Matrona of Chios

Saint Matrona was born in the village of Volissos on Chios sometime in the fourteenth century.

When the time came for her parents to arrange her marriage, she refused because she wanted to remain a virgin.

To avoid this marriage, she left Volissos and went to an area overlooking the village, called Katavasis, where there was a women's monastery.

Her parents, seeing that she still desired to lead a monastic life, gave her their consent to pursue her ambition.

When Mary's parents died, she gave much of her inheritance to the poor and spent the rest building a monastery in the Palaiókastro quarter of the town of Chios.

The church itself was small, and so the abbess agreed with Matrona's plan to enlarge it and to build cells for the nuns.

In the village of Katavasis, there was a church built to honor the place where St. Matrona had first started her spiritual struggles.

The Holy Monastery of St. Matrona was built by the noble Roidis in 1470 near the village of Mesa Didima.