Monasteries of Crete

Path of cave monasteries, Akrotiri

The roads of Crete lead everywhere to monasteries, whose histories sometimes stretch back to a pagan era, when a fertility goddess was worshiped on mountaintops and in caves. Many have been theatres of political resistance for Cretans whose gritty, courageous fighting is legendary. The European Union preserves many monasteries--yet their placards are in Greek and unintelligible to other Europeans. Perhaps one cannot blame them; in modern history, Crete has been a pawn of the Great Games of larger powers. Though here was where Europe's great civilizations began.

Agia Triada

We began with the monasteries of Akrotiri in western Crete. Agia Triada was built by the Venetian Zangaroli brothers in the 17th c, a sublime Byzantine structure of austere precision, balanced by lush floral grounds. Many young and narrow cats sleep in the sun, fleabitten, bumpy, but with exquisite Egyptian faces. Inside the Orthodox sanctuary the pure architecture seems to collide with nearly garish icons, but then it took us awhile to appreciate the Orthodox style. A rather petulant Angel Gabriel and a secretive mild-mannered Angel Michael defy our western notions. Another Michael holds a tiny Virgin in his hand as he tramples a man. The monastery contains a museum of Cretan Renaissance icons, most notably of the Evangelist John receiving instructions from a tiny angel whispering in his ear.

Ruin of Gouverneto dependancy

From there we drove up the rocky hillsides of olive trees and brambles to the Gouverneto Monastery. A black kid, still without a bell, scampered under brambles. The entrance to the Gouverneto resembled the grounds of a California Apple millionaire. Perhaps we were fortunate that the monastery itself was closed, for we proceeded down a flagstone path that plunged to the sea, a journey with the more interesting "dependancies" of the Gouverneto.

Stalactite in Bear Cave

The assiduously laid path hid treasures along its winding way. A ruin of a Byzantine monastery was built around cave--called the Bear Cave--where a huge stalagmite for all the world like a kneeling monk or bear prayed at the edge of a man-made pool. Deeper in the darkness stalactites glowed. Before Cretans worshiped in buildings they worshiped in caves, before majestic stalagmites and stalactites. Icons were gathered in shacks at the entrance.

A shack outside a cave

We climbed further down the stony path, bordered by gnarled oliviers that had been carefully pruned, presumably by monks. Across a steep ravine we could see remnants of stone walls, courtyards and in a cliffside was a dome building out of which peeked black goats.

Ruin of Christian monastery

The torturous bends of the path kept another secret, revealed by a gothic church door, stranded as a surrealist painting, against the massive rock mountainsides.. It led to the remains of a Christian monastery, Before it was the entrance to a cave where a kind German lent us his flashlight. Inside the cave an apparently natural rock ceiling peaked in a gothic style. Columns of swirled stalactites adorned the interior. Outside the cave, a massive stone bridge had been constructed over a now-dry river bed. Arched windows adorned the few standing shells of buildings. I climbed back alone where lizards scurried, in birdsong and sun, up to get water. A black robed priest was conferring with the construction workers who drove off in the back of a pickup, brown young Cretans pulling out their cell phones.

Forgotten, except by goats

Chryssoskalitissa Monastery

The next day I drove down and up winding hills toward the south from Canea, among pine forests and villages, velvety tundra, goats gamboling up sheer cliffs and scattered along the road, among prehistoric boulders and the cracked skin of brown rock mountains, among travertine caves and shapes of many chapels, to the restful brine of the Libyan Sea, at Souja's. On theway we stopped at the Chryssoskalitissa Monastery by the sea. There, it is said, an icon hidden in the rocks cast a glow that a shepherd saw, so a church was built there. During the Turks' occupation it harbored, like other monasteries, a hidden school for Greek children. Tiny, scrawny kittens greeted us. The museum emanated a decayed sweetish smell, as if an ancient saint were still in there.

Azogires Monastery

We stumbled upon Azogires, Monastery of the 99 Holy Fathers, gleaming white plastered against the forested slope, next to exuberant cataracts and falls of mossy green. It was closed and quiet, but we learned that the 99 Holy Fathers had been followers of St. John the Hermit (who stayed back in his cave), and they all were said to have died on exactly the day he died. The tomb of Father Gavriel Papagrigorakis remains by the monastery, who in the 19th c. restarted its holy mission and still performs miracles for the local people from the beyond. There are many monastery caves in the area, accessible by footpath, treacherous to enter.

Arkadi Monastery

On my "rest day" Jacques visited the legendary monastery of Arkadi, where more than 900 Cretans chose to blow themselves up rather than surrender to the Turks.

The Monastery of Vrontissi, contains a 900 year old house and a 700 year old church with the original frescoes still on its walls. The Monastary of Vansamonero, which has the most spectacular frescoes of the Cretan Renaissance frescoes is owned by a museum in Heraklion, and was closed.

Vrontissi Monastery

Courtesy P. Vasiliadis, Wikicommons

Of Crete's rather sparse tourists we were among the geekiest. Even the German who made loud declarations about the archeology of Harold Evans at Kato Zakaros fled the museum of the Toplou Monastery, one of the most signifiant in Crete. But we devoured the icons, most notably a fantastic work, a Michaelangelo in miniature--all creation, with a Last Judgment, in a Renaissance-like mandala of scenes crowded upon scenes. The document and engraving section gave the history and beliefs in the Orthodox faith, including a graphic scene of a prophet hanging upside down about to be sawed in half beginning with his genitals.

The Monastery had been a center of resistance, its elegant pink mortar and pale stone fortified from the 15th c onwards, so that now it is a small Byzantine church with remnants of original frescoes still on the walls, built over with walls and courtyards and buttresses till it has become a fortress. Its lofty Cretan belfry had transmitted messages for the Resistance during the Nazi occupation. Eearlier it had been a center of insurrection against the Turks, where monks and laymen had died for their country.