Asomatos Monastery: the monastery of the Archangels in the Amari valley

Asomatos Monastery in the Amari valley

Asomatos Monastery (Μονή Ασωμάτων) lies in the middle of the green Asomatos valley, about 35 kilometres south-east of Rethymno, in the broad trough of Amari between Mount Kedros and the Psiloritis range. Vines, olives, plane trees, oaks and fruit trees grow all around, and the complex seems to have settled into the Amari landscape rather than been set upon it. The monastery is dedicated to the holy Archangels, the Heavenly Powers, who in Greek are called the Asomatoi; it is this name that has given the monastery its own. The same body of angels is also known as the Taxiarches, and both names are heard locally.

Foundation and early history

The exact date of the foundation is not known. Greek local histories place the beginning of monastic life in the 10th or 11th century – that is, in the second Byzantine period, after the island had been won back from the Arabs – and connect it with a noblewoman of the district who chose the religious life. Excavation has borne out the early date: the church stands on the foundations of a 10th-century predecessor which came down in the earthquake of 1303, and six graves and bronze crosses of the 10th century were found beneath its floor. Alongside this there is the tradition of a Byzantine aristocrat who presented the monastery with sacred vessels and so enriched it. In documents of the 13th century the house is probably mentioned as the monastery of the Archangel Michael. The Venetian period became the monastery’s heyday, when it was associated with the noble Varouchas family, and its lands made it one of the economic and spiritual centres of Amari; travellers remarked on its good order, its large estates and its educated clergy.

Destruction and rebuilding

The history of the monastery was shaped by wars and natural disasters. A destruction and a rebuilding are recorded for 1682 – a major phase of reconstruction, not the foundation itself, which was much earlier – and this agrees with the fabric, whose oldest surviving buildings are of the 17th century. In the 18th century the monastery was for a time the seat of the bishops of Lambi, and Abbot Manassis, who himself became bishop, undertook extensive building work. In 1810 the complex was damaged by a severe earthquake. Setbacks of this kind belong to the history of almost every Cretan monastery: again and again they were struck by earthquakes, fires and looting, and rebuilt by their brotherhoods with great tenacity.

The year 1821 and the destruction of the monastery

During the rising of 1821 Asomatos supported the Cretan struggle for freedom and was part of the local network of resistance; it had already been set on fire in 1818 on account of the revolutionary activity of its monks. Ottoman troops bombarded and burned the monastery, and the abbot, Gerasimos Lourotos, was taken prisoner and executed. In 1823, when it was sheltering insurgents, it was laid waste once more. In the great revolt of 1866–69 it again became a centre of the rising, and monks joined the bands of fighters. In 1868 leaders of the insurgents of western Crete gathered here and addressed an appeal to Queen Victoria, asking for help for the Cretans; the letter was drawn up by Kostaros Voloudakis. The monastery is thus bound up not only with local church life but with the political history of the island. That the insurgents should have met here of all places shows the standing the monastery enjoyed as a spiritual and, at the same time, protected place of assembly in the hill country of Amari – at that date the whole complex was still enclosed by massive walls, more like a fortress than a farm.

In 1833, in the years when Crete was administered from Egypt and many of the island’s monasteries were able to reopen, Abbot Iosif restored the monastery and its farm. His activity was not confined within the monastery walls: at the prompting of Nikodimos, Bishop of Lambi, he founded a school in neighbouring Monastiraki, which the monastery maintained. At first it was a primary school, later the Ελληνική Σχολή Μέσης Εκπαιδεύσεως, the secondary school of Amari under Ottoman rule.

The school at Monastiraki

The school founded at Monastiraki in 1833 was among the most important places of learning in Amari in the Ottoman period. The monastery paid the teachers and bore the cost of the teaching; Asomatos thereby became a place not only of worship but of Greek education. In doing so it carried on the tradition of the monasteries as guardians of language, books and ecclesiastical culture. Anyone walking through Monastiraki today can still see the school building; it is a reminder that in the mountain villages of Crete education was for a long time the work of the Church.

Monastery land and the agricultural school

Between 1927 and 1929 monastery lands were made over to the state for the establishment of an agricultural school. The whole of the monastery’s property came to about 1,500 stremmata; in 1929, 471 stremmata of it, roughly 47 hectares, passed to the state for a practical school of agriculture. On this land an agricultural complex grew up, from which the Asomatos centre for agricultural research later developed. The monastery itself was declared dissolved in 1935, and the many service buildings put up for the school – together with the demolition of the old enclosure walls – changed the appearance of the complex profoundly.

In 1930 the main building work on the agricultural school began and the school itself started to function, and in 1938 the large trees were planted that still give the valley its character. In its best years the school, with its gardens, fountains and peacocks, counted among the leading agricultural institutions on the island. From 1941 to 1944 the complex was occupied by German troops. In 1989 an agricultural research establishment was created on its foundations, a department of the national agricultural research organisation concerned chiefly with livestock; today’s scientific and educational role continues the economic tradition of the monastery.

The church of the Archangels and the monastery’s legacy

The monastery church preserves valuable icons of the 17th and 18th centuries. Best known is the image of the Holy Trinity of 1619; beside it are icons of the Archangels of 1755, painted by Abbot Manassis. These works link the monastery with Cretan and post-Byzantine icon painting and show how it kept its artistic inheritance even through periods of political change. In the old images the Archangels appear as protectors and servants of the divine will. Cretan icon painting of the Venetian period, to which the year 1619 belongs, is regarded as one of the great schools of post-Byzantine art; its masters combined the Byzantine language of form with ideas from the West. The church itself was founded in the 14th century as a single-aisled, barrel-vaulted building and was rebuilt in the early 20th century on a cruciform plan with a dome. Much of the monastery’s movable treasure – sacred vessels, portable icons, books and gold-embroidered vestments – is now in the Historical Museum of Crete in Heraklion.

At the entrance to the monastery there is a spring whose water, according to local Church tradition, has healing power; pilgrims come here with a prayer. For visitors Asomatos is at once a place of Orthodox pilgrimage, a monument to the history of education and a living cultural landscape in the heart of Amari.

The valley and its landscape

Amari is one of the greenest districts of Crete. Between the massif of Psiloritis to the east and the lower ranges to the west, Kedros chief among them, stretches an upland valley with dozens of small villages, marked by olive groves, cherry trees and woods of oak and cypress. The floor of the Asomatos valley is particularly shady thanks to the trees planted for the agricultural school in 1938, and the shade of the planes along the approach to the monastery makes a visit pleasant even in summer. The monastery is thus not merely a building but the centre of a landscape in which spiritual life, cultivation and water have belonged together for centuries.

Monastic life and hospitality

As everywhere on Crete, Asomatos Monastery was never a place of seclusion but a hub of village life. The people of the surrounding villages came for services, for baptisms and weddings, for the patronal feasts and in times of need; the monastery took in travellers and the persecuted and managed land, water and stores from which the neighbouring villages also benefited. This combination of prayer, work and care explains why in the 19th century the community turned so naturally to the monastery when it came to schooling and education, and why in the years of the rising the complex became the target of Ottoman reprisals. The present-day visitor still senses something of that atmosphere: the quiet of the courtyard, the smell of incense in the church and the rustle of the plane trees are all part of the impression the place leaves.

Visiting the Asomatos valley

The monastery is most conveniently reached from Kalogeros, only about two kilometres away, and the road is tarmac throughout. It runs through vineyards, olive groves and the shade of plane trees; in spring and autumn, when the valley is green or the harvest is beginning, a visit is especially rewarding. The visit combines well with the frescoes at Kalogeros – the cruciform church of Agia Paraskevi on the plain just north of the monastery is one of its dependencies – with Monastiraki, where the monastery once maintained the school, and with other villages of Amari. From Monastiraki it is also worth making the detour to the Minoan settlement on the hill of Kokkinos Charakas, and anyone wishing to drive further into the hills can go on from here to Thronos, Apostoli and Agia Fotini, the modern administrative centre of the valley. For the whole route at least a full day should be allowed, for the roads are winding and the villages invite one to linger.

Within a single valley Asomatos unites a medieval monastic foundation, a Venetian heyday, the sacrifices of the rising of 1821, the educational work of the 19th century and the agricultural research of the present. From 1941 to 1944 the complex was occupied by German troops; today it remains a sanctuary, a monument to the history of education and part of a living farmed landscape.