CHIONOCHORI
The picturesque, mountain village of Chionochori, once home to stock breeders but now deserted, lies some 7 kilometres north of Oinousa on the southern slopes of Mount Menoikios at an altitude of 515 metres. It is an hour's walk to the south-east of the Monastery of the Timios Prodromos. The village was founded by inhabitants of the neighbouring village of Keranitsas (known as Keranitza in Byzantine times). Later on, semi-nomadic Vlachs from Abdella near Grevena settled in the village. Tradition has it that they had abandoned their homelands to escape further persecution at the hands of Ali Pasha Tepelenli.During the years of Turkish occupation, the village came to be known as Karlikioi -meaning "Snow Village" - because its inhabitants would store snow in holes during the winter to sell in the city during the summer months. Following liberation in 1913, the village became an administrative part of the Community of Agios Pneuma. In 1923 it became a community in its own right, but it is today part of the Municipality of Serres. The villagers started drifting away from the village in 1927 to settle in neighbouring Oinousa. The last inhabitant left the village for good in 1967.The church of the Agioi Anargiroi stands in the centre of the village. This post-Byzantine church dates from the first half of the Nineteenth century, and its basilica is of a three-aisled design, the central aisle being vaulted. The wooden rood-screen contains fragments of a former carved and gilded screen from the early Eighteenth century. The masterly icons were painted during the second half of the Nineteenth century, as were the folk-art pictures on the walls.A small Byzantine chapel (measuring 3.67 by 7.77 metres) has survived, carved into the stone of the elevated western section of the church's exonarthex. The chapel is ascribed to the catholikon of the Byzantine Monastery of the Agioi Anargiroi. The entrance - with a wood surround - faces east. A narrow passageway leads from the entrance into the main section of the chapel with its two octagonal marble columns topped by capitals. The tops of the capitals are carved with a honeysuckle design, while the sides of one are decorated with rosettes, and the other with crosses. The small sanctuary is situated to the right of the passageway. The rood-screen consists of a marble architrave with a cross in its centre flanked by decorative meanders and rhombuses. The screen is supported by two small pillars. Two marble portals decorated with crosses are attached to the lower part of the screen. A third, this time carved with crosses and rosettes, is built into the outside wall at the south end of the church. The architrave of the Royal Gate is also executed in marble.
To the north of the entrance, the picture of the saint has survived. He is depicted holding a Gospel in his left hand, which he is blessing with his right. The passageway into the cave-like chapel is covered with wall paintings of the same saint and representation of the Beheading of the Baptist, while the Royal Gate in the rood screen is flanked by a depiction of Christ on the one side, and the Virgin holding the infant Christ in her left arm on the other. The painting of the Agioi Anargiroi can still be made out on the north wall of the main chapel: the two healer saints each hold an open chest in their arms containing the tools and medicines of their trade. There is an icon of an unidentified saint or martyr next to that of the Anargiroi, who is holding a martyr's sceptre or cross in his right hand. The icons in the central section and the passageway are among the oldest in the church, and are all painted directly onto the natural stone. Many ascribe several of the wall paintings in the important neighbouring monastery of the Timios Prodromos to this same anonymous artist.The interior of the church is covered with post-Byzantine wall icons which were painted at a later date. The main frieze of the Virgin with Child, with Saint John Chrysostom, Christ, the Virgin, Saint Stephanos and Saint Grigorios arraigned around them is to be found in the carved niche in the eastern wall.The history of this Byzantine church is linked to Ioannikios of Serres, the founder of the Monastery of the Timios Prodromos. According to the first chapter of the Rubric drawn up by his nephew, the Blessed Ioakeim (later Ioannis), the Metropolitan of Zichne and second founder of the same monastery, shortly after his uncle's departure from Mount Athos, where he had taken his vows and been ordained as a priest, he returned in around 1260 to the city of his birth
Once there, he set off in search of a remote spot on the eastern slopes of Mount Menoikios to shut himself off from the world and continue his monastic existence. He found a small, abandoned, uncared for cell, with only its small church - which was dedicated to Saints Kosmas and Damianos, the Anargiroi - still intact. Having settled there with his two year old orphaned nephew, he took great care of it, rebuilt its cells and made it into a refuge for ascetics. He left a few years prior to 1279, leaving an older ascetic in his place, having succeeded in his goal of attracting other monks to the place, where he had built cells for them. He then set off with his nephew in search of another inaccessible area further to the west. He lived for a short time in a damp cave before descending lower down the mountain and founding the famous monastery of the Timios Prodromos.Later Byzantine sources, dating from between 1310 and 1357, refer to the church of the Anargiroi as a dependency of the Athonite Monastery of the Ibiroi, and ascribe to it the added epithet of "Leaskos". In time the monastery acquired its own dependency: the Monastery of Ioannis Theologos of Libobistos, near Serres. The Monastery of the Anargiroi seems to have enjoyed something of an apogee during this period, since a golden bull issued by Emperor Andronikos II in 1322 assigned both monks and a number of properties to the monastery, including land in Trevesaina (present-day Oinousa), Trevesenikia, and the area surrounding the monastery itself at Libobistos, near Serres Castle. These final grants of land, especially the ownership of the dependency at Keranitza, were to cause a great deal of animosity on the part of the neighbouring monastery of the Timios Prodromos.During the period of Serbian rule, two golden bulls issued by Stefan Dousan in 1346 confirm the monastery of the glorious miracle-working Anargiroi to be a dependency of the Iberite Monastery. A later golden bull of 1351 issued by Ioannis VI Cantacuzenus refers to the monastery as an "agridion". We come across the last reference to the monastic dependency of the Agioi Anargiroi in a golden bull of confirmation issued by Ioannis V Palaiologos in 1357 concerning the possessions of the Athonite monastery of Ibiroi. In all probability, the monastery was destroyed shortly before 1371.
Writer:
Petros K.Samsaris
