Patriarchal and Stavropegic Monastery of the Holy Trinity, Chalki
The Holy Patriarchal and Stavropegic Monastery of the Holy Trinity, Chalki, Princes Islands of Istanbul, Turkey. There is no verified historical information about the first years of the Monastery of the Holy Trinity, but tradition has it that its founder, later canonized as Patron Saint of the Theological School of Chalki, was Patriarch Photius the Great (second half of the 9th century).
The church possesses many important treasures, among them the Palaeologan icon of the Virgin Glykophilousa, the Reliever of Sorrow and another of the Virgin Hodegetria.
The Holy Theological School of Halki
- See the Main Article on the: Theological School of Halki
Patriarch Germanos I when in 1844, having renovated the monastery had it declared, by synodical decision as «erected in order to serve for the greater love of God as a theological school.» The School building, designed by Pericles Photiades, was inaugurated on October 6, 1896. Now a Pan-Orthodox theological centre, the School dominated the island's existence. It had brilliant teachers and as brilliant students who came from all over the Ottoman Empire and from throughout Greek lands, some of them Arabic -and Slavic- speaking. After graduating, these students distinguished themselves not only as theologians but also as professors and entrepreneurs and senior civil servants, the attribute they possessed in common being 'an Orthodox way of life'.