Monastery of Icosifinissis

The Monastery of Icosifinissis is at an altitude of 753 meters, on the northern side of Mount Pangaio. It is located on the national road of Serres-Kavala, on the borders of the two Prefectures of Serres and Kavala. Ecclesiastically it falls under the Holy Metropolis of Drama. The monastery was founded by Oslo Germanus in the 8th century. During the Ottoman domination, the contribution of the Monastery to the preservation of Orthodoxy and Hellenism was invaluable, while its historical course was destroyed many times by Turkish and Bulgarian invaders. On August 25, 1507, the Turks slaughtered 172 Monks of the Monastery. Three years later, 10 monks from the Holy Monastery of Vatopedi of Mount Athos came to the Monastery to reconstitute it. During the First Bulgarian Occupation of Eastern Macedonia the murders and violence committed by the Bulgarian occupation army were many. On Monday, March 27, 1917, soldiers of the Bulgarian occupation army headed by the Bulgarian Committees Pantina entered the monastery and, after having raped against the monks, they seized most of the heirlooms and transferred them to Bulgaria, where they were detained to this day. The Bulgarians captured Eastern Macedonia for the third time on July 12, 1943 (after 1916 and 1918) during the Second World War. The Bulgarian army invaded the monastery, held the abbot Gregory and the twelve monks in a constraint and burned the monastery. Today the Monastery is feminine and has 23 nuns. It celebrates the memory of Saint Germain on November 22 and the following day the memory of St. Dionysios. It is also celebrated on August 15, in memory of the Virgin Mary, on the 14th of September, in memory of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross and on November 21, in memory of the Presentation of the Virgin Mary. In 2011, part of the Holy Relief of Saint Dionysios from Bulgaria was returned. The lasipan had been stolen on a Bulgarian occupation, along with a number of other heirlooms that still remain in Sofia (Ivan Dujev’s Slav-Byzantine Studies Center and the National History Museum of Bulgaria). Also, in 2016, a rare handwritten New Testament of 674 pages, written in the 9th century, which was abducted in 1917 by the Bulgarians and returned to the Chicago Lutheran Theological School in the United States, was returned to the Monastery.