Arkadi Monastery
The Arkadi Monastery is a Greek Orthodox monastery, situated on a fertile plateau to the southeast of Rethymno on the island of Crete in Greece. The current church dates from the 16th century, completed in the Renaissance Revival style, with a mix of both Roman and Baroque elements. As early as the 16th century, the monastery was a place of science and art, and had a school and a rich library. Situated on a plateau, the monastery is well fortified, being surrounded by a thick and high wall.
The monastery played an active role in the Cretan resistance to Ottoman rule during the Cretan revolt of 1866. 943 Greeks, mostly women and children, sought refuge in the monastery. After three days of battle and under orders from the hegumen of the monastery, the Cretans blew up barrels of gunpowder, choosing to sacrifice themselves rather than surrender. The monastery became a national sanctuary in honor of the Cretan resistance, commemorated on 8 November. The explosion did not end the Cretan insurrection, but it attracted the attention of the rest of the world.
Topography
The Arkadi Monastery is located in the Rethymno region, southeast of the city of Rethymno. The monastery is situated on a rectangular plateau on the northwest side of Mount Ida, at above sea level. The Arkadian region is fertile and has vineyards, olive groves and pine, oak and cypress forests. The plateau on which the monastery rests is surrounded by hills. The west side of the plateau stops abruptly and falls off into gorges. The gorges start at Tabakaria and lead to Stavromenos, to the east of Rethymno. The Arkadian gorges have a rich diversity of plants and native wildflowers.The area the monastery is located in first developed in antiquity. The presence of Mount Ida, which is a sacred mountain because it was legendarily the childhood home of Zeus, made the area attractive to early settlers. Five km to the northeast, the city of Eleftherna had its cultural peak in the time of Homer and in classical antiquity, but its influence was also felt in the early Christian and Byzantine periods.
The closest village to the monastery is Amnatos, located three km to the north. The villages that surround Arkadi are rich in Byzantine relics that prove the early wealth of the region. The Moni Arseniou monastery, which is several km north of Arkadi, was also an example of the grand Cretan monasteries.
The Arkadi Monastery is in the shape of a parallelogram, that is nearly rectangular. The interior resembles a fortress and is long on the north wall, on the south wall, on the east wall and on the west wall. The total area of the monastery is.
History
Founding
The exact date of the founding of the monastery is not precisely known. According to tradition, the foundation of the monastery is sometimes attributed to the Byzantine emperor Heraclius and sometimes to the emperor Arcadius in the 5th century. And, according to the second version, the monastery took its name from the name of the emperor. However, in Crete, it is common for monasteries to be named after the monk that founded the building, which lends support to the theory that Arkadi may have been founded by a monk named Arkadios. Other such monasteries are Vrontisiou, Arsiniou and Aretiou.According to Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, the monastery was built on the site of an ancient city, Arcadia. Legend tells that after the destruction of Arcadia, all the springs and fountains stopped flowing until a new city was built. However, in 1837, Robert Pashley found evidence to suggest that it was impossible for the monastery to have been built on the ruins of another city, so this idea has lost credence.
In 1951, the professor K. Kalokyris published an inscription dating to the 14th century and verified the hypothesis that a monastery was dedicated to Saint Constantine in this period. The inscription was located on the pediment of a church that predates the current one, over the entrance door. It read:
"The church carrying the name of Arkadi is consecrated to Saint Constantine."
Restorations
Towards the end of the 16th century, the monastery was subject to restorations and transformations largely headed by Klimis and Vissarion Chortatzis, without a doubt from the family of Hortatzis of Rethymno and Georgios Chortatzis, the author of Erofili. Klimis Hortatzis was the hegumen of the abbey and in 1573, he made the monastery cenobitic.He oversaw the building of the church, which took twenty-five years and was believed to have begun in 1562. In 1586, the façade of the building was built, as were the two naves. An inscription at the base of the clock also dates it back to 1587. This inscription is as following:
« ΑΦ ΚΛΜΧΤΖ ΠΖ »
or : « 15 Klimis Chortatzis 87 »
Klimis Chortatzis likely died soon after the completion and was not able to attend the inauguration of the new church, which was sometime between 1590 and 1596. This is known thanks to a letter of the Patriarch of Alexandria, Mélétios Pigas, in which he wrote that the inauguration ceremony was entrusted to Klimis's successor, the hegumen Mitrofanis Tsyrigos. Although this letter wasn't dated, one can place it between 1590, when Mélétios Pigas was ordained the Patriarch, and 1596, when the hegumen Nicéphore succeeded Tsygiros.
During the period of the first three hegumens, and up to the beginning of the 17th century, the Arkadi Monastery continued to boom, economically and culturally. The monastery became a great centre for the copying of manuscripts, and although the majority were lost during the destruction of the building by the Ottomans in 1866, some survive in foreign libraries. The monastery grew, with the construction of a stables in 1610 and a refectory in 1670.
Ottoman period
In 1645, the Ottoman Empire began their campaign to conquer Crete. In the spring of 1648, they controlled the major part of the island, with the exception of Heraklion, Gramvousa, Spinalonga and Suda, which remained under Venetian rule.After the capture of Rethymno in 1648, the Ottomans pillaged the monastery. The monks and the hegumen Simon Halkiopoulos took refuge in the Vrontissi Monastery. They were allowed to return after having sworn allegiance to Hussein Pasha, who also gave them the right to ring the monastery's bell. The Arkadi Monastery therefore became the Çanlı Manastır. A firman authorized the rebuilding of the destroyed monasteries according to their original plans, without changes. Arkadi benefited but abused its rights by adding new buildings.
During the Ottoman Period, the monastery continued to prosper, which was shown in the writing of Joseph Pitton de Tournefort. For the traveller, Arkadi was the richest and most beautiful of the monasteries of Crete. There were 100 monks that lived in the convent and 200 others that lived in the surrounding countryside. The monastery's territory extended north of the sea and to the east of Rethymno to the top of Mount Ida in the south. These lands allowed the monastery to support itself through agriculture.
Tournefort notes "400 measures of oil" produced each year, a figure which would have been doubled if the monastery did not give the inferior olives to charity. Tournefort also boasts of the monastery's cellars, which had at least 200 barrels, labelled with the name of the hegumen who blessed them each year with a prayer. The wine made at Arkadi was well known. This wine was called Malvoisie and was named after a town close to Heraklion. Franz Wilhelm Sieber, during his time in the monastery, recalled the hegumen's cellar and attributed the making of the wine to an excellent grape raised in high altitude, but that it was not produced at Malvoisie.
Image:Arkadi Pashley 1837.jpg|thumb|The monastery as seen by Robert Pashley
At the beginning of the 17th century, the monastery fell into decline. Sieber, who stopped there nearly a century after Tournefort and Pococke, left a less flattering description. By the time the German visited, the monastery only had eight priests and twelve monks. Farming continued, but the monastery had debts. He recalled the hegumen who often had to go to Rethymno in order to acquire funds to pay the bills.
Sieber described the library of the monastery as rich in more than a thousand texts, including religious texts and those of Pindar, Petrarch, Virgil, Dante, Homer, Strabon, Thucydides and Diodore of Sicily. But the traveller mentioned their sad state, noting that he had never seen books in such bad condition and that it was impossible to distinguish the works of Aristophanes from those of Euripides.
In 1822, a group of Turkish soldiers led by a Getimalis took hold of Arkadi and pillaged it. The civilians of Amari gathered to plan how to retake the monastery and expel Getimalis and his troops.
Another version tells of a certain Anthony Melidonos, a Sphakian from Asia Minor, who came to the island at the head of a group of Greek volunteers from Asia Minor in order to support the Cretan efforts in the War of Greek Independence. With 700 troops, he set out across the island from west to east. After the pillaging of the monastery, he changed his course and went to Arkadi instead. Arriving in the night, his troops scaled the walls of the building and fired the monastery. He jumped on Getimalis who was drinking, grabbed him and threw him to the ground outside the room. He was about to kill Getimalis when Getimalis claimed to be at the point of converting to Christianity. A baptism immediately took place and the new convert was allowed to go free.
Turkish and Greek documents mention the capacity of the monastery to produce enough food for the residents of the region and to hide fugitives from the Turkish authorities. The monastery also provided education for the local Christian population. From 1833 to 1840, the monastery invested 700 Turkish piastres in the schools in the region.