The Church of Crete’s Metropolitan of Kisamos and Selinos, His Eminence Amphilochios, this week presided over a Divine Liturgy at the Cave of St. Sophia, Greek for God’s Holy Wisdom, which is located in the historic Topolia Gorge on the large island.
The specific chapel is linked with two significant chapters in Crete’s post-medieval history.
A group of Cretan volunteers that had fought the Ottomans in the 1453 siege of Constantinople survived the momentous battle and finally arrived back on the island. They carried with them an icon of the Holy Wisdom, which they hid in one of the cave’s many crevices.
The same cave was the setting where the Bishop of Kissamos, Misail Psaromiligos, in 1660, asked his nephew, the leader of a rebellion against Venetian rule, to cut his and his brother’s head off and present it to the authorities — ostensibly, as proof that his nephew was not behind the uprising.