Gouverneto Monastery: Our Lady of the Angels, the Bear Cave and Katholiko

Gouverneto Monastery and St John the Hermit

The monastery of Gouverneto (Moni Gouvernetou), dedicated to the Mother of God of the Angels – Kyria ton Angelon, Our Lady of the Angels – is an Orthodox monastery still inhabited today in the north of the Akrotiri peninsula. It lies north-east of Chania, some nineteen kilometres from the city by road, on a bare, light-flooded plateau at about 260 metres above the sea, not far from Cape Melecha, and is counted among the oldest working monasteries of Crete. Its story cannot be separated from the cave and the abandoned monastery of Katholiko in the Avlaki gorge below it, nor from the veneration of St John the Hermit, one of the ninety-nine God-bearing fathers of Crete, whose relics it keeps and whose feast on 7 October is the great day of its year.

Foundation and the Link with Katholiko

The sanctuary is devoted to the memory of St John the Hermit, whose life, according to tradition, ended in the 11th century in a cave of the Avlaki gorge: a hunter took him for an animal and killed him by mistake. Legend names St John Xenos himself – the “Stranger”, born around 970 in the Messara and a tireless founder of churches and monasteries across western Crete – as founder of the monastery, and he is said to be buried at Gouverneto; it is more likely, however, that the house was established by monks from Katholiko who carried on his ascetic way. By 1027 hermits and ascetics had already gathered in the ravine, and the caves there became one of the most important centres of the solitary life in Crete. To escape the raids of pirates the monks gave up Katholiko, which lay close to the shore, and in 1537 built a new complex higher up in a safer position – so the old inscription at the entrance testifies. In 1593 the monk Mitrophanis Fasidonis settled here and brought the house new prosperity; in 1620 the monastery came under the care of Agia Triada Tzagarolon, under its abbot Ieremias Tzagarolos, and in 1632, the year of John Xenos’s formal canonisation, work began on the present main church. It was completed only centuries later, long after the Ottoman conquest of Crete: the façade of the church, the narthex and the side chapels were finished as late as 1894, some 250 years after the first stones were laid.

The complex is an example of Venetian fortress architecture. A rectangle of about 40 by 50 metres encloses the court; four defensive towers with bastions stood at the corners, of which two survive, the walls are pierced by embrasures, and above the main gate there was a machicolation through which attackers could be repelled with boiling oil. Some fifty cells are arranged on two storeys, vaulted storerooms lie in the south range and the refectory with its pointed barrel vault on the upper floor; a small museum of ecclesiastical treasures and relics has been fitted out in the buildings, and a programme of restoration has been under way since 2005. In the middle of the court stands the cross-in-square church, whose portal is decorated with Italianate columns and relief masks – grotesque faces, almost monsters, a curious and nearly Baroque form of ornament unusual in Cretan church building. The two side chapels are dedicated to the Ten Holy Martyrs (Agii Deka), the Cretan martyrs of the persecution of Decius, and to St John the Hermit.

In the Venetian period Gouverneto flourished; around 1637 it counted among the largest and wealthiest monasteries of the island, with some sixty monks, and even in 1818, under Ottoman rule, it still had fifty monks and an estate reckoned at 230,000 olive trees. In the rising of 1821 it was plundered and seven or eight monks were killed. From the 1830s the brotherhood reorganised itself. In the Second World War the German occupiers set up a guard post here and the buildings suffered damage; the monastery nevertheless gave shelter and food to local people. Today a small brotherhood lives within the walls. Visitors are admitted only at set times in the morning and late afternoon, on certain weekdays the gate stays shut, and the dress code is strict: shorts and bathing costumes are not permitted, and women should wear a skirt or a wrap. Photography inside the church is not welcome, and the monks ask for quiet in the court.

The Monastery of Katholiko and the Path to the Sea

The Holy Monastery of St John the Hermit, known simply as Katholiko, is today a ruin; the visible buildings date from the 16th and early 17th centuries, when it was enlarged under the direction of Ieremias Tzagarolos, drawing like Agia Triada on the architectural designs of Sebastiano Serlio. It lies not far from Gouverneto in the Avlaki gorge, immediately beside the cave in which St John died. The monastery church consists of a small cavity in the rock, built out on the north side with dressed stone, and its origins may go back to the 5th or 6th century; in front of the church extends a courtyard carried on vaults. A massive stone bridge spans the ravine at this point and joins the two slopes, into whose rock faces the old hermitages are tucked, and around it stand the remains of a bell tower, large vaulted stores and two-storey buildings that once lodged pilgrims. The cave church of St John keeps its own feast on 20 September. Fig trees have taken root among the ruins, and the whole place has the stillness of somewhere left to itself for three hundred years.

From Gouverneto a paved path, partly stepped and cut into the rock, leads north through the Avlaki gorge, which falls away towards the sea; the first stretch descends some 140 steps.

The descent is fairly easy, but the way back can be tiring for anyone unused to longer walks – especially on hot summer days, for there is almost no shade and no water on the way. It is best to set out early in the morning or in the late afternoon, to wear proper shoes rather than sandals on the worn and polished stone, and to carry plenty of water. Allow about 45 minutes for the whole descent to the coast and considerably more for the climb back, so that the round trip from the monastery takes a good two hours including stops.

After ten to twenty minutes one reaches the famous Bear Cave (Arkoudospilios, also Arkoudiotissa, “the she-bear”). In its main chamber rises a great stalagmite about two and a half metres high that resembles a bear bending to drink. Legend tells that the animal drank the water of the monks’ cistern until the Mother of God turned it to stone. Finds of Classical pottery, terracotta figurines and tiles with representations of Apollo and Artemis show that Artemis, the goddess of wild creatures, was worshipped here already in antiquity, and the bear – her sacred animal – makes the continuity between the pagan and the Christian cult unusually plain. At the entrance stands the little chapel of the Panagia Arkoudiotissa, Our Lady of the Bear, whose feast is kept on 2 February, Candlemas, the Presentation of Christ in the Temple.

One continues downhill, on steps and over bare rock, until the monastery of Katholiko with the church of St John the Hermit is reached, its bridge and courtyard appearing suddenly below as the gorge narrows.

Whoever walks on for another ten or fifteen minutes comes to a small bay, a narrow rocky inlet like a fjord, which once served as the monastery’s harbour; a ruined building in which the monks kept their boats and a stone-built well recall it. The water shimmers blue-green, and one would gladly take a refreshing swim before the climb back to Gouverneto – but bathing is strictly forbidden by the monks, who regard the whole ravine as holy ground.

The Life of St John and the Ninety-Nine Fathers

St John the Hermit came from Egypt and lived, according to the monastic Life, in the early Middle Ages. He preached in Cyprus, in Attaleia on the coast of Asia Minor and in Crete, where he arrived together with ninety-eight holy fathers – ninety-nine saints counting John. Of the assembly of the ninety-nine their prayers say that with Christ as their head they made up the full hundred.

According to the Life the saints came to Crete out of great humility: they were seeking a place for solitary prayer, for their fame followed them everywhere and drew many people, not a few of whom were healed of their afflictions. So John set out from Egypt for Cyprus with thirty-five other Egyptian ascetics, following the divine word spoken to the patriarch Abraham: “Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee” (Genesis 12:1, King James Version). In Cyprus too the report of their holiness soon spread across the whole island. Many sought them out because they received benefit in soul and body, and many of the sick were made well. In Cyprus thirty-nine further fathers were living as ascetics in various places. When they heard of the virtue of the newcomers from Egypt they too came and joined them, to lead from then on a common ascetic life. Then the Cypriots also wished to leave their homeland in obedience to that scriptural word; together they crossed to the opposite coast of Asia Minor, to Attaleia, where they met twenty-four more hermits who attached themselves to them. Thus the number of the holy fathers reached ninety-nine, “but with Christ as their head they were the full hundred”. After they had remained for a time in Attaleia and saw that God blessed their desire for still greater seclusion, they set out for Crete, the goal of their journey.

All together they boarded a ship. But as they drew near the coasts of Crete a violent contrary wind seized them, so that they could not land and the ship was nearly wrecked. The fathers had meant to go ashore at the far eastern end of the island, at Sitia, which lies nearest to Asia Minor. The storm, however, drove them south and then west, until they were able to put in at one of the small bays of the island of Gavdos – Homer’s famous Ogygia, the island of Calypso – where they stayed for twenty-four days. When the sea had calmed they went aboard again and sailed for Crete. But God wished to glorify John and to reveal his virtue to men; he “hid” him in sleep, the other ascetics did not notice his absence at the departure, and so he was left behind on Gavdos. The Life interprets this as divine providence: God wished to show the Cretans his power and to teach them that he can help his servants with a staff and a cassock more than the Cretans could help themselves with swords and lances against the Venetian tyrants who ruled over them – a turn of phrase which betrays that the text received its present form in a later age, several centuries after the saint’s death. The miracle followed at once. When John saw that his brothers had left Gavdos and heard their cries from afar, from the opposite shore of Crete, he went down to the beach in firm trust in God, prayed to the Lord, blessed the waters with the sign of the cross, spread his cassock on the waves, stepped onto it as into a boat and began to sail towards the other shore – a crossing of some forty kilometres of open sea.

Praising God he reached Crete unhindered, where the brothers received him; the first stretched out his hand and bade him welcome, and all together they sang a hymn of praise in the bond of love, consecrated themselves to the Lord of all and proclaimed peace to everyone. In the village of Azogires in the district of Selino, where they withdrew into a cave, John Xenos is also said to have preached, and the old sources record a sanctuary of St George founded by him at Nazogeraia, the place now called Azogires. Here they found the longed-for spot, at the place called the Great Rock of Charakas. They lived in silence and prayer; their food was lupins, carob pods and the herbs of the earth. But because the cave was too small to hold them all, they divided into two groups: thirty-six crossed to the other bank of the river into a second cave, the rest remained in the first until the end of their lives. While the other fathers were content with the communal life they had established at Azogires, John, a passionate follower of perfect solitude, felt even the presence of these venerable brothers to be a hindrance to complete surrender and converse with God; he wished “to pray to God alone”. He opened his wish to the fathers, and when they saw that his resolve was unshakeable they let him go and turned to Christ with the following prayer:

The Prayer of the Brothers and the Departure of John

“Lord Jesus Christ our God, since John our brother wishes to depart from us, guide him through life in peace and stillness, and grant us, Ruler of all, that on the day on which thy grace decides to complete our earthly way, on that very day we may all die together, and unite us with him in thy heavenly kingdom. Amen.”

So John left the brotherhood at Azogires and came to the cape of Kydonia – called Kiamon in antiquity and Melecha under the Venetians – near the monastery of Gouverneto, the old Gderneto. There, at the narrowest point of a great wild torrent bed, on whose slopes ancient hermitages cling in tiers like true eagles’ eyries, from time immemorial the gathering place of the hermits of the Kydonia district, lies the old, original monastery of Gderneto, which today is called Katholiko. There too is the famous cave of St John the Hermit, beautiful and rich in mighty stalactites and stalagmites, 150 metres long, 40 metres wide and between 3 and 20 metres high. This old monastery, according to tradition, was later moved to its present place, a little higher and not far from the old one, into the embrace and clear light of the quiet plateau of Akrotiri. Since its foundation it has been wholly bound up with St John; although it is dedicated to the Mother of God, “Our Lady of the Angels”, it is known to this day also as the “Monastery of St John the Hermit”. He is venerated in the left side chapel, where his holy head is kept in an old reliquary and brought out for the faithful on his feast.

Here John lived, a hermit in the exact sense of the word and a lover of solitude, after he had parted from his ninety-eight companions, in complete seclusion, “alone with God” and “in converse with the angels”, in utmost abstinence, in prayer and fasting. In winter he fed on the herbs of the earth, in summer on lupins and wild carob, faithful to the word of the author of the “Ladder of Divine Ascent”, St John Climacus of Sinai: “When the belly suffers, the heart is humbled.” From the wasting fast the saint grew so weak that he lost all his strength and could no longer stand upright; he went bent double like a four-footed beast, and “crawling like an animal and yet leading an angelic life” he “wetted the rocks of his cave day and night with tears of repentance”.

The Death of the Saint and the Hunter’s Remorse

So the day came – it was 6 October – on which God wished to take John to himself. He went out into the open, as he did every day, to gather his usual food, when a young shepherd “practised in archery”, who was hunting in the district, took the figure bent on all fours for game and by mistake shot him through the heart. John understood that his end was near and asked God to let him reach, in spite of the wound, the cave in which he lived. The hunter ran up to fetch his supposed quarry and recognised his tragic error only when he followed the drops of blood and found the saint lying in the cave, gravely wounded and bleeding, the fatal arrow still in his heart. The Life tells of the hunter’s remorse and of the saint’s forgiveness. The shepherd fell at his feet, kissed them and said amid tears and sobbing:

“Woe is me, wretch that I am, what have I done today! O unhappy man, how blind I was, that I became the murderer of a just and holy man! What shall I do now, to whom shall I flee, if not to thee, holy servant of God, that thou mayest forgive me my error and pray to God to lead me to repentance.”

And the saint answered him humbly and calmly, with the last of his strength:

“Holy is God, my son, who loves the salvation of men; may he grant thee repentance and forgive thee the sin thou hast committed today against me, his unworthy servant, and count thee worthy of his kingdom. Amen.”

It is said that this shepherd later became the first herald of the holiness of the unknown ascetic whom his arrow had killed – convinced by the wondrous light which he saw streaming from the cave in the hour of the saint’s death, and which the people of the district took as the sign that a holy man had died among them.

The Common Memorial of the Ninety-Nine Fathers

The memory of St John the Hermit and his ninety-eight companions is celebrated on 7 October instead of the 6th, because that day belongs to the holy Apostle Thomas. According to the Life, John and the ninety-eight fathers all died together on 6 October, between the third and the seventh hour of the day, exactly as they had asked in their common prayer: that on the day on which grace completed the earthly way of one of them, the Lord might permit all to pay the common debt of death at the same time. The local people tell that some were found seated, leaning on their staffs, others in prayer, others again kneeling or asleep, as they gave up their blessed souls to the Lord at one and the same moment; the caves at Azogires, in the hills above Paleochora, are still shown to visitors and bear the name of the Holy Fathers.

Such an event – the peaceful falling asleep of many saints at the same hour – is unique in the lives of the saints of the Church, where common martyrdoms, by contrast, occur often. For that reason the peaceful common death is regarded as a sign of the holiness of the fathers around John the Hermit, as the visible expression of the works of faith and of the “bond of love”, as the Church joyfully sings on this day:

The exalted choir of the champions of Christ, united by the radiant bond of love, of one heart and one faith in Crete, raised up on an appointed day to the heights of heaven, implores Christ, the Ruler of the heavens, for mercy and forgiveness for us all.

A Note on the Church Tradition

The number ninety-nine in the Life means ninety-eight fathers and St John; together with Christ as head of the Church they form the symbolic fullness of the hundred. It is not, then, the chance number of a band of wanderers, but the theological image of a single brotherhood bound together by common prayer – and the two monasteries of the Avlaki gorge, the upper house on the plateau and the ruined lower one by the cave, are its lasting memorial in stone.