February 28, 2022

The 800 Year Anniversary Since the Repose of Saint Michael Choniates, Metropolitan of Athens


Today marks exactly eight hundred years since the death of Saint Michael Choniates, Metropolitan of Athens, who is commemorated in the Orthodox Church on July 4th. 
 
In a Synodal Letter of the Metropolitan of Nafpaktos John Apokaukos written in Arta, the capital of the Despotate of Epirus during Theodoros Doukas, we read in his handwritten note, as a reminder of the exact day of the repose "of the body and soul of the most-holy one of Athens; the 28th of February, Monday, in the tenth indiction of the year 1222."

Ferdinand Gregorovius, in his work History of the City of Athens in the Middle Ages, notes: "He was translocated from here to the ageless bliss, the ray that illuminated the darkness of Athens in the Middle Ages, the last great citizen and the last glory of this city of the wise."