Source: Mystagogy Resource Center
February 7, 2023
Photo: Mystagogy Resource Center
The sacred relics of the Venerable and God-bearing Luke, known more popularly as Hosios Loukas, which were treasured in the magnificent katholikon of his eponymous Monastery until 1460, due to the occupation of the Boeotian land by the Turks, were transferred by the Hosioloukaite monks of the Monastery to Lefkada. From there, due to the arrival of the Turks in Lefkada, they were transported to Bosnia by the rulers of Bosnia, who bought them from the Turks thinking they were the relics of Luke the Evangelist, since there had been confusion between the two saints bearing the same name.
However, when the Turks occupied Bosnia in 1463, Franciscan monks transferred the relics of the Saint to Venice, to the Church of Saint Job (San Giobbe). The protests of the Benedictine monks, who possessed the relics of Luke the Evangelist in the Basilica of Saint Justin (Santa Giustina) in Padua, resulted, in 1464, in the convening of a Synod of Cardinals deciding that the relics in question are not of Luke the Evangelist, but of a Saint Luke from Steiris (the Bishop of Nicosia in Cyprus, Isaiah, also testified about this) with the result that they were kept in a secondary and insignificant position in the Church of Saint Job and fell into obscurity.
… Read the rest at the Mystagogy Resource Center.
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