The Madonna Eleimonitria : an elusive sad history

Abstract

The icon of the Virgin of Mercy, venerated in the Greek Catholic Church, Valletta, under the title ‘Eleimonitria’,an adjective coined from the Greek έλεήμων meaning ‘pitiful’ or ‘merciful’ is, in spite of its poor state of preservation, an important legacy of the Rhodiot Greek community that accompanied the Hospitaller Knughts to Malta in 1530. The title reflects the cult of eleimonitria Madonnas that was common in the Aegean and the Dodecanese. One shrine, in particular, that of the Panagia Eleimonitria (‘All Holy Mother of Mercy’) in the Castle of Antimachia on Kos had an association with the Hospitallers, but it is unknown if the Valletta icon was, in any way related to it. The icon is intimately associated with the better known and more cultic Virgin of Damascus venerated in the same church but its history is less documented and its surviving original elements permit only a conjectural comment. The essay considers it in a meaningful historical context and suggests an approximate appreciation its artistic significance. Iconographically the icon is of the ‘Hodigitria’ (‘She who shows the way’) typology. This distances it from the Elousa (‘Virgin of Tenderness’) typology of the Virgin of Damascus . Like the Virgin of Damascus, it was a Rhodiot Greek devotional image over which the Hospitallers had no jurisdiction.