Leontios of Vlacherna

Saint Leontios of Vlacherna was a hermit of Arcadia in the Peloponnese. He lived before the year 1770, perhaps between 1650 and 1750, and he fell asleep on the day of the Resurrection.

Life

He came from the village of Stemnitsa in Gortynia, and his family name was Pasomenos. Nothing is known of his parents, childhood or youth. He was probably tonsured in one of the monasteries around Stemnitsa. His life becomes clearer when he begins his struggle on the summit of Mount Kastania, opposite the village of Vlacherna, in a natural cave, a place of hermits. In time he enlarged the cave and built a small monastery in honour of the Deposition of the Robe of the Mother of God. The icon "Mother of God Vlacherna" was hidden in a recess of the rock under his cell, so that it should not fall into profane hands, and was found miraculously after the liberation. From it the village, formerly called Bezenikos, took the name Vlacherna.

Besides his prayer and struggle, Leontios helped the people around and the travellers. The village lay on the road between Tripoli, Kalavryta and Pyrgos, and on the stretch near Vlacherna there was no water. The venerable carried water in a skin and placed it in a jar in the shade of a tree by the road. When he returned, he climbed the path to his hermitage carrying a large stone, to keep himself in labour and to gather material for the church of the Mother of God and for his own tomb.

Repose and veneration

The Lord granted him foreknowledge of the day of his repose. On Great Saturday he fell ill; a shepherd friend wished to bring him milk, but the venerable told him to come the next day to take the vessel and gave him instructions for burying him in the cave, in the tomb he had made. On the day of Pascha the shepherd found him asleep and did exactly as he had been told. After a year the villagers opened the grave and found his relics loosened and full of fragrance, according to the codex of the Monastery of the Forerunner in Gortynia. The relics were taken to Stemnitsa, to the Monastery of Saint Demetrius, and in 1779 a band of Albanians burned the monastery and sold the venerable's head to Christians of Preveza. Small fragments of the relics are kept in the church of Saint Athanasius in Vlacherna.

Tradition also keeps miracles: the milk of a goat that grazed on the grass of the grave was fragrant, and a rainstorm with hail lasting days ceased after the monks lifted the venerable's head toward heaven. He is commemorated on the Wednesday of Bright Week, at the Monastery of the Mother of God of Vlacherna on Mount Kastania.