Manual of Christian Iconography

unspecified "the Great George" in the year 1533, and as the year of "the fine painting" of it, "that is, when it was decorated," the year 1543-1544. It is therefore a question of the first painting since the construction or renovation of this church. The thus-unspecified church of Saint George can, I believe, be distinguished from the one of the same name at the Monastery of Xenophontos, if we consider first that Panselinos, both as a painter and as a hieromonk, had his place of living on Athos, residing there together with his father and his brother Benjamin (both hieromonks); and second, the proximity of the year 1544 in the inscription of the church of the Monastery of Xenophontos to the year 1554, which is mentioned in the note of the father of Panselinos. And since the year of the inscription is reliable due to its clarity and public nature, the year of the father of Panselinos must necessarily be considered a failure of memory. I convince myself of this from the observation that in the notes I found of his, we have recollections in an irregular order, and therefore accidental memories from different times of a great old man 1. First, it is noted that his son Panselinos was ordained on July 2, 1559. In the second note, he says that his second son, Benjamin, was ordained a priest in the month of August of the year 1570. In the third, which follows, he remembers that he himself was ordained in the unspecified year 1527/1528; and in the fourth and last, he remembers the year of construction of "the church of the great George" as 1532/1533, and as the year of "the fine painting" of it, "that is, when it was decorated," the year 1554. The thus-irregular order of these four items proves that we have in them an elderly author who wished at one time and on the same day to record in writing events of different times, honoring the memory of his family. These suffice for determining the time of the peak of Dionysius of Fourna and Manuel Panselinos.

The things said so far about them bring the Hermeneia Manual back to the point where it is chronologically appropriate to place it.

1) See my Mavrogordatos Library, vol. 1, pp. 152-153.