Ignatios of Provata

Ignatios of Provata, a hieromonk and confessor, a much venerated elder, with the secular name John Grammatas, son of Christopher and Vasilia, was born in 1871 on Lesbos. In 1891 he came to the cell of the Dormition-⁠Kranias in the skete of Glossia-⁠Provata, in which Saint Gregory Palamas is said to have lived in the fourteenth century. He was tonsured a monk in 1893, ordained deacon in 1894 and priest in 1898.

According to his disciple, the hieromonk Kallinikos, "he was affable and consoling to all. He was endowed with all the virtues, love of the brothers and charity toward all, guilelessness toward enemies, and even prayed for them, and he gave alms gladly and cheerfully to anyone who asked. He kept the prayer of the mind unbroken at all times. He prayed day and night for all Christians and his spiritual children, as well as for his own household. He was a model of a perfect and virtuous monk. He had much love and reverence for our Lord Jesus Christ, for the Mother of God our protectress, and for almost all the saints. For 63 years he struggled against injustice and for justice and truth, rendering priceless services to our holy Place, as well as national action for our beloved homeland, preventing and averting various national dangers on the Holy Mountain." He was a very venerable elder. His word rebuked even monasteries. He also worked for the question of the cell dwellers. In the book he composed about his skete, the elder, a lover of history and of the holy, writes beautifully of "the God-⁠glorified and blessed assembly of the Venerable and God-⁠bearing Fathers who strove and struggled in holy Glossia." He reposed in the Lord in August 1959. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.