Dean Christakos

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April 20, 2006

On Mortality

This Wednesday was Wednesday of Holy Week, before Easter. There are two major services Wednesday evening. One is where the Bishop washes the feet of twelve of his priests. During the service, two priests remove the bishops mitre and a layer of his vestments, and he kneels down and washes the bare feet of his priests in a ceremony of Christ washing the feet of the twelve apostles shortly before his crucifixion and reminding the bishop of his position of humility.

The major ceremony, however, is the sacrament of Holy Unction, which will be familiar to Roman Catholic readers as Last Rites. Orthodox Christians receive this every year on the Wednesday before Easter.

Why do we do this once a year? The explanation I heard growing up in a Greek church was "During the time when the Greeks were occupied by the Turks for 500 years, the Christians knew they could be killed at any time, so they accepted Last Rites once a year in case they would be killed in the intervening time."

One should be skeptical of this claim, as many Greeks know that the explanation for just about everything is invariably "because the Turks occupied Greece for 500 years."

Where does resinated "Retsina" wine come from? "Well, when the Turks were invading Greece, which they occupied for 500 years, Greeks put pine needles in the wine so that the Turks would gag on it when they stole it to drink, to ensure that they would stop stealing it. When the Greeks strained the pine needles out, they discovered retsina!" This is totally untrue, as resinated wine has been in the lands of Greece since the pre-Greek Minoan times.

Why does it take 6 months for the Greek national phone company to install a landline phone? "Our country has this problem because Greece suffered under the occupation of the Turks for 500 years!" Ok, that last one might actually be true.

Despite the fact that such an explanation can lends itself to overuse, there were real reasons for administering Holy Unction once a year which lend credence to the explanation I received in Sunday School. From here on out, this blog entry will become serious and rather dark.

In the spring of 1822, during the Greek revolution against the Ottoman Empire, some revolutionaries landed in Chios and attempted to foment separatist feelings from the Chiots. After the revolutionaries failed and left, the Sultan decided to teach the Chiots a lesson and thus began the Massacre of Chios in which, of a population of 118,000 people, 23,000 were killed, 47,000 women and children were sold into slavery, leaving 1,800 spared to continue cultivating the sap from the mastic trees. The others escaped.

In Chios you can see the scars of the massacre. About 25km from Hora is the isolated mountain town of Anavatos perched on a hill:

This town is completed abandoned. All of its people were killed or threw themselves off the cliffs rather than be captured by Ottoman Turkish troops, and no one ever moved back. It remains as a ghost town and a memorial to the dead.

It is maintained and parts are being restored, but nature is taking over:

Nearby is the monastery of Nea Moni, founded in the 11th century and built by Constantine Monomachos. During the Massacre of Chios, 3,500 women and children sought refuge in the fortified monastery which was ultimately penetrated by the Ottoman Turks, who killed the refugees and the 600 monks who lived there. The remains of the monks are kept in a public ossuary as a reminder of the tragedy:

Posted by Dean at April 20, 2006 10:56 AM

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