Panagia Dinious Church

Panagia Dinious is a small church in North Evia, near Istiaia, where there is a miraculous icon of Panagia.

There are two main versions of the name.

The first is related to the history of the icon, where according to tradition, a Turkish Ottoman soldier during the Ottoman period shot the icon, in his attempt to kill a hunted Greek who hid behind it. According to tradition, the miraculous icon "returned" the bullet to the heathen soldier and killed him. This version is strengthened by the existence of the mark of the firing of the Turk's firearm on the face of the Virgin Mary and especially on the forehead. The "return" of the sphere gave the name to the Virgin Mary who was called Panagia Dinious or Donious from the Turkish word "Donus" which means "return".

The second version, equally important, but which does not seem to have prevailed, conveys with some phonetic rendering or altered paraphrase the local peculiarity of the place, because a few meters from the church there is a stream with water from local sources which is, to this day, called diniorema. Thus, Panagia Dinious, some even call her even today Panagia Dinios, owes her nickname to her position near the Diniorema.