Lithines: Byzantine heritage and the Panagia of Lithines

Lithines: the legacy of the Litinos family

Lithines (Λιθίνες) is a small village in the interior of the Sitia district, 26 kilometres south-west of the town on a hilltop at about 275 metres. It stands among olive groves and fertile slopes, off the main through roads but close to the routes to Chandras, Ziros and the south coast at Makrygialos. A little over 300 people live here, many of them by oil: the cooperative founded in 1944 has run its own mill since 1949 and produces some 500 tonnes of virgin olive oil year after year. The village is one of stone houses and cobbled lanes, and its former school, a neoclassical building of the 1920s on the square, now serves as a cultural centre. The name is traced to the Byzantine Litinos family, who held land in this part of Crete; it already occurs in Venetian documents of the 14th century.

According to local and ecclesiastical tradition the settlement took shape after Crete had been freed from Arab rule in the 10th century: the emperor Nikephoros Phokas refortified the island in 961 and distributed land to the families of his soldiers, the Litinos among them. A second tradition places their arrival later and names the nobleman Loukas Litinos, whom the emperor Alexios Komnenos is said to have sent to Crete in 1182 together with eleven other noble families from Constantinople, in order to bind the island more firmly to the empire. The history of Lithines, then, is not contained in any single charter: it can be read from the name, from church inscriptions, old houses and the memory of the family that gave the village its name.

Agios Athanasios and the memory of a family

The church of St Athanasios, a small single-aisled vaulted building of the 15th century or earlier still, preserves inscriptions and a family burial place. The inscriptions are mostly dated to 1591; the transverse porch that was to receive the tomb was added in 1603, built, as its dedication puts it, for the family of the most noble lord Vlachis. Buried here was the feudal family of Francesco Vlachis, whose coat of arms adorns the elaborate monument on the south side; the principal tomb has come down in excellent condition, while a second, an arched niche in the outer wall, has fared less well. The church has no wall paintings; it served above all as a funerary chapel. It thus belongs to the late Venetian period, when village churches were at once places of worship, of family commemoration and a mark of the standing of the leading families. The stone here speaks not only of the age of the building but of the people who went on caring for their parish through years of changing rule.

The same family owned the three-storey Venetian tower that once stood in the middle of the village and was meant to secure the Serenissima’s hold on the district; under the Ottomans it went on serving as a post from which the country round could be watched. In 1828, in the years of the struggle for independence, it was besieged by insurgents who had come over from Gramvousa and burnt to the ground.

The Panagia of Lithines

The church of the Panagia of Lithines, in the centre of the village, holds a special place. It is sometimes taken for a cave church of the 15th century in which the rock itself forms the interior – quite in keeping with the old habit of monks of choosing sheltered places for prayer. It is in fact a masonry, barrel-vaulted single chamber of only 5.35 by 8.60 metres, strengthened by two transverse arches, whose foundation tradition sets in the period after the liberation of 961; in the 1950s a twin-aisled chapel of the same length was built on to its south side. What is certain is that the little room contains one of the densest programmes of painting in eastern Crete. Both the fabric and the frescoes have been conserved by the Byzantine antiquities service of Lasithi, which retiled the roof and stripped the later plaster from the outside walls.

The frescoes, dated to the 14th century, show nineteen scenes from the life of Christ and eight from the life of the Virgin – the former chiefly on the south side, the latter on the north towards the screen; the whole of the west wall is taken up by the Last Judgement. The floor is laid with hexagonal limestone slabs of the Venetian period, and glazed pottery bowls are set into the outer face of the south wall. In the carved iconostasis stands the miracle-working image, the dark “Panagia of Lithines”, surrounded by countless votive offerings; beside it hang 15th-century icons of St George and the Crucifixion. The Virgin, shown holding the Child, is painted on a panel measuring 103 by 67 centimetres. When it was restored in 1995 an older overpainting of 1714 came to light beneath the surface; the icon itself is placed in the 14th century. Frescoes and icons link this sheltered place with the church history of eastern Crete.

The panigiri of 8 September

On 8 September, the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin, Lithines holds its panigiri in honour of the Panagia – although the church is in fact dedicated to the Dormition; why the Nativity has been kept here from time out of mind, nobody can now say. The celebration begins on the eve with vespers and lasts two days. After the service local people and pilgrims gather, there is music and dancing, the festal meal is prepared, and church and village become the centre of a great reunion. On the feast day itself a fun run is held as well. For the small village this is no spectacle laid on for tourists but the yearly continuation of parish life.

Agii Apostoli and a walk round the village

A little way outside, at the old settlement of Andromyli, stands a third church worth seeing: that of the Holy Apostles, single-aisled with a porch set at right angles to its side, and with well-preserved frescoes dated to 1415 – seventeen scenes from the life of Christ, which fill the eastern part of the vault and run on westwards, with the Last Judgement above, and on the south wall a large foliate cross and the Synaxis of the Archangels. The building itself is held to be of much earlier foundation. Its feast is kept on 29 June. Lithines is best explored slowly: from the old lanes to the church of St Athanasios, then on to the Panagia, and those who can should stay in the village for the feast day. A scale rare in eastern Crete has survived here – the story of the great Byzantine tradition unfolds in a small parish, in stone, frescoes and living prayer.