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...obtain good luck general--and the oral narratives associated with St Phanourios and his mother, which seem to constitute the Greek adaptation of the international folktale type 804. The investigation is based on recently collected material as well as the manuscript collections of the public folklore archives.
Introduction
The folk cult of St Phanourios, a newly revealed saint in the Greek Orthodox ecclesiastical tradition, is widespread in modern times, as much in Greece as in Cyprus. A main element of this cult is the preparation of a special bread-based confection or pie, the phanouropita, which is baked not for the saint himself but "for the soul of his mother." The offering of the pie is linked to a series of predictions, as the believers ask the saint in return to reveal to them (according to the false etymological equation of the saint's name with the Greek verb phanerono, "to reveal") something they have lost or, in more general terms, something good. For unmarried girls this means the revelation of a good "fortune"; that is, a good bridegroom--and, respectively, a good bride for the unmarried men.
We can discern two strands of traditions associated with St Phanourios. On the one hand, we have a limited iconographic and hagiological tradition (both manuscript and printed), which is relatively recent, since the saint is not mentioned in the Byzantine sources. On the other hand, we have a rich but relatively unrecorded folk tradition, which develops both as oral literature and as ritual practice--two fields that are always interdependent.
This paper deals with the conditions in which this folk tradition was shaped and evolved, mainly from the beginning of the twentieth century up to its present-day form. Unlike other folk religious customs that seem to be gradually fading away, or are preserved in a merely occasional and/or revivalist manner within the context of the phenomenon of folklorismus (in festivals, municipal events, and so on), the customs related to St Phanourios are considerably more widespread, as much in rural as in urban areas. Being religious customs, they are incorporated into the ecclesiastical practice, but they also express elements of a rich folk tradition that is somewhat differentiated from the Christian tradition.
This paper is based on a fragmentary corpus of material recently collected during field research in various regions of Greece and Cyprus. The paper also draws on a diverse body of material found in the manuscript collections at the archives of the Academy of Athens, the Greek Folklore Society, and the Centre for Asia Minor Studies.
My approach to the material is a combination of the diachronic and the synchronic methods, as my main objective was to examine the historical evolution of the custom and at the same time to study a situation currently existing in Greek society. Given the lack of any other collections or studies concerning these customs and their associated narratives, this paper details the various aspects of the custom within the wider context of popular religion.
The Written Tradition
The miracles of St Phanourios are described in two manuscripts. The first of these, included in the Cod. Vat. Gr. 1190 (dating from 1542), was written in Crete and was published in the Acta Sanctorum. The second originates from Heraklion, dating from 1600-1640 (Vassilakes-Mavrakakes 1980-81, 226).
Both manuscripts describe a miracle that took place in Rhodes, which caused the saint's cult to spread from Rhodes to Crete. Four Cretan priests on their way back from Methoni and Koroni of the Peloponnese (where they had travelled to be ordained, since there was no Orthodox bishop in Crete during the times of Venetian Rule) were attacked by Turkish pirates and taken as slaves to Palatia in Asia Minor. The Cretan authorities took an interest in the ransoming of them. Following the failure of an ambassador sent for that purpose, Father Ionas, the priests' confessor, travelled to Rhodes, a stopping-point between Crete and Palatia, and assigned the task of ensuring their release to Lord Georgios Petranis. At the time, Palatia was at war; as it did not impede communication with Rhodes, it must have been a conflict unrelated to the Christian
countries of the West (probably the war of 1360 between the emirates of Aidyn and Mendeshe; see Zachariadou 1964, 317-18). The Vatican manuscript states that Metropolite Neilos--referring to Metropolitan Bishop Neilos Diasorinos, who resided in Rhodes between 1357 and 1366---advised Father Ionas to go to the monastery of St Phanourios and to ask for the saint's help. He went and prayed to the saint, as advised, and immediately afterwards met Theodoros, a former prisoner in Palatia, who had been recently set free, and who informed him that Lord Petranis was successfully continuing negotiations for the release of the priests. After this, full of gratitude towards St Phanourios, Father Ionas returned to Crete bringing with him an icon of the saint--and, as a result, his cult also spread to this island.
Although the second manuscript, from Heraklion, is a later one (dating from the seventeenth century), it provides more detailed information about the event. It confirms that the three priests were liberated and identifies the monk, Ionas, who appears in the story, as Ionas Palamas, bishop of Varsamonero, the founder of the chapel of St Phanourios, thus moving the story of the miracle forward into the first decades of the fifteenth century (with a terminus ante quem in the year 1426 when the chapel of St Phanourios was erected).
The second part of the Vatican manuscript enumerates several miracles attributed to the saint in Crete, such as helping in the discovery of lost animals and objects, and in the curing of sick people and animals.
More information on St Phanourios can be found in the Synaxaria ("Legend Records") of the nineteenth century. In the addition to the details they offer regarding the miracle of the Cretan priests' release, they provide information on the origins of St Phanourios's cult. These are linked to a story about the fourteenth-century discovery, during repair work at the south walls of the City of Rhodes, of the ruins of a church along with an icon on which the Metropolite of Rhodes, Neilos, read the saint's name: "Phanourios."
St Phanourios is mentioned in Makarios Notaras's Neon Leimonarion (literally, "New Orchard," a "new collection" of teachings and deeds by saints, martyrs and monks, published in Venice in 1819), and in the Synaxaristis (Collection of Legend Records) of the Twelve Months, by Nikodimos the Agioreitis, which was completed in 1807 and published in 1819. [1] References to St Phanourios proliferate in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century, with the appearance of new editions of the Synaxaristis and the Neon Leimonarion, as well as new publications that followed the older texts (Nikolopoulos 2000, 361-642; Orlandos 1948).
The inclusion of St Phanourios in the hagiology of the Greek Orthodox Church by Nikodimos the Agioreitis (who collected records of old saints and discovered newly-revealed martyrs, as part of a major hagiological project) thus introduced this newly-revealed saint into the bosom of the Church and its ecclesiastical rituals of more recent times. Moreover, Nikodimos's version of the saint's life was later popularised through accessible editions, which reached a much wider public, from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards.
According to Vassilakes-Mavrakakes, the story of the discovery of the church in Rhodes was known in Crete when the chapel of St Phanourios in Valsamonero was built and decorated in the early fifteenth century, given that it is depicted in a scene on the north wall of the chapel. Vassilakes-Mavrakakes also offers an explanation for the fact that Metropolite Neilos is mentioned in both these stories (concerning the discovery of the church and icon, and the miracle of the liberation of the priests): if the release of the Cretan priests was brought forward to the early fifteenth century, when Neilos was no longer alive, this was obviously done in order to reinforce the authenticity of the facts, since Neilos was linked with the discovery of the church and icon in Rhodes. Vassilakes bases her argument on the analysis both of the two manuscripts, and of the icons of the saint in Crete and Mount Athos, and concludes that St Phanourios is an invented saint who was created due to the erroneous reading of an inscription on an icon. She posits that the icon discovered in Rhodes probably depicted twelve scenes from the martyrdom and miracles of St George--a very popular saint in Rhodes--and the name Phanourios must have been devised due to a misspelling of his cognomen as St George the "Phanerotis" (literally, the "One who reveals"). The fact that no icon of St Phanourios was preserved in Rhodes suggests that the mistake was quickly recognised and the saint was set aside, contrary to what happened in Crete where his cult spread widely.
The Folk Tradition: The Custom
The preparation of breads is a constant feature of Greek folk customs connected with various occasions...
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