| On the Apokoronas peninsula -
half-way between Vamos and Vrysses - stands an Agios Georgios monastery
also known as the Karydi monastery. |
|
|
|
 |
The first pieces of information
about the monastery come from a report from the Venetian governor
Francesco Barozzi to the Venetian senate in 1577 where he mentions the
village of Caridhi San Zorgi. Some years later another Venetian official
mentions that the village of Caridi S(an) Zorzi owes 30 services of
serfdom. |
|
|
| The Egyptian census from 1834
states that the village consisted of six Christian and three Turkish
families. The monastery had its great period at the same time as it had
obtained a licence to produce olive oil in 1829. The oil production gave
employment to many of the inhabitants in the area and for that reason
the large hall with the six oil mills was built in 1860. |
|
|
|
 |
The monastery was not mentioned
in the following censuses because it had been placed under the Agia
Triada monastery on Akrotiri. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
The
inhabitants of the area had according to tradition converted to Islam
-
more or less voluntarily - except the abbot of the monastery. When the
Turkish authorities of the area threatened to convert the monastery into
a mosque the abbot handed over the monastery to Agia Triada which was
placed under the patriarchate of Constantinople and therefore, according
to Turkish law, inviolable. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| The village of Karydi was
mentioned separately for the last time in the census of 1928 where it
belonged under the rural district of Vamos and had 31 inhabitants. |
|
|
|
 |
After having been uninhabited
since 1900 the monastery was officially closed down in 1923 and its
lands distributed among veterans from the Balkan Wars and from the
unsuccessful expedition in Asia Minor. |
|
|
| At the request of Eirinaios
Galanakis, the just retired metropolitan of Kissamos and Selino (24th of
August 2005), the monastery was reinstituted in 1996. |
|
 |
Today it is headed by prior
Dorotheos who has worked hard - and still does - to renovate the old
monastery. |
|
|
|
|
|
