The single-aisled church of Christ was once the katholikon of a 14th century stavropegiac monastery (so called as the patriarchal cross is thrust into the ground of each such monastery to signify the latter is subject immediately to the Patriarchate of Constantinople).
Documents issued by the patriarch Niphon and the emperor Andronikos II in 1314 transferred ownership of the church to the monk Ignatios Kalothetos, a personal friend of Grigorios Palamas, at the time leading an ascetic life in the monastery of Timios Prodromos in the vicinity of Beroia.
Ignatios invited the Thessalonikan Georgios Kalliergis -- the "outstanding painter in all Thessaly" (as the artist grandiosely signs himself in the donor's inscription within the church) -- to decorate the monastery.
Kalliergis' work, which still excites admiration today, is one of the rarest achievements of the Palaeologan renaissance in the realm of painting. His wall-paintings are characterised by the use of many colours and show the artist's profound theological knowledge which was influenced by the work of his contemporary Thessalonikan scholars.
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