Patmos (Latmos in the ancient times) was the beloved island of the goddess of the moon, Selene! In prehistoric times, it was inhabited by the Caries, then colonized by the Dorians and later on by the Ionians! The name of Patmos certainly comes from the name of Mount Latmos of Caria in Asia Minor. And it is said that Orestes, pursued by the Furies because of the murder of his mother Clytemnestra, as he was on his way with the Argonauts, found refuge in Patmos. The ancient Wall, which exists in the location of Castelli, is from the 6th to the 4th century BC! The Wall and the different ruins are showing the existence of an acropolis, where, as believed, were erected a temple to Apollo and another to Bacchus and further down, by the sea, was a hippodrome! According to what was discovered, mainly in the walls of churches, cultural and social life was flourishing during the antiquity. Protector goddess of the island was the Patmian Artemis, other form of the Ephesian Artemis, whose temple was located in Chora and on the ruins of which were first built a big Basilica dedicated to Saint John and later on the monastery of St John by Holy Christodoulos.

In 95A.D., the beloved disciple of Christ, John, came as a prisoner, sent into exile by the emperor Domitian. On the island was living at that time a magician called Kynops (meaning dog's face) or Kenepsi as now named, on the place called Genoupa. When Kynops learned John's presence on the island and that he was preaching the word of a new god and baptizing an increasing number of people, he got very angry and he went looking for John to see by himself what was going on! He found him in the city of Fora (nowadays Pernera), which was then the main city of Patmos, on the seashore at a place called Botrus, where the baptistery was. Then Kynops defied John, in front of his followers, to prove the existence of his god by bringing back to life the recently deceased father of a Patmian who was among the crowd! As John refused to do so, Kynops dived into the sea and, showing the power of his magical tricks, brought to the surface a person with the same appearance as the man's father! The crowd started to applaud at Kynops and to turn against John! Then John, invoking the name of Christ and making the sign of the Cross with his hand, changed Kynops into a stone and let him at the bottom of the sea! With the foundation by St John the Theologian himself of the first apostolic church in Patmos, a new period started for our island!

After the Roman occupation Patmos fell into decline. Most of the inhabitants had deserted the island which was merely used by the Romans as a place of banishment. Things changed when Holy Christodoulos arrived in Patmos with a few monks and workers from Crete and Asia Minor and started to build the monastery. At first, the inhabitants, mostly workers and farmers, were depending on the monastery. Later on, with the development of shipping and of trade, changes occurred in the population and as the monastery increased in prosperity, cultural upheaval reached at its highest peak with the foundation of the Patmian Theological School.

During the great fight of Greece for its liberation from the Turkish yoke, a lot of Patmian played a first role. Apart from the three best known, Emmanuel Xanthos, founder of the Friendly Society, Theophile Pancostas, patriarch of Alexandria, and Dimitrios Themelis, the great messenger of the ideas of the Friendly Society, all the Patmians with no exception took an active part into the revolution! Well known names of Patmian army officers are M.Pankalos, Emmanuel and George Kalos, lieutenants of Dimitrios Ypsilanti, Emmanuel and Theodore Xenos who equipped the army of Karaiskakis and supplied with their ships the besieged city of Mesologgi! Emmanuel Xenos indeed who was an erudite was elected member of the commission, which negotiated the peace with the sultan after the intervention of G.Canning. Patmos was indeed the second island after Spetses to hoist the flag of Freedom on Holy Tuesday in the square of Aghia Levia. Patmos itself obtained very quickly its freedom and became the first capital of a group of four island including Ikaria, Leros, Kalymnos and Patmos, joined as the "Supplementary Islands of the Eastern Sporades "! But this liberation did not last long! By the Treaty of Constantinople, on the 9th of June 1832, Patmos returned to the Ottoman State, following the fate of the other islands of the Dodecanese. In 1912, the Italians occupied it at their turn and it is only after the Second World War, as known, that it was reunited to the Greek State.