Dozens of believers will pass tonight under the entrance of the imposing bell tower of the stone-built holy church of Agios Georgios, in the old town of Xanthi, to watch the procession of the Holy Passion.

With fervor and reverence they will worship the Crucified Christ bearing the signature of a great Greek hagiographer and writer, Fotis Kontoglou.

Kontoglou’s “vision”.

In the 1950s, Kontoglou’s reputation was great. The work was commissioned in 1959 by the then vicar of the church, Father Meletios. But time passed and Kontoglou was late in finishing the work and when he finished it he was late in sending it to Xanthi.

Despite the telegrams sent to him and the pressures he received, he made various excuses and prevented him from sending the Crucified to the temple from where he was ordered.

The vicar of Agios Georgios, Father Dimitrios Maistralis, who in 1996 came to the church as a young deacon, heard an oral testimony that spread from mouth to mouth and is said to have convinced Kontoglou to finally send the Crucified One. In fact, the artist himself seems to have recorded it, noting that he liked the work so much that he wanted to keep it.

According to this testimony, Fotis Kontoglou saw Christ in his sleep, who instructed him to send the work, as he had promised. He took this sign as divine intervention and thus decided to send the Crucified One to Xanthi.

This can also be seen from the special dedicatory inscription of the same, on the back of the Crucified, at the height of the head and the halo: “By the hand of the sinner Photius Nik. Kontoglou from Kydonia M. Asia aϡ N θ + (1959) month of March”.

The spire and the marble funerary monument

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Built in 1835, the holy church of Agios Georgios is located in one of the most beautiful neighborhoods of the old town of Xanthi, above the famous Antika Square, which bears the name of a heroic figure of the local community, the hairdresser Iagos Efstratiou Antika, who was tortured until death by the Bulgarian occupation troops.

Like most of the churches of old Xanthi that were built during the Ottoman rule, the church is a three-nave basilica without a dome. The tobacco merchants of Xanthi contributed decisively to its construction. Inside the church, the wooden despotic throne, the wood-carved pulpit with the paintings of the Evangelists and the crystal chandeliers brought from Russia create a sensation.

The tower-like spire, where the entrance to the church is, was built in 1927, much later than the original church, since the Turks did not allow churches to have bell towers. Also impressive in the courtyard is the marble funerary monument dedicated by Stavros Davidovich to the memory of his wife Euthalia, who came from Xanthi and died of cholera in Kiev in 1866.
In the same parish, a few meters away, belongs the equally impressive stone-built church of Agios Vlasios, directly opposite the mansion where Manos Hatzidakis spent his childhood with his family.

A few words about Fotis Kontoglou

Fotis Kontoglou was born on November 8, 1895 in Ayvali (Kydonias) in Asia Minor with the surname Apostolelis. He searched both in his literary and painting work for “Greekness”, i.e. an authentic expression, returning to the Greek tradition. He had a very important contribution to the field of Byzantine iconography. His work is very large, among which the restoration of the frescoes of Mystras stands out. His students were Giannis Tsarouchis and Nikos Eggonopoulos.
He died prematurely on July 13, 1965, in Evangelismos from a post-operative infection, following an operation to remove stones from the bladder. He was suffering physically and mentally in the last years of his life after a car accident in 1963.