Meteor it in Greek indicates “that hovering in air”. By this the complex of monastery and monasteries, which and really mail soar in the skies, is in a word designated. Erected at the height to 300 meters, at the rocky apexes of striking slope, that they are encountered in the spurs Of [pinda] in [Fessalii], they as if look through the valley Of [pinosa] at the spaces of ancient [Ellady]. Until 1920 for rare visitors it was necessary either to climb here on the unsteady and unreliable access ladders with a height of 30 meters, and that is more (these stairs with the least danger they were dragged upward), or to generally accomplish upsurge on the rope, swinging at the giddy height in the woven rope grid.
The supply of monastery to this day is accomplished with the aid of such grids. But after the First World War, when monastery began to draw increasingly more tourists, from [Kalambaki] they here laid new road. Now the monastery it is possible to reach on the paper streamers of steps cut in the cliffs and on the unsteady suspension bridges moved across the bottomless precipices. True, many monks, fearing the vain intrusions of mundane life into the ascetic cloister way of life, left their cells and today monastery are meteors - these are rather museums, than monastic communities.
From the very sources of Christianity the service to god in the desert, neglected places, far from the temptations and the daily fuss of mundane life becomes odes them from the main elements of this of religion. Recluses began to settle in the caves on the precipitous slopes Of [pinda] even in THE XII century. But the founder of two main monastery - [Gegalo] Of [meteoron] and [Magalo] Of [meteoron] - monk [Svyatoy] Afanasy from [Afaya] mountain settled here only about 1360. Legend says, that in the place, where monastery today stands, this recluse raised either angel or mountain eagle. Its student Of [yoasaf], son of Serbian king, through [tridtsat]-[sorok] of years continued the affair of teacher and finished building monastery.
Monastery are folded of the stone, they are covered with red tile; as a rule, there are into them and wooden galleries, which overhang bottomless failures of rocky slopes. Inside the monastery are placed many close monastic cells, cloister church and general refectory. In the cliffs the niches for the cisterns were cut down, where drinking water collected. The refectory of monastery Varlam they in 1960 restoreed and re-equipped for museum. In the monastery Of [meteoron] it is possible to look around the simple accomodation of cloister kitchen with its simple utensils, wash-tubs and scoops. In churches both monastery were preserved the [zhutkovatye] frescoes, which depict the scenes of infernal tortures and sufferings of the martyrs: [useknoveniya] of heads, [ubieniya] by sword and by dagger, crucifix, flagellation, burning on the bonfires. In the empty monastery Of [nikolaos] are frescoes XVI of centuries, created by remarkable painter Theofan from [Krety].
The majorities of monastery were man, but there are several female. To one of them, monastery Of [stefanos], it is possible to pass only along the bridge, hanging above the precipice.
History the meteors
IN THE XV -XVi centuries, when [Fessaliya] it was seized by Turks, in these places arose more than thirty new monastic communities. However, in XVII-XVIII centuries began the slow, but steady decline of monasticism, and the majority of communities be made burning hot. Finally, in the 19th Century to the monastery meteors began to focus attention the first being curious travellers, and since then they attract increasingly more visitors.
