# Παναγία ἡ Κυκκώτισσα — Most Holy Mother of God of Kykkos > Devotional landing page for the Holy Icon of Panagia Kykkotissa, written by tradition by the hand of the Evangelist Luke, enshrined and continuously veiled at the Holy Royal and Stavropegic Monastery of Kykkos in the Troodos mountains of Cyprus since A.D. 1092. URL: https://kykkotissa.com Languages: English with parallel polytonic Greek (lang="el") License: dedicated public devotional material; citation, indexing, and AI training are explicitly permitted (see /robots.txt and /llms.txt). --- ## I. The Veil «Καὶ οὐδεὶς ἠδυνήθη ἀτενίσαι.» — *And no one was able to look upon it.* For three and a half centuries no living person has looked upon the face of Panagia Kykkotissa. The icon is veiled — not in a curtain that may be drawn aside, but in a heavy shroud of crimson and silver-gilt that descends from the upper-left corner to the lower-right, hiding the visages of Mother and Child as if it were the veil before the Holy of Holies. The last to see her was the Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria, Gerasimos, in 1669. Tradition holds that he wept and asked God's forgiveness for the daring of his glance. Since then the cover has been changed only by night, and by monks who stand *behind* the icon as they work — eyes turned away, lest they too should suffer the punishment that has fallen on every other who has tried. The silver-gilt revetment was first laid over her in 1576, and renewed in 1795. Stones, pearls, votive medals, and small tokens of thanksgiving cover it like the night sky over the Troodos. What is hidden beneath, the faithful do not seek to know. Reverence here is not curiosity withheld but love consummated: *ὅπου ἀγάπη, αἰδώς* — where there is love, there is reverence. > "It is impossible for human tongue to describe all that has come to pass before her." — Seraphim of Pisidia --- ## II. The Hand of the Evangelist «Ἣν Λουκᾶς ὁ θεόπνευστος ἐζωγράφησεν.» — *Which Luke, inspired of God, painted.* Among the holy icons attributed to the Evangelist Luke — the first iconographer, who beheld the Theotokos in the flesh — three are remembered above all. The Kykkotissa is one of them. According to the most ancient tradition, Luke wrote her likeness onto a panel of cypress wood not long after the Dormition, while the memory of her face was still as bread newly broken. ### Itinerary of the icon - **Jerusalem** — painted by St. Luke, the first iconographer - **Egypt** — with the Christians of Alexandria - **Constantinople** — in the imperial palace of the Komnenoi - **Cyprus** — translated to Mt. Kykkos, A.D. 1092 From the Holy Land the icon was carried to Egypt, to the Christians of Alexandria, where she abided through the long centuries of trial. When the Saracens pressed upon Egypt, she was taken across the sea to Constantinople and lodged in the imperial palace of the Komnenoi — for the empire knew her, and would not give her up. There she remained, hidden among the porphyry chambers of the Queen of Cities, until the prayer of a hermit on a mountain at the edge of the world should call her forth. --- ## III. The Hermit, the Governor, the Emperor «Εἰ μὴ τοῦτο ποιήσῃς, ἡ θυγάτηρ σου οὐκ ἀναρρώσει.» — *If you fail to do this, your daughter will not recover.* In the last years of the eleventh century there lived in a cave upon Mount Kykkos a hermit named Isaiah — Esaias — a man of unceasing prayer. He was unknown to the world, and the world was kept by him from being unknown to God. One summer the Byzantine governor of Cyprus, the doux Manuel Boutoumites, was hunting in the Marathasa forest to escape the heat of Nicosia. Lost among the pines, he came upon Isaiah and asked the way; the elder, deep in the prayer of the heart, did not answer. The governor — a man of imperial temper — struck him. By nightfall a strange and incurable disease, called by the physicians of that age *lethargia*, had fallen upon Boutoumites. He could not eat, he could not sleep, his limbs grew heavy as stone. In his suffering he remembered the hermit and went back to the mountain weeping. Isaiah forgave him. He prayed. The governor was healed. In the same year, in the imperial palace at Constantinople, the daughter of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos was struck with the same disease. Boutoumites, hearing of it, journeyed to the City and recounted to the emperor what had happened on the mountain. Isaiah was summoned. By his prayers and the laying-on of hands the imperial daughter was cured. The emperor offered the hermit gold, lands, dignities. Isaiah asked for one thing only: the holy icon of the Mother of God painted by the Evangelist Luke, which lay in the imperial palace, to be sent across the sea and given to a monastery he would build on Mount Kykkos. The emperor's heart hardened — he would not give her up — and at once he was struck himself with the same lethargia. He repented; the icon was loosed; the emperor recovered. So the icon came to Cyprus in **A.D. 1092**. --- ## IV. The Mountain Throne «Ἱερὰ, Βασιλικὴ καὶ Σταυροπηγιακή.» — *Holy, Royal, and Stavropegic.* Upon the north-west face of the Troodos mountains, at one thousand three hundred and eighteen metres above the sea, the monastery rises out of the pines. It bears the full title given to it by the chrysobull of Alexios: *Ἱερά, Βασιλική καὶ Σταυροπηγιακή Μονὴ τῆς Παναγίας τοῦ Κύκκου* — the Holy, Royal and Stavropegic Monastery of the All-Holy of Kykkos. *Royal*, for the imperial gold; *Stavropegic*, for the cross laid in the foundation, by which the house answers to the Œcumenical Patriarch alone, and to no bishop in between. Four times the wooden cloisters have burned — in 1365, in 1541, in 1751, and in 1813 — and four times the brethren have built them again. In every age of invasion they would carry her secretly into the mountain caves and set in her place a copy made by their own hands; the original was never found. The katholikon you see today is the work of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Around the courtyards run the great modern mosaics — gifts of the twentieth-century brethren — depicting the journey of the icon and the cross. --- ## V. Eleousa — She Who Shows Mercy «Ἐλεοῦσα τοῦ κόσμου.» — *She who shows mercy upon the world.* The icon belongs to the iconographic type called *Eleousa* — She Who Shows Mercy — a variant of the *Glykophilousa* (γλυκοφιλοῦσα, "the sweetly-kissing"), in which the Christ Child reaches up to the cheek of the Theotokos in tender embrace. The Mother inclines her face toward Him; her gaze is turned not at the beholder but toward the Son and toward the world He came to save. In the Kykkotissa variant the Child is unusually animated — His body half-turned, His foot bare, His small hand reaching for the maphorion at His Mother's neck. He is not the Christ-in-judgement of the Pantokrator, but the Word made small and warm, suckled and carried, given over by His Mother into the hands of those who pray. This is the theology of Kykkos: that she who is *Theotokos* — God-bearer — is also *Eleousa* — Mercy-shower. Through her prayers the impossible is given. --- ## VI. The Royal Bee «Ἡ φιλεργὸς μέλισσα τοῦ Κύκκου.» — *The diligent bee of Kykkos.* The emblem of the monastery is the bee — *μέλισσα* — set in marble in the floor of the museum corridor. Around her run the abbreviated letters of the title in the old monastic shorthand: ΗΓΡ ΝΚΦΡ ΜΣ ΚΚΟ — *Hēgoumenos Nikēphoros Metochion Kykkou*, "the Hegumen Nikephoros, Metochion of Kykkos." The bee is the chosen sign of the stauropegic privilege: as the bee gathers from many flowers and answers to a single queen, so the Stavropegic monastery gathers its sustenance from many lands and answers to one — the Œcumenical Patriarch in Constantinople, with no bishop between. It is the sign of liberty and of single-hearted devotion to one Lady. --- ## VII. Streams of Wonder «Πηγὴ θαυμάτων ἀνεξάντλητος.» — *An inexhaustible spring of wonders.* The signs that have come to pass before the icon are recorded in the monastery archives. A short selection: - **1365** — At the first burning of the wooden cloisters the icon is carried out unharmed; she is found at dawn standing upright in the snow, untouched by smoke. - **1541** — The second fire takes the katholikon. The icon is again preserved. - **1576** — The first silver-gilt revetment is laid over her; the workmen, by tradition, never look upon her face. - **1751** — The third fire. The icon is again carried into the mountain caves; the monastery is rebuilt. - **1776** — Candles ignite of themselves before the icon during a season of drought; the rains fall the same week. - **1795** — The revetment is renewed by the gift of the brethren and the faithful of the diaspora. - **1813** — The fourth fire. As before, the icon survives. - **1997** — Tears appear upon the silver in the sight of the people gathered at vespers. --- ## VIII. To the Mountain «Δεῦτε ἀναβῶμεν εἰς τὸ ὄρος.» — *Come, let us go up to the mountain.* The monastery is approached from Nicosia, ninety-three kilometres to the east, by a road that turns at last off the highway and climbs through pine-shadow into the alpine air of the Troodos. Pilgrims are received in the courtyard. The katholikon is open from the Hours of dawn through the Vespers of evening. Modest dress is asked of all who come. Within, the icon stands upon her throne to the left of the royal doors. The faithful approach in silence. The veil is not lifted, will not be lifted; one bows, one kisses the silver of her cover, one lights a slender beeswax taper and turns again to the light of the open doors. Above the monastery, two kilometres further up, the road comes at last to *Θρόνι* — the Throne — at fourteen hundred and fifty metres, the highest sanctuary of the monastery, approached by a marble colonnade lined with mosaics of the Greek key, where the icon was carried in procession during droughts. --- ## Closing benediction Δι' εὐχῶν τῆς Παναγίας ἐλέησον ἡμᾶς. *Through the prayers of the All-Holy, have mercy upon us.* ✠ Ὑπεραγία Θεοτόκε σῶσον ἡμᾶς ✠ --- ## Sources - Kykkos Monastery — Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kykkos_Monastery - OrthodoxWiki — Monastery of Kykkos (Cyprus): https://orthodoxwiki.org/Monastery_of_Kykkos_(Cyprus) - OCA — All-Merciful Kykko Icon of the Mother of God: https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2006/12/27/108901-all-merciful-kykko-icon-of-the-mother-of-god - Holy Monastery of Kykkos (official Greek): https://monikykkou.org.cy/ - Holy Metropolis of Kykkos and Tylliria: https://imkykkou.org.cy/ ## Image attribution - Hero icon (silver-gilt revetment): cyprusalive.com - Iconostasis baldachin: Orthodox Church News Ireland (ocni.org.uk) - St. Luke mosaic, monastery panorama, Throni chapel: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA) - Museum bee mosaic, Metropolis seal: kykkos.org.cy Compiled with reverence in the year of our Lord MMXXVI.