Agia Kyriaki Monastery and the Cave of the Seven Children

The Monastery of Agia Kyriaki and the Cave of the Seven Children

The Monastery of St Kyriaki (Moni Agias Kyriakis) lies near Varypetro, some twelve kilometres south-west of Chania, in a wooded district where a small valley with a stream borders on a whole system of caves and chapels; some of these caves were inhabited by hermits over the centuries, and the monastery grew up among them. Above it rises the hill of Kastellos with the remains of a Byzantine fortress. Paved paths lead through the protected grove to the monastery; within the walls and around them survives a rectangular complex of the 16th century with monks’ cells and farm buildings, laid out round a courtyard in the Cretan manner. A Venetian register of 1635 already lists the establishment. The convent of Chrysopigi, to which it belongs, was itself founded at the end of the 16th century by Ioannis Chartofylakas, a physician and philosopher of Chania, and became a patriarchal stauropegial monastery in 1654.

The main church is dedicated to the Transfiguration of the Lord and keeps its patronal feast on 6 August. The monastery itself particularly observes the memory of the great martyr St Kyriaki on 7 July, when the sisters and the people of the surrounding villages gather here in the heat of midsummer. This double dedication explains the name: the church feast belongs to the Transfiguration, the historical name of the monastery to the veneration of St Kyriaki, a Roman girl martyred under Diocletian whose name means “of the Lord’s day”, Sunday.

Cave chapels and the monastic landscape

Around the monastery lie the cave chapels of St Antony, of the Seven Martyrs of Ephesus, of St Silouan of Athos, of the Panagia Myrtidiotissa and of the Cretan New Martyrs; a further grotto of eleven by five metres with a portico in front of it is dedicated to St Kallinikos. In ecclesiastical Greek such cave churches are called εξωκκλήσια – small chapels outside the main church; together with the monastery and the natural relief they form a single space of prayer, and the sequence of grottoes along the stream recalls the rock-cut hermitages of the Holy Land and of Athos. The gorge runs about a kilometre south from the monastery before it loses itself in the ridge of Keramia; on its rocks grows the rare Cretan dittany (Origanum dictamnus), a plant found wild only on Crete, recognisable by the grey woolly down on its round leaves and its pink flowers, prized since Hippocrates as a healing herb and so sought after that the men who climbed the cliffs for it were called erontades, “lovers”.

About 600 metres away lies the Cave of the Seven Children (Agii Epta Pedes), a grotto of roughly eight by four metres. In it the remains of an older church and a grave cut into the floor were found; the cave and the neighbouring chapels have been restored. The way there crosses a handsomely built bridge and climbs 260 steps. Over the footbridge one reaches the chapel and a second cave, a natural cistern of clear, always cool water. The Seven Children are the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, young Christians who, according to the legend, hid in a cave during the persecution of Decius about AD 250 and woke nearly two centuries later under Theodosius II; a cave chapel is their natural home. On the feast of St Kyriaki pilgrims come here, and they regard the complex of caves as a continuation of the monastery grounds.

Olive press and the working life of the monastery

An olive press of the 16th century has survived in the monastery. After restoration it serves as the sisters’ refectory, its great stone wheel and the press beds left in place among the tables. This is no accident: a monastery always combined the life of prayer with farming, the storing of provisions and the pressing of olives, and the working rooms belonged to the order of the house as much as the church did. The olive groves around the metochi are still tended by the nuns, who farm them organically.

Another mill stood in the cave called Alitrivadio, whose very name means “olive press”; its millstones still lie where they were used. Together with the restored chapel of St Antony at the entrance to the gorge, the spring and the other grottoes it shows how natural shelters served at once for prayer, for work and for everyday life – a pattern found all over Crete, where caves have been sanctuaries since Minoan times.

The monastery and the Cretan Revolt of 1866

In Ottoman times the monastery gave refuge to insurgents, as its secluded valley and its caves made it easy to hide men and arms. On 14 May 1866 the first great pan-Cretan assembly met here, in the locality of Boutsounaria near Chania. The representatives of the provinces drew up a memorandum to the Sultan and to the consuls of the European powers in which they demanded respect for the rights of the Christian population and reforms of the administration – lighter taxation, schools and the keeping of promises made after the earlier risings.

At first the aim was not an armed rising but a joint petition to the Sultan’s government. Yet the failure of the petition was one of the steps towards the Great Cretan Revolt of 1866 to 1869, the rising that ended in the holocaust of Arkadi in November 1866 and drew the attention of all Europe to the island. Later assemblies of the Cretans then openly proclaimed their aim of union with Greece.

The memory of the place

Today the Monastery of Agia Kyriaki unites several historical layers: the architecture of the 16th century, the cave churches, the monastic economy and the memory of Crete’s political history. The feast on 7 July, the liturgy in the church of the Transfiguration on 6 August and the walk to the Cave of the Seven Children make the monastery appear not as a single building but as a coherent cultural landscape. It is reached by way of Varypetro, by way of Nerokourou or by way of Mournies and Perivolia; a small car park lies at the end of the lane, and the walk through the grove and up to the caves takes an hour or so at an easy pace, best in the morning before the valley fills with heat. Modest dress and quiet are taken for granted at an inhabited convent; wraps are kept at the gate for those who arrive without.