The Agios Giorgios Monastery and the Pheneos Valley:
Corinthia’s Best Kept Secret
The view of Lake Doxa from the
monastery of Agios Giorgios (Άγιος Γεώργιος)
is alone worth a trip to the Pheneos valley, but there is so much more. Where
else can you find, at 900 meters elevation, a valley approximately 3km by 12,
flat as an ironing board and surrounded on all sides by some of the highest
peaks in the Peloponnese?
Nowhere!
This little Shangri-La was
isolated even in ancient times when most cities tended to be inland and it has
remained relatively unknown today because the easiest road access is from the Corinthian
Gulf at Derveni - a bit of a trek unless you live in the north Peloponnese. There
are twisty paved passes on the east and west sides of the valley and one on the
southern tip (passable on a good day by a 4 by 4). But a quick look at a map of
the Peloponnese tells you that these roads lead respectively to Stymphalia,
Kleitoria, and Orchomenos, not exactly
household names unless you are a Greek history buff. So the Pheneos valley remains
the kind of place you either go to on purpose or stumble upon because you lost
your way en route to somewhere else.
Pausanias visited around 150 AD. Like many
classical scholars since, he was attracted to the ancient city of Pheneos and
the valley’s quirky mythological past. This was Arcadian territory back then
and Arcadia has always been the breeding ground of oddball religious cults. Pheneos
was the stomping ground of Hermes, Hercules, Odysseus, Asclepios, and, no
doubt, Pan.(1)
William Leake
was just one of the many travelers who braved
the mountains in modern times to visit Pheneos. In his case, he was working for the Ottomans,
surveying and making maps. Ancient Pheneos (called Fonia back then) is marked on a little knob of raised ground on the
rough and ready map he drew for his book on the Peloponnese.(2)
Leake’s map
Ancient Pheneos was never large
although it once boasted a circuit wall with towers and a good sized Asclepeion.
(Its tiny museum, if it ever happens to be open, has a wonderful Hellenistic
head of Hygeia from the Asclepeion.) The city was founded by the Mycenaeans in
1500 BC and, although partially in ruins, was still going strong during the
Roman period. Likely, it was never entirely abandoned even after that because
it was at a crossroads and something of a hideaway too. Hideaways have been handy
spots to maintain throughout Greece’s turbulent history.
But, it wasn’t just its out of the way location that kept Pheneos small; it was geology. In winter,
water and snow run-off poured down those steep mountain sides. Some of it was
channeled into the rivers Doxa and Aroanios , but all of it eventually
ran pell mell into the valley bottom with nowhere to go unless two large sinkholes
(katavothres) on the southern part of
the valley were unobstructed. In that case, the resulting winter ‘lake’ would
slowly drain through underground limestone channels to Stymphalia in east and
to the River Ladon in the west. (3) Often earthquakes
plugged these sinkholes and when that happened, a
large lake would form and silt would settle.
This was the case in ancient times and true again when Leake came by in
1806.
I have doctored Leake’s map a
little to show modern roads and the position of today’s Agios Giorgios Monastery:
Roads are in red; sinkholes are black
circles.
Note that the modern towns are
also built quite far up from the old lake bed, - just in case. Where Leake saw water everywhere, we see a
plethora of small rectangular fields now given over to animal fodder, potatoes
and the best beans south of Lake Prespa.
A small
section of the Pheneos valley at dawn.
Ancient Pheneos is a tiny
pimple of a knoll on the very left edge of the bigger green hill in the picture.
Agios Giorgios lies behind the bigger hill, right underneath a barren peak of
Mount Helmos.
The ancients could not have counted on this as arable land although
there is ample evidence that they attempted to use some of it by channeling the
water from the two rivers through a man-made canal to one of the sink holes. In
fact, Pausanias was told by the locals that Heracles had performed the deed. The results were less than stellar. Until our
times, the Pheneos valley has been an ‘on again, off again’ lake.
I suspect that Christianity took quite a while to gain a foothold in
remote Pheneos but when it did, it was represented first by a
few small churches and only much later by our Monastery.
The Agios Giorgios monastery today.
(From:
http://koimisikallimasia.blogspot.gr)
It was not the first monastery
here to be dedicated to Saint George the Dragon Slayer. The original 14th
century complex was lower in the valley by the River Doxa. They say it was founded
by monks from Mega Spilaion in Achaia. (4) It
was submerged when the river ran rampant shortly before 1700. The picturesque
chapel of Agios Fanourios marks the spot today. It is situated on a small
peninsula in the middle of Lake Doxa,
a beautiful addition to the landscape thanks to a 1990s dam created to tame the
waters of the Doxa River and to create a controllable means of irrigation for
all those potatoes and beans.
Agios Fanourios: the most beautiful
‘grave marker’ ever.
A walk to this small chapel
gives you a chance for a swim beside a remnant of the first Agios Giorgios:
(There is a better if less romantic spot for a swim on the western shore
of the lake.)
Today’s three storey monastery
reached its final form around 1745. (Although its position well up from the
lake avoided water it didn’t avoid fire. The first effort on the site burned to
the ground in1740.)
It is a wonderful blend of
stern ‘fortress’ and cosy retreat. It had to be the former because it was built
in troubled times and was a hotbed of resistance against the Ottomans. Both
Theodoros Kolokotronis and members of the Filiki Eteria met here to plot
insurrection. The monastery’s remoteness along with its defensibility made it a
good hideout. (5)
It was wealthy: founded with permission from the
Patriarchate in Constantinople and therefore not under the aegis of the local Metropolitan,
it could largely control its own wealth. It owned a lot of land and drew monks
from as far away as Epidavros, Nemea, and Elis. Some claim that the famous agiorgitiko wine that originated in
Nemea and Corinthia took its name from this monastery because it once owned so
much of the land that cultivated this grape variety.
You approach the monastery
from the ring road that circles the lake. It is charming. Agios Giorgios’ single resident monk must have
an amazing green thumb. There are flowers everywhere – in the ground in old tin
containers - on the entrance path, and in the courtyard.
The large wooden cross which
has bloomed in the inner courtyard by 2015 is a botanical marvel:
The first time I visited, that cross consisted merely of two austere
pieces of wood. Its transformation seems
positively Biblical!
On three sides of the inner
courtyard are wonderful balconies and on the fourth the church of Agios
Giorgios, a domed extravaganza with excellent wall paintings dating from 1754
by a painter named Panayiotis from
Ioannina,
and an impressive gilt
iconostasis (circa 1768) that should not
be missed:
Over the church entrance Saint George
rides his white horse, his ‘coffee bearer’ in attendance (see ‘G is for George’ on this blog). The vanquished dragon is hidden by
the lamp. Great ‘filler’ decorations abound!
The door has an impressive
bronze representation of Saint George in action
as well.
In the narthex of the church a
wooden staircase leads to the ‘secret school” run by the monks. This whole ‘hidden school’ idea has been
debunked by many historians and, it is true that this could also have been
merely a superb hideout for insurgents, but if such schools ever did ever exist
this is the sort of place they would have been. The Peloponnese suffered more
oppression from the Ottomans than many other parts of Greece and had no access
to education.
The ‘Secret School’ up by the dome.
As we marveled at all of this, the voice of the caretaker (the monk was at the Bishops on this particular day) wafted down from the third floor, inviting us up for coffee and the rose petal jam that the monastery makes and sells. The visitor’s area is as cosy as a village house,
And leads out to one of those
precarious balconies and the ‘view’
I was thinking it would be a
great place to stay and was happy to learn that it is possible to arrange to do just that. The caretaker showed us a
six bedroom dormitory, ready for anyone who could arrange it. Try 274 704 1226
or contact the Bishopric in Corinth.
Tempting, isn’t it?
After1830, Agios Giorgios fell
on hard times. Like so many monasteries, it gave up a good deal of its wealth
to the new state which needed money to create some sort of educational system.
They ‘downsized’ monasteries everywhere.
The monastery had a macabre
fate during the Greek civil war (1946-9)
when it was taken over by the communists of ELAS who used it as a prison and
executed six monks.
Hard to believe today; it is all
is peace and serenity.
Like so many churches in
Greece, the journey to it and its surroundings are as wonderful as the destination.
Pheneos and Lake Doxa have become a
popular winter venue with Athenians.
But I prefer the summer and a
swim in the lake. It is so well named. ‘Doxa’ in Greek means ‘glory’.
Then there is the last half of September when a swim is still possible,
there are hardly any visitors, and those fabulous beans are ready to be taken
home and stored for winter feasts. So many reasons to visit…
Footnotes
(1) On my first trip to Pheneos, I
didn’t give a fig about the monastery. I was totally focused on the weird rite
to Eleusinian Demeter and a yearly ritual involving disengaging a mask from a
cunningly contrived rock and beating the ground with rods! Great stuff, all
from Pausanias, Book 8. For the
scoop, try http://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias8A.html. Enigmatic Ancient Pheneos was more
comprehensible this year because the archaeologists were there:
no cunningly contrived rock as yet…
(2)The problem
of names always crops up in any study of Greek History. Ancient
Pheneos was called Phonia, then Kalivia, then Ancient Pheneos again. Leake
tried to use Pausanias’ names on his map where he could, but more Slavic names had
been given to the surrounding mountains; those he could not ignore. Hardly any
place of any age has retained one name throughout its history in Greece. It
makes reading contemporary accounts quite mysterious.
(3) Pheneos water really travels.
From Stymphalia it goes to Corinth and via an ancient man made channel to the
famous Pirene fountain and then into Pope’s poetry as well as the Gulf. It also
travels from Stymphalia to Kefalari near Naplio in the Argolid. From the Ladon
it goes eventually via the Alpheos river to the west coast of the Peloponnese –
quite a wide swath. All those limestone
caverns ‘measureless to man’ do strange and wonderful things to the Peloponnesian
watershed!
(4) Mega Spilaion has its own entry on this blog, as do Agios
Fanourios and Saint
George for that matter!
(5) The monastery has narrow
‘rifle’ slits as windows near ground level. That made the well guarded
entrance (two doors with a corridor in between) the only access. My attention
was drawn to this feature one year by a long red strip of a flokati rug hanging
down from one, so that the monastery cats could clamber up and gain entrance
when the monastery was closed at midday!
