Theotokos Axion Esti – Eleousa

Description

The Eleusa (or Eleousa) (Greek: Ἐλεούσα – tenderness or showing mercy) is a type of depiction of the Virgin Mary in icons in which the infant Jesus Christ is nestled against her cheek. In the Western church the type is often known as the Virgin of Tenderness.
Such icons have been venerated in the Eastern Church for centuries. Similar types of depictions are also found in Madonna paintings in the Western Church where they are called the Madonna Eleusa, or Virgin of Tenderness. By the 19th century examples such as Lady of refuge (e.g. by Luigi Crosio) were widespread and they were also used in retablos in Mexican art,

This miracle-working icon, which is today kept on the synthronon of the church of the Protaton in Karyes, was in the late 10th century in a kelli near Karyes which today bears the same name of “Axion Estin” because of the following miracle:while the Elder of the kelli was absent at a vigil in the Protaton, his hypotaktikos happened to be providing hospitality to some passing monk, unknown to him, with whom he was signing the service of Sunday Matins.When they came to sign the ninth ode of the Canon, the monk of the kelli sang “More honourable…”, the familiar ancient hymn by St Cosmas the Poet, which was sung then, as it is now, together with the verses to the Theotokos of the ninth ode (“My soul doth magnify the Lord…”), while the monk who was a stranger began “It is meet (axion estin) as truly…”, which the monk of the kelli admired so much that he asked for it to be written down, so that he could sing it too. But since no ink or paper could be found, the mysterious stranger inscribed the hymn with his finger one a stone slab, and saying that thus the hymn should be sung ever after by all Orthodox, he disappeared.