100 Places in Greece Every Woman Should Go by Amanda Summer

Author:Amanda Summer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Travelling
Publisher: Travelers' Tales
Published: 2016-01-24T00:00:00+00:00

ELEITHYIA, SAINT FILOTHEI, AND THE VIRGIN MARY WHO ANSWERS PRAYERS QUICKLY

Do you want prayers answered quickly? Looking for a goddess to call on when it’s time to go into labor? Then have I got a church for you!

One of the things I love about Athens is that every so often you come across a tiny church, shoehorned between a bakery and an apartment building. Some of them, such as the tiny Panagia Kapnikarea, literally sit in the middle of a busy pedestrian walkway. Yet the Panagia Gorgoepikoos is an especially big name for a miniscule church. Let me simplify things by saying this means “The Virgin Mary Who Answers Prayers Quickly.” Built in the late 12th or early 13th centuries, the church, which used to be the cathedral of Athens, sits directly on top of another ancient site: a temple dedicated to Eileithyia, the goddess who protects pregnant women and women in childbirth.

Eileithyia’s name means to “relieve” or “she who comes to aid.” She is often depicted with her arms in the air as if to bring the newborn child into the light, and her Roman counterpart is named Lucina, or “light bringer.” It is believed that she was born in the town of Amnisos, Crete, which is the root of the word amniotic. Although there are no visible remains, the ancient traveler Pausanias tells us more about Eileithyia and her temple in his 2nd-century-a.d. travelogue Description of Greece:

Near the Prytaneion [or Town Hall of Athens] is a temple of Eileithyia, who they say came from the Hyperboreans to Delos and helped Leto in her labour; and from Delos the name spread to other peoples. The Delians sacrifice to Eileithyia and sing a hymn of Olen. But the Kretans suppose that Eileithyia was born at Amnisos in the Knossian territory [in Krete], and that Hera was her mother. Only among the Athenians are the wooden figures of Eileithyia draped to the feet. The women told me that two are Kretan, being offerings of Phaidra [daughter of the mythical King Minos of Krete], and that the third, which is the oldest, Erysikhthon [an early king of Athens] brought from Delos.

It is said that the Empress Eirene, wife of Constantine, first founded this tiny, toy-like church in 787 atop the remains of the ancient temple, but it was destroyed and rebuilt in the following centuries, and many of the original pieces are still visible in the current building. Yet what Panagia Gorgoepikoos (also known as Mikri Mitropoli, or “little Metropolitan,”) lacks in grandeur, it makes up for in charm. A series of friezes adorn the exterior walls, including a pre-Christian Panathenaic depiction, which was carved over in the Christian era with a Maltese cross. Other rich sculptures have been added and reused from other structures in an original recycling effort. Called a “puzzle piece” of reconstruction, approximately one hundred marble and limestone slabs date to a period of more than 1,500 years, and are inscribed with symbols and ornaments from ancient Greece, Rome, Persia, and Mesopotamia, as well as Jewish, Coptic, Catholic, and Islamic imagery.

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