Liturgical memoranda: books from the Church of the Dormition of the Virgin in Ano Skotina


Βασίλειος Κουκουσάς
Abstract

Ano Skotina lies in the southeast corner of Pieria, on the flanks of Mount Olympus. But even though the inhabitants of this once busy little place abandoned it in the 1950s for the present-day village of Skotina at the foot of the mountain, they still worship in the old church of the Dormition, built in 1862 by Patriarch Kallinikos of Alexandria, a native of Ano Skotina.

In this church we found a whole series of liturgical books (18th-20th c.), in which priests, cantors and churchwardens had made entries recording various events over the years from 1785 to 1966. These constitute an important source of information about the commune of Skotina and the whole Mount Olympus region, opening a window onto unknown aspects of the 1878 revolution in Skotina and Litochoro, and giving the names of the priests, cantors and church­ wardens of the church of St Athanasios and the teachers of the local primary school.

The authors of these notes, who so studiously recorded the events and the people they considered important, have preserved for us a mine of information about the history and cultural life of Mount Olympus spanning a period of nearly three centuries. 

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