Athens, October 18, 2023
Photo: thenationalherald.com
In 1917, hundreds of items were plundered from a monastery in northern Greece by Bulgarian combatants in WWI. Among those items were three 16th and 17th-century manuscripts.
The texts eventually made their way to America. They were later sold at auction in 2008, but the buyer later returned them, believing the manuscripts to have been stolen. At that point, the documents were misplaced, and only found years later when the auction house’s Chief Financial Officer’s office was being renovated.
The manuscripts, stolen from the Patriarchal and Stavropegial Theotokos Eikosiphoinissa Monastery, often called Kosinitza, were first returned to the Patriarchate, in Istanbul, but now they have been returned to their rightful home in Greece.
Yesterday, October 17, at the Patriarchate’s representation office in Athens, Metropolitan Theodoritos of Laodicea presented the stolen and recovered manuscripts to Metropolitan Dorotheos of Drama and the Abbess of Panagia Eikosiphoinissa Monastery, Mother Antonini, reports Romfea.
The manuscripts in question are:
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Handwritten parchment measuring 21.5x15.9 cm, from the 16-17th century, listing names of benefactors, donors, and founders of the monastery
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Handwritten parchment measuring 29.3x20 cm, from the 17th century, listing names of founders, donors, and benefactors of the monastery, with various notes for years from the creation of the world (7142, etc.)
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Handwritten parchment measuring 31x21 cm, from the 17th century, listing names of founders, donors, and benefactors of the monastery, with various notes referring to the 17th century (in 1614, 1630, 1639, etc.)
Thus, after more than a century, the manuscripts have returned to the monastery that rightfully owns them.
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