Churches Dedicated to Saints
Two of the most important saints to the Greeks are John and George. There are three churches in Kavousi named after a Saint John, but these represent two different Johns. There are two churches dedicated to John the Baptist, whom the Greeks call Agios Ioannis Prodromos, Άγιος Ιωάννης ο Πρόδρομος. Prodromos is from πρόδρομος, the “Forerunner” or “Precursor”, since John came first to announce the Christ.
As with Mary, the two churches to John the Prodromos are dedicated to specific events in his life. There is a Church of the Nativity of the Prodromos, dedicated to his birth, which is called the Ιερός Ναός Τιμίου Πρόδρομου (Γενέσιο), literally, “The Holy Church of the Honored Forerunner (Birth)”. For this church, John is identified by another of his epithets, Τίμιος. This epithet is pretty common for John. The story of the birth of John is at Luke 7.1-7.15.
There is also the startling Church of the Holy Forerunner (Beheading), Ιερός Ναός Τιμίου Πρόδρομου (Αποτομή). The story of the death of John is at Mark 6.14-6.28. Mark uses the verb ἀποκεφαλίζω for “beheading.”
There is also a Church of Saint John the Theologian (Ιερός Ναός Ιωάννης Θεολόγου). This church is dedicated to John the Apostle, traditionally identified as the author of the Gospel of John, Revelation, and the “Johannine Epistles”. All of these identifications are super controversial.
The Church of Saint George is dedicated to the most imporant Saint, to the Greeks, after John the Forerunner. The big Greek Orthodox cathedral in Greenville, SC, is St. George. George is Γεωργός in Greek (the word means “farmer”). Georgos and its feminine equivalent Georgia are really common names in Greece and among Greek Americans.
St. George was a Roman soldier under Emperor Diocletian who was martyred for refusing to give up his Christian faith. The Wikipedia article has a fun section on Edward Gibbon’s theories about George and how everyone else thinks Gibbon is wrong—stuff about taxes and Athenasius, which you can read for yourselves. The romantic stories of George involve him fighting a dragon who was about to eat a princess named Sabra.
Those are the big-name Saints. There are others. Kavousi has a Church of St. Niketas, dedicated to Niketas the Goth who lived during the reign of Constantine but was martyred by order of a judge among the Visigothic tribes.
It has a Church of St. Fotini. Fotini (Φωτεινή) , or Photine, is The Shining One. According to tradition, she is the Samaritan Women whom Jesus meets at a well in John 4.4–4.26. Tradition says, further, that after this encounter she became an evangelist, defied the Emperor Nero and died a martyr’s death with her sisters.
Note to self for another blog post or video: Some of the tortures Nero devised for Photini and her sisters resemble things in the Theseus myth.
We did not visit the Church of St. Paraskevi. Παρασκευή can refer to a number of Saints. The word means “preparation”, and because it was used in Scripture for “the Day of Preparation before the Sabbath”, it came to mean “Friday”. The personification of Friday is venerated in the Greek Church, as is the Saint known as Paraskevi of the Balkans. I would like to think that this Paraskevi is the woman identified by Tradition as the sister of Fotini, the Samaritan woman at the well. But it is most likely that this is the Church of Paraskevi of Rome.
And lest no one get left out, there is a Church of the Holy Apostles, Ιερός Ναός Αγίων Αποστόλων (Ieros Naos Agiōn Apostolōn). Note, Greek students, the obvious genitive plural!
