Patmos

This is an excerpt from the book Travels through History : 9 Greek Islands , newly available on Amazon.

The island of Patmos has been inhabited since 3,000 BC, but the identity of those first inhabitants has not been conclusively proved. Some believe that the Kares, and the Leleges were the first settlers, others believe the Dorians were the first inhabitants, followed by the Ionians. Finds have excavated various buildings, cemeteries, fortresses and evidence of an ancient acropolis, testifying the existence of a densely populated area in the past, but no one can conclusively prove who built it.

During the Peloponnesian Wars, the Lacedemonians came to the island to escape from the Athenians and there are ruins that show a flourishing island during this period. However, Patmos started to decline when the Romans conquered it and used the island as a place of exile for convicts.

It was in these circumstances that St John the Divine or St John the Evangelist was exiled to Patmos from Ephesus in 95AD by the Roman Emperor Domitian. It’s said St John wrote his Gospel on Patmos, but his exile here is better remembered for his authorship of the last book of The Bible, The Book of Revelations. St John heard the voice of God and dictated the words to his scribe Prohoros in a cave on the island. The imagery provided by Revelations has been used ever since in frescoes to depict to people what will happen to them if they don’t believe in God and don’t follow the path of the righteous.

The Whore of Babylon, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and the Seven Trumpets that will sound to cue apocalyptic events are all depicted in Revelation. This book was sent to the Seven Churches of Asia Minor before John was allowed to return home.

A thousand years later the cave used by St John was enclosed within a chapel, which is now visited by hundreds of people on a daily basis as part of the Apokalypsis monastery. The chapel and cave together comprise an area not much more than ten metres square, with a central rock pillar that manages to divide the whole area roughly into two areas of about the same size. The first area nearer the entrance is where visitors stand and look around the chapel. The second area, closer to the icons at the front of the chapel, is where services take place and where people attending those services stand. My advice is to get there early so you can soak some of the atmosphere and have a good look at what there is to see namely, a small opening in the rock, outlined by beaten silver, where St John is said to have rested his head every night and a smaller gap in the rock, also outlined by beaten silver, which St John used to haul himself up in the morning after lying on the cave floor.

I was lucky enough to see a Greek Orthodox service at the Apokalypsis monastery, only attended by local people. The priest wore a white ‘dress’ decorated with Greek crosses. He had a large, bushy grey beard and his hair was a similar colour. He spent most of the service in an inner room chanting while two men, members of the congregation not garbed in priestly attire but definitely part of the service, on the opposite side of the inner half of the chapel were counterpoint to his chants. People attending the service had lit candles when coming in to the chapel, but these were replaced every 10 minutes by one of the two men helping to run the service, who would replace each thrown-away candle with a new one. There were a few chairs in the inner part of the chapel and there was no music, the only sounds were the three human voices.

If you’d like to read more, the book Travels through History : 9 Greek Islands is newly available on Amazon.