Atali Monastery (Bali): St John the Baptist, history and revival

The Monastery of St John the Baptist above Bali Bay

Atali Monastery (Moni Atalis), equally well known as Bali Monastery, is dedicated to the Nativity of St John the Baptist, the Timios Prodromos or Holy Forerunner. It stands at about the 33-kilometre mark of the road from Rethymno to Heraklion, a little under a kilometre south of the carriageway and some 200 metres above the sea, roughly half-way between the two cities and about four kilometres from the resort of Bali itself; the turning off the national road is paved but unsigned. The slopes around the monastery and along the coast preserve the memory of numerous hermitages and small monastic settlements, among them cave-dwellings of ascetics. Opposite rises Bachoumis, 607 metres high, whose name is linked with the monk Pachomios; above the monastery lies the hill of Agia Ypakoi, “Holy Obedience”, in dialect Agia Apakoui, at 304 metres. From here a wide view opens over the Sea of Crete, while the complex itself is almost invisible from the water – a concealment that was intended in the days of the pirates. Until the national road was built in 1970 the district was remote and seldom visited, which is precisely why the monks had chosen it.

Layout and economic life

The terrain has given the monastery an unusual shape. It belongs to the fortified type of Cretan monastery with a roughly rectangular plan, yet the katholikon – the principal church – does not stand in the middle of the courtyard but by itself on the north-eastern terrace of the complex, outside the enclosure proper; a heavy door once closed off the stair that leads up to it, a precaution against pirate raids. The west gate is built as an arch and creates a covered space for pilgrims and passers-by waiting for the door to be opened. Behind the gate lay the stable with its stone mangers, the olive press, the pottery and the oven; the cells, the refectory and the abbot’s quarters were linked by internal passages. The inner courtyard forms a rectangular ensemble of its own: stone arches and cell doorways show how carefully the monks fitted their buildings to the slope.

From late Venetian times to the first written record

The exact date of foundation is unknown. Remains of frescoes in the north aisle of the katholikon are attributed to the 14th century; they belong to a small older church that was absorbed into the present building, and the single-roomed chapel seems to have grown into a double-aisled church by the 16th century. The first written evidence, a notarial deed of 1628 concerning the lease of landed property, already speaks of a brotherhood and of renovation works. In 1635 the main gate received the inscription with the date AXΛE and the name of the hieromonk Pachomios, who had the works carried out “at his own expense and under his own supervision” and is regarded as the second founder; an octagonal window bears the date AXΛH (1638), when a storey was added to the western range of cells. In these years the church was enlarged, cells for ten to twenty monks and the communal rooms were built, and by about 1640 the refectory was complete. Its wall paintings, executed around the turn of the 17th century and in its first decades, are among the rare examples of a painted monastic trapeza on Crete. An inscription of 1692 at the passage from the cells to the katholikon records the rebuilding after the destruction of 1646–1647, when the Ottomans occupied lower Mylopotamos; during the long war that followed, the monks are said to have carried their icon of the Virgin to safety at a monastery on the island of Sifnos.

Architecture and the monastic economy

The monastery is built in steps, because the slope falls steeply to the bay. In the service range the rooms survive that a community needed in order to feed itself: refectory, olive press, pottery, bread oven and stables; the sources also mention a cheese dairy and a water mill. The double church was enlarged in several stages: to the original aisle a southern one was added, dedicated to the Beheading of the Baptist; both were then extended westwards, the roof was raised and the building was given an imposing south façade with carved relief ornament in Renaissance and Mannerist forms. Arches connect the two aisles; in the floor lie two graves, probably of abbots, and in one of the domes the old frescoes are still preserved. The monastery also owns the nearby church of Panagia Charakiani.

The name Atali and the name Bali

The name Atali goes back to the Venetian name of the coastal settlement, which in turn recalls the ancient town of Astale, the harbour of Axos; Venetian maps mark the bay as Porto di Atali. The name Bali prevailed later; the English traveller Richard Pococke, passing in 1739, is the first to record it. Local tradition connects it with the Turkish word bal, “honey”, because the surrounding slopes were famous for their honey-bearing herbs; local historians think a derivation from the surname Balis more likely, a name attested on Crete since Venetian times and perhaps that of a founder. The form “Atali-Bali” is also found, which preserves both layers of the place-name. Remarkably, “Atali” appears within the monastery itself only on a cross of 1784 and a Gospel book of 1795, while the old brass seal reads simply “Holy Monastery of Bali”.

The monastery and the struggle for Crete

Bali Bay was a convenient natural harbour and served during the Cretan risings as a link with the Greek mainland. The monastery thus lay on the routes by which the insurgents were supplied and brought to safety. In the years of the German occupation after 1941 Greek, Australian, New Zealand and British soldiers found refuge here; Abbot Agathangelos helped them on their way across to the Middle East.

The monastery under Ottoman rule

After the Ottoman conquest of this part of the island in 1646 the monastery did not cease to exist, although it lay in the fighting zone. The bay served the insurgents as a point of contact and supply, and the monastery was drawn again and again into the risings. From 1761 the record grows denser: a water conduit was laid, and icons, books and liturgical vessels came to the house as gifts. The icon “In Thee Rejoiceth” bears a note on the hieromonk Gervasios and the painter Emmanouil (1761), the icon of the Nativity of the Baptist the date 1763. Gervasios, who describes himself as a pilgrim of the Holy Sepulchre, gave a carved cross (1784) and a silver-bound Gospel book printed in Venice, whose binding is dated 7 May 1795. In 1791 Abbot Gedeon had the more distant spring tapped and channelled to a fountain, and an image of the Holy Forerunner was painted for the iconostasis.

Risings and decline

The monks took part in the revolution of 1821; according to tradition and indirect evidence the church was set on fire or badly damaged. After the rising, which on Crete ended in 1831, the monastery was restored, and in 1837 Abbot Meletios Karteris had the carved wooden iconostasis installed. During the Great Cretan Revolt of 1866–1869 Turkish detachments made regular forays; in 1866 they plundered the monastery and desecrated its holy things, and the destruction continued in 1867, even as the house served the fighters as a supply point. Abbot Gerasimos Pikrakis, the “Abbot of Bali”, who presided over the house until 1909, fought against the Ottoman troops, and his deeds passed into Cretan song. Yet in 1881 only two monks and nine laymen lived in the monastery, the latter probably tenants of the monastic land. In 1900 it was declared dissolved by a law of the Church of Crete and for a time placed as a dependency (metochi) under Vosakou Monastery; in 1935 it was closed for good. Its estates were sold or distributed to landless peasants; the last monk died in 1949. After the occupation the complex stood empty and fell into decay.

Rebirth in our own time

In 1979 the monastery was listed as a protected monument, and in the spring of 1983 a community moved in once more. On 24 June 1983, the feast of the Nativity of St John the Baptist, an episcopal liturgy was celebrated in the monastery church. Titos Sylligardakis, Metropolitan of Rethymno and Avlopotamos, installed Archimandrite Anthimos Syrianos as abbot – today a metropolitan himself. The new superior, working with the Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities, began the restoration and reorganisation of the house. From 24 June 1996 his successor, Archimandrite Parthenios Kalyvianakis, carried the work forward. Among the notable buildings of the new era is the chapel of St Theodosios the Coenobiarch opposite the refectory; today the monastery receives pilgrims and continues as a coenobitic community. The gate remains closed during the midday rest, and the monks bar it again in the evening.