Fief Churches

Church of Ag. Adrianos, near Nauplion.

I recently became interested in fief churches after I realized I had identified three in the vicinity of Nauplion. I will have more to say about fiefs later on, but fief churches are one way to identify fiefs. We have too little information on fiefs, although we have a great deal of information on landholdings in general, and I have written several entries here about that information.  For example:

Cosmina

Mapping the Territory, 1

Mapping the Territory, 2

A visit to the Nauplion area early this month allowed me the provisional identification of a few more.  I have not worked out a satisfactory set of criteria for identification: in most cases I find rebuilding has obliterated architectural distinctions I would have expected, and in one case I have the before-and-after photographs that would prove it.  Take Ag. Thomas at Midea about which I have written. Here you see the north end of the cross-vault in 1978, looking through to the arched south windows.  I marked on the photograph the cross made with 8 or so inserted bowls, such as are found on Ag. Triada at Merbaka. I was unable to tell if the bowls were still in position and only whitewashed.

Ag. Thomas, Midea

Now the south side with its 8 or so bowls.  The bowls are characteristic of Frankish churches, though the church would have been built by Greek labor and we see this in the arches and dentil ornamentation. This little 13th-century church is perched on a small hill that looks across the plains from Midea to Nauplion.

Ag. Thomas, Midea

Now for the improved modern version of the church.  All traces of the cross-vault have been removed, with the molding, the arches, and the plates:

Ag. Thomas, Midea

It would be unrecognizable as the same building were it not for my photographs.

Another identification as a fief chapel is the presence of Western frescos, and I have written about the two I found here.  One is at Ag. Marina at Kazarma, an endearingly clumsy chapel with a 14th-century fresco behind the iconostasis of a man in red and a woman in white.

Rear view of Ag. Marina, Kazarma.

and then at Ag. Sotira where far up to the right when you first enter is the remains of a fresco with Westerners looking up to a Franciscan-style cross.  The fief of this church has been through a number of incarnations, and I suspect perhaps a little piracy might have been involved, given its private landing beach.

Roof of Ag. Sotira, Asine.

I reported these frescos to the Archaeological Service in 08-09, but nothing has been done towards their study or preservation.  Nor has anything been done for the fortified tower at Ag. Sotira which was 4 stories high in 1978, but is now down to 3 stories.

A church need not have been built by Franks or Venetians to have become a fief church, though I suspect there was very little pre-emption of religious space in terms of fiefs.  As an example, here is the tiny church at Plataniti from about 1100, I Metamorphosis,  and then the newer clumsily-Western-built church a stone's throw away.

12th C, Plataniti.

13th C, Plataninti.

I wasn't able to stand where I could get a complete shot of the facade of I Koimisi, but I did get one of its two surviving bowls.

I think the church at the top of this entry, Ag. Adrianos, was built as a fief church, although it has been so improved and restored and rebuilt and hedged and locked against visitors, that it is difficult to say.  These are the only two pictures I was able to get because of the barricades.

Ag. Adrianos, Ag. Adrianos-Katsingri

It was, however, the church on the fief where Cyriaco went in the previous entry to find his Mycenae.  A fresco in it gives a restoration date of 1713, and it is mentioned in a Venetian document of 1696.  My interest is more in the earlier fiefs, but fiefs were assigned again when the Venetians came in 1686.

Another church documented then, and in 1500 is Ag. Paraskevi on the side of the road up Palamidi.  It, too, has been restored almost beyond recognition and given new bright frescos although I think it is distinctively Western-built.

Ag. Paraskevi, Palamidi.

Ag. Paraskevi, Palamidi.

It was, once, a Santa Veneranda, being out in the area where the Albanians were living, though I think it was built well before they arrived.  We have a 1500 reference to the Strada S. Veneranda, which was the road from Nauplion out to the side of Palamidi and over the hill to Karathona beach.

As a final church, Ag. Nikolaos at Iria, near the coast, and also in an area that became Albanian.  It has the date of 1381 carved over the western entrance.

Ag. Nikolaos, Iria.

There are certainly more churches in the Argolid to identify and I may have been reckless about some of these. I can only hope for the opportunity of another visit.  Meanwhile, I would be grateful for more information and corrections from readers.

(My thanks to Hermes Car Rental in Nauplion (down from the bus stop) for the darling little red car that was such a delight to drive to these churches.)

Ag. Thomas at Midea

This is how Ag. Thomas looked in 1978 and this is how history happens.

Ag. Thomas is a sweet small church, up many steps above the road leading to the archaeological site of Midea. In 1978 it was surrounded by brush, its walls were rough though immaculately whitewashed, and in 1978 there was evidence on the exterior that it was built in the 13th century.

For one thing, there was a dentil trim--corners of bricks barely visible in this picture -- along the roof line and across each side under the windows. For another, there were -- whitewashed over then -- crosses made of ceramic bowls over the windows on the north and south sides, like this bowl from the church of the Dormition of the Virgin at Merbaka-Ag. Triada which used to have 52 of these jewel-colored ornaments. Ag. Thomas had at least 12 making up the two crosses, and there may have been more.

Inside the apse are remains of indecipherable frescos. The iconostasis was in 1978 and is now painted a splendid bright blue. At the base of the iconostasis is a hole -- recall that Thomas wanted to put his fingers into the hole in the Master's side for proof -- through which children were once, perhaps still are, passed for healing.

What you see in the immaculate exterior, the clumsiness of the arches, the gaiety of the paint and the amateurishness of the icons is that this church is beloved by the people of its small village to whom it belongs.

This may be the problem -- it certainly is a problem for archaeologists, art historians, and those who require history to be frozen for the buildings of their choice. There is a great word here in Greece often seen on restored buildings, anapaliotheke -- "made old again" which is what happens to these medieval churches when they are officially discovered, fixed, and frozen.

Ag. Thomas was not officially discovered and so in recent years, its village has done the fixing. The brush was cleared out and the pavement extended on the south side looking south to Midea and down the valley east to Nauplion and the sea. The porch roofs were sensibly enlarged and electricity put in. So far, so good.

But then the uneven roof line was regularized -- the interior vault was left intact, but the walls on the east and west ends were raised a bit, and the center walls cut down to the tops of the windows. This eliminated the ceramic bowls that had survived for 700 and more years.

The exterior of the church was replastered, eliminating any sign of dentil moldings, sizes and shapes of stones, and any other indications of age. The photographs of Ag. Thomas from 1978 and from 2009 are so unlike that anyone who has not been there may have to accept on faith that these are photographs of the same building. This new one is immaculate, well cared-for, and has nothing of its former appealing shabbiness.

This is partially a class thing, this yearning for charm and shabbiness, this desire for the picturesque. The picturesque is generally a function of long-time poverty, and if there is anything people want when they no longer have to submit to poverty, it is to signal that is has gone. If you repair and paint your home, why not your church ?

This is a problem for me as a historian: why should these remnants of the past, valuable to me as an outsider, one who neither pays taxes here nor helps whitewash -- why should the people to whom they belong maintain them for my satisfaction? Real vandalism has been done to several churches I know, particularly one on private property, but for a government agency to take over under the rationale of the value of "national heritage" may do violence to other values, and to individuals who already have a firm concept of their own heritage based on the information available to them.

I particularly love the Saints Thomas: Thomas Apostle, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Becket, Thomas More -- all in love with accuracy, even to the point of disaster. So I want to be accurate about Ag. Thomas-Midea: it has not been vandalized, it has been cared for by the people to whom it belongs. And it is accurate to say that this care has created loss for another community.