Avvakum the Barefoot

Saint Avvakum the Barefoot, a venerable monk, was born in 1894 at Symi in the Dodecanese, with the name Antonios Gaitanios. He always lived in the churches of the island, above all in that of Saint Phanourios. Unable to reach Jerusalem, he came to Athos and to the Great Lavra in 1920, where he was tonsured a monk after a year of trial. On the Vigla he built a church of Saint Phanourios. In the Lavra he was always a good and willing servant: refectorian, steward, infirmarian. Metropolitan Nathaniel of Kos wrote that he was never absent from church and that he did his prostrations, prayer rope and fasts not only for himself but for many guests of the Lavra.

He had the gift of memorizing Holy Scripture. He usually walked barefoot, his heel hard as rock, and resembled Saint Anthony. University professors came to the Lavra and were amazed listening to him for hours reciting from memory the prophecies of Isaiah and homilies of Basil the Great and Gregory the Theologian. The writer George Theotokas wrote that Father Avvakum is a phenomenon of memory, a rare case: he knows by heart the whole Old and New Testament. Father Paisios writes that, feeling his end near, he went to his hermitage on the Vigla to leave his bones where he had left his flesh. Before his death he gave away his belongings, saying: "My hour has come. Now I have peace." His last words were: "My Christ, Your great mercy." He fell asleep on 19 October 1978 and was buried beside the church of Saint Phanourios, among his beloved trees. He is honoured by the faithful, without synodal canonization.