412 Kalopissi-Verti
are attested in the church of St Nicholas at Malagari in Perachora.107 The most
prominent representative of the ecclesiastical hierarchy is Bishop Ignatios who
donated the church of St Peter at Kalyvia Kouvara (1232/33). Priests alone or
with their families, such as Leo Kokkalakis who built and decorated the church
of the Saviour at Alepochori near Megara, or priests in collaboration with lay
people have been attested in several cases, for example in the churches of St
Nicholas Mavrika in Aegina and of the Taxiarches in Desphina, and in the cave
church of Zoodochos Pege in Kopais, Boeotia (1333).108 This latter patronage
scheme of collaborating ecclesiastics and lay people is common in Latin-held
provinces and reflects the lack of the necessary financial means for an indi-
vidual donation.109 On the other hand, it is possible that priests undertook the
initiative of founding or renovating a church not only because they felt respon-
sible for the religious life of the Orthodox population but also because they
could probably raise money from their flock. Two priest-monks, the abbot and
his brother, in the church of St George at Akraiphnion have played an impor-
tant role in the renovation of the church and the preparation of the tomb of
the knight Anthony le Flamenc. According to epigraphic evidence two monks,
father and son, are the donors in the church at Malagari.110 The donation of a
church by a priest or a monk is also very common in Venetian-held Crete.111
Individual lay patronage is documented in only a few cases. Manuel
Mourmouras and his family, for example, probably a local archon, donated the
church of the Holy Trinity at Kranidi in 1244.112 However, no collective dona-
tion by numerous members or by the totality of a community, mostly peasants,
has been documented, as in other Byzantine or Latin-held provinces.113
107 Eleni Ghini-Tsofopoulou, in Αρχαιολογικόν Δελτίον 36 (1981), Β, Χρονικά, pp. 173–74;
Demetrios Athanasoulis, “Corinth,” in Heaven and Earth: Cities and Countryside in
Byzantine Greece, ed. Jenny Albani and Eugenia Chalkia (Athens, 2013), p. 206, fig. 184.
108 See above, pp. 407–08.
109 See indicatively churches in the castellania of Selino in Giuseppe Gerola, Monumenti
veneti nell’isola di Creta, 4 vols. (Venice, 1905–1932), 4:431–71, nos. 9, 10, 14, 15, 21, 26, 41, 46,
48 etc. See also Tsirpanlis, Κατάστιχο, p. 68, no. 121.
110 See above, note 107.
111 Gerola, Monumenti veneti, 4: 431, nos. 5, 18, 19, 22, 53, 56; Tsirpanlis, Κατάστιχο, pp.
61–62, nos. 55, 64; Olga Gratziou, Η Κρήτη στην ύστερη μεσαιωνική εποχή: Η μαρτυρία της
εκκλησιαστικής αρχιτεκτονικής [Crete in the Late Middle Ages: The Evidence of Church
Architecture] (Herakleion, 2010), pp. 118–23.
112 See above, pp. 380–81, 403.
113 Sophia Kalopissi-Verti, “Collective Patterns of Patronage in the Late Byzantine Village:
The Evidence of Church Inscriptions,” in Donation et donateurs dans le monde byzantin:
Actes du colloque international de l’Université de Fribourg; 13–15 mars 2008, ed. Jean-Michel