Xenophon the Founder

Venerable Xenophon the Founder was the founder of Xenophontos Monastery on Mount Athos, at the end of the tenth and beginning of the eleventh century. He was canonized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate on 24 November 1997.

He came from a famous and wealthy family and had a good education. He was a contemporary of Venerable Athanasius the Athonite, whose life tells that he miraculously healed Xenophon's brother Theodore, who suffered from cancer. According to tradition, Xenophon came to the place where his monastery now stands and found a small church of Saint Demetrius and the wonderworking icon of Saint George. The icon had been in Constantinople in the time of iconoclasm, when the holy icons were burned by heretics, but, thrown into the fire, it remained whole. A bolder iconoclast than the rest struck the Saint's face on the chin with a sword, and blood gushed from the wound as if the Saint were alive, rebuking the error of the heretics; the wound can be seen to this day. The heretics fled, and a pious Christian carried the icon to the shore and threw it into the sea to save it. So the icon came to Xenophontos Monastery, to be support, consolation and protection of the place. Seeing it, Xenophon built at his own expense a new and splendid monastery, dedicated to the Great Martyr George the Trophy-⁠bearer, in the year 998.

He was distinguished by discernment, almsgiving, humility and above all justice, and so was called "the Just". In the early eleventh century he made peace among the monasteries of Athos in boundary disputes, and his "securities", that is the documents he drew up, show the wisdom of his mind, the meekness of his heart and his spirit of peace. Near the end of his life he resigned the abbacy in favour of his brother Theodore, so as to find quiet until the end, between 1018 and 1035. The first feast was kept on 23-24 April 1998, with a new service set to music. He is commemorated on 24 April.