In Taygetos and near the village of Dyrrachio in Arcadia is the historic Monastery of Rekitsa dedicated to Saint George. The founder, the circumstances and the time of the foundation of this Monastery cannot be known because no written historical evidence has survived. It is said that the name "Rekitsa" means "small stream". Its historical importance is very great and its contribution to the liberation of the Greek nation very important. There, many initiations into the Friendship Society took place, "categories" and recruitments took place. From the Beautiful Gate of her temple, the priests blessed the weapons of the chieftains and warriors.
Meetings of chieftains were also held, the wounded were treated and women, children and old people were hidden. Enslaved Greek children learned their first letters there. The National hero Zacharias was one of the many who fought in the "battle of Rekitsa". Grigorios Dikaios-Flessas or Papaflessas learned his first letters from a monk and then he was sent to the School of Dimitsana and in 1816, out of zeal for the monastic life and hatred of the Turkish conquerors, he was enrolled in the monastery of Velanidia near Kalamata, but he quarreled with the local hierarch, the metropolitan of Monemvasia and moved to the monastery of Rekitsa, which was under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the metropolis of Lacedaemonia. But he didn't stay there long either. Fotakos, the first Adjutant of Kolokotroni, mentions an episode with Turko aga Husein Serdaris from Leontari for real estate disputes with the monastery, thanks to which the monk boasted of an intelligent plan, otherwise he invoked the Turko's mein. He also mentions another episode, which caused the dissolution of the congregation and gave rise to the mobilization of the Turkish machine against the young monk. An armed conflict followed between the monk and his brothers in the current position and a Turkish detachment. The narrator seals the end of the episode with the monk's decisive words to the Turks:
- You cuckolded Turks, go back to your master the cuckold, tell him that I am leaving for Pauline and I will not return as a simple monk, but I will come like as a despot, or as a pasha! So Papaflessas, on August 18, 1816, left the Monastery of Rekitsa and began to organize himself in order to face the Turks and liberate his homeland. Together with his companions, they made the Monastery of Rekitsa their base, hiding place and place of meetings and supplies. Big names are associated with the Monastery apart from Grigorio Dikaios Papaflessa, such as Panagiotis Kefalas, Theodoros Kolokotronis, Nikitaras, Anagnostaras etc. From there, all of them are led to the liberation of Kalamata and of course to the gradual liberation of the entire Greek Nation.
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