Mount Athos is known as the "Garden of Virgin Mary". As the place where the Most Holy Theotokos is honored, as the place where she appears, acts and rests, as "the conceivable and most beautiful Paradise of Theotokos". According to the tradition, Mount Athos was given as a heritage to the Virgin Mary by the Lord himself: "Let this place be a heritage and its surroundings be Paradise, and a port of salvation for those who want to be saved".
The icon of the Theotokos Three-Handed (Trojeručica in Serbian or Tricherousa in Greek), one of the miraculous icons of the Serbian Hilandar Monastery on Mount Athos. The icon was an heirloom of Saint John of Damascus and was kept with great reverence in the chapel of his house. During the Iconoclasm, the Emperor of Constantinople was Leo III the Isaurian. During this period, the veneration of holy icons was forbidden. However, Saint John of Damascus was a fervent defender of the icons. Through his writings, he sought to fight off the pillars of Iconoclasm.
At the Holy Monastery of Kostamonitou on Mount Athos is found the icon of the Virgin Mary Antifonitria, meaning ‘She Who Retorts’. The exact time and occasion of how this holy icon appeared in the monastery remain unknown. However, the miracle associated with the holy icon of the Theotokos, which took place in 1020 AD during the reign of Constantine the Great, is widely known.
The original name of the Palaiologina was “Hodeghetria Pantanassa”. Later, to distinguish it from other icons of the same name, it was renamed “Palaiologina”, after the name of its donor “the most pious Kyra Maria Asamina Palaiologina, lady of Moldo-wallachia”, as a small inscription in gold attached to the silver revetment states. Here the Blessed Virgin is represented with an affectionate, but at the same time sad air, as she holds Christ at the age of three.
This icon had long been in the Katholikon of the Monastery of Vatopedi, on the column of the left choir. In 1730, however, it suddenly disappeared from its place, although the gates of the Monastery were locked, and was found at the Monastery of Xenophontos. Everyone thought that someone had secretely stolen it, and so the icon was brought back to its old place, while the Vatopedi fathers took stricter precautions and locked the church.
This miraculous icon was once in a famous Constantinople monastery called “Myrelaiou”. From there it was brought to the Holy Mountain by St Paul of Xeropotamou, who dedicated it to the second monastery he had founded (after Xeropotamou), which had taken his name.
The miraculous icon of the Virgin Mary Glykofilousa is one of the most loved miraculous icons of the Theotokos. It is housed at the Holy Monastery of Filotheou on Mount Athos and is placed on the left side of the Katholikon's sanctuary. The miraculous icon of Our Lady Glykophilousa is double-sided. In this holy icon, the Most Holy Theotokos tenderly holds Jesus Christ, who is portrayed at a young age and Her gaze, filled with love and compassion, is directed towards the faithful. At the same time, Jesus Christ, the God-Man, turns His head towards His Mother, resting His face lovingly against hers, while His left hand gently touches the face of the Ever-Virgin Mary. On the back side, the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ is depicted.
The best-known miraculus icon of the Holy Mountain after the Portaotissa is an ancient wall-painting of the Blessed Virgin on the outside of the eastern wall of the refectory, to the right of the entrance, in the Docheiariou Monastery. In 1664, the trapezares Neilos, who used to pass regularly in front of the icon holding in his hand a lighted torch which he needed for his duties in the refectory, heard a voice telling him: “Do not come pat here with a torch, leaving smoke on my icon”. Neilos did not pay much attention to the voice, but it was soon heard again, imposing a punishment on the monk and leaving him blind. The brothers began to show great reverence in passing before the icon and hung a perpetual lamp before it and ordered the new trapezares to burn incense before it every day.
When the Blessed Cosmas of Zografou, an anchorite who flourished around the end of the 13th century or the beginning of the 14th, was still living in the coenobium, he chanced once to be alone in the church and to turn towards this particular icon fervent prayer, saying: “Most holy Theotokos, pray to your Son and God, that I may be led along the path of salvation”.
During the period of the false union of the Council of Lyons under th pro-Latin Michael VIII Palaeologus and the Patriarch Ioannes Beccus, in the 13th century, Latin clerics accompanied by soldiers invaded the Holy Mountain, that stronghold of Orthodoxy, to impose by force union with the Western Church. The Zografou Monastery had the honour to produce in this struggle against error the 26 Martyrs of Zographou. At that time, there was a saintly elder living the ascetic life near the Monastery whose habit it was to recite the Akathistos Hymn many times a day before the icon of the Theotokos.
In this icon, which is on the pillar of the left choir of the Monastery s katholikon, the Blessed Virgin is shown standing in an attitude of supplication, without Christ. On the Silver reventment of the icon can be seen a storage jar overflowing, reminding us of a miracle of the Theotokos when, hearing the prayers of the Elder (Yerontas – hence the name “Yerontissa”) filled with oil the empty storage jars of the Monastery.
This icon of the Theotokos is the only object which was saved from a terrible fire which completely destroyed a metochi of the Monastery in Crete. It was brought to the Monastery where it continues to perform many miracles, to which the fathers of the Monastery and its pilgrims are witnesses.
According to an inscription on a silver plaque on its back, this icon was given by the Emperor Alexius Comnenus to the Blessed Dionysious, the founder of the Monastery, when the latter visited Trebizond, and it is that with which the Patriarch Sergius on the walls of Constantinople repelled the siege of the Scythians in 626 AD, and before which after a miraculous victory of the Byzantines the Akathistos Hymn was sung for the first time. In 1592 it was stolen by Algerian pirates, but a great tempest, a terrible dream and a strange miracle seen by their leader decided them to return it to the Monastery.
