Prousiotissa Icon of the Mother of God
The Wonderworking Icon of our Most Holy Lady the Theotokos, the Prousiotissa of Eurytania
The Prousiotissa is the wonderworking icon of the Monastery of Prousos, high in the mountains of Eurytania in south-western Greece above Karpenisi — the greatest Marian shrine of the Greek mainland after Tinos, and the spiritual centre of a whole region. The tradition holds that the icon was painted by the Evangelist Luke and came from Prousa (Bursa) in Bithynia, carried away by a young nobleman when the iconoclast emperor Theophilos (829–842) ordered it destroyed; that it disappeared from him at Gallipoli and was found again in a cave in the Eurytanian mountains, where shepherds saw on the night of 22–23 August a pillar of fire rising from the rock to heaven — from which the icon is also called Pyrsos, the Torch. The Mother of God refused to be taken back to the cities, and the monastery grew around the cave where she chose to stay. Her feast is kept with great solemnity on August 23, the day of the leavetaking of the Dormition.
From Prousa to the mountain
The received account, as the monastery tells it and as the Orthodox lives repeat it, begins in Prousa of Bithynia during the last and fiercest phase of the iconoclast persecution, under Theophilos. An icon of the Mother of God venerated in that city — held by the tradition to be one of those painted by the Evangelist Luke — was condemned to be destroyed, and a young man of noble family carried it off to save it. Fleeing westward across the straits, he lost the icon at Gallipoli: it vanished from his keeping altogether.
It was found in the mountains of Eurytania, in a cave in the rock face above what is now the village of Prousos. Shepherds pasturing their flocks there saw, on the night of the 22nd to the 23rd of August, a column of fire standing over the cave and reaching up to heaven; going up in the morning they found the icon in the cleft of the rock. The name Pyrsos — the beacon or torch — is attached to the icon and to the place from this apparition, alongside the name Prousiotissa, "she of Prousa," which records where she came from.
"With the shepherds and the country people"
Word of the wonders worked at the cave reached the young nobleman, who came and recognised his icon and made to take it back. The tradition preserves the answer he received — a voice from the icon telling him that it pleased her to remain there, with the shepherds and the country people, and not to be in the cities among those who preach heresy. It is a saying shaped by the iconoclast crisis out of which it comes: the image driven from the imperial cities takes refuge among the poor of the mountains, and stays.
The young man accepted the refusal, built a chapel at the cave to house the icon, and was tonsured a monk with the name Demetrios; a companion, Timothy, joined him. From that foundation grew the Holy Monastery of the Panagia Prousiotissa, whose buildings now rise in tiers against the cliff, the sanctuary itself hollowed out of the cave in which the icon was found.
The monastery in the Greek nation's history
Prousos was one of the mountain monasteries that carried Greek learning and Greek identity through the centuries of Ottoman rule, and it was repeatedly sacked and burned for it. In the War of Independence the shrine was the spiritual home of the klephts and armatoloi of Roumeli, and above all of Georgios Karaiskakis, the great captain of the Revolution, who was raised in the region, called the Prousiotissa his mother and made the monastery his refuge and his treasury. The silver-gilt revetment that covers the icon was his gift, worked by the goldsmith Georgios Karanikas in 1824 and inscribed with the donor's name — one of the very few pieces of Revolutionary-era silver still in use on the object it was made for.
The monastery burned more than once, and in 1944 the occupying Germans set about destroying it; the tradition of the house is that an officer tried repeatedly to fire the church and could not. During the Civil War that followed, the fathers carried the icon down to Naupaktos for safety, and the monastery stood empty — except, the story runs, for a nun whom soldiers found keeping the church alone, and whom they afterwards recognised, when they venerated the icon at Naupaktos, as the Mother of God herself.
Feast and commemoration
August 23 (church date; Old Calendar civil September 5). The feast keeps the finding of the icon on the night of the 22nd to the 23rd, and falls on the leavetaking (apodosis) of the Dormition of the Theotokos — so that the Great Feast's own office is repeated on the day the Prousiotissa is honoured, and the two commemorations reinforce each other: the monastery keeps a panegyris of several days, and the pilgrimage to Prousos from Karpenisi, Agrinio, Aetolia and Roumeli is among the largest on the Greek mainland. The commemoration is Greek (and is carried by the OCA calendar for its Greek-tradition readers); it is not in the Slavonic books.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of an icon of the Theotokos)
Having thy holy image as a rampart and a refuge, O Theotokos, we cry aloud with thanksgiving: thou who wast found in the cleft of the rock as a beacon of fire for the faithful, thou hast chosen for thine own the poor of these mountains; wherefore, O Prousiotissa, deliver from every affliction and danger those who run to thy protection.
Kontakion — Tone 6
O protection of Christians that cannot be put to shame, thou hast set thy dwelling in the rock of the wilderness and hast not despised the prayers of shepherds and of the poor: hasten, O Lady, to intercede, and make speed to entreat, for thou dost ever protect them that honour thee.
Original translation from the Greek
Appointed readings
Epistle — Philippians 2:5–11
5Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: 6Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: 7But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: 8And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. 9Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: 10That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; 11And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Gospel — Luke 10:38–42; 11:27–28
38Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. 39And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus’ feet, and heard his word. 40But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me. 41And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: 42But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her. 27And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked. 28But he said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.
Iconography
The Prousiotissa is of the Hodēgḗtria type: the Mother of God at half length, holding the Christ Child on her left arm and indicating him with her right hand, the Child blessing and holding a scroll. The panel is dark with age and almost entirely hidden by the silver-gilt revetment of 1824, which leaves only the faces and hands exposed and is worked with repoussé foliage and an inscription naming Georgios Karaiskakis as donor and Georgios Karanikas as its maker; votive offerings in silver hang thick around it. The icon stands in the katholikon whose sanctuary is the cave of the finding, so that the rock itself forms part of the shrine.
No image of the icon has been stored: no reproduction of it was located on Wikimedia Commons under any spelling of the name, and modern photographs of the shrine are the photographers' copyrighted works. Any candidate would in any case need to be assessed against the 1824 revetment rather than the panel, which is not visible.