16th century
Venerable Dionysios of Olympus
A 16th-century monk from Sklataina near Karditsa who lived as an ascetic at Meteora, on Mount Athos and on Mount Olympus, where a monastic community gathered around him.
Biography
Dionysios was born around 1500 in Sklataina near Karditsa (today's Drakotrypa) with the given name Demetrios. At eighteen he became a monk at Meteora and later moved to Karyes on Mount Athos, where he was ordained priest and took the name Dionysios.
He lived as an ascetic at the Karakalou skete, briefly served as abbot of the Philotheou monastery and, after opposition to the way of life he wanted to establish there, settled at the Timiou Prodromou monastery in Veroia before living as a hermit in a cave on Mount Olympus.
In 1542 he founded the monastery of the Holy Trinity of Sourvia on Mount Pelion, around which many monks gathered, while he himself toured the surrounding villages preaching and supporting the enslaved Greek population.