The Karoussos Icons

In 2007 one of our parishioners, Nigelle de Visme, had a revelation whilst sitting in the Cave of the Apocalypse of St John on the island of Patmos. Nigelle realized that this holy place, Patmos, and the holy place of Glastonbury were linked by two saints who knew Jesus himself: St John of Patmos and St Joseph of Arimathea. Nigelle concluded that both places should be Twinned.

With the encouragement and blessing of the Abbot of Patmos, Nigelle put it to Glastonbury Town Council. 21st September 2009 was agreed by both the Glastonbury Town Council and the Town Council in Patmos as the date for the Twinning. As a result, the two sacred places, Glastonbury and the Holy Isle of Patmos, were Twinned in Perpetuity. This is the only Twinning of its kind in Britain linked in holy Perpetuity.

In 2016, Katerina Karoussos, custodian of the Karoussos Foundation, flew over from Greece to meet with Nigelle in Glastonbury. Katerina had read of the Twinning in Perpetuity between the Holy Isle of Patmos and Glastonbury. Her father, Iannis Karoussos, was the most revered iconographer of his day. His icons won him commissions to paint the frescos for two of the largest churches of Greece, St. Panteleimon in Athens and St. Andrew in Patras. They would win for Iannis Karoussos the most impressive of all accolades: to paint the frescoes of St. Teodoro on Rome’s Palatine Hill when, in 2004, Pope John Paul II returned the church to the Orthodox community a thousand years after the Great Schism which severed the two great traditions.

Katerina offered Nigelle, for Glastonbury, three of the icons which won her father that commission. Nigelle suggested the Shrine of Our Lady of Glastonbury as the only location which might justly serve to honour the three sacred icons. The two women met Fr James Finan who supported this unique proposal. Kim, the Parish Administrator, commissioned a simple and beautiful case made from local oak and rimmed with 6,500-year-old bog oak from Avalon marshes to house them. The case was made by Paul Rendell of Glastonbury.

On the evening of Tuesday 5th September 2018, three icons, depicting the Virgin Mary, Christ the Life Giver, and St John the Theologian and Prochorus, were received with great ceremony by the Shrine of Our Lady of Glastonbury. St Mary’s was full to capacity. Bishop Declan Lang, Bishop of Clifton welcomed the Greek Orthodox Archbishop Gregorios Theocharous of Thyateira and Great Britain, who had come from London to bless the icons in the traditional Greek way.

Exactly as Archbishop Gregorios walked away from the chapel, glowing with the unveiled and blessed icons now lit in splendour, an astonishing thing happened. Shafted rays of brilliant blue-silver light flooded upwards through the stained-glass roundel of Mary high above the icons. The collective gasp of the congregation, sudden flourishing of mobile phone cameras, and the astonishing moment was captured forever above the Virgin Mary, Christ the Life Giver and St John the Theologian and Prochorus.

A word about the remarkable photo taken by Ann Cook FRPS, whom Nigelle had invited: at the very moment Ann had taken the photo her camera inexplicably jammed. She could take no more!