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Modern Description: I km W of Kalyvia Thorikou (former Kalyvia Kouvara), in the location known as Εννιάπυργοι, Ennea Pyrgoi (Nine Towers), site of a vanished Byzantine settlement. The architecture dates the church between the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century. It is a two-columned, cross-in-square church with dimensions of 9,82 x 6,88. Many fragments of older buildings and tombstones have been incorporated into its rubble masonry. The wall paintings are of the same era. A portrait of Michael Choniates, bishop of Athens, in a halo is found in the altar. In the north arch of the cross are paintings of agricultural saints Agios Mamas and Agios Tryphon. "Located in Ennea Pyrgoi. It is a cross-shaped domed church with three semihexagonal apses and a tripartite narthex. Architectural elements point to a date shortly after the 12th c. Its masonry contains a considerable amount of spolia; among them a 4th-c. BC funerary inscription, commemorating two citizens of Prospalta, is part of the evidence for the location of the ancient demos, while a 4th-c. AD funerary inscription with christograms and two names in tabulae ansatae attests to the burial use of the area in a later period. The impost capital used in the two-light window of the central apse bears a monogram cruciform inscription which reads Ἐ(πι)σκ(ό)που Ἰγν(α)τί(ου). The impost capital was recently broken during a vandalism; despite its subsequent conservation, the inscription is now lost; it had fortunately already been drawn by Orlandos. The interior of the church preserves numerous wall-paintings of good quality, which stylistically recall other Attic churches of the 12th and early 13th c. Three painted inscriptions belong to the same layer of painting; one among them, located in the Bema, mentions the year during which the wall-paintings were executed, ΣΤΨΜ or 1232 CE. Another inscription in the narthex mentions the saints to which the church was dedicated, St Peter and Paul, as well as its donor: …Ἐπανελεύσ(ει) Δευτέρα τ(οῦ ) Δεσπότ(ου) / Ἰγνάτιος κέκραγα λιτάζῶν τάδε / Ἐκ γῆς Ἀθηνῶν ἡγμένος μονότροπο(ς) / Νήσων προεδρεύων δε Θερμείων Κέω. The donor, Ignatius, was bishop of the suffragan see of Thermia (Kythnos) and Keos. This inscription is our only source for the existence of a bishop of Thermia and Keos named Ignatius. Panselenou considers as certain that the monk and bishop Ignatius commemorated in the painted inscription should be identified with the bishop Ignatius of the engraved inscription placed upside-down in the window of the central apse." (Tzavella 2012, p.269)
Wikidata ID: Q56397824
Trismegistos Geo: 54407

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(JBK)

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