The Dormition of the Theotokos at Tinos
Greece's principal Marian pilgrimage, kept on 15 August at the Tinos shrine of the Megalochari, where the icon found in 1823 is carried out of the church by men of the Hellenic Navy and down to the harbour.
The Dormition of the Theotokos at Tinos is Greece’s principal Marian pilgrimage, kept on 15 August at the Church of Panagia Evangelistria above the harbour town. The shrine holds the icon of the Annunciation struck by the pickaxe of Dimitris Vlassis, a volunteer digger from the village of Falatados, on 31 January 1823, on ground identified by the nun Pelagia of the Kechrovouni monastery after she reported visions of the Virgin on three consecutive Sundays in July 1822. The marble church raised over the site drew its stone largely from the neighbouring island of Delos, with the east wing standing by mid-1832 and the last construction work finished in 1880. Its bell tower, 29 metres in three marble compartments, was cut by Ioannis Filippotis of Pyrgos to a design supervised by the architect and academician Anastasios Orlandos.
The feast is not confined to the day. Pilgrims arrive from the first days of August for the supplicatory canons said in the church each evening, the last and largest of them held in the courtyard on 13 August. On the morning of the 15th the Metropolitan of Syros and Tinos, who chairs the shrine’s governing committee, presides at a hierarchal liturgy, after which the icon leaves the church in its canopied frame, carried by men of the Hellenic Navy and escorted by detachments of every military corps and the security forces. Pilgrims come up the road from the quay to meet it, many on their knees by long custom.
The day carries a second observance at the water. The Greek cruiser Elli lay off Tinos for the feast on 15 August 1940 when the Italian submarine Delfino torpedoed her at anchor, killing nine of her crew and wounding 24 in the first act of the Second World War in Greek waters, ten weeks before Italy invaded. Navy representatives throw wreaths over the wreck’s position during the morning, and a monument on the quay carries the ship’s name. The Panhellenic Holy Foundation of Evangelistria, established in January 1825 and constituted as a legal entity under public law, orders the feast and turns the pilgrims’ offerings into scholarships, schools, hospitals and homes for the aged.