As my post about Dimitris Mitropanos’s song Roza(https://wordpress.com/posts/wordscene.wordpress.?s=great+song+bu) has for some reason been generating a lot of interest recently, I thought I would translate another song in the zeïmbekiko style of the Greek rebetiko tradition – brilliantly performed here by Themis Adamantidis, Dimitris Mitropanos and Dimitris Basos.
The lyrics, by the writer Manos Eleftheriou, set to music by Christos Nikolopoulos, are again quite hard to understand. Anyway, let’s have a go and see if we can then attempt an interpretation:
At the Angels’ Bouzouki Club At night some friends of ours who are called down-and-outs watch us and wave to us from the sky they come in the darkness like pickpockets and play and feel pain and sing to us about their stories that our minds can’t grasp.
Let’s go to the Angels’ Bouzouki Club that’s like Byzantine times throw away your old black clothes and take into your soul humane voices.
At night some unknown people doing life in prison sing some songs that are hallowed now like military policeman at the gate of heaven their songs and their caress they sing their songs to us and silently weep.
Let’s go to the Angels’ Bouzouki Club that’s like Byzantine times throw away your old black clothes and take into your soul humane voices.
At night some friends of ours who are called down-and-outs watch us and wave to us from the sky they come in the darkness like pickpockets and play and feel pain and sing to us about passions that our minds can’t grasp.
So who are these down-and-outs waving from the sky? I think they are the classic rebetiko musicians whose music was that of the outcasts and those on the margins of Greek society. Their music continues to be performed in dark clubs and still speaks to us today of the pain and experiences that generated it.
They’re in the sky because they are like stars or angels, they have a sort of immortality and an aura of glory and attraction to them like the Byzantine empire for us today. But they’re not remote or indifferent because they are waving to us. Their voices are those of humane, decent people.
Even people doing life in prison sing their songs now and these songs have acquired an almost religious significance. Their music is like a caress, communicating the pain and the passions that generated it, making them cry still, even though we can’t quite grasp what the music is about.
I don’t quite understand the reference to the ‘military policeman at the gate of heaven’. Maybe one of my readers would like to have a go at explaining it or indeed give another interpretation of this beautiful song?
I did an initial poston this church a little while ago, but forgot to do a follow up. The most famous mosaics in this church are the ones on either side of the altar depicting (on the left) the Byzantine Emperor Justinian and (on the right) his wife Theodora.
Both are part of processions offering gifts to San Vitale. Justinian, carrying an empty basked, is accompanied by soldiers and priests, including the local bishop, Maximianus, the only one to be named on the mosaics. The Emperor seems to hover in mid air, between earth and heaven, as befits God’s representative on earth. He is wearing a cloak of imperial purple with a gold border, a colourful, bejewelled rosette fastening his cloak at his right shoulder.
On his head he is wearing an imperial crown studded with precious jewels and pearls. Four pearls hang on gold chains from the crown (pendilia), a symbol of his imperial status.
In Theodora’s procession she is accompanied by two priests and a group of ladies in court costume. She is also wearing an imperial crown with pendilia, a rich purple cloak with gold trimming and a depiction of the three Magi.
She stands beneath a shell, holding a golden bowl or chalice. The shell has been interpreted as a symbol of her death (she died in 548 AD), perhaps reinforced by the priest to the left pulling aside a curtain to reveal a black space. The mosaics were finished in 547 before she died, so this seems unlikely. In front of the pulled back curtain is a fountain symbolising the eater of life.
Both Justinian and Theodora are given haloes, not I think as a sign of saintliness, but perhaps to emphasise their status as divine representatives. All of the faces shown in the mosaics have the large eyes seen in icons, focused not on the here and now but as if looking out into eternity.
As noted in my first post on this church, only the apse and the walls to the side of the main altar have the mosaic decorations. The mosaics are of such superb quality they must have been done by artists from Constantinople: the Great Church of Aghia Sofia was consecrated there 10 years earlier in 537 AD. Neither Justinian no Theodora ever visited Ravenna, so they never got to seem themselves immortalised in mosaic form.
It’s not clear why the rest of the church was left undecorated: did they run out of money or was it all part of the plan that only the area near the altar would be decorated? To one side of the area under the central dome is a large baptismal pool with water in it.
An unusual feature is an inlaid labyrinth on the floor between the altar and the central dome area. It’s not clear whether this is part of the original building or whether it was added later. Often they are associated with medieval cathedrals, so it would be interesting to know how old it is.
There are some beautiful floor mosaics, including several in the following style which looks very Roman or like those remaining from the Great Imperial Palace in Constantinople:
A shell motif appears in various places on the floor of the church (though the first one may be more a depiction of the sun and its rays):
Right next to the road between the villages of Moni and Khalki on the island of Naxos and in among the olive groves stands this little church, said to be one of the oldest in the Balkans and one of the most revered churches in Greece. It seems incredible, but the oldest part of the church dates back probably to the 6th century, though the little guide to the church claims it dates from the 4th century. Dedicated to the Panagia (Our Lady) Drosiani (the one who cools), it is the only remnant of an old monastery, perhaps giving the village of Moni its name (Moni in Greek means monastery).
Architecturally, the church was built and added to over the course of about a thousand years. The oldest part is the area consisting of the apse, the sanctuary, the iconostasis and the top part of the nave. On the northern side of the church are what look like three side chapels set at an angle to the nave, probably from the 7th century. The main body of the church, the nave, dates from the 12th-14th century.
Here’s a view of the church looking towards the iconostasis and apse:
Marble iconostases, like the one here, at this early stage in the development of Byzantine church architecture were generally low, as was the original one in Haghia Sofia. It was only later that it was raised in height to obscure the view of the sanctuary from the laity.
The church is famous for a miracle-working icon of the Mother of God which is said to perspire whenever the village is at threat. I have to confess I didn’t pay much attention to it in my eagerness to look at the frescoes.
The area around the apse and sanctuary are the only part that has frescoes. What makes them so special is that they date from the period before Iconoclasm (between the early 8th and mid 9th centuries) when the Byzantium turned against the making of images. Not only that, they destroyed many existing ones; very few frescoes or icons survived. Notable examples can be found at St Catherine’s Monastery on Mt Sinai, one of the oldest monasteries in the world. But it is remarkable that this church on Naxos pre-Iconoclasm frescoes. Perhaps its isolation and distance from Constantinople enabled it to preserve them.
On either side of the top of the nave facing each other are frescoes of the military saints on horseback, St George here:
and St Demetrios:
The tympanum of the apse has a seated Christ surrounded by angels that is really hard to make out and certainly too faint to photograph (even for me).
In the sanctuary there is a beautiful Virgin holding the infant Jesus in a circle in her breast, called the Nikopoios type in Greek (meaning Victory-making):
On either side of the Virgin are roundels of the healing saints, Kosmas and Damian:
In the space beneath the apse depiction of the Virgin, it is customary to depict four saints, usually the Three Hierarchs, the great teachers of the Orthodox Church (Saint Basil the Great, Saint Gregory the Theologian and St John Chrysostom), plus usually in Greece, St Nicholas. In this case, there is an unusual selection.
In the centre is Christ standing on a footstool:
To the left of Christ are the Virgin also standing on a footstool, with hands held out in supplication:
and next to her is what the guidebook says is Solomon holding a cross, a really strange choice. To me he looks more like a Byzantine Emperor: his imperial purple clothes are studded with pearls and he wears a pearl-encrusted crown. I don’t know how to explain the halo though. To the right of Christ is the figure of St John the Baptist and next to Christ what looks to me like a Byzantine Empress (not a female saint as the guidebook says) with a pearl and jewel-encrusted crown and pearl pendilia (pendants hanging down from the crown). Maybe she is the companion of the Emperor depicted on the left. Could they be Justinian and Theodora or Constantine and Helena?
In the dome are two very badly damaged portraits of Christ, symbolising the human and divine natures of Christ:
On one of the arches are inscriptions referring to the donors who paid for the church to be built:
The arches also have damaged full length depictions of saints, most unidentifiable, such as this female saint with a bag of healing medicines:
and this one:
This is the Holy Martyr Julian in a very badly damaged fresco:
On the north wall are these two striking head fragments:
On the south wall is a very naïve depiction of the Mother of God, looking cross-eyed:
On the north and south walls under the frescoes of SS George and Demetrios are red crosses that looks as though they may date back to the time of Iconoclasm:
Of the three side chapels, one was used as an ossuary and one as a ‘secret’ school, a church school that taught Greek to local children during Ottoman rule. The Ottomans though had a light presence on the island and left the Venetians to administer it, so it may be that this is a piece of myth-making.
I had asked the old lady guardian if I could take photographs inside the church and she quite willingly me agreed to let me do it. However, as I got to the end of shooting the frescoes, I suddenly heard her shout at me ‘Stop!’ in a very angry voice. Of course, I stopped taking photographs, but I couldn’t understand why she had suddenly turned against me.
A very old olive tree near the entrance gate to the church:
Finally, a view of the church of the Panagia Drosiani at the bottom of the valley with Mt Fanari in the background:
Relations between church and state can sometimes be fraught, but sometimes they can also be unhealthily close. I was reminded of this when I read this articleon the site of Proekt.media entitled The Kremlin’s Elder – how the Russian government fell in love with mysticism. Proekt.media is an initiative of independent investigative journalists in Russian that has been publishing some remarkable stories about corruption and cronyism, particularly involving the circle around Putin. This month the Russian government has declared it a banned organisation, confiscated all its financial assets and declared all its journalists to be foreign agents.
I was drawn into reading the article because I recognised the photograph of the Elder referred to in the article’s title: I had seen him during my visit to the Orthodox monastery of Optina Pustyn back in 2002.
His name is Starets Iliy (Elder Elijah) and he struck me then as being a remarkable man. According to my friend Dima who took me to the monastery on pilgrimage, Elder Iliy, like many Elders at Optina and at other monasteries in Russia, has the spiritual gifts of insight and foresight. I have written about my visit to Optina Pustyna at length in the following older posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
The article depicts him as a spiritual adviser to government officials who consult him for spiritual healing and advice about their futures. Since 2009 he has also been the spiritual adviser to Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church. He is very anti-Communist and brands non-believers as Satanists.
I recall from my visit to Optina Pustyn that the monastery shop sold leaflets about the dangers of non-belief, including one called Meditation – the route to hell. However possibly a more serious reason for this is the terrible event at Easter 1993 when three monks were killed by a “satanist” who broke into the grounds. He attacked and killed one monk outright with a large knife and then attacked a second who managed to give the alarm by ringing the bells. A third monk, alerted by the bells, came out to see what was happening and was also attacked and killed. All three monks are now buried next to each other in the monastery’s grounds and celebrated as ‘new martyrs of the faith’. So, you can see that for the monks who experienced this attack, unbelief can literally be a matter of life or death.
The article points out that Putin has met the Elder on several occasions and that the Elder is a big supporter, attacking opponents of the regime and asking people who visit him whether they pray for the President. It points out that this closeness to Putin is probably why other government officials frequent the Elder, as it provides another means of accessing ultimate power.
The original Russian article gives some interesting biographical information about Elder Iliy that is not translated into the English version. Born Aleksey Nozdrin, on his mother’s side of the family they were not poor, but under Stalin they were branded as kulaks and driven out of their home. His grandfather later died of hunger.
In 1941, at the start of the Second World War in Russia, his family was living in a tent. He came to Christianity through hearing a Tatar praying. There are various ‘miracles associated with his younger years. For example, in 1943 returning home from staying with his godmother, he was passed by a German vehicle that went over a bump causing a door to open and a map case to fall out. The occupants of the vehicle were so drunk they didn’t notice. The future Elder took the map case home and showed them to a Russian prisoner who looked after the Germans’ horses. This prisoner somehow passed the maps to the Russian army where they ended up in the hands of the Russian Commander, General Rokossovsky, and helped him take out Germain fortified areas during the Battle of Kursk.
Another miracle dates back to the late 1940s when he and his brother worked as hired workers and were paid in bread. At the station on the way back home the bread was stolen from them, so they returned home empty-handed. Aleksey cried and prayed for a long time in front of the Kazan icon of the Mother of God. He then went out into the street and saw on a white cloth a piping hot loaf of white bread.
After leaving school he served in the army before going to a technical college and then on to the seminary at the Church Academy in Leningrad. It was here that he got to know the future Patriarch Kirill. In the picture below, taken with fellow students at his technical college, the future Elder Iliy is standing in the back row on the right hand side:
On becoming a monk he took the name Iliyan and claimed to see devils flying through the air. In the mid 1970s he was sent to the monastery of St Pantaleimon (then a run down monastery with a few Russian monks) on Mt Athos, where he served as a confessor until the late 1980s. On his return to Russian he ‘took the great schema’, in other words he took a vow to observe the most extreme ascetic practices (the highest level of monkhood), assumed the name Iliy and became a confessor at Optina Pustyn. Many ordinary people started going to him then to ask for help and also a lot of politicians and people from the underworld. I remember seeing him at Optina Pustyn in 2002 being asailed by people seeking advice wherever he went. I thought he looked ill and very tired.
In 2009 he moved to Peredelkino to become Patriarch Kirill’s confessor / spiritual advisor. That’s when he started to attract visits from government officials. The Elder can apparently take a lighter view of his reputation as a miracle worker. One evening, popping into the church he saw several people standing around and announced in a loud voice ‘Let there be light!” To the astonishment of those standing around suddenly there was light. The Elder was standing next to the light switch.
What is it that brings together church and state in these rather unhealthy relationships? I think this is particularly the case in Orthodox countries where often religion and nationalism go hand in hand. I am sure there are many reasons for this, but two stand out for me. The first goes back to Byzantine times when the Emperor was identified as God’s representative on earth and worked in close cooperation with the head of the church, the Patriarch. The interests of church and state largely coincided. That relationship was also transmitted to Russia and lasted really up to the eve of the Revolution, though probably during the last 20 years or so of that period the Church was showing signs of wanting to reform and modernise.
In the Soviet period, the Church survived on the ground partly ‘thanks to the babushkas’ as Solzhenitsyn said, but as an institution largely through endless tortuous accommodations, and at great cost to lives and faith. In the post Soviet area, there was a thaw: churches opened up, it was no longer a stigma to go to church. The state became a great patron to the Church, giving it back some of its old privileges, building new churches, increasing the number of seminaries and monasteries. In gratitude, the Church reverted to type and supported the state, encouraging people to vote for the government.
In Greece and other Balkan countries the church is associated with national identity. All through the long years of the Ottoman occupation, it was the church in Greece that kept alive the language and culture, becoming a focus for the development of a national identity when the new Greek state emerged after the 1821 Revolution.
Although we have a Church of England, established as a deliberate act of separation by a sulking monarch, it has never become the standard bearer for English identity. Perhaps because the monarch made themselves Supreme Governor (a heavily qualified form of Head of the Church), the national identification is with the monarchy, not with the established church. Not better, just different.
This is the third and final post in my series on this monastery. You can find the first post here and the second one here.
The Panagia is the oldest of the two main churches, built in the second half of the 10th century. It was probably decorated with frescoes, but hardly anything remains and with its plain stone walls it feels a bit of an anticlimax after the magnificence of the katholikon.
In the exhibition room next to the Panagia Church in addition to Osios Loukas’s cell there is a space between the floors that was used either as a ‘hidden school’ to teach children to read and write Greek or to hide them from the Paidomazoma (Tur: Devshirme) during Ottoman rule in Greece. Paidomazoma was the Ottoman practice of kidnapping Christian boys to recruit soldiers and bureaucrats to the Sultan’s service.
Here are some more views of the monastery’s buildings:
These wonderful arches form a series of flying buttresses between the katholikon and the old refectory:
Here’s the rear of the katholikon (on the left) and the rear of the Church of the Panagia (right):
The dome of the katholikon behind the drum of the Panagia:
Drum of the Panagia:
The original monastery entrance gate:
Exterior of the Panagia church:
An old outbuilding:
The monastery’s ancient cistern:
A quite corner in the grounds:
Cannot resist a good door:
Finally on the terrace in front of the monastery there is a monument to Archbishop Isaïas Salomon who with his brother Gaga-Giannis died fighting the Turks at Khalomata on 23 April 1821 (ie at the start of the Greek Revolution against Ottoman rule). In this monastery, which the monument refers to as the base of the Revolution, he also blessed the weapons of the revolutionary fighters.
Osios Loukas is a beautiful place: it has an aura of calm and peace from the concentrated prayers and meditation of all the monks who have lived and worshipped here over the past 1,000 years.
This is the second of my posts on this monastery – you can find the first part here.
On his death, Osios Loukas was buried in his stone cell which is visible today as part of an exhibition room next to the Church of the Panagia.
At some point in the 11th century though his remains were transferred to the Crypt in what is now St Barbara’s church.
Later still his remains were transferred to a glass case in the connecting space between the katholikon and the Church of the Panagia:
The Crypt is decorated with frescoes, some restored. but others in a poor state of repair, including some with gouged out eyes and bullet holes in them. They feature a mix of scenes from Christ’s life and roundels of saints.
The Descent from the Cross:
The Deposition in the Tomb and the two Marys:
The Last Supper:
St Filotheos, a companion of Osios Loukas:
Another companion of Osios Loukas, St Theodoros:
St Andreas (Andrew):
Unidentified saint (possibly St Pantaleimon?):
St Peter:
St Paul:
St Vartholomeos (Batholomew):
The oldest of the two churches, is the Panagia, built in the second half of the 10th century. The largest of the two churches is the katholikon built in the early 11th century.
In the narthex over the main entrance is a fine mosaic of the Pantokrator:
Also in the narthex is this Crucifixion:
and Christ washing the disciples’ feet:
Inside, the katholikon is overwhelming. It was clearly built and decorated by craftsmen and artists from Constantinople. You can see and feel the influence of Aghia Sofia: in the quality of the mosaics and frescoes as well as in the grey, green and red marble revetments and floors.
Perhaps the most striking of all is this depiction in the semi-dome of the apse of the enthroned Mother of God with Christ which reminds me of the one in the Great Church in Constantinople:
In the dome above the apse a fresco shows the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles:
In the main dome is a fresco of Christ Pantokrator (Almighty) surrounded by the Virgin Mary and Archangels, and by Apostles on the side of the drum. Originally this must have been done in mosaic, but the dome was damaged in an earthquake and replaced by a fresco rather than the much more expensive mosaic.
A beautiful mosaic Pantokrator in a squinch (sorry about the focus)
An Archangel (Rafael?):
A superb mosaic of St Pantaleimon (one of my favourite saints):
Baptism of Christ in the Jordan, with a superb stylised depiction of the water:
St Theodoros ?
St Demetrios:
Alongside these excellent works are frescoes of a completely different quality, executed in a more naïf style, eg St Nestor:
St Demetrios:
As at Aghia Sofia in Constantinople, the upper gallery of the church is very richly decorated:
I have written a little about this monastery before when I translated a poem by Sikelianos set there during the Easter Vigil service. I visited it about three years ago and though I took a lot of pictures I was disappointed by the quality of some of them, especially the ones of mosaics and frescoes inside the churches. So I put them on one side until just recently, when looking through them again, I thought there was something I could do to rescue some of them. Perhaps my processing skills have improved a bit in the meantime.
We stopped off at Osios Loukas on our way from Delphoi to Nauplio, a long day’s drive of about 300km. I wrote about my trip to Delphoiand its museum in previous posts. Osios Loukas is an 8km detour off the main road between Delphoi and Livadia through the villages of Distomo and Steiri (which gets a mention in the Sikelianos poem). Distomo though is famous for a more tragic reason, a terrible atrocity it suffered in the Second World War. On 10 June 1944 the Nazis shot 232 inhabitants and burned the village down as a reprisal for an attack on a German convoy. Today a modernist monument in the village commemorates the dead and the Greece is still trying to get reparations for this war crime from the German government.
This walled monastery is in a beautiful setting on the side of Mount Helikon overlooking an uninhabited valley. The road from Distomo and Steiri just runs out at this point in the large car park, but on the day we were there there were few visitors. The monastery is dedicated to Venerable Luke (Osios is a monk who has been made a saint; and Loukas is a 10th century Greek saint, not the Evangelist). The terrace in front of what is the modern entrance to the monastery is planted with tall pine trees offering some very welcome shade, and set with tables and benches for visitors. All very tastefully done. There is still a small monastic community here, but in the course of our visit we only come across one monk in the katholikon (central church).
The old refectory in the foreground and behind it the katholikon dedicated to Osios LoukasThe old refectory and below, the entrance to the crypt beneath the katholikon dedicated to St Barbara where Osios Loukas’s tomb is locatedOld monastic buildings and the continuation of the monastery’s defensive walls
A low arch surmounted by a depiction of the saint leads into the main courtyard.
The monks’ cells are in the building facing you as you enter the main courtyard. The old refectory – off to the right in this picture and the location of the ticket office – has been beautifully renovated in a modern, but sympathetic style and turned into a museum. Well laid out displays recount the monastery’s restoration and display some fine examples of old stonework from different periods of its history.
Who was Osios Loukas and why is there a monastery here? He was born in the early 10th century in Kastorion near the Bay of Corinth, about 80 miles west of Athens and became a monk at a monastery in Athens. In 946 he moved out to this area of Greece, living as a hermit in a small stone cell that still exits as part of the monastery complex. This period seems to have seen a renewal of monasticism in Byzantium, as a contemporary of Osios Loukas, St Athanasios, initiated the formation of the first monasteries on Mt Athos. Attracting others monks to the area and gaining the support of the local people, Osios Loukas started the building of a church dedicated to St Barbara before his death in 953. There are now two churches on the site the katholikon, dedicated to Osios Loukas, and a smaller and older church dedicated to the Virgin Mary (Panagia).
The fame of the monastery grew as miracles were associated with its founder. It is claimed that he had the gift of foresight, predicting various historical events, including the liberation of Crete from Arab control in 96. The monastery became a site of pilgrimage and attracted donations from Byzantine emperors and local wealthy families. Over the centuries it also acquired more land locally from gifts and bequests, helping it to become more self-sufficient and enabling it to earn money from land rented out to tenant farmers.
Looking out over the valley from the monastery
It is a strange coincidence that the saint was credited with the gift of prophecy within such a short distance (30km at most) of Delphoi, the most famous prophetic centre in the ancient world. I wonder whether this was a deliberate attempt by the Church to counterbalance pagan beliefs associated with Delphoi which may have lingered in folklore in the area long after the Delphic Oracle fell silent.
Another curious pagan parallel concerns the method by which pilgrims sought healing from the saint. They would sleep next to the tomb of Osios Loukas for days at a time in the hope of having a dream of the saint curing them. This practice recalls what happened at cult centres of the Ancient Greek god of healing, Askleipios. After purification practices and sacrifices, people seeking a cure would spend the night sleeping in the abaton (a sanctuary within the temple) hoping for dreams, inspired by Askleipios that would then be interpreted by priests to prescribe a cure. It seems that these ancient pagan practices had a very long after-life by being absorbed into Christianity!
Dating from the late 4th to early 5th century, the Baptistry of Neon is claimed to be one of the oldest monuments in Ravenna. One again from the outside this small octagonal structure, built in the familiar red brick common to all of the Ravenna churches, is underwhelming. But inside the variety and richness of the mosaics is stunning.
The centre piece is the dome, very similar to that of the Arian Baptistry, which depicts Christ’s baptism in the Jordan.
On this occasion the figure of Christ is closer to the standard iconographic portrayal, with long hair, beard and moustache. To Christ’s left stands the pagan symbol of the River Jordan, an old man holding a cloth for Christ to dry himself on and a reed. Around this central scene is a procession of Apostles carrying martyrs’ crowns:
On the next level down are a series of almost tromp l’oeil structures featuring altars:
There is an incredibly rich variety of vegetal motifs throughout the mosaics:
I was fascinated to see the use of marble revetments, similar to those found in San Vitale:
In the squinches are simple depictions of saints on richly gilded backgrounds:
At ground level are a series of alcoves with richly decorated arches:
At the level of the windows are another series of depictions of saints and prophets, executed in a limited range of styles in marble relief:
The floor of the Baptistry is occupied by a large but simple marble font:
The Arian Baptistry is a small building in a courtyard near the Church of the Holy Spirit in Ravenna. It was built in the early 6th century by Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths who made Ravenna his capital after conquering much of Italy.
At one time the the whole of the interior must have been decorated with mosaics and frescoes. Many tons of tesserae were found underneath the baptistry after damage to the building during the last war. Today though the only part of the interior that is decorated is the dome and it is truly magnificent.
The central roundel of the dome mosaic depicts a beardless Christ standing naked in the River Jordan. On the right, standing on a rock is John the Baptist, holding a shepherd’s crook in his left hand and touching Christ’s head in blessing with his right hand. Over Christ’s head is a dove releasing a spray of water or pouring out the Holy Spirit on him.
Seated on the left of Christ is an old man, holding a reed (?) in his right hand, personifying the River Jordan. Next to him is an upturned water vessel and a pair of red crab claws pop out rather incongruously from behind the top of his head. He is a very pagan looking figure in an otherwise Christian iconographic setting.
Surrounding the roundel of Christ’s baptism is a procession of the Apostles, six moving clockwise and six anticlockwise. Both sets of Apostles are processing towards the throne of God, not occupied by a figure, but draped with a white garment (possibly a symbol of Christ’s suffering). On the throne lies a purple cushion surmounted by a cross also hung with a purple cloth.
All but two of the Apostles carry a crown of martyrdom in their cloth-covered hands, a sign of reverence.It is also a reference to the Byzantine court when servants used cloths to cover their hands as a sign of respect to the Emperors when presenting them with things.
The Apostles are separated by date palms, each slightly different from each other in design.
At the head of the two processions are St Paul on the left (not one of the original Apostles, but considered by the Church to be an equal of the Apostles) holding not a crown but two scrolls representing his epistles. On the right stands St Peter holding the keys of the Kingdom.
As I looked at the dome, I wondered how this mosaic expressed an Arian view of Christianity. Before the elaboration of the theology of the Trinity, Arius a 3rd -4th century priest in Alexandria developed the idea that Christ had been created by the Father and was therefore not co-eternal with him. Although it was condemned as heresy by the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, Arianism had a strong hold over the church and it was this sect of the church into which Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths was baptised.
I still cannot see how this belief is translated into the iconography.
To illustrate the lengths to which I go to get the right shots for this blog, I had to lay down on the floor of the baptistry to try and get the dome into my camera’s frame. This caused much amusement to some Italian visitors who passed me their cameras to take photos for them while I was down there. Jumping up unaided, I made a little bow of appreciation when they cheered me spontaneously.
This is a continuation of my series of post on this Pagomenos church in Crete, started here.
Now we move on to the frescoes in the apse. Traditionally this space is used to depict the 3 hierarchs (St Basil the Great, St John Chrysostom and St Gregory the Theologian). We find these three here, though the fresco of St Basil is badly damaged, together with some more unexpected saints. First there is St Nikolaos again:
followed by St Athanasios:
and a little window gap:
and then St John Chrysostomos:
Finally in the apse, an unusual saint, St John the Merciful, a 7th century Patriarch of Alexandria:
On the arch is St Romanos the Melodist or Hymnographer, a 6th century composer of some of the Orthodox Church’s finest kontakia (chanted hymns with a teaching objective) who served in the Great Church in Constantinople during Justinian’s reign. He is depicted tonsured as a deacon, wearing the red robe of a singer, holding a censer in his right hand and, in his left hand a box in the shape of a church for storing incense.
Two roundels showing St Panteleimon, the healer saint, with St Daiman. A third roundel apparently showing St Cosmas is lost completely.
Next is St Mamas:
On the south wall is a badly damaged fresco of two unidentified bishops:
This is followed by an icon of the enthroned Mother of Godholding the Infant Christ:
Next to this is an icon of St Irene, the face badly damaged. There are several saints with the name Irene, but this is likely to be Empress Irene of Athens (752-803), wife of the Emperor Leo IV. As you can see in the picture, she is wearing an imperial crown and pendilia. Her most notable act was to restore the veneration of icons in the late 8th century after a period of Iconoclasm and for this reason she was revered as a saint, even though she was never canonised. I cannot work out the significance of the object she is holding in her left hand that looks like a Catherine wheel.
The following icon depicts the Archangel Gabriel:
Next is St Constantine and his mother St Helena:
and next to St Helena stands St Kyriaki
Finally, to the left of the entrance are St Foteini and St Paraskevi:
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