18 09-28-saint-anna-the-nun corr. 2 (1)

Cape Lefkates or Lefkatas in Lefkada island and its importance, through the ages

1. Saint Anna, the nun at Leukates
(some thoughts about Cape Lefkatas)
By A.G.Perdikaris

2. Ancient cape “Leucates”, today's
“Lefkatas”, Lefkas Island, western
Greece
Lefkatas or Sappho's Leap,
is the most southerly cape
on the island of Lefkas.
It is a white rock which
stretches out from Lefkas
into the sea towards
Cephallonia.
This rock boasts a temple of
Apollo, and the leap from it
was believed to end a
repelled love

3. Cape Leucates: A very important
point on the way from Greece to
Italy
S. Maria di Leuca (Italy)
Leucates or Leucatas (Greece )

4. Lefkas in the Antiquity: A station
on the way to Italy

5. Lefkas in Byzantine period:
(a poor area)
 “On the sixth of December we came to Leucas, where, as by all the other bishops, we
were most unkindly received and treated by the bishop who is a eunuch. In all Greece -
I speak the truth and do not lie - I found no hospitable bishops. They are both poor and
rich; rich in gold coins wherewith they gamble recklessly - poor in servants and utensils.
They sit by themselves at a bare little table, with a ship's biscuit in front of them, and
instead of drinking their bath water they sip it from a tiny glass. They do their own
buying and selling; they close and open their doors themselves; they are their own
stewards, their own ass-drivers, their own "capones" - aha, I meant to write
"caupones", but the thing is so true, that it made me write the truth against my will - as
I say, they are "capones", that is, eunuchs, which is against canon law; and they are
also "caupones", that is, innkeepers, which is again uncanonical. It is true of them to
say:
Of old a lettuce ended the repast
To-day it is the first course and the last.
If their poverty imitated that of Christ, I should judge them happy in it. But their reason
is sordid gain and the accursed hunger for gold. May God be merciful to them. I think
that they act thus because their churches are tributary to the state. The bishop of
Leucas swore to me that his church had to pay Nicephorus a hundred gold pieces every
year, and the other churches the same, more or less according to their means. How
unjust this is is shown by the enactments of the holy patriarch Joseph. At the time of
the famine he made all Egypt pay tribute to Pharaoh, but the land of the priests he
allowed to be exempt”.
 (LIUTPRAND OF CREMONA “DE LEGATIONE CONSTANTINOPOLITANA” , CHAPTER 63 ), 968 A.D.

6. SYNAXARIUM
Name given in the Eastern Orthodox, the Oriental
Orthodox and the Eastern Catholic Churches to a
compilation of hagiographies corresponding roughly to
the martyrology of the Roman Church.
Historical Synaxaria: including biographical notices,
The notices given in the historical synaxaria are
summaries of those in the great menologies, or
collections of lives of saints, for the twelve months of
the year. As the lessons in the Byzantine Divine Office
are always lives of saints, the Synaxarion became the
collection of short lives of saints and accounts of
events whose memory is kept.

7. Life of Saint Anna
According “Synaxarium Ecclesiae
Constantinopolitanae”, a text coming from
10
th
century A.D., Anna was a wealthy,
virtuous daughter of a noble family, who
was forced to marry a Muslim pirate, during
the second half of 9
th
century A.D.
The pirate was preparing invasions to the
area and the city, where Anna was living, in
order to force her to accept the marriage.
The Byzantine Emperor Basil the I
st
the
Macedonian, 829-842 A.D., himself had
given permission for this ceremony.

8. Life of Saint Anna-II
Anna refused to accept this marriage, but
she could not find any help from anybody.
That’s why she prayed for God’s
intervention and after some time the pirate
died suddenly.
Anna felt so grateful to her Lord that she
decided to spend the rest of her life in the
church of the Holy Virgin at Cape Leucates.
She died there, after about fifty years at an
old age. Her body was buried in a family
tomb, but as it remained unspoilt, it was
associated with miracles.

9. Cape Leucates: a place of worship
throughout the centuries
Ancient Greece: Temple of
Apollo Leucates (the God
responsible for good
whether in the sea).
Byzantine period: Church
of the Holy Virgin (“Stella
Maris” of Western Church).
Modern times: Church of
Saint Nicolaos (the saint of
the mariners in the Eastern
Church)

10. “…Meanwhile Gylippus the Lacedaemonian and the ships from
Corinth were already at Leucas

hastening to their relief. They
were alarmed at the reports which were continually pouring in,
all false, but all agreeing that the Athenian lines round Syracuse
were now complete. Gylippus had no longer any hope of Sicily,
but thought that he might save Italy; so he and Pythen the
Corinthian sailed across the Ionian Gulf to Tarentum as fast as
they could, taking two Laconian and two Corinthian ships..”
(Thuc.: “Historiae”, 6.104)
A voice from 4
th
century B.C.