Arsani Monastery – the house of St George

Arsani Monastery – St George and the memory of the Rethymno countryside

In Greek the monastery is called Arsaniou (Αρσανίου). It stands in a quiet position close to the coast, on rising ground a kilometre and a half from the beaches of Sfakaki and Stavromenos and with a wide view over the Sea of Crete, on the site of an older monastic establishment that already existed in Byzantine and Venetian times; the date 1645 survives on one of the old parts of the building, and a consecration around the year 1600 is given for the earlier church. Opinions differ on the origin of the name: according to local tradition it was given by the monk Arsenios, who is regarded as the founder and is placed in the 16th century; another interpretation links it with a benefactress named Arsinoe, who gave her wealth for its construction. Which of the two versions is correct cannot be decided – the only certainty is that the complex took shape in the Venetian period, to which individual architectural members still bear witness. The Ottoman conquest of the Rethymno district in 1646 emptied the house almost at once, and for a long time afterwards it was largely deserted.

The present katholikon – the main church of the monastery – was built in 1888 on the foundations of the older church and is dedicated to St George, whose feast is kept on 23 April. It has the form of a free cross with a central dome, characteristic of Cretan church building in the closing years of the 19th century. The rebuilding followed decades of violence: the monastery was laid waste in the great uprising of 1866 and damaged again in 1896. Between 1970 and 1975 the complex was renewed from the ground up; later the church was given a complete cycle of wall paintings in the Byzantine tradition, executed around 1988 to 1990. Anyone entering the courtyard therefore sees a monastery that is old and new at once: well-kept ranges of cells, gardens in flower and a church interior whose painted programme is only a few decades old.

Arsani in Crete’s struggle for freedom

Arsani played its part in the Cretans’ national struggle for liberation. The abbot Gavriil Klados fell in a skirmish with Ottoman troops near Adele, in 1897, during the last of the island’s risings against the Sultan; in the memory of the monastery he stands as an example of pastoral courage. In the 19th century the monastery was also an important place of education for the surrounding villages. When the old monastery of Agia Irini south of Rethymno was dissolved in 1900, it passed to Arsani as a metochi, a dependent monastic estate. In the years of the German occupation the monk Damianos Kallergis supported the men of the resistance; on 3 June 1941 he was shot by German soldiers in Pangalochori.

Museum, conference centre and monastic routine

Since 1971 the monastery has had an ecclesiastical museum. It preserves handwritten codices, early printed books and Gospel books, liturgical vestments and vessels, portable icons and relics, some of which came here from other monasteries of the diocese of Rethymno. Museum and conference centre have made Arsani an important place for the preservation of ecclesiastical and regional history alike; theological and cultural-historical conferences are held in the hall.

In the chapel of St Nicholas, no longer in use today, archaeologists came upon material of the Late Minoan period. The finds show that the monastery grounds are connected not only with Christian history but with a very much older settlement of Crete – which is hardly surprising, since only a short distance away extends the archaeological zone of Chamalevri and Stavromenos with its remains of Minoan settlement and workshops, among them an installation of about 2100–2000 BC in which olive oil was scented with iris.

Arsani is to this day an inhabited monastery of monks, a place of prayer and pilgrimage. The visitor sees the church of St George, the collections of the museum and a group of buildings in which the traces of different periods have been preserved. During the midday hours the gate is usually kept shut. The liveliest day is 23 April, when the faithful of the surrounding villages come for the patronal feast; if the day falls in Holy Week, the feast is moved, in accordance with Orthodox custom, to Easter Monday.