Meteora - Kalambaka

LINEUP The Antonia Papageorgiou

Meteora in Thessaly Geographical apartment in the old days, there was a vast lake. According to tradition, a great earthquake separated the mountains in two and between Olympus and Kissavos formed a passage, Tempi. The water spilled into the sea and Thessaly became a plain.

According to the theory of the German geologist Al. Philipson, the Meteora rocks created by a large mass of river stones, sand and mud that came together to form a single cone.

When later, the waters of Thessaly lake poured the Aegean Sea, this single volume divided because corrosive water action, strong winds, the rapid rains and earthquakes, forming hills and rocks of various shapes and sizes.

The consolidation of river-stone and sand to solid rock, was a result of dissolution of limestone, and the pressure for many thousands of years brought to the lowest fossils of the highest.

The view of Philipson considered complete because explains the mosaic nature of the rocks and the hills and because the explanations are not in contradiction with the tradition that relates the Sea of ​​Thessaly.

In the prefecture of Trikala and just 20 km from Trikala, over Kalambaka, rising proud and imposing the stone rocks of Meteora HOLY, full of fossilized shells, revealing a unique geological phenomenon. In meteorites landscape the height of the cliffs reaches 400 meters. It is the largest after Mount Athos, a monastic complex in Greece

In these inaccessible peaks around 1100 AD., Arrived in Meteora the first ascetics.

They climbed and nested like birds through the caves and hollows of rocks isolated looking there with prayers and fasts their mental completeness and redemption.

The rocks are situated between earth and sky. Those who had the patience to count them found to be over a thousand.

In the 14th century, Saint Athanasios Meteorites, constitutes the first organized monastic community with regulations and organized according to typical organized monasteries of Mount Athos.

Meteora was named by Saint Athanasius of Meteora Monastery of Great Meteoron. Since then over at Sacred Rocks came and settled monks and nuns, who toil day and night to work, fasting, vigil, not only for their own salvation and for the salvation of all people with long prayers and supplications.

Established from 1350 to 1500 AD. 24 monasteries, but the ravages of time and the passage of time most of the monasteries were deserted and few ruins exist today. In the early 18th century started the decline of monasticism meteorites, thus, both the number of monasteries, and the Monks, be reduced enough and the few monks care for survival and reconstruction.

Since 1960 and until today began the restoration and maintenance of monuments at the expense and care of the monks of Agiometeoritikis monastic state.

In cooperation with the 7th Byzantine Antiquities is restoration of the monastic buildings.

Also monks and nuns at their expense and with their care maintain artistic manuscripts, icons and paintings, wood carvings and embroidered items, relics and unrivaled art ware, key historical and national value.

In the field of communication and visibility of the Holy Meteora Monastic State boasts a large and specific project.

They have issued a large number of scientific and aesthetic level books in many languages, art albums, biographies Saints and guidebooks.

Current:

· Documentary videotape <Holy Meteora: the catacombs of the sky> in many foreign languages.

· Audio CDs: <the Holy Meteora> with Byzantine hymns as well as cards, posters, flyers, etc.

Many of the publications are distributed free of charge to the GNTO offices, departments and agencies of internal and external to the exclusion of ethnic Greeks and foreigners, performing important national project.

On September 29, 1990 the Monastic State of Meteora had the great honor to receive the visit of Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios.

The Holy Meteora is recognized as a listed and protected monument of humanity by UNESCO and other international organizations.

In 1995 it was declared a place sacred, immutable and inviolable that ensures the Orthodox authenticity and effective protection.

Over the centuries the monasteries of Meteora have to present our rich action. They offered a lot and continue to offer not only the Orthodox Monasticism in the church and in the nation, with their rich social work and their contribution to the preservation of our cultural tradition and heritage.

Monks and nuns dedicated to Christ Brought in "Thebaid of Stagon" carry in their hearts the religious character, the cultural content of the Holy Meteora as well as spiritual and national role of our monastic state in the modern world. The advice of the monasteries the subject of education was very important

They founded schools to save the Greek language, and together and the Orthodox faith. For this purpose, in the mid 16th century it had established the Socrates Academy in Meteora.

The scholar Bishop Stagon Paisius the Kleinovitis (1784-1808) donated by testamentary rich library at the Monastery of St. Stephen.

Its predecessor in 1818 had offered two thousand piastres to the Holy Monastery of St. Stephen.

In School Monastery St. Stephen attended, among others, the scholar Hierarch and great benefactor of the Nation Dorotheos Scholarios (1812-1889). Later he founded in Trikala on the Dorotheio School

Their interest in education is impressive. In 1845 the Abbots of the Monasteries: Varlaam, Meteora and St. Stephen signatory joint letter which undertake to contribute time 500 piastres in Schools City Triki for Teacher salaries.

The famous Abbot Constantius Monastery St. Stephen in the 19th century founded the School Constantius Kalambaka. He gave a lot of money for the construction of schools in Trikala.

But mainly in the monasteries, the religious life was kept together with the Orthodox Faith, unadulterated the Greek language that allowed enslaved to understand the Psalter and the octave and maintain a militant alert their national consciousness and the desire to acquire liberation.

The location and the Sacred Temples your cause undefined feelings.

The wild environment around the warm closeness of monasteries and intense emotional loadings inundated man, away from everyday life. Ideal place for the scale of "life in Christ".

Until 1500 AD. founded in Meteora rocks total below 24 monasteries:

1. HM Holy Spirit

2. Monastery St. Modestos

3. HM St. John the Baptist

4. IM St. George Mandila

5. IM St. Demetrios

6. IM St. Anthony

7. Monastery St. Athanasius

8. IM St. Nicholas Bontova

9. IM St. Nicholas Kofina

10. HM St. Stephen

11. HM Trinity

12. HM Holy Monastery

13 HM Apostles

14. HM St. Nicholas Anapafsas

15. HM Saints Archangels

16. HM Chain of dec. Peter

17. HM Varlaam

18. HM Kallistratos

19. HM Transfiguration

20. HM Pantocrator

21. HM Virgin

22. HM Rousanou

23. HM Visitation

24. HM Ypsilotera calligraphy

They survived and now operate only six monasteries:

      

1. Holy Monastery of Great Meteoron or Transfiguration.

2. Monastery of Varlaam.

3. Monastery of St. Stephen.

4. Holy Monastery of St. Nicholas Anapafsas.

5. Monastery Rousanou.

6. Monastery of Holy Trinity.