Deisidaimonia in Kavousi
So the village of Kavousi is inarguably deisidaimōn (δεισιδαίμων), God-fearing and devoted both to Biblical texts and to 2,000 years of Tradition. There is a lot that I don’t understand. How did each of these churches come to be founded? Who chose the particular objects of veneration for each? Why “Birthday” and “Beheading” for St. John, for example, or “Birth” and “Dormition” for Mary (as opposed to Annunciation and Nativity)?
All of small-town Greece is like Kavousi in this respect, as far as we could tell. And this (very long… sorry!) blog post didn’t even touch the dozens and dozens of tiny shrines that you see along the roads and along even the most remote trails. Each of these is a naos (νᾱός), like the ones Herodotus describes in Egypt: “The image of the god, in a little gilded wooden shrine…” (τὸ δὲ ἄγαλμα ἐὸν ἐν νηῷ μικρῷ ξυλίνῳ κατακεχρυσωμένῳ) (Hdt. 2.63.2).
If you want a truly relaxing vacation in Greece, skip Athens with its crowds and tourist-trap tavernas and costly tickets. Find a little village, anywhere, and spend a week visiting all the little churches. If you go to Kavousi, you can grab a midday drink and snack at the elegant Café Chez George and enjoy dinner in the evening at Ntakos, to which you should bring a big appetite.
Kavousi’s biggest tourist attraction, however, the only one on TripAdvisor, pre-dates Christianity by at least a thousand years. I’ll write about that in a separate post.