Patrick Comerford
Many visitors to Athens are fascinated by the sight of Agia Dynami Church, a tiny Byzantine-era church that is completely surrounded by a modern, multi-storey city centre building.
The church is on the corner of Mitropoleos street and Pantelis street, close to Athens Cathedral and 200 metres from Syntagma Square and the Greek Parliament. It is a popular place for pregnant women to pray for a safe birth. Many Athenians pop in and out of the church on their way to and from work to say a quick prayer or to light a candle.
Agia Dynami (Holy Power) Church was built in the 16th century. Archaeological evidence suggests the little church was built on the site of an ancient temple dedicated to Heracles, known for his strength and his ‘12 labours’.
During the War of Independence, Greek munitions experts were forced to make bullets for the Turks in the church. However, they were successful in also making large quantities of bullets for the Greek revolutionaries, smuggling them out through the garbage each night.
After the Greek War of Independence, in the 1830s, the buildings around the church were demolished so the street could be widened to serve the growing needs of the city.
The church was renovated in 1912 and again in the 1950s. When the area was being redeveloped again in the 1950s, the Greek government tried to acquire the site of the church to build new headquarters for the Ministry of Education and Religion.
When the Greek Orthodox Church refused to dispose of the church, it was decided to build over it and around it. The small single-aisle church found itself almost entirely ensconced by a modern municipal building, wedged between the supporting pillars of the new building.
A 15-metre tunnel was found under the church connecting it to a large cave system that some say reaches to the Acropolis and the Kaisariani Monastery on the north side of Mount Hymettus. A bell tower was built over the entrance to the tunnel in 1963, blocking any future access.
For many years, the large office building enveloping the tiny church remained vacant abandoned until 2016, when it was converted into the Electra Metropolis Hotel. The church is now a much-photographed curiosity at the entrance to the five-star hotel. The church holds the relics of Saint Nikolas Planas, a late 19th century priest known for his work to protect thousands of orphaned children.
I was reminded of Agia Dynami in Rethymnon last week when I found myself at the Church of the Holy Anargíron (Ιερος Ναος Αγios Αναργύρων) on Koumoundourou Street. This tiny chapel is a few paces west of the Brascos Hotel, where I was staying, and the Municipal Gardens, and close to the entrance of Rethymnon General Hospital. In its location on the edge of the street, it is overwhelmed by and engulffed by the surrounding buildings, including street shops and businesses and multi-storey apartmnt blocks.
The name Αγios Αναργύρων refers not to some Saint Anargyron but to the ‘Holy Unmercenaries’ or ‘Holy Unsilvered’ (Άγιοι Ανάργυροι, Agioi Anárgyroi) – a number of saints who received no payment for the medical services they offered to people. They include healers or physicians who, contrary to medical practice of the day, tended to the sick, free of charge or payment.
There are many saints who received this epithet, including Cosmas and Damian, Cyrus and John, Panteleimon and Ermolaos, Samson and Diomedes. There is a similarly named small church of the Holy Unmercenaries (Agion Anargyron) at the Monastery of Christ the Saviour at Koumpe, on the western fringes of Rethymnon. It celebrates Saint Cosmas (Κοσμᾶς) and Saint Damian (Δαμιανός).
The Saints Anargyri Cosmas and Damian were twin brothers and doctors who only wanted to be paid by faith. They were arrested by Lysias, governor of Cilicia, during the reign of the Emperor Diocletian because of their faith and fame as healers. They were hung on a cross, stoned and shot by arrows, and finally beheaded in Aegeae ca 287 or 303.
The dedication that hints at the story of Saint Cosmas and Saint Damian seems so appropriate for a chapel so close to the hospital in Rethymnon.
A small inscription above the west door reads: Ιησος Χριστός, Θεον Υιός του Θεού, Cωτήρ, ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour.’ However, a clumsy and inelegant extension at the west front obscures half of one of the paired ICXC NIKA Christograms on each side of these opening words of the Jesus Prayer.
The gates outside this small chapel were locked and I searched but failed to find some information about its history or details of when it was opened. All I could find was a fading notice in ecclesiastical Greek lettering that warns: ‘It is forbidden to enter the church indecently dressed (women in pants, shorts, etc). Issued by the church.’
Hardly the welcome patients and their families at the nearby hospital need, hardly comparable to the everyday, popular use of Agia Dynami in Athens by pregnant women and office workers.
Nor is it hardly the open and generous attitude I associate with the ‘unsilvered’ or ‘unmercenaried’ Saints Cosmas and Damian.
