Dionysios the Rhetorician

Saint Dionysios the Rhetorician and his disciple Saint Metrophanes were the first known inhabitants and ascetics of the Little Skete of Saint Anne on Mount Athos (Mikragiannia). The Little Skete is a dependency of the Great Skete of Saint Anne and lies between Saint Anne's and Katounakia, on a rocky slope with little greenery. It consists of ten kalyves (cells gathered around a church), two of which have no church.

The two saints came from a dependency of Stoudion Monastery in Constantinople, where Dionysios was tonsured. Desiring a more intensive life of prayer and solitude, they left the monastery of their repentance and journeyed to the Athos peninsula, settling in a cell near Karyes at the end of the fifteenth or early sixteenth century. There they devoted themselves to prayer, fasting and vigil. Dionysios was known for virtue and wisdom, and many disciples were drawn to him. Training others left him little time for his own struggle, and with so many people around, his soul had no peace. So with Metrophanes he went into the wilderness of Athos in search of greater solitude. Somewhere between Saint Anne's and Katounakia they found a cave and made it their abode. This would be the future site of the Little Skete, and they were the first to settle there. In the small, humble cave they lived a godly life equal to that of the angels. In their struggles they fought the stomach's need for food and the body's need for sleep, limiting both the kinds and the amount of food and the time of sleep, to devote themselves more to repentance and prayer.

Dionysios was honored with the office of Rhetorician by the Great Church of Constantinople, and both were esteemed as learned men. They attained greater wisdom, however, by the true philosophy of monasticism, "life according to the Gospel," and progressed so far in virtue and holiness that they became teachers of many holy ascetics. Metrophanes, as his elder's disciple, was asked, with the blessing of the Athonite fathers and of Dionysios, to leave Athos for a time to preach the Word of God in the villages of Halkidiki, and he ministered as spiritual father to his flock in the Turkish-⁠occupied country. On his return he also made known a famous vision of Hell and Paradise, seen by a man named Demetrios from Stratonike. Dionysios was an excellent calligrapher and writer; his books are in the Great Lavra and other monasteries, as well as in the Skete of Saint Anne. A manuscript with the venerable man's signature survives in the skete library, titled "Kouvaras," a guide on how to benefit and instruct the brethren, in which he describes the art of inner watchfulness and noetic prayer, in which he was proficient. He also rendered many writings of the Holy Fathers into simpler Greek so that ordinary people could understand them. Some have been printed, but many remain unpublished.

Dionysios was admired by many, and his repose was regarded as something special in the codices of the Dionysiou and Docheiariou monasteries. He reposed peacefully on 9 July 1606, though other manuscripts give 6 October 1596 or 1602; Metrophanes went to the Lord shortly afterward. At the Little Skete of Saint Anne they are commemorated together on 9 July (new style; 22 July on the old calendar) with a solemn celebration in the cave where there was once a church. Father Gerasimos of the Little Skete, a twentieth-⁠century hymnographer of the Great Church, cleaned the cave with great labor, after an appearance and revelation of the saints, and built a church dedicated to both. Water drips constantly from the cave's roof, and the fathers give it to pilgrims as holy water. According to tradition, Saint Dionysios the Rhetorician is depicted standing straight, with a broad forehead, a large mustache and a square beard.