Meteora

Előszó

PREFACE This year the Holy Monastery of the Great Meteoron celebrates the 600th anniversary of its founding. The present book marks this occasion which will be a modern and completed guide to the Monasteries that have existed in Meteor a through the years. ft is a study, which has a main solicitude to inform correctly and responsibly every visitor and to become his guiding light in every step he makes on this holy stone-city, a real pacemaker in a place where the present watches, with a feeling of awe, the past as it was förmed throughout the centuries on the blessed land of the Meteora rocks. Because this is what Meteora is, a holy place built and protected by God, a place where many saints, hermits and martyrs have lived and where someone can feel the breath of the past to meet harmoniously the presént. It is a place where devotion and sacrifice for God's love steeled the humble souls of the monks who lived here, so today we can admire the greatness of our Ecclesiastical tradition and National heritage. Every visitor or pilgrim in Meteora feels the greatness of a long existing creation, a heavenly society, a divine state and alsó the responsibility of the orthodox heritage which is inherited to the humble «citizens» of such a small yet at the same time such a great society. To those visitors who whish to genuflect the Holy Meteora Land and to the whole world we bestow our sincerest blessings for a peaceful and according to the will of God life and for every personal happiness. We congratulate all the people who worked hard for this study and especially Mr. Dimitrios Sofianos, director of the Research Center of Medieval and Modern Hellenism of the Academy of Athens, who very successfully wrote the text of this book, as well as the Superior of the Holy Monastery of the Great Meteoron, the very Reverend Archimandrite Athanasios Anastasiou for his valuable help and contribution that made our wish come true, a wish we have expressed since the first day of our establishment in the Holy See of Trikke and Stagoi and for this reason we thank him once again. Vissza