Sfaka – churches of the Holy Cross and a Venetian tower

Sfaka (Σφάκα) lies on the old national road between Agios Nikolaos and Sitia, about 40 kilometres from the former and a good 30 from the latter, at a height of some 236 metres; Kavousi is seven kilometres back along the road to the west. Dry mountain slopes and silvery olive groves surround the village, and far below gleams Mirabello Bay. The through road divides Sfaka into an upper and a lower village; from a distance, the locals say, it resembles a gull with its wings outspread. This is also where the winding road branches off down to the coastal village of Mochlos, and a farm track climbs the other way to the small upland plain of Monokara.

The village enters the written record in the Venetian censuses – as “Sfacha” in 1577 and as “Sfaca”, with 244 inhabitants, in 1583; Francesco Basilicata lists it again in 1630, and an older name is said to have been Milia. The present name is derived from the sfakes, the oleander bushes that once grew by a spring in the district. The Egyptian census of 1834 found 32 Christian and 7 Turkish families here, that of 1881 counted 417 Christians and 44 Muslims, and in 2001 there were 328 people, 323 in 2021 – living from olives, livestock and increasingly from tourism. Sfaka has kept its traditional way of life: in the evening young and old meet in the kafenion, and the church calendar gives the year its rhythm. The patron is the Precious Cross of the Lord. Two churches in the village are dedicated to it, and one of them has a second aisle in honour of St Charalambos. A further two-aisled church, of the Holy Trinity and the Panagia, bears a founder’s inscription of Michael Sylignas dated 2 March 1643.

The church of the Holy Cross and St Charalambos

The old church in the upper village (Pano Chorio) is a two-aisled building of a kind typical of rural Crete: two single-aisled, barrel-vaulted chambers stand side by side and open into one another through low arches. The south aisle is dedicated to the Exaltation of the Cross (Ypsosi tou Timiou Stavrou), the north aisle to the martyr-bishop St Charalambos. An inscription on the lintel records that the north aisle was renewed in 1881 – the year of the census that still counted a Muslim minority in the village. Sfaka’s first schoolroom lay immediately beside the church, a reminder of how closely worship and teaching belonged together in the Cretan villages of the Ottoman period.

On the walls, folk paintings of the 19th century have survived. They show scenes from the Gospels, among them the story of Zacchaeus the publican, who according to St Luke climbed a sycomore tree in Jericho to see Christ pass by, and the stoning of the protomartyr Stephen. This is not courtly art but the vivid, story-telling imagery of village painters, strong in colour – and that is precisely its charm. The feast of the Exaltation of the Cross is celebrated on 14 September, the commemoration of St Charalambos on 10 February.

In the Orthodox Church 14 September is at once a feast and a strict fast, on which meat, dairy food and fish are all forbidden. It recalls the finding of the Cross in Jerusalem by St Helena, the mother of Constantine, in 326, its first showing to the people at the dedication of the church of the Holy Sepulchre in 335, and its recovery from the Persians by the emperor Heraclius. By Greek custom the cross is carried into the middle of the church on a bed of basil, and the faithful take a sprig of the fragrant herb home with them. St Charalambos, who by tradition suffered martyrdom as a very old bishop of Magnesia under the emperor Septimius Severus – in AD 202, it is said, at the age of 113 – is invoked on Crete above all as a protector against pestilence; his skull is venerated at the monastery of St Stephen at Meteora. In summer there is a further village festival: on 20 July Sfaka celebrates the Prophet Elijah.

Background: the Precious Cross

In Orthodox tradition the Precious and Life-giving Cross (Timios kai Zoopoios Stavros) is far more than a historical relic: it is the sign of Christ’s victory over death and stands at the centre of the Church’s liturgical remembrance. To dedicate a church to the Cross is therefore to place the whole community under its particular protection. The patronal festival, which is preceded by a day of preparation and echoes through the services of the eight days that follow, joins the Divine Liturgy to a procession in which the entire village takes part – and afterwards, as everywhere on Crete, to a shared meal, music and dancing.

The Venetian tower

Not far from the village stands a Venetian tower. Buildings of this kind were fortified residence and look-out post in one; from its height the eye ranges over valleys and mountain passes down to the coast. The tower is a reminder that the rule of the Serenissima rested not only on the great fortresses of Candia, Spinalonga or Sitia but equally on a dense network of small defensible houses, from which feudal lords administered their estates and kept watch on the coast against corsairs. A later ruler has left his mark as well: an Ottoman fountain survives on the western edge of the village.

More recent history has left its traces in Sfaka too. According to local tradition men of the village took part in the rising of 1821; when the Ottoman governor of Sitia thereupon had hundreds of Christians of the province put to death, the villages of the north coast, Sfaka among them, are said to have been spared. In the Second World War the village gave a priest, Gennadios Syllignakis, abbot of Toplou Monastery, who was executed by the German occupiers for his part in the resistance and is honoured to this day as a witness to faith and freedom.

Sfaka is no “open-air museum” with a single outstanding monument. Its appeal lies in the combination of churches in which services are still held, an austere mountain landscape and a living local tradition. The best time to come is for a service or one of the village festivals. Outside service times village churches are often locked – in the kafenion they usually know who keeps the key.