Virgin Mary the Portress

The miraculous Portaitissa, the most prominent among the mother-of-pearl icons of Mount Athos, was originally kept, as tradition has it, in Nicaea in Asia Minor. There, a pious woman and her monk son had placed it inside their privately owned church and venerated it.During the years of the second iconoclasm, royal spies discovered the icon and threatened the woman that they would kill her if she did not bribe them. She promised to give them the money the next day.