Robert Pashley (1805–1859), the English classical scholar and traveler, visited Crete in 1833–1834 and later published the results of his journey in his two-volume Travels in Crete (Cambridge, 1837). The work remains an important nineteenth-century firsthand account of the island, combining observations of its geography, antiquities, villages, monasteries, customs, and inhabitants with information gathered from local sources. In the following passage from the second volume, Pashley records his thoughts on Saint Anthimos Kourouklis, the Blind Ascetic of Kefallonia (+ 1782), providing a valuable contemporary glimpse into nineteenth-century Cretan life, as well as how he viewed the oral legends of a holy elder he heard from locals. Following this description, he goes on at some length describing another "holy elder" who he actually saw with his own eyes.
In a country where the belief in such supernatural occurrences, as have been described in the previous chapter, is not confined to old women and children, but prevails among the whole population, it is not surprising to learn how powerful an influence has occasionally been exerted over the people by artful men, who have played on their simplicity and credulity, and have made the profession of a Saint and Prophet answer well their own base ends. The older Sfakians remember that not long after the devastation of their country in 1769, a saint, who was stone-blind and never tasted any food,[1] came from one of the monasteries of the Holy Mountain[2] to preach and prophesy to the Sfakians. When surrounded by a numerous audience he would sometimes declare who were the sinners, and who the righteous men among his hearers. Once some Mohanmedans joined his congregation, and scarcely had they entered the church before he exclaimed, that they would never learn any thing from him but must go to their prophet Mohammed. He declared that the wrath of God could only be averted from the land by their abandoning their unchristian and murderous practices: and the influence of his reputation and preaching among them was confessedly great enough to put a stop, for awhile, to the murders which from time immemorial were so common in Sfakia. But the date of this worthy man’s ministry is so remote, that we do not learn so much about him as we may of another saint, who is still living,[3] and who made his appearance in Sfakia during the year 1811.
Notes:
1 My Sfakian informant, although he had been a leader in the whole war, and had lived in exile at Nauplia ever since his country was given up to Mehmét-Ali, was firmly persuaded that the holy elder never eat anything. Many examples “of wonderful fasting” are stated in JONSTONUS, An History of the Wonderful Things of Nature, Classis x. Ch. 2. §.7. p. 315. ed. Lond. 1657. The periods vary from the modest length of forty days to that of forty years! "Hermolaus knew a priest who lived in health forty years, without any thing, but by sucking in the air.” The goats of Cephallenia are said always to have satisfied their thirst in the same way: see the Book de Mirab. ausc. n. 9. p. 831. ed. Bekk.
2 The “Holy Mountain", as Mount Athos is called by the Greeks.
3 I saw him at Nauplia in 1834. He has long since abandoned his sacred profession spoken of in the text.
