Monastery of Saint John the Theologian: Byzantine Monastic and Cultural Centre on Patmos

Site at a Glance

Rating: 4.8
Popularity: Medium
Country: Greece
Primary era: Medieval
External website: Open

Eras represented: Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
Civilizations: Byzantine, Ottoman
Site type: Religious
Remains: Fortified Monastery

On this page24 sections

History

The Monastery of Saint John the Theologian is a Byzantine Orthodox monastery in Chora, Patmos, Greece, founded in 1088 by the monk Christodoulos the Latrinos. Its royal, patriarchal, stavropegic, and coenobitic status reflects its imperial foundation and direct relationship with the Patriarchate of Constantinople. A coenobitic monastery is one in which monks share communal worship, property, and a common rule. The monastery was established as both a secluded religious community and an institution intended to help repopulate a frontier island.

Foundation under Christodoulos

Christodoulos had previously lived at Mount Latros in Asia Minor, but Seljuk attacks led him to seek a safer and more isolated setting. Before reaching Patmos, he and the ascetic Arsenios Skinouris founded a monastery dedicated to the Mother of God on Kos. Christodoulos later petitioned Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos for Patmos. The emperor first sent him to Thessaly to organize monasteries, but eventually granted him authority over the island with the support of Anna Dalassene, his influential and strongly pro-monastic mother.

Patmos had been left largely deserted after pirate attacks. Alexios I granted the island to Christodoulos in 1088, intending to encourage monastic settlement, restore population to the frontier, and gather the island’s agricultural production. The imperial charter established the monastery’s independence and granted fiscal and other privileges. It remains in the monastery’s archive. The island was formally delivered to the brotherhood after an inspection by the imperial notary Nikolaos Tzanzes.

Christodoulos’s first building programme concentrated on security and communal life. It included a fortified enclosure, the principal church, a refectory, an early timber-roofed cistern, cells in the southern two-storey wing, and a substantial part of the defensive walls. The monastery was briefly abandoned in 1092 when the Turkish emir Tzachas of Smyrna led raids against islands near the coast of Asia Minor. The monks returned in 1095 and resumed construction. Christodoulos later died in Euboea, and his remains were transferred to Patmos for burial in the entrance vestibule of the principal church.

Administration passed temporarily to the monks Savvas and Joseph. Christodoulos’s testament named Arsenios Skinouris as his successor and heir, followed by Theodosios if Arsenios declined. Arsenios could not be found, and Theodosios refused the abbacy, so the brotherhood elected an abbot from among its own members.

Imperial protection and patriarchal autonomy

The monastery received grain, gold, and other assistance from Alexios I, John II, and Manuel I Komnenos. Alexios I also granted it the islands of Lipsi, Arki, and Agathonisi. Later emperors, including Alexios III Komnenos, Alexios III Angelos, Theodore I Laskaris, John Vatatzes, Andronikos II Palaiologos, and Andronikos III Palaiologos, confirmed or expanded its possessions and privileges. These grants gave the monastery agricultural land and dependencies in Patmos, Leros, the Dodecanese, Crete, and Asia Minor.

In 1132, Patriarch John IX Agapetos issued a lead seal confirming the monastery’s self-government under the Patriarchate of Constantinople. This established its patriarchal stavropegic status, meaning that it stood directly under the patriarch rather than under the ordinary authority of a local bishop. The monks followed the Rule of Saint Basil for internal organization and the Typikon of Saint Sabas of Jerusalem for worship and services.

Between 1145 and 1157, an agreement temporarily placed the monastery under the authority of the bishop of Ikaria. Patriarch Luke Chrysoberges restored its autonomy in 1158. In the later thirteenth century, patriarchal protection prevented an attempted subordination to the bishop of Leros. Documents issued in 1504 and 1512 again confirmed the monastery’s stavropegic status.

Byzantine expansion and maritime activity

Norman forces attacked Patmos in 1186, and Frankish forces under Philip Augustus attacked the island in 1192. These assaults did not produce major changes in the monastery. By 1196, the community had about 150 monks. During the Empire of Nicaea, the Byzantine successor state based in western Asia Minor after the capture of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, the monastery acquired numerous dependencies in Asia Minor. Theodore I Laskaris exempted trade carried by its ships from taxation, while Michael VIII Palaiologos renewed earlier privileges and provided further assistance.

The monastery also maintained relations with Venice and other western powers. In 1219, Domenico Delfino, the Duke of Crete, exempted it from reprisals because it had assisted the Cretan rebels Konstantinos Sevastos and Theodore Melissenos. The monastery later obtained rights to export grain from its Cretan dependency in 1271 and 1385, together with Venetian tax exemptions and protection.

In 1267, the monastery’s ownership of the village of Stylos in Crete was recognized against claims by the Skordilis brothers and local feudal authorities. The village lay around the Kiliaris River and in the valley of Apokoronas. In 1271, the monastery received permission to export 1,000 mouzouria of grain to Patmos for the support of the monks and islanders. It paid specified dues in wine or money, cattle, and tithes, although its state tithe was abolished in 1401. In 1402, the monastery refused to contribute to the financing of two Venetian galleys intended for action against the Turks.

Ships served the monastery from the Byzantine period onward, carrying supplies to Patmos and conducting trade. Its first ship received a tax exemption, and in 1186 the monastery possessed three vessels with a combined capacity of 1,500 maritime modia. It owned four ships in 1577, three of which sailed annually to Venice, and six by 1589. Some vessels were jointly owned with islanders, while their crews included priests, monks, and laymen. The monastery later sought compensation from the Grand Master of Malta after Maltese piracy damaged its shipping.

Ottoman rule and changing fortunes

Under Ottoman rule, the monastery retained its immovable property as mulk, privately held property under Ottoman legal usage. It initially administered the whole island. An agreement with the Community of Patmos in 1720 divided the island into two parts, leaving the monastery with lands covering approximately half of its area. Ottoman authorities, the Knights Hospitaller, the papacy, and western powers offered the monastery privileges and protection, although it remained subject to taxation.

Economic activity included an exclusive right to establish and operate olive presses from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. The monastery financed two mills in 1588 and received a windmill for its dependency on Milos in 1794. Its community numbered about 150 monks in the seventeenth century, but Charles Perry counted no more than 60 in 1743. The monastery welcomed western travelers, supplied provisions and religious services to some of them, and attracted manuscript hunters during the later eighteenth century.

Venetian raids associated with Morosini and the loss of the monastery’s Cretan lands after the Ottoman conquest of Crete between 1645 and 1669 contributed to a serious economic crisis. Despite these losses, the monastery continued to receive protection and privileges from different political and religious authorities. A traditional account states that representatives visited Sultan Mehmed II at Adrianople after the fall of Constantinople and negotiated favorable terms for Patmos. According to this tradition, a decree required Abbot Matthew, Metropolitan of Myra, to deliver the island’s taxes, amounting to 40 florins, to a servant of the sultan. An Islamic seal and lamp preserved at the monastery are traditionally regarded as gifts from Mehmed II.

A school for Patmos’s children was operating at the monastery by 1494. Its wider educational influence grew with the Patmiada School, founded near the Cave of the Apocalypse in 1713 and directed by monks. The school remained an important Orthodox theological institution for almost two centuries and was re-established as an ecclesiastical school in 1947.

From Ottoman rule to modern status

During the Greek Revolution of 1821, the abbot of Patmos was reportedly the second person on the island to raise the revolutionary flag. Patmos remained under Ottoman rule until Italy occupied it in 1912. German and British control followed during and after the Second World War. Under the Treaty of Paris of 1947, the island was transferred to Greece, effective on 7 March 1948.

The monastery took part in discussions about the autocephaly of the Church of the Dodecanese in 1924. In 1989, Ecumenical Patriarchal Synodal Decree no. 677 reintroduced the coenobitic system. The monastery, Chora, and the Cave of the Apocalypse were inscribed together on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1999 under criteria iii, iv, and vi. The monastery belongs to the Church of the Dodecanese as a royal, patriarchal, and stavropegic institution. A 1979 opinion of Greece’s Legal Council recognized it as a private-law legal person, while Greek constitutional provisions provide special protection for its agricultural property.

Remains

The monastery occupies the summit of a hill above Chora and has the appearance of a fortified complex. High, thick, crenellated walls enclose it on all four sides. The defensive system includes a double circuit, towers, bastions, and sloping reinforcing walls. Its location is associated with the Cave of the Apocalypse, where Orthodox and Catholic tradition holds that the Apostle John wrote the Gospel and the Apocalypse. The complex is organized around several courtyards, with the irregular main courtyard surrounded by the principal church, service rooms, monastic cells, and other buildings.

Fortifications and entrance passage

North entrance

The principal entrance lies on the north side between two towers. A large, slightly pointed relieving arch rises above a doorway with a massive stone lintel set on recessed pilasters. The present door is iron. The earlier wooden door had been faced with iron plates and nails. Above the gateway is an arched projecting structure without a surviving floor, formerly a machicolation, a defensive opening used to drop liquids or objects onto attackers.

The approach runs uphill through a non-linear passage covered by plastered cross-vaults. It turns twice before reaching the main courtyard, making a direct assault with a battering ram difficult. Three shallow semicircular niches face the gate. The passage also contains a small entrance to a barrel-vaulted blind space and a former gatekeeper’s window or niche that is now blocked. A room at the base of the eastern tower has limited light and ventilation, while a blind ground-floor space occupies the base of the western tower.

Early rooms and reinforcing walls

Near the passage is the so-called Cell of the Bazai, a narrow room with a low ceiling and a small cistern belonging to the oldest wing of the monastery. Its eastern wall has a narrow decorative band. Two further low-ceilinged, poorly lit rooms lie above the passage. A major sloping buttress was added after the earthquake of 1646, followed by additional buttresses constructed around 1677 and 1700.

Main courtyard and communal buildings

Courtyard and portico

The principal courtyard has an irregular plan and is one of several courtyards within the complex rather than its true centre. Three free-standing pointed arches, added in 1698, act as buttresses. A well and water basin occupy the courtyard. Opposite the entrance stands the two-storey, porticoed tzafara, a covered part of the monastery complex formerly topped by a small belfry with two bells.

Refectory

The refectory adjoins the outer wall of the chapel of the Virgin and belongs to the original building phase of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It is a long hall covered by a barrel vault, with a small central dome that gives the building a basilical appearance. Two old tables remain inside, including a carved northern table reserved for the prior. A niche in the eastern wall holds the vima, a lectern from which a monk traditionally reads Scripture while the community is fasting.

Most of the refectory’s wall paintings date from 1745 and were transferred from the chapel of the Virgin. Fragments of the earlier decoration, dated approximately 1290 to 1310, survive in the northern apse and on the eastern wall. Other communal and service spaces include kitchens, monks’ cells, a guesthouse, wine cellars, storage rooms, and facilities for keeping oil and wine in large jars. The guest reception hall, or synodokio, dates from 1806.

Katholikon complex

The katholikon, the principal church of an Orthodox monastery, stands against the eastern enclosure wall rather than in the centre of the main courtyard. The complex consists of the main church, the chapel of Christodoulos, the chapel of the Virgin, an outer entrance porch, or exonarthex, and an inner vestibule, or endonarthex. It may have been founded over the ruins of a large Early Christian church. Only a small chapel survives from that earlier structure, which is described as a fourth-century church built over a small pagan temple dedicated to Artemis.

Main church

The main church is a Byzantine cross-in-square building of the simple four-column type, although its arrangement includes several irregularities. Its central space measures 6.15 by 9 metres internally. A dome on a medium-height circular drum covers the centre, and the drum has four narrow arched windows. Curved triangular pendentives transfer the dome’s weight to the four arms of the cross and terminate in columns.

The eastern columns are marble, while the western columns are built and painted with oil paint. All have heavy capitals. The eastern pair stands on Early Christian bases with spirals and plinths associated with the support of the sanctuary screen. The western pair rises directly from the marble floor. The corner compartments are covered by transverse vaults. Their high springing creates interpenetrating surfaces in the form of cross-vaults, possibly allowing a usable flat roof.

The interior is covered with frescoes, paintings made on wet plaster, dated around 1600. The sanctuary apse contains the Virgin Platytera and concelebrating hierarchs. The sanctuary vault depicts the Ascension, while the dome contains the Pantokrator, the Divine Liturgy, angels, prophets, and the four Evangelists in the pendentives. Other scenes include the Transfiguration, Christ at the age of twelve in the Temple, the Withered Fig Tree, the Crucifixion, Jacob’s Ladder, the Ancient of Days, the Hospitality of Abraham, several healings, the Touching of Thomas, Noli me tangere, and the Parable of the Hundred Sheep.

Full-length images of the ascetic saints Anthony, Sabbas, Paul of Thebes, and Christodoulos also appear in the church. Another scene shows John dictating the Gospel to Prochorus. The church may have received frescoes in the mid-twelfth century, and its earliest surviving painted decoration includes ornamental motifs on the jambs of the southern doorway to the Virgin’s chapel and a northern doorway that formerly led to the outer sacristy.

The church once had a marble templon, the screen separating the sanctuary from the nave, made in Christodoulos’s time from reused sixth- and seventh-century elements. A fourteenth-century wooden iconostasis, the taller icon-bearing form of this screen, probably later entered the church of Saint George of the Porzians in Chora. Another wooden iconostasis was rebuilt around 1490. The present iconostasis dates from 1820 and was donated by Nektarios Thomaidis, Metropolitan of Sardis and a native of Patmos. Its gilded carving carries Russian-style icons, including Christ and the Virgin from 1702 and Saint John the Theologian from 1697.

Chapel of the Virgin

The southern chapel of the Virgin is a single-aisled structure covered by a barrel vault and dated to the twelfth century. Its wooden iconostasis and Cretan-school icons date from 1607. Frescoes from approximately 1176 to 1190 were found beneath later paintings dating from 1745. They are the oldest frescoes in the monastery.

Chapel of Christodoulos

The northwestern chapel of the Blessed Christodoulos contains a marble sarcophagus and a reliquary, a container for sacred relics, covered with gold and silver. Made in Smyrna in 1796, the reliquary holds the remains of the monastery’s founder. The chapel’s wooden iconostasis dates from 1607 and includes sixteenth-century icons from the workshop of Andreas Ritzos. Its frescoes date from the seventeenth century.

Exonarthex and endonarthex

The exonarthex dates partly from the seventeenth century and incorporates elements recovered from the earlier basilica. Its paintings include scenes from Saint John’s life on Patmos, attributed to the eighteenth century, and lower wall paintings of Patmos’s magistrates from the nineteenth century. The endonarthex has a barrel vault covered with narrative frescoes. Their subjects include the expulsion of Zechariah, the Adoration of the Magi, the Massacre of the Innocents, the Flight into Egypt, the Visitation, Christ among the Apostles, the Parable of the Ten Virgins, and the Last Judgment.

Chapels and working spaces

Ten smaller chapels are distributed through the monastery. They are dedicated to the Virgin, Saint Nicholas, All Saints, the Holy Cross, Saint Prodromos, Saint Constantine, the Great King, the Holy Apostles, Saint George, and Saint Onouphrios. The chapel of the Holy Cross dates from the sixteenth century. The chapels of All Saints and the Great King date from the seventeenth or eighteenth century, while the chapel of Saint Prodromos dates from the eighteenth century.

A passage room contains a large boat-shaped wooden vessel used by the monks for kneading bread and traditionally said to date from the eleventh century. The complex also includes a candle store, offices, kitchens, workshops for restoring and conserving books, manuscripts, and paintings, and facilities connected with the storage of oil and wine.

Library, archive, and museum

Library and manuscripts

The library occupies a room beneath the museum, arranged for this purpose in 1978. It contains approximately 855 manuscripts, most of them religious or related to ecclesiastical law, including about 330 associated with Christodoulos. Approximately 3,000 printed books are also held there. The collection includes 33 leaves of the sixth-century Purple Codex of Petropolis, a ninth-century Book of Job, and Discourses of Gregory Nazianzenus produced in Reggio Calabria in 941.

The Greek manuscripts include biblical, patristic, hesychast, hymnographic, and musical works. The collection preserves old Kontakaria containing hymns by Romanos the Melodist, musical manuscripts using early notation, and secular works by Plato, Diodorus Siculus, Sophocles, and Proclus. A manuscript dated to the tenth century is the oldest surviving hagiographical item identified in the collection. After 1856, the library was substantially enlarged when books from the Patmiada School were transferred there. It also contains an edition of Aristotle printed in Venice in 1497, probably by Aldus Manutius. The earliest surviving printed-book catalogue dates from 1769.

Museum collections

The museum occupies the large rooms of the New Sacristy. Its religious art came from the monastery and from gifts presented by Byzantine and Orthodox patrons. The collection includes Byzantine icons dating from the eleventh to the middle of the fifteenth century, an eleventh-century Byzantine micro-mosaic of Saint Nicholas, Cretan-school works from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, and a painting of Christ attributed to Domenikos Theotokopoulos.

Other holdings include a triptych by Georgios Klontzas dated approximately 1596 and a Venetian-Cretan-school Virgin and Child dated 1474. About 300 pieces of precious-metal work from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are preserved alongside vestments, seals, and a small lapidary containing fragments ranging from a sixth-century BC head of Dionysus to medieval material. Islamic objects traditionally regarded as gifts from Turkish sultans are also kept in the museum.

A catalogue from around 1200 lists eighteen richly metal-covered and jeweled icons. Among them was an enamelled, metal-covered icon of Saint John the Theologian described as an imperial gift, together with icons of Saint Theodore, Saint James, and Saint Nicholas. Later holdings include works by Andreas Ritzos and Georgios Klontzas, local paintings influenced by Cretan artists, an icon of Christodoulos dated 1610 to 1629, and an enthroned Virgin with donors dated 1590.

The collections also include sacred relics, liturgical vessels, vestments, icons, manuscripts, and documents. A stone bearing an image of the Virgin, traditionally regarded as an angelic gift from the period when John wrote his works, was taken to Moscow in 1647 with part of the relics of Saint Lazarus and is preserved in the Dormition Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin. European travelers were shown another traditional relic identified by some as the hand of Saint John and by others as belonging to a Muslim prophet. The associated tradition was recorded by European travelers in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.

Defensive and urban changes

In 1609, monks and lay inhabitants decided to demolish houses adjoining the monastery walls. The action was intended to improve the security of both the monastery and Chora and formed part of the later defensive and urban development of the complex.

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