The churches of Myloi

South of the village, near the springs of Lerna

Church of Agios Dimitrios

Feast day 26 October

The church stands on the southern edge of the village, near the cemetery and the springs of Lerna. It is one of the stops on the Visit Myloi walking route.

The saint

Saint Demetrios of Thessaloniki was a Christian martyr of the early 4th century, put to death under the Roman emperors. He is one of the most loved saints in Greece and the patron saint of Thessaloniki, often shown as a young soldier on horseback.

The soldier-martyr of Thessaloniki

According to his Life, Demetrios came from a noble family of Thessaloniki and served as an officer in the Roman army. When it became known that he was teaching the Christian faith, he was imprisoned in a bathhouse and there, around 306, killed with spears on the emperor’s orders. Shortly before, the young Nestor, with his blessing, had defeated the emperor’s favourite gladiator, Lyaeus, in the arena. A great basilica was later built over the place of his martyrdom; it still stands in the centre of Thessaloniki.

The myrrh-gusher and the little summer

Demetrios is called the Myrovlytis, the myrrh-gusher, because fragrant oil was said to flow from his tomb. His feast on 26 October often falls in a spell of mild autumn weather that Greeks call “the little summer of Saint Demetrios”. In many places it also marked the end of the farming year: the new wine is opened, and in earlier times shepherds and farm workers settled their agreements around this date.

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Ruin in the castle on Pontinos, 14th century

The lost church in the castle

Ruin Feast day: Unknown

Myloi has three churches in use, and a fourth that was forgotten for centuries. On a German survey plan of the castle drawn in 1957, a small building against the eastern wall of the outer ward is marked “Kirchenruine”: church ruin.

What the archaeologists found

The ruin has since been studied. It is a small church with a single room, about 9.00 by 4.80 metres, with a semicircular apse at the east end. The apse rests on the castle wall, which bends outward at that point to make room for it. The sanctuary had a paved floor raised by one step, and there is no trace of a built altar or of an iconostasis. For the researchers these are signs that it was a Latin, Roman Catholic church, built for the Frankish lords of the castle. That is a strong indication, not a proof.

A priest who had to stay

In his will of 1347, Gautier VI de Brienne, Lord of Argos and Nauplia, left sixty hyperpyra, Byzantine gold coins, every year for a church and its priest at his estate of Kiveri. The money was to come from the rent of a shop in Argos where cloth was sold. In return, the priest had to live at the castle permanently and celebrate mass every day. Another fifty hyperpyra were set aside for the church's books, vessels and furnishings. Whether this was the same building cannot be proven. But somewhere on Pontinos hill, a priest once said mass every morning above the Argolid plain, because his lord had wished it.

What we do not know

The name of the church, its saint, the exact date it was built and the identity of the priest are still unknown.

Source: I. Varalis, K. Bountouris, G. Tsekes, ‘Το Λατινικό κάστρο CHIVERI στους Μύλους Λέρνας’ (conference Fortification architecture in the Peloponnese, Loutraki 2011), and the will of Gautier VI de Brienne (1347), both as cited by Argoliki Vivliothiki, ‘The Chamires castle’ (10 Sept 2026); W. E. McLeod, ‘Kiveri and Thermisi’, Hesperia 31 (1962) 378–392.

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