Dionysios the Merciful

Saint Dionysios the Merciful was metropolitan of Larissa at the end of the fifteenth century and the later founder of the Monastery of Saint Nicholas Anapafsas at Meteora. He fell asleep in the Lord on Holy Thursday of the year 1510.

No hagiographic texts, services, synaxaria or written life of him survive. What we know comes from elsewhere: a fresco of 1627 in the left aisle of the church of the Holy Unmercenaries in Trikala shows in a row seven "holy archbishops of Larissa": Thomas the Gorianite, Cyprian the Wonderworker, Anthony the Scholar and New Theologian, Bessarion, Dionysios the Merciful, Mark the Hesychast, and Bessarion of the Saviour. The inscription on the fresco shows that he had entered the awareness of his flock as a local saint. The epithet "Merciful" bears witness to his rich work in church and society, as a helper of the poor and a comforter of the suffering.

By the order of the seven, his tenure as hierarch falls after 1489-1490 and before 1499, so it was short. Around 1499 he stepped down from the throne, and Mark the Hesychast took his place. He then became a monk at the Monastery of Saint Nicholas Anapafsas, of which he renewed the foundation. The "Chronicle of Meteora", written shortly after 1529, mentions him several times and says that he was the first to give the title of abbot to the hieromonk Ioasaph, the "father" of the Monastery of the Transfiguration at Meteora, and then ordained him bishop of Phanarion.

He is commemorated on 28 March, according to the calendar of the Church of Greece (new style). His veneration is local, in Larissa and Meteora.