Metrophanes

Holy Venerable Metrophanes was the disciple and fellow ascetic of Saint Dionysios the Rhetor on the Holy Mountain of Athos, and is known as Metrophanes the Spiritual Father. He reposed about the year 1606.

The year and place of his birth are not known, but he is thought to have lived toward the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the next. He lived a time with his elder Dionysios at the Studion monastery in Constantinople, then both left for Athos, to a cell near Karyes. Seeking still greater quiet, they came, between Saint Anna and Katounakia, to a cave on the site where the skete of Little Saint Anna would grow. They were the first to settle there. They struggled with fasting and vigil, measured their food and sleep, and lived in unceasing prayer. Dionysios, learned and bearing the title Rhetor of the Great Church, was also a calligrapher and writer: his books are kept at the Great Lavra and in other monasteries, and a manual he wrote, the "Kouvaras", with counsels for the brethren, is in the skete library.

Later, with the blessing of his elder and of the Athonite fathers, Metrophanes preached in the villages of Halkidiki under Ottoman rule and heard confessions, whence his name Spiritual Father. At Stratoniki he learned of the vision of a man named Demetrios about heaven and hell and wrote it down. Dionysios fell asleep in 1606 (other manuscripts give 1596 or 1602), and Metrophanes shortly after him. In 1956 the monk Gerasimos Mikragiannanites, after a vision, cleaned their old cell and built a chapel there; the water that flows from the rock is given to pilgrims for blessing. At Little Saint Anna they are commemorated on 9 July (new style).