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Τinos country routes after Easter

12.04.2014
Guestroom.
Tinos, Agapi village
Tinos, Agapi village
Tinos, is a centre for pilgrimage for the inhabitants of the neighbouring islands, and the Christians who flock to it every year. Reflecting the religiosity of the local inhabitants is the excessive number of chapels, mainly private, which dot the landscape and define the territory of the villages (over forty five villages) posted as sentinels on the mountains and hill tops of the island both inland and overlooking the island’s extensive coastline. On the two hundred square kilometers of the island there are approximately seven hundred and fifty chapels.

 

 

 

 

Remote in the landscape, and representing piety and faith, the outlying chapels on Greek islands and countryside make their presence stronger than the rest of the year, during the week after Easter,Diakenisimos week. Generally, they indicate their own topographical region, since apart from the community and the family to whom a particular chapel belongs, it also belongs to the saint to whom it is dedicated. 

 

The outlying chapel usually is visited by its owners and the community at least twice a year, where a liturgy will be enacted: on the feast day of the Saint and just after Easter, during the forty days between the Resurrection and the Ascension of Christ.“These days were marked by convincing proof of the Resurrection and commandments to the Apostles.”

 

 

The week after Easter is called Διακαινησίμου, (Diakenisimoυ), is the time when all the outlying chapels start having their festivals; the liturgy and the communal meals celebrating the Resurrection of Christ and the saint to whom the chapel is dedicated. During these festivals, the village community to which the chapel belongs and the neighbouring communities, participate going up to the chapel and celebrating in the countryside.

 

 

Before the festival, the place needs to be purified. The day of the festival, everything is cleaned and repainted in white lime, while the holy table or altar is covered in white embroideries, and flowers decorate the chapel and the icons. The order in the chapel reflects the arrival of a renewal, but also reflects a separation from the surrounding wilderness and the past.

 

In particular in Kardiani village on the island of Tinos, three days after Easter, the peasants, joined by the neighbouring communities, celebrate the resurrection at the outlying chapel of St. Peter by the coast.  St Peters’ chapel was built in 1621 and was the property of a peasant of Kardiani who later donated the chapel to the parish church. Next to the church an open space sheltered from the rain and the wind has been built so that the community can participate in the meal of agape, after the liturgy.