Irina Gorainoff

This article by Irina Gorainoff presents the figure of Theoktistos, a hermit monk originally from Thyatira in Asia Minor, who lived on Patmos until 1917. Through a biographical account combining direct testimonies and written sources, the author traces the ascetic journey of this contemporary hesychast: his successive hermitages, his spiritual struggles against temptation, his practice of the Jesus Prayer, and his singular relationship with living creatures. The article draws notably on the testimony of Protestant missionary William Edgar Geil, who met Theoktistos in 1896, as well as on the recollections of witnesses still living at the time. The theological contribution lies in the highlighting of a living continuity between the tradition of the Desert Fathers and twentieth-century Orthodox monasticism, illustrated by the figure of an ascetic rooted in the hesychast and eschatological tradition of Patmos.

This article by Irina Goraïnoff constitutes a spiritual and geographical guide to the island of Patmos, written from the island itself. Combining concrete description with charismatic vision, it presents the physical configuration of the island, its history from Antiquity to reunification with Greece in 1948, as well as its principal holy sites: the Cave of the Apocalypse, the Great Monastery of Saint John the Theologian, the Patmiade, and the women's monasteries. The article highlights the contemporary spiritual vitality of Patmos through figures such as the hesychast Theoktistos and Father Amphilochios. It concludes with a scriptural meditation devoted to the personality of Saint John the Evangelist. The principal contribution lies in this articulation between concrete geography, historical memory, and living Johannine presence, offering an Orthodox reading of the island as a place of revelation that remains perpetually active.