Sights - Chania Prefecture - Akrotiri

Agia Triada Monastery (1)

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History

 

The official name of the monastery is Agia Triada ton Tzangarolon after the brothers Ieremias and Lavrentios Tzangarolos from the Agia Kyriaki monastery in Chalepa. Ieremias was given the task of building the new monastery by the Venetian authorities in 1611. The work went on according to plan, though it was by far finished, when he ten years later was ordered to take over the leadership of the nearby Gouverneto monastery, where he among other things was in charge of the building of its new church and the large bridge in the nearby Katholiko monastery.

 

 
When Ieremias died in 1634, his brother Lavrentios continued the building of Agia Triada. Neither he did however achieve the completion of their shared work, because the dome of the church still remained to be built, when the Turks captured the Chania area in 1645.

 
Even though the Turks officially followed a policy, that improved the position of the orthodox church at certain points compared with earlier times, a Turkish law however existed, prohibiting construction and repair of Christian buildings.

 
For that reason, abbot Melchisedek (in the second half of the 17th century) was imprisoned by the Turkish authorities, when he was covering the ground in front of the church with flagstones, and in order to save their abbot from being hanged the monks had to pay the gigantic sum of one gold florin for every flagstone laid down.

 
Because of the Turkish prohibition the monastery was not finished until 200 years later, when the Egyptian commander-in-chief of Crete, Mohammed Ali, in 1827 gave permission to a renovation of the monastery, after the damages caused during the 1821 rebellion.

 
Agia Triada is a so-called stavropigiaki monastery, which means that it falls directly under the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople. The first archbishop of Crete after the Turkish occupation was Neofytos Patellaros, and in 1654 he arranged for Agia Triada to be placed under the Patriarchate in order to avoid the Turkish lootings. The monastery was nevertheless looted several times by the janizaries (specially trained Greek-Turkish soldiers), but every time it managed to get back on its feet again, even though the great former times were definitively over.

 

 
Despite the lootings, the monastery became rather wealthy during the Turkish period. It had many monks to cultivate the land, and quite a few of the Cretan families willed their fortune to the monastery to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Turks. During the same period of time many minor monasteries were placed under Agia Triada, and the monastery also bought a good deal of land.

 
Large parts of the monastery were destroyed during the Greek Revolution in 1821. A manuscript from the monastery says about the event:

 
"We fled from the monastery, when the Turks in their furious and insane hatred towards us, poured into the church - well, into all of the monastery, stealing, breaking or burning everything that could be broken or moved. It went on in such a violent way that the church of our monastery after their attack looked like a lime burner. The pews, the walls with the holy icons, the altar and the sanctuary, the wooden cupboards and even the wooden ceiling of the large dome, not yet finished, they set on fire. The fire was so strong, that not only did it pulverize the stones of the church and make them look like burnt chalk, but also the thick iron bars, holding the very heavy bronze chandelier, melted like wax candles."

 

 
After this catastrophe, 20 years would pass until the monastery was rebuilt.

 

 

 

Read my description of the monastery     

 

 

Read three foreign travellers' descriptions of their visits to the monastery:

 

F. W. Sieber (1817)

 Robert Pashley (1834)

Vittorio Simonelli (1893)

 

 

 

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