Will Alkass follows up his previous article on Lourdes with another article based on his travels.
In my previous article, I wrote about Lourdes, the famous pilgrimage site in France. In this article I am going to tell you about the other Lourdes, the Lourdes of the East which my wife and I had the good fortune to visit during our trips to Egypt in 2023 and Crete in 2024.
In North Africa and the Middle East there are several monasteries dedicated to Saint Minas but this article describes just the two that we visited. In Egypt, Saint Minas Monastery is situated about a two hour drive to the west of Alexandria and is visited by a large number of Christians of Coptic Orthodox and other denominations, both for prayers and supplication and for healing and cure. In Crete there is a beautiful church in Heraklion which is very popular with the local Greek population.
The Legend of Saint Minas, The Miracle-Maker (Mar Mina in Arabic)
Minas was born in 285 to an ascetic Christian couple in the city of Nikiou, near Memphis in Egypt. At the age of fifteen he joined the Roman Army and served as a high-ranking officer in the region of Phrygia in present-day Turkey. However, as he could not stand the persecution of Christians by the army he left after three years to become a hermit in the desert in Egypt. After hearing a voice blessing him he declared his belief to the local ruler but then was executed for refusing to denounce his faith. Legend has it that his executioners tried to burn his body but it would not burn; then after that his sister managed to take the body to be buried in a church in Alexandria.
When the times of persecution of Christians ended, Pope Athanasius of Alexandria obeyed a vision which led him to locate the body and head westwards with it to the desert. The spot where the body was re-buried, in a decay-resistant wood coffin with a silver covering, was decided not by the men carrying the coffin but by the camel carrying the body as it refused to go any further than that spot! The tomb was then forgotten until many years later, when a sick lamb with a scab fell in a hole in the ground there; as it struggled to get back on its feet the shepherd found that the sheep had been cured. Many such miraculous cures followed and then culminated when the Emperor
Constantine the Great sent his sick daughter, who was suffering from incurable leprosy, to the same spot and she was miraculously cured.
Constantine, the famous liberator of Christians, decided to dig up the saint's body and place it in a church to be built on the site. People flocked to the new church from all over the Christian world, hoping for a cure from their afflictions. They would come and then take back with them little clay “Minas flasks” containing holy water or oil with the saint's name and picture stamped on them. These can be found all over the Mediterranean basin. That first church however, now lies in ruins as it was destroyed during the Arab invasion of the 7th century.
A new Cathedral and a Monastery were built nearby in 1959 under the auspices of the Coptic Pope Cyril VI of Alexandria where the relics of the Saint and of the Pope are now interred.
The legend of El Alamein
According to Orthodox Christian belief, when the allied forces confronted the militarily and numerically superior German army under General Rommel, during the first night of engagement Saint Minas appeared to the German troops at the head of a caravan of camels thus undermining their moral and helping the Allies to win the first of many victories to follow.
After a two hour drive west of Alexandria we were pleasantly surprised to discover a wonderful gem of a complex of buildings including the main monastery, several churches, a restaurant, a market for the local produce and also dormitories for the monks.
The miracles of St Minas, martyr and wonder-worker, didn't only happen in Egypt and he is also well-known in both the East and the West. His feast day is celebrated on 11th November by the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches and this is a public holiday in Greece. In Crete St Minas is venerated as the Patron Saint of Heraklion, the capital city.
How did St Minas come to be the Patron Saint of Heraklion in Crete?
There had been a small church in the centre of Heraklion built in 1735 called Agios Minas Church, or Small St Minas Church. St Minas became the Patron Saint of Heraklion after an incident in 1826 when during the Ottoman occupation of Crete a large group of Turkish zealots tried to attack and kill the Christian congregation attending the church during the Easter celebrations.However, they were thwarted in their attempt when an old horseman with grey hair appeared to them charging around the church waving his sword and scaring and chasing the Turks away in panic, thus saving the worshippers.
A large cathedral was later built next to the old church between 1862 and 1895, as a token of gratitude to the Patron Saint. The cathedral, one of the largest in Greece, is a gem combining splendid interior decorations and exterior grandeur. It was built by the self-taught architect Athanasius Moussis who came from Constantinople for that purpose, and who also built St Titus Church (see related article on St Titus Church in Heraklion).
The Cathedral was miraculously saved from destruction during the Second World War, even though 2 bombs were dropped on it while the rest of the city of Heraklion suffered extensive damage.
Petitioning the Saint for intercession on one's behalf.
It was interesting to observe in these two holy places how people pray and plea for help from God and for intercession by the Saint on their behalf .
You can see above how in the Monastery of St Mina in Alexandria people write their pleas on a piece of paper and put them in a basket placed on the tomb of the saint, accompanied by their prayers and supplication; I am not sure what happens to these pieces of paper later on.
In St Minas Church in Heraklion people appeal to the saint for a cure or for other miracles by making a vow (called tama). They then return there after their prayers have been answered to offer their thanks with a votive offering (called tamata) which is made usually of metallic or wooden reliefs depicting the part of the body that has been cured of its affliction. It is worth noting that similar votives have been discovered in ancient Greek temples.
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