I
had to scan off small B&W prints, but here is Ay. Sotiros at Gardenitsa, just up the road from Kitta. Many of these are family churches, you could say Maniate clan churches, which is why they are so many and so extremely small. But there was
still a priest serving them in 1960; they
still were consecrated. A quarter century (almost) later I came back and found the grandhildren of these women, widows so mavrophoroi, the girls in shorts, sunning where I
had photographed the giagiades in 1960. Also, at that time, in the late 1980s, the
church was deteriorating. Many, I think, now are being
restored. Periplinthitiko construction is inherently weak, so such upkeep is necessary.
Megaw dated the Gardenitsa chuch to the 11th century (article in Annual of the British School at
Athens, early 1930s, following a merely exploratory one by Ramsey Traquair in 1909/10 in the same journal.
I promise not to post a bunch of
Byzantine churches here, but my trips to sourthern Laconia were among the richest experiences of my life, and just because one is a classicist one ought not to ignore all the rest, or to just leap from
Alexander to Mavromichalis!
Thank you! That is a lovely
church, beautifully resotred.
Pat L.
P.S. The women were not just photographed as 'types'; they informed me that they are the descendants of the family and the keepers of the
church, and I recorded WHO they are not 'what'. The adolescents I talked to later, also, were
members of the family.