Everyday bread for a Greek Orthodox Easter

on the Aegean island of Patmos, 1989.

Residents of the Aegean island of Patmos, a pair of rocky peaks in the Dodecanese within sight of the Turkish coast and a monastery and convent at its zenith, celebrate Easter week according to the Gregorian calendar week, sometimes even a month, later than the western church. This year’s Easter Sunday is May 5th.

In 1989, while researching European Festival Food, a companion volume to European Peasant Cooking,  I spent Easter week on Patms, joining the congregation of the Monastery of St. John at Chora, where the monks held open house to welcome all-comers from Palm Sunday to Easter Monday in honor of the monastery’s patron, St John the Divine, believed by the devout to have penned The Book of Revelations - dire warnings of imminent Armageddon then as now - in a cave close by.

Easter is to Eastern Orthodoxy as Christmas is to the Western Church - the time when all good Greeks go back home to celebrate the holiday with their families. The monastery is the center of activity throughout Holy Week, and the monastery church remains open day and night to all comers with free water from the well and bread from the bakery set out in basket at the entrance.

On Easter Thursday, however, the monastery comes to the congregation (instead of the other way round) for a re-enactment of the Last Supper by the monks and their Patriarch, on a dais set up in the village square at the edge of a precipience that falls straight to the sea and from then thence towards gates of Jerusalem itself.

Many of the monks were married before they took holy orders, and, since this is the time for visiting families, the monastery is busy with reunited families. Grandfathers settle down in a corner of the courtyard to talk over old times while children tumble up and down the whitewashed steps of the frescoed chambers.

Bread for the Host is baked each day in the village bakery - but great crusty wheels of prosforon - offering bread - a full yard in diameter, double-tiered, made with best wheat flour. Only the cross-stamped central piece is distributed from the altar - the rest is laid out in shallow baskets for those who keep the long hours of the vigils, or are taken home for the Easter meals. The scent which curls down the steep white-washed streets calls the inhabitants to Mass more persuasively even than the tolling bells.

In devout Chora, I was told, while egg-cracking is permitted as a friendly gesture when wishing neighbours “Christ is risen” after midnight mass, do not like to make too much of the Sunday feasting. Not for them the whole lamb carcass turning on the spit in the hills or at the beach, as happens at the port where the sailors gather for the holiday.

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In the village, Sunday’s lamb - chunked and flavoured with garlic, lemon and rosemary and basted with olive oil - is taken to the bakery take advantage of the oven after the last bread-baking. On Sunday, everyone stays at home to share the meal quietly with family, friends and (happily for me) passing strangers who happen to be around. The following day, however, everything changes amd the mood lightens from sacred to secular.

Spring is in the air, sweet things are permitted, the nuns bake all day in the convent kitchen, and the Patriarch descends from the monastery to bless his congregation and their dwellings with water shaken from a posy of spring flowers

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p.s. Further and better particulars of Easter on Patmos in “European Festival Food” aka “European Seasonal Food” (Grub Street)

p.p.s. Beloved paid subscribers (you know who you are!) will shortly be in receipt of Easter Monday’s Convent Cake with honey.