A sacred place, a pilgrimage to the faithful, a reference to Pogoni, the tree of the Hieromatyr Cosmas of Aitolia in the village of Vasiliko in Ioannina, exists to keep the prophecy of Saint Cosmas alive generation after generation. Saint Cosmas’ prophecy was the freedom from the Ottoman Empire.
In a green alley in Vasiliko, a small stone building is dedicated to the memory of Saint Cosmas of Aitolia. In the centre, there is a tree, the “oak tree of Freedom,” as the locals have named it.
The monk visited Vasiliko in Pogoni twice when Greece was under the Ottoman rule.
In 1779, a few months before his martyrdom, Saint Cosmas visited Vasiliko for the second time. He stayed in the village for a week. He would meet people every day and pray at the crossroads of the village in front of the inhabitants. At the prayer time, some Ottoman tax collectors, who were oppressing the people under their rule, came to the village. Some were asking the monk when they would get rid of this evil. Father Cosmas took his stick or a piece of wood, and dug a hole in the trunk of an oak next to him and said, “When that hole closes, what you long for will happen.”
In 1912, the hole in the oak trunk was closed, as tradition has it. At that time the wars of independence began in Greece and Epirus and Macedonia were liberated from the Ottoman rule. The oak became the “tree of Prophecy and Liberty.” In 1990, the tree withered and some people from the village decided to revive it in 2004.
With the help of Professor Georgios Peklaris, the oak tree was uprooted and rescued. The trunk was placed in the stone building, which was inaugurated in 2010 as a museum. In the courtyard, there is an old stone iconostasis, which the people from Vasiliko built, when they were informed that Saint Cosmas had been arrested and executed in the village of Kolkondas, Albania. The iconostasis was built in the place of his martyrdom, as a sign of respect, and to keep the place intact where the saint prayed and preached.
SOURCE: ANA-MPA
