Church of Saint John the Theologian

Saint John the Theologian in Trachiniakos — the church of three families The fourth of April, 1329. On that day — according to the foundation inscription — the painting of this church was completed. Three families contributed to the frescoes: the Trachiniakoi, the Sibritiani, and a third whose name time has erased. The village itself takes its name from the first of them. The inscription has two layers. The first version was partially wiped out and covered with a red frieze, then written again from scratch. What changed between one version and the other — we do not know. Perhaps someone fell off the list of founders. Perhaps someone was added. Gerola photographed both layers at the beginning of the twentieth century; today the inscription is illegible. The church belongs to the circle of the workshop of Ioannis Pagomenos, the most important painter of fourteenth-century Selino. The single-naved interior with its barrel vault preserves an extensive iconographic programme — a Christological cycle in the vault, individual figures in the arcades, narrative scenes on the walls. In the blind arcade of the western wall — an equestrian scene with a warrior saint, colours still vivid. In the vault near the apse — the Betrayal and the Baptism, both scenes legible despite losses. The most striking detail is on the wall: the Archangel Michael in ceremonial dress encrusted with pearls. One eye gouged out. Someone — when and why, we do not know — decided that this was where the danger lay.