Church of Saint George

Archangel Michael's neighbour, a stone's throw away in the same village — but half a century older and in far worse condition today. The building is elongated, trapezoidal, sharply skewed to the north (about 35°), built of plain rubble stone. At some point the vault collapsed and was rebuilt with the same material — you can see this today with your own eyes: scraps of the earlier decoration survive on the stone blocks, walled back in at random, with no relation to the original composition. A narthex once stood here too, on the west side; today only a crumbling wall marks where it was. The architectural type — a hall with niches on both sides — has a surprisingly distant pedigree: Lassithiotakis, who described this church in 1962, traces it all the way to the Tur Abdin mountains of northern Mesopotamia and to Armenian Ani (7th century). The frescoes inside are badly damaged, though not uniformly so. The rows of saints in bust above the niches — including the "Five Martyrs" from Asia (Akindynos, Pegasios, Aphthonios and others) — survive today only as silhouettes. Little remains of the south niche, where a full-length Archangel Michael in rich sakkos once stood. The Betrayal scene, however — showing only the kiss of Judas, without the arrest, itself a rarity — has survived surprisingly well, still legible despite worn faces and halos. The biggest surprise is the apse: the conch with the Mother of God as Orant and the medallion of Christ Emmanuel is in good condition, and the register below, with four hierarchs holding unrolled scrolls, is in fact the best-preserved part of the whole church — the texts on the scrolls can still be read. Of the Annunciation on the apse jambs, only Archangel Gabriel survives; of Mary, barely half a figure. And most importantly: unlike at Archangel Michael, where the founder's inscription bearing the date was destroyed during a repair to the lintel, here the date survived. In the conch of the apse, a small plaque 30 by 17 centimetres: the year 6792 from the creation of the world, that is, 1284 — one of the oldest inscriptions of its kind on all of Crete (Gerola: "sicuramente databile"). The founder was the hieromonk Jacob, who financed both the building and the painting out of his own pocket. Half a century before Pagomenos and his son came to the same village to paint the neighbouring church with the full sweep of Palaiologan style, some unknown, provincial painter was working here for a monk who just wanted to build his little church and decorate it. Practical info: the church is occasionally locked, key location unclear — access irregular.