaria in the 1st World War.

According to the treaty of Neigy (1919), the Bulgarian state should have returned those curios and valuables that they had stolen. But from the 907 worship objects, the 430 hand-written codes, and the 467 originals, only 7 were returned.

In the 2nd World War, the Bulgarians occupied for the 3rd time (1st time was in 1916, the second time was in 1918) the region of East Macedonia. On the 12th of July 1943, they entered the monastery, kept under constraint the abbot Gregorios and 12 monks and then put the monastery on fire.

The monastery was revived again in 1965 by the Metropolitan of Drama city, Dionysios Kyratsos. But this time the monastery was established again as a nunnery.

High-quality imagery by Elias Pentikis with his own hand-written signature provided with a 30-day money-back guarantee from Fine Art America. Canvas prints, metal prints, fine art paper prints, framed prints.

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September 25th, 2019

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