The Melancholy of the Palaiologoi (Photios Kontoglou)

The Melancholy of the Palaiologoi 

By Photios Kontoglou

When I was working in Mystras, it often happened that I found myself alone inside the Peribleptos Church. In the late afternoon the church would grow dark and forbidding. From above, on the scaffolding, I would hear footsteps.

“Some ghost must be walking about,” I would think to myself, and I would always turn my head toward the place where the soldiers and commanders were painted.

They stood in a circle, one after another, a little above the ground. Most of them had their eyes gouged out; their chests had been pierced. Many had been slashed to pieces by swords. On many faces only a single eye remained intact, but that one eye looked as though it were ten living eyes.

“Remember me, O Lord!”

29 May 1453: The City Has Fallen! A Lamenting Synaxarion of Constantine Palaiologos (Photios Kontoglou)

29 May 1453: The City Has Fallen! 

A Lamenting Synaxarion of Constantine Palaiologos 

By Photios Kontoglou

(Excerpts from a manuscript text by Photios Kontoglou, 1949)

This King Constantine Palaiologos, whom I wish to recount, was not one who was fortunate, long-lived, and glorified in his life, but rather a man afflicted and sorrowful. As many days as he lived in this world, he never ate bread in peace. The water he drank was bitter as poison. He came into the world in a storm-tossed age, to become king over a nation that was in anguish and unceasing struggle from the time the inhabited world was formed, and which by then had become utterly exhausted, poor, and struck from both East and West. And he was the last of his line, a true Palaiologos, and he took upon himself the sins of his people and, instead of a crown, wore a crown of thorns. Worn and old was his royal mantle; humbled was his scepter. Sorrowful was his face, humble his appearance. His words were like hymns. He was raised among weapons, yet he seemed like a saint. Therefore, a synaxarion would be fitting for him rather than a royal history.

The Icon of the Resurrection of Christ (Photios Kontoglou)

The Icon of the Resurrection of Christ 

By Photios Kontoglou

In Orthodox iconography, the type of the icon of the Resurrection is the one upon which the image of this book cover was made, and it bears the title “Resurrection” or “The Descent into Hades.” In the center is depicted Christ, of greater stature than the other figures, within a radiant “glory.” With forceful movement He steps upon the shattered gates of Hades, which opens beneath His feet like a dark cave, strewn with locks, keys, and broken bars. With His right hand He pulls Adam, and with His left Eve, drawing them out of the tombs. On His hands and feet are visible the marks of the nails.

On the right and left surrounding their Redeemer and standing in amazement are the “righteous,” that is, those who were pleasing to God from the foundation of the world until the Incarnation of Christ: Enoch, Noah, Moses, Elijah, David, Solomon, and the others. First on the right appears Saint John the Forerunner, because, after he proclaimed beforehand to the world the coming of the Lord, he was beheaded and descended into Hades in order to announce also to “those bound from ages past” that the Redeemer would descend to free them from the bonds of Hades, “and as a forerunner to the faithful in Hades.”

The Depiction of Saint George the Trophy-Bearer in Iconography (Photios Kontoglou)

 

“Saint George the Trophy-bearer,” portable icon, 1951. It is included among a series of portable icons that Kontoglou sent to America, after consultation with Father Nicholas Trivelas, for the iconography of the Sacred Church of the Holy Trinity in Charleston, South Carolina.

By Photios Kontoglou

Saint George the Trophy-bearer: young, beardless, curly-haired, with thick hair flowing at the sides. He is usually depicted on horseback, upon a white horse, armed, piercing with his spear a green dragon that has its lair within a cave. On the left side there appears a castle upon a rock, and within it the king and the queen, with trumpeters, soldiers, and people. Below the fortress and outside the gate stands the princess, whom the Saint saved from the teeth of the dragon, according to the popular story.

Saint George is also painted on foot, clothed in a breastplate and holding a spear and shield. Sometimes he is depicted seated upon a throne. More rarely he is painted holding his severed head and praying, as is seen in a wall painting of the Monastery of Xenophontos on Mount Athos.

The Passion of Christ, The Lamentations of the Epitaphios, The Entombment (Photios Kontoglou)

The post-Byzantine fresco of the Apokathelosis, painted by the venerable Parthenios Skourtos (mid-18th century) in the Katholikon of the Skete of Kavsokalyva, inspired Photois Kontoglou.

The Passion of Christ

(Column written for Proia in 1934)

By Photis Kontoglou

“In this world my eyes have seen many things, my ears have heard many things; like every man I have read a multitude of books written by the most worthy people of every place. And yet, every time these days of the Passion of Christ come, everything fades away, and my heart falls into a sweet sorrow.

Just as winter comes each year, just as the equinox comes and the earth changes its face and people are affected by the moon, by the stars, and by the comets that cross their path, so too Great Week comes like a sooty night — but behind it there flickers the gentle star of hope.”

The Hours of Great Friday (Photios Kontoglou)

“The Unnailing,” egg tempera, 1932, Holy Church of Pantanassa, Monastiraki.

The Hours of Great Friday

By Photios Kontoglou

“It was astonishing to behold the Maker of heaven and earth hanging upon a Cross.”

Today, on Great Friday in the morning, they say the Hours in the church. In whatever church one may happen to be, it is good, but whoever happens to be in some monastery or in some deserted chapel, he can say that he truly felt compunction.

The Hours do not have much chanting; most of the texts are read. At the beginning they read from the Psalter three psalms: “Give ear to my words, O Lord; understand my cry,” “Why did the nations rage and the peoples meditate empty things?” “O God, my God, attend to me; why have You forsaken me?” Then they chant two or three troparia, beginning from this: “Today the veil of the temple is rent for a reproof of the lawless, and the sun hides its own rays, seeing the Master being crucified.” And after the priest says the Gospel, they begin again the reading. How well these readings are chosen — the psalms, the prophecies, and the other readings of Holy Scripture!

At the time when the chanters chant and the readers read, you see on the arches painted those things which they chant and those which they read. And you think that the words are one with the images, which are made from fasting hands. You hear the priests chanting the troparion:

The Crucifixion (Photios Kontoglou)

“The Crucifixion,” fresco of the side-chapel of Saint Irene, of the Pesmazoglou family, Kifisia.

The Crucifixion 

By Photios Kontoglou

The night that they seized Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, His disciples from their fear scattered and left Him alone in the hands of the lawless, so that the prophecy might come true: “They will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered.”

The evildoers therefore bound Christ and led Him to the high priest Caiaphas, and there the scribes and the elders were gathered together. Peter was following to see the end. Meanwhile the Pharisees were seeking to find false witnesses in order to put Christ to death. And some were found who said that they heard Him saying that I will destroy the Temple of Solomon and in three days I will build it without stones. Caiaphas stood up and said to Christ: “Do you not answer? What do these testify against you?” And He was silent. The High Priest says to Him again: “Are you the Christ, the Son of God?” And Christ answered him: “I am, and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the power and coming upon clouds.” Then Caiaphas said: “What need do we have of witnesses? You heard that He blasphemed.” And the others cried out that He is guilty and to be put to death. And they took Him and spat on Him and struck Him and said to Him: “Prophesy to us.”

Love of Money: The Heavy Sickness of the Soul (Photios Kontoglou)

Love of Money: The Heavy Sickness of the Soul 

By Photios Kontoglou

“Make for yourselves money-bags that do not grow old, an unfailing treasure in the heavens, where no thief comes near” (Luke 12:33)

“The love of money is the root of all evils” (1 Tim. 6:10)

Of all the sicknesses that afflict the human soul, the most disgusting, in my judgment, is love of money, stinginess. From a young age I detested it. And now, although with age I have changed my mind about many things, about stinginess I have not changed. I would rather deal even with a murderer than with a miser. For the murderer may have killed in a surge of soul, in anger, and later repented, whereas the miser is a cold calculator, rotten to the bone. In the murderer you may find some feelings; in the miser you will find none. The miser is of course always selfish, loving only himself, but many times he is a monster worse even than the selfish man, because he may not even love himself, and may let himself die of hunger.

With this, man shows how he can fall into a condition that no other animal reaches. Only he, who called himself “king of the animals,” arrives at such disgusting foolishness that, out of his stinginess, he hides his money in the mattress or the pillow and dies of hunger. Have you ever seen a stingy dog? Or a donkey that has plenty of hay to eat and yet does not touch it, and is found dead from hunger? You see how the miser becomes mad, and indeed the most unpleasant, the most repulsive kind of madman.

The Troparion of Kassiani (Photios Kontoglou)

The Troparion of Kassiani 

By Photios Kontoglou

Kassiani — also called Kassia or Ikasia — lived during the reign of Emperor Theophilos in Constantinople, from 829 to 842 AD. She came from a noble family, and for this reason she was among the most beautiful and most educated young women who were gathered at the palace so that the emperor could choose the best one as his wife.

But she lost the crown because of her intelligence. As the emperor passed in front of her, he was struck by her beauty and modesty, and, wanting to tease her, he said: “From woman came evil,” meaning that Eve brought the curse upon humanity. Kassiani replied: “But from woman also came what is better,” meaning that the Most Holy Theotokos brought salvation into the world. Then Theophilos, judging that she was too intelligent to take as his wife, gave the apple to Theodora and married her.

Kassiani then became a nun and built a monastery, which survived until the later years of the Byzantine Empire and was called Ikasion. There she spent her life in fasting and deep devotion. Her favorite work was reading and writing. Among the hymns she composed, the hymn of the Sinful Woman is the most famous; it is known as “the Hymn of Kassiani” and is chanted on the evening of Great Tuesday.

The Many Dresses of Kassiani (Photios Kontoglou)

The Many Dresses of Kassiani

By Photios Kontoglou

The troparion of Kassiani is greatly beloved by our Orthodox people; even people who do not go to church go to hear it. Contributing to this is the inspiration with which it is written and the passion of the sinful woman who repents, as well as the story of Kassiani who composed it. But above all, in my opinion, what moved the people was its music, which is slow and majestic; for the teachers of our ecclesiastical music emphasized it with special love and care. However, one could say this about former times; now, I cannot understand what people hear in most churches where it is chanted — or rather sung — in some improvised way, with a supposedly European music, which is fashioned by people without Christian compunction and without any musical feeling, but with that dead and false conception of music, which they think is the music suited to our age.

First of all, chanting is one thing, and singing is another. Even this these “maestros” have not understood, who take as their ideal in everything the scale of Milan. In this we ought to be proud of our cultivated race. For, as happens in everything, we have surpassed the Europeans. Because for them secular music is different from religious music, whereas among us the music of the Church is becoming more worldly even than opera and even operetta. May we not be bewitched! These disgusting and insipid concoctions, which from time to time one or another fairy-struck fellow presents in church, have completely disfigured the modest and profound character of our Church, so much so that anyone who still has within him genuine Greek sensibilities falls into despair.

Blessed Is He Who Comes - Palm Sunday (Photios Kontoglou)

Blessed Is He Who Comes - Palm Sunday 

By Photios Kontoglou

What noise and turmoil is heard again around us! The world, like a stormy sea, groans and rages — with revelries, with sleepless nights, with wicked feasts where people dance and get drunk, devouring one another with their eyes, celebrating without fear of God, “clouds without water, driven about by winds; autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame; wandering stars for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever” (Jude 12–14).

Just as sin raged shamelessly in the time of Christ, so it rages now, “feasting without fear;” so now its storm surrounds, just as then, the few who walk, sorrowful and silent, behind Christ who goes to be crucified. And He turns and says to them: “Do not fear, little flock!” “Do not be afraid, My little flock, My few sheep, surrounded by wolves who howl day and night!”

Who are these few who follow the poor little donkey? They are the “weary and burdened,” to whom the One riding on the donkey said: “Come to Me, and I will give you rest!”

The Resurrection of Lazarus and the Palm Bearers (Photios Kontoglou)

“The Palm Bearers,” mural of the Church of the Zoodochos Pege, Paiania, 1946.

By Photios Kontoglou

Christ raised Lazarus before He was crucified, so that the Jews might believe in His power and so that the faith of His disciples might be strengthened, just as earlier He had been transfigured on Mount Tabor for the same reason, as the troparion says: “On the mountain You were transfigured, and as much as Your disciples could bear, they beheld Your glory, Christ God, so that when they should see You crucified, they might understand that the Passion was voluntary, and might proclaim to the world that You are truly the radiance of the Father.”

But neither the Transfiguration nor the Resurrection of Lazarus were able to strengthen the disciples and the world in faith. Human nature is weak and inclines toward unbelief, because unbelief is a weakness of the soul. The faith in Christ was established, through the centuries, after many miracles that were done in His name and from supernatural manifestations that silenced the unbelievers. But even so, most people remained in unbelief.

The Resurrection of Lazarus: The Miracle and the Tradition (Photios Kontoglou)

“The Raising of Lazarus,” mural of the Church of the Zoodochos Pege), Paiania, 1946. It is the mural “in the church of a certain village” that is mentioned in the article.

THE RESURRECTION OF LAZARUS

The Miracle and the Tradition

By Photios Kontoglou

Without simplicity of mind and without a humble heart, a person will never truly taste anything — neither peace nor joy, nor light nor love; in a word, he will not truly taste even life. The simple eye makes the whole body full of light.

The innocence and simplicity found in the Gospel, while for the unbeliever are the cause of his unbelief, for the believer are precisely the cause of his faith. The cunning and complicated want cunning and complicated things, so that their arrogant heart may be satisfied. The religion of humility was spoken with humble words.

Yet these humble words (pay attention), these humble and unadorned words, are filled with a certain active power that pierces us to the core — the power that only truth has. Whatever man constructs artificially, with his false art, even if he is the strongest orator or poet, are hollow words “of empty deceit,” for the one who wants to be nourished by spirit and truth, and not by shadows and illusions, “deceptions of magical art,” according to Solomon.

The Art of Iconography (Photios Kontoglou)

 

The Art of Iconography 

By Photios Kontoglou

The all-honorable art of Iconography of the Eastern Orthodox Church is a sacred and liturgical art, just as all ecclesiastical arts are, for they have a spiritual purpose. These holy arts do not aim merely to adorn the church with painting to make it pleasing and delightful to the worshippers, or to delight their hearing with music, but to lift them into the mystical world of faith through a spiritual ladder, which has gradations, that is, steps: the sacred arts, hymnography, psalmody, architecture, iconography, and the other arts, all cooperating together, so that the mystical Paradise, fragrant with spiritual perfume, may be formed within the souls of the faithful. Therefore, the works of the ecclesiastical arts of the Eastern Church are reminders of the divine word.

The art of Icons in the Orthodox Church is called Hagiography, as it paints holy persons and sacred subjects. The iconographer is not simply an artisan who makes a representational painting on religious themes, but possesses spiritual rank and a spiritual ministry, which he performs within the church, as does the priest and the preacher.

Icons and the Feast of Orthodoxy (Photios Kontoglou)

"Christ the Merciful" in egg tempera (1965) by Photios Kontoglou

Icons and the Feast of Orthodoxy 

By Photios Kontoglou

The Sunday before last was the first Sunday of Great Lent, on which the Church celebrates the Feast of Orthodoxy in remembrance of the Restoration of the Holy Icons. From the very first years of Christianity, Christians venerated the icons. But in time certain irreverent people appeared, the so-called heretics, who wished to give a new interpretation to many matters of religion, different from what the Apostles and the Holy Fathers had established. Thus there arose certain innovators who taught that Christians ought not to venerate the icons, because this was supposedly idolatry. These innovators were called Icon-fighters and Iconoclasts, and they caused great turmoil in the Byzantine state because they managed to win over many powerful figures of authority to their side.

The most demonic iconoclast was Theophilos, the son of Emperor Michael the Stammerer — he who, according to the well-known story, did not marry Kassiani but Theodora. During his reign many holy fathers were tortured and persecuted because they venerated the icons and taught the people to venerate them. After his death, Empress Theodora issued a decree that those who had been imprisoned and exiled for the veneration of the icons should be released. The iconoclast patriarch John was deposed, and Methodios — who had suffered greatly for the icons, even being shut up alive in a tomb — ascended the patriarchal throne.

The Feast of Lights in Aivali (Photios Kontoglou)

 

 

The Feast of Lights in Aivali 

By Photios Kontoglou

In seaside places they throw the Cross into the sea after the Divine Liturgy of Theophany. That is how they used to do it in my homeland too, and it was a beautiful and strange sight.

The procession would set out from the cathedral. In front went the exapteriga and banners, and after them the priests with the bishop, dressed in their golden vestments — many priests and archimandrites, because the town had twelve churches, and on feast days the smaller parishes would finish the Liturgy quickly and their priests would go to the cathedral, so that the celebration might be more solemn. The chanters were many as well, the best-voiced among them, and they chanted Byzantine — that is, Greek — music with majesty, not like today, when we have gone mad and turned our chanting into tasteless, foreign theatrical songs. Behind them followed a great crowd of people.

When they reached Angelí Beach, as that shore was called, the bishop and the priests would ascend a large wooden platform, beautifully constructed, to perform the Sanctification of the Waters. The people filled the shoreline and climbed wherever they could in order to see. The surrounding houses were packed with spectators. Women burned incense from the windows. On the sea side, there were gathered nearly a hundred caiques and countless small boats, with their prows turned toward the place where the bishop stood. Arrayed in this way, the boats looked like a fleet about to go to war. Farther out toward the open sea, you could see the large caiques anchored, also full of people. Others had encircled the boats near the shore, and they too were crowded — mostly sailors and children.

Time and the World of Decay (Photios Kontoglou)

 

Time and the World of Decay 

By Photios Kontoglou

The most dreadful and most inscrutable power in the world is Time, the Kairos. What this power truly is — no one knows. And all who have tried to define it have struggled in vain. The mystery of Time has remained incomprehensible, even though Time itself seems so natural to us. We cannot understand Time in itself — what it is — but we sense it only through the energy it exerts, through the marks it leaves upon creation. Its mysterious breath changes everything. Nothing remains stable — not even what appears stable and eternal. An unceasing motion whirls all things around, day and night, and no power can halt this elusive and hidden movement.

This thing we call Time is something we have grown accustomed to; we are familiar with it. Otherwise, terror would seize us if we were truly able to grasp what it is and what it does. As we have said, it works day and night, for ages upon ages, ceaselessly, silently, secretly, and it changes everything with an underground force — intangible, invisible, disobedient — so much so that one forgets it and thinks it does not exist, though it is the only thing that truly exists and that our mind, in no way whatsoever, can comprehend as ever not existing — how it could ever be destroyed, how it could ever cease. For how could that “someday” exist, when that “someday” is Time itself? How can one imagine that this very “someday” could ever cease to exist?

New Year's Day at Agia Paraskevi (Photios Kontoglou)

"Kydonies Agia Paraskevi," early 20th-century photograph

New Year’s Day, as Photios Kontoglou remembered it, at his estate in Agia Paraskevi of Aivali (Ayvalik).

NEW YEAR’S DAY AT AGIA PARASKEVI

By Photios Kontoglou

Agia Paraskevi was the name of a monastery, but in truth it was an estate, administered by the abbot. It had neither monks nor the other things monasteries usually have. The abbot and his clan governed the surrounding mountains, the olive groves, the fields, the gardens, the pastures, the salt pans, the sea, and the livestock. The abbot was ordained from within the family — the most educated and the most honored — and this had been done so from grandfather to great-grandfather.

The abbot and his people lived in a true fortress with high walls, which contained many rooms, kitchens, ovens, storerooms, mills, and at the center stood the Church of Saint Paraskevi. This enchanted fortress was built atop a mountain surrounded by the sea on three sides, and at its summit there was a rock such as one would not find elsewhere, of such strange form and such size. The fortress was built at its base, toward the south.

My Holy Christmas in Aivali (Photios Kontoglou)

“The Nativity,” Oil on canvas, 1936. 

“Mural of the Peribleptos Monastery in Mystras. Copied by hand by Photios Kontoglou, after being freed from soot and salts, in the year of salvation 1936, in the month of August.”

By Photios Kontoglou

When I was very young, I spent the holidays with my family on a storm-beaten mountain, at Agia Paraskevi.

Most of the hours I would go and sit inside the small, fragrant little church — not only during the services, but also at times when no one else was inside except me. I would read the ancient hymns and would find myself in a state that I cannot convey to another. Above all, the iambic canon “He saved the people” (Έσωσε λαόν) made me feel as though I were in the first days of creation, just as primeval as the nature that surrounded me: the gigantic rock hanging over the little church, the sea, the wild trees and grasses, the clean stones, the small deserted islets visible out on the open water, the icy north wind that blew and made everything appear crystal clear, the lambs bleating, the shepherds clothed in sheepskins, the stars shining at night like frozen dewdrops.

The Cross – The Life-Bearing Plant (Photios Kontoglou)

Sketch of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross by Photios Kontoglou

 

The Cross – The Life-Bearing Plant

By Photios Kontoglou

“Come, all nations, let us venerate the blessed wood, through which eternal justice was accomplished.”

The Cross is the most honorable and holy symbol of all Christians. And yet, this Cross was, before Christ was crucified on it, a sign of dishonor, condemnation and curse, because the most terrible criminals were condemned to be nailed to it. Christ, who changed everything, also changed the meaning that the Cross had in the souls of people, completely changed their feelings and from a disgusting and cursed tool, transformed it into a venerable and beloved symbol.

Christians place the Cross everywhere, on the domes and bell towers of the church, in their homes, on women's ornaments, on their buildings, on flags, on the masts of ships, in high places so that it can be seen from afar. The old pious Christians, from the faith they had, saw it everywhere, even in natural phenomena, as Saint Justin the Philosopher and Martyr writes.