Mani by Patrick Leigh Fermor Page A

Athonite and cruciform but usually basilican: the square centre of the katholikon is flanked by two short aisles, and ended by three apses. Massive stone beams spanned with golden diameters the four semi-circular arches that bore the pendentives from which the dome grew; similar horizontals enclosed the lesser arches and crossed the top of the iconostasis and all these beams, like the capitals that topped the pillars, were carved with a rough intricacy of bosses and crosslets and Byzantine motives of leaves and bunches of grapes and sunflowers. Over the door a complex skein of calligraphic Byzantine abbreviations, conjoined letters and ligatures unravelled itself into a dedicatory inscription and the information that the church was built by “the humble Roman, Michael Kardianos”; Romaiòs , of course, meaning Byzantine, a Greek of the Roman Empire of the East. Why is it stated? What other nationality can have been there to make this worth mentioning? For once the Nyklian was at a loss. The date followed,always a conundrum in Byzantine churches, as the numbers are written in the tormenting old Greek way—which makes ancient mathematical computation a nightmare even to think of—with oddly arranged letters of the alphabet and appended apostrophes, and additional peculiar symbols arbitrarily inserted into the alphabetical system for 6, 90, 900 and 6000. Add to this that the Byzantine epigraphic script, like certain flowery Arabic inscriptions, is more an intricate means of decoration than a device for conveying information; add to this again that if it is painted, the paint is usually half defaced, and if carved, chipped into semi-illegibility; add finally that the dates are reckoned not from the birth of Christ but from 5508 B.C. (an oddly hard figure to remember), the Biblical date of the Creation—which must be subtracted from the date inscribed—and the reader will have some idea of the difficulties of deciphering the dates for someone as bad at any kind of figures as I am. I often get it wrong, even after ten minutes with pencil and paper, and I plainly did so in this case, as my notebook says the Taxiarch was founded in 1211, and a reference book says 1373; or rather, it was founded in 6881 as opposed to 6719; not ,ςφιθ′ but ,ςωπα′ [3] during the wars of John VI Cantacuzene and John V Palaeologue, in fact, as opposed to the short-lived Frankish empire of Byzantium to which I had assigned it. Nothing could be simpler....
    Perhaps, then, the founder’s race was worth mentioning to show that he was an Orthodox Byzantine and not one of the Catholic Venetians who were by then established in the Messenian peninsula or one of the Frankish barons of the Peloponnese; a proud affirmation that the Empire was Greek—Romaic—once more, and the Mani part of the Orthodox Byzantine Despotate of the Morea.
    The stony churchyard had several new graves. Burial is a problem here, as the earth is seldom more than a few inches deep and hacking trenches out of the rock with adzes must be a back-breaking task. I had been told that the dead in some parts of the Mani are buried in their shrouds, as wood is too scarce for coffins; they are borne to the churchyard on a ceremonial coffin or a bier; then, after the miroloyia , lifted off and laid in the shallow graves for their temporary sojourn. The same recesses must be used many times over. These new graves of Charouda were adorned at their heads with something I had never seen before; two rough thick sticks stuck in the ground at an angle of forty-five degrees, crossing in saltire with white rags twisted untidily round their upper ends, like so many uncouth St. Andrew’s crosses. They were the staves, the Nyklian said, with which the pallbearers had carried the coffins. Why were they planted in that position? Nobody knew. They had an oddly pagan aspect, like part of the gear of a voodoo tonnelle. Again, the late conversion