A MIDNIGHT MASS
[Illustration]
We spent Easter Sunday at Paros. It proved to be a mild and not
especially remarkable day in the local church, which was old and quaint
and possessed of many highly interesting features within and without, of
which we must speak later on, for some of its portions date back to the
pagan days. Its floor was littered with the aromatic leaves which had
been dropped and trampled under foot the night before by the worshipers
at the midnight mass; for it appeared that the chief observance of the
feast in the Greek church was on the night before Easter, rather than on
the day itself. Indeed we ourselves had been so fortunate, on the
previous evening, as to attend this quaint nocturnal ceremony at the
neighboring island of Ios, or Nios, as it is variously called.
Our little ship, as is the usual custom among the Greeks, had a shrine
in the end of its saloon, with an icon, and a lamp was perpetually
burning before it. The Greek takes his religion seriously, and makes it
a part of his life afloat and ashore, it would seem. On Good Friday, for
example, our national flag was lowered to half-mast and kept there in
token of mourning for the crucified Lord, until the church proclaimed
His rising from the dead, when it once again mounted joyously to the
peak. The men seemed religiously inclined, and it was in deference to a
request of the united crew, preferred while we lay in the harbor of
Santorin, that it was decided to run north from that island to Nios,
which was not far away and which possessed one of the best harbors in
the Ægean, in order that the native sailors and the captain might
observe the churchly festival according to custom—a request that was the
more readily granted because we were all rather anxious to see the
Easter-eve ceremony at its climax. Those who had witnessed it in
previous years vouched for it as highly interesting, and such proved to
be the fact; for between the ceremony itself and the excitement of
reaching the scene, this evening furnished one of the most enjoyable of
all our island experiences.
In reply to questions touching upon the remoteness of the church at Nios
from the landing, the second officer, who spoke Italian, had assured us
with a high disregard of the truth that it was “vicino! vicino!” It was
pitch dark before we neared Nios, however, and as the moon was due to be
late in rising that night we got no warning glimpse of the land, but
were made aware of its approach only by a shapeless bulk in the dark
which suddenly appeared on either hand, the entrance to the harbor being
vaguely indicated by a single light, past which we felt our way at
little more than a drifting pace until we were dimly conscious of hills
all about, half-guessed rather than visible in the gloom. Then, faint
and far away, we began to hear the clamor of the village bells, rung
with that insistent clatter so familiar to those acquainted with
southern European churches. That their notes sounded so distant gave us
some idea at the outset that the mate’s “vicino” might prove to be a
rather misleading promise, but very little was to be told by the sound,
save that the churches from which the bells were pealing lay off
somewhere to the right and apparently up a hill. Light there was none,
not even a glimmer; and our three dories put off for the shore over an
inky sea in becoming and decorous silence, toward the point where a
gloom even more dense than the sky showed that there was land. The
effect of it all was curious and had not a little of solemnity in it, as
we groped our way to shore with careful oars and then felt about in the
dark for the landing. The forward boat soon announced that some stone
steps leading upward from the water had been found, and the rowers
immediately raised a shout for lights, as one by one we were handed up
the slimy stairs to the top of a broad stone quay, on which some white
buildings could be dimly seen. A lantern did materialize mysteriously
from some nook among the ghostly houses, and came bobbing down to the
water’s edge, serving little purpose, however, save to make the rest of
the darkness more obscure. By its diminished ray the party were
assembled in a compact body, and received admonition to keep together
and to follow as closely as possible the leader, who bore the light.
These instructions, while simple enough to give, proved decidedly
difficult to follow. The moon was far below the horizon, and the stars,
while numerous and brilliant, gave little aid to strangers in a strange
land, who could see no more than that they were on a deserted pier
flanked by dim warehouses, and a long distance from the bells which were
calling the devout to midnight prayer. The lantern set off along the
flagstones of the deserted hamlet; and after it in single file clattered
the rest of us, keeping up as best we could. We emerged in short order
from the little group of huts by the wharf and came out into a vast and
silent country, where all was darker than before, save where the leading
lantern pursued its fantastic way upward over what turned out to be a
roughly paved mule track leading into a hill. Like most mule tracks, it
mounted by steps, rather than by inclines, and the progress of the long
file of our party was slow and painful, necessitating frequent halts on
the part of the guide with the lantern, while a warning word was
constantly being passed back along the stumbling line of pedestrians as
each in turn stubbed his toes over an unlooked-for rise in the grade.
There was little danger of wandering off the path, for it was bordered
by high banks. The one trouble was to keep one’s feet and not to stumble
as we climbed in the dark, able scarcely to see one another and much
less to see anything of the path. The bells ceased to ring as we
proceeded, and even that dim clue to the distance of the town was lost.
Decidedly it was weird, this stumbling walk up an unknown and
unfrequented island path in the dead of night; for it was long past
eleven of the clock, and the Easter mass, as we knew, should reach its
most interesting point at about twelve. Knowing this we made such haste
as we could and the little town of Nios stole upon us ere we were aware,
its silent buildings of gray closing in upon the road and surrounding us
without our realizing their presence, until a sudden turning of the way
caused the lantern far ahead to disappear entirely from our view in the
mazes of the town.
It was as deserted as the little wharf had been. Moreover it was as
crooked as it was dark. Here and there an open doorway gave out across
the way a single bar of yellow light, but most of the habitations were
as silent as the tomb, their owners and occupants being in church long
before. On and on through a seeming labyrinth of little streets we
wound, the long thread of the party serving as the sole clue to the way,
as did Ariadne’s cord; for the lantern was never visible to the rear
guard now, owing to the turns and twists of the highway. Twice we met
belated church-goers coming down from side paths with their tiny
lanterns, and the utter astonishment on their faces at beholding this
unexpected inundation of foreigners at that unearthly hour of night was
as amusing as it was natural. Once the thread of the party was broken at
a corner, and for an anxious moment there was a council of war as to
which street to take. It was a lucky guess, however, for a sudden turn
brought the laggards out of the obscurity and into a lighted square
before the doors of the church itself—a tiny church, white walled and
low roofed, and filled apparently to its doors, while from its open
portals trickled the monotonous chant of a male choir, the voices always
returning to a well-marked and not unmelodious refrain.
In some mysterious way, room was made for us in the stifling church,
crowded as it was with men and women. Candles furnished the only light.
On the right a choir of men and boys, led by the local schoolmaster,
chanted their unending, haunting minor litany. An old and bespectacled
priest peered down over the congregation from the door of the
iconostasis. Worshipers came and went. The men seemed especially devout,
taking up the icon before the entrance and kissing it passionately and
repeatedly. On each of us as we entered was pressed a slender taper of
yellow wax, perhaps a foot in length, and we stood crowded in the little
auditorium holding these before us expectantly, and regarded with lively
and good-humored curiosity by the good people within. Presently the
priest came forward from the door of the altar-screen with his candle
alight, which was the signal for an excited scramble by a dozen small
boys nearest him to get their tapers lighted first—after which the fire
ran from candle to candle until everybody bore his tiny torch; and
following the old priest, we all trooped out into the square before the
church, where the service continued.
That was a sight not easily to be forgotten—the tiny square, in the
centre of which stood the catafalque of Christ, while all around stood
the throng of worshipers, each bearing his flaring taper, the whole
place flooded with a yellow glow. The monotone of the service continued
as before. The gentle night breeze sufficed now and then to put out an
unsheltered candle here and there, but as often as this occurred the
bystanders gave of their fire, and the illumination was renewed as often
as interrupted.
The quaint service culminated with the proclamation of the priest that
Christ had risen,—"Christos anéste,"—at which magic words all restraint
was thrown off and the worshipers abandoned themselves to transports of
holy joy. A stalwart man seized the bell-rope that dangled outside the
church and rang a lively toccata on the multiple bells above, while
exuberant boys let fly explosive torpedoes at the walls of neighboring
houses, making a merry din after the true Mediterranean fashion; for the
religious festivals of all southern countries appear to be held fit
occasions for demonstrations akin unto those with which we are wont to
observe our own national birthday. We were soon aware that other
churches of the vicinity had reached the “Christos anéste” at about the
same hour, for distant bells and other firecrackers and torpedoes
speedily announced the rising of the Lord.
Doubtless a part of the Easter abandon is due to the reaction from the
rigorous keeping of Lent among the Greeks, as well as to a devout
sentiment that renews itself annually at this festival with a fervor
that might well betoken the first novel discovery of eternal salvation
as a divine truth. The Greek Lent is an austere season, in which the
abstinence from food and wine is astonishingly thorough. Indeed, it has
been reported by various travelers in Hellas in years past that they
were seriously inconvenienced by the inability they met, especially in
Holy Week, to procure sufficient food; for the peasantry were
unanimously fasting, and unexpected wayfarers in the interior could find
but little cheer. The native manages to exist on surprisingly little
sustenance during the forty days. On the arrival of Easter it is not
strange that he casts restraint to the winds and manifests a delight
that is obviously unbounded. However, it need not be inferred from this
that undue license prevails, for this apparently was not the case—not in
Nios, at any rate. The service, after the interruption afforded by bells
and cannonading, resumed its course, and was said to endure until three
o'clock in the morning; a fact which might seem to indicate that the
Easter pleasuring was capable of a decent restraint and postponement,
although the Lord had officially risen and death was swallowed up in
victory.
Our own devotion was not equal to the task of staying through this long
mass, as it was already well past the midnight hour, and we had made a
long and strenuous day of it. So, with repeated exchanges of “Christos
anéste” between ourselves and the villagers, we set out again through
the narrow byways of the town, and down over the rough mule path to the
ship, each of us bearing his flaring taper and shielding it as well as
possible from the night wind; for the sailors were bent on getting some
of that sacred flame aboard alive, and in consequence saw to it that
extinguished candles were promptly relighted lest we lose altogether the
precious fire. We made a long and ghostly procession of winking lights
as we streamed down over the hillside and out to the boats—a fitting
culmination to one of the most curious experiences which the Ægean
vouchsafed us.
We found the “red eggs” peculiar to the Greek Easter awaiting us when we
came aboard—eggs, hard-boiled and colored with beet juice or some
similar coloring matter, bowls of which were destined to become a
familiar sight during the week or two that followed the Easter season.
The Greeks maintain that this is a commemoration of a miracle which was
once performed to convince a skeptical woman of the reality of the
resurrection. She was walking home, it seems, with an apron full of eggs
which she had bought, when she met a friend whose countenance expressed
unusual rejoicing, and who ran to meet her, crying, “Have you heard the
news?” “Surely not,” was the reply. “What is this news?” “Why, Christ
the Lord is risen!” “Indeed,” responded the skeptic, "that I cannot
believe; nor shall I believe it unless the eggs that I carry in my apron
shall have turned red." And red they proved to be when she looked at
them!
Owing to the exhaustion due to the festivities of the night before, we
found Easter Sunday at Paros a quiet day indeed. The streets of the
little town proved to be practically deserted, for it was a day of
homekeeping, and no doubt one of feasting. The occasional vicious snap
of a firecracker was to be heard as we landed on the mole that serves
the chief town of Paros for a wharf and started for a short Sunday
morning ramble through the streets. From the landing stage the most
conspicuous object in Paros was a large white church not far from the
water, rejoicing in the name of the “Virgin of a Hundred Gates,” as we
were told we should interpret the epithet “hekatonpyliani.” It proved to
be a sort of triple church, possessing side chapels on the right and
left of the main auditorium, and almost as large. In that at the right
was to be seen a cruciform baptismal font, very venerable and only a
little raised from the level of the floor, indicating the uses to which
this apartment of the church was put. The presence of ancient marble
columns incorporated into this early Christian edifice was likewise
striking. In the main church the most noticeable thing was the
employment of a stone altar-screen, or iconostasis, with three doors
leading into the apse behind instead of the customary single one, an
arrangement which has often been commented upon as resembling the
proskenion of the ancient theatre. It was all deserted, and the air was
heavy with old incense and with the balsamic perfume of the leaves and
branches that had fallen to the floor and been trampled upon during the
mass of the previous night. It was all very still, very damp and cool,
and evidently very old, doubtless supplanting some previous pagan
shrine.
In the court before the church stood a sort of abandoned monastery, as
at the pass of Daphne, only this one was spotless white, and with its
walls served to shut in completely the area in front of the church
itself. In a portion of the buildings of this inclosure is a small
museum, chiefly notable for inscriptions, one of which refers to
Archilochus, the writer of Iambic verse, who lived in Paros in the
seventh century before the birth of Christ.
[Illustration: OLD COLUMNS IN CHURCH. PAROS]
The chief fame of Paros was, of course, for its marbles. The quarries
whence these superb blocks came lay off to the northeast, we were aware;
and had time only allowed, they might have been explored with profit.
The Parian marble was the favorite one for statues, owing to its
incomparable purity and translucence, and the facility with which it
could be worked up to a high finish. It was quarried under ground, and
thus derived its designation, “lychnites,” or “quarried-by-candlelight.”
Those who have visited the subterranean chambers formed by the men who
anciently took marble from the spot relate that the exploration of the
quarries is fraught with considerable interest and with not a little
danger, owing to the complex nature of the galleries and the varying
levels.
In wandering around the little modern town which occupies the site of
the ancient city of Paros, and bears the name of Paroikia, we found not
a little color to delight the eye, although the streets were generally
rather muddy and squalid. On the southerly side of the harbor, where the
basic rock of the island rises to a considerable height, there was
anciently a small acropolis, which is still crowned with a rather
massive tower built by the Franks out of bits of ancient marble
structures. From the outside, the curious log-cabin effect caused by
using marble columns for the walls, each drum laid with ends outward,
was most apparent and striking. Within we found a tiny shrine, deserted
as the great church had been, but still giving evidence of recent
religious activity. Aside from the remnants of old temples, serving as
the marble logs of this Frankish stronghold, there seemed to be little
in Paros to recall the days when she was one of the richest of all the
Athenian tributaries. A few prehistoric houses have been uncovered and
several ancient tombs. But the most lasting of all the classic monuments
are the quarries, now deserted, but still revealing the marks of the
ancient chisels, whence came the raw material for most of the famous
Greek sculptures preserved to us.
To us, seated on the pebbly beach and idly listening to the lapping of
the Ægean waves, as we sunned ourselves and awaited the time for
embarking, there appeared a native, gorgeous in clothes of a
suspiciously American cut. He drew near, smiling frankly, and with a
comprehensive gesture which explicitly included the ladies in his query,
said: “Where do you fellers come from?” He had served in the American
navy, it appeared, and had voyaged as far as the Philippines. Other
Parians ranged themselves at a respectful distance and gazed in
open-mouthed admiration at their fellow townsman who understood how to
talk with the foreigners, and who walked along with a lady on either
side, whom he constantly addressed as “you fellers” to their unbounded
amusement and delight. We convoyed him to a wayside inn near the quay,
under two spindling plane trees, and plied him with coffee as a reward
for his courtesy and interest; and later we left him standing with bared
head watching our little ship steam away westward, toward the setting
sun and that land to which he hoped one day to follow us once more.
Our return to Athens from our island cruise was by way of the
southeastern shore of the Peloponnesus, touching at Monemvasía, a rocky
promontory near the most southern cape, and connected with the mainland
by a very narrow isthmus, which it has even been necessary to bridge at
one point; so that, strictly speaking, Monemvasía is an island, rather
than a promontory or peninsula. It is a most striking rock, resembling
Gibraltar in shape, though vastly smaller. In fact, like Gibraltar, it
has the history of an important strategic point, though it is such no
longer. Its summit is still crowned by a system of defenses built by the
Franks, and the inclosure, which includes the entire top of the rock,
also contains a ruined church. A narrow and not unpicturesque town
straggles along the shore directly beneath the towering rock itself,
much as the town of Gibraltar does, and in it may be seen other ruined
churches, belonging to the Frankish period largely, and unused now. The
entrance to this village is through a formidable stone gateway in the
wall, which descends from the sheer side of the cliff above. A steep
zig-zag path leads up from the town to the fort, which although deserted
is kept locked, so that a key must be procured before ascending.
Those who have seen the Norman defenses at the promontory of Cefalù, on
the northern coast of Sicily, will recognize at once a striking
similarity between that place and this Grecian one, not only from a
topographical standpoint, but from the arrangement of the walls at the
top and lower down at the gateway that bars the upward path. Cefalù,
however, is in a more ruinous condition than this Frankish fortress
to-day. In point of general situation and view from the summit the two
are certainly very similar, with their broad outlook over sea and
mainland. The sheer sides of the promontory made it a practically
inaccessible citadel from nearly every direction, save that restricted
portion up which the path ascends, and the defense of it against every
foe but starvation was an easy matter. Even besiegers found it no easy
thing to starve out the garrison, for it is on record that the stout old
Crusader Villehardouin sat down before the gates of Monemvasía for three
years before the inhabitants were forced to capitulate.
The name of Monemvasía is derived from the fact that the isolated rock
crowned with the fortress is connected with the mainland by a single
narrow neck affording the only entrance. Hence the Greek μόνη ἔμβασις
(moné emvasis) was combined in the modern pronunciation to form the not
unmusical name of the place and has a perfectly natural explanation.
Moreover the same name, further shortened, lives again in the name of
“Malmsey” wine, which is made from grapes grown on rocky vineyards and
allowed to wither before gathering, as was the custom in the old
Monemvasía wine industry.
Of course the village at the base of the cliff is wholly unimportant
now. Malmsey wine is no longer the chief product of this one solitary
spot, but comes from Santorin, Portugal, Madeira, and a dozen other
places, while Monemvasía and the derivation of the word are largely
forgotten. The town has sunk into a state of poverty, and as for the
fort, it is capable neither by artifice nor by natural surroundings of
defending anything of value, and hence is of no strategic importance. It
has had its day and probably will never have another. It is, however,
ruggedly beautiful, and the town, if degraded and half ruined, is still
highly picturesque, though unfortunately seldom visited by Greek
pilgrimages. It formed a fitting close for our island cruise, and indeed
it is, as we discovered, really an island itself, the ribbon of isthmus
connecting it with the Peloponnesus having been severed years ago, when
Monemvasía was worthy to be counted a stronghold. The gap in the land is
now spanned by a permanent bridge, so that practically Monemvasía is a
promontory still, lofty and rugged, but not ungraceful; and its imposing
bulk loomed large astern as we steamed back along the coast toward the
Piræus and home.
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