Folklore - Frescoes
Manouil og Ioannis Fokas

 
In Eastern Crete the two brothers Manouil and Ioannis Fokas decorated several churches around the Lassithi mountains in the middle of the 15th century.


We do not have personal informations about the Fokas brothers, but it is certain that they originated from the imperial family with the same name in Constantinople. Since the middle of the 10th century there has existed a Fokas family in Crete, after the recapture of the island by the commander and later imperor Nikiforos Fokas the 2nd from the Arabs.
According to oral tradition he send members from twelve princely houses from Constantinople (Ioannis Fokas, Marinos Skordilis, Filippos Gavalas, Thomas Archoleos, Efstathios Chortatsis, Leon Mousouros, Konstantinos Varouchas, Andreas Melissinos, Loukas Lithinos, Nikiforos Argyropoulos, Dimitrios Vlastos and Matthaios Kalafatis) to Crete in order to restore christianity and power there.
 

 

In the churches' inscriptions the brothers dated their works in two ways, from the creation of the world (5508 BC) and from the imperor of Constantinople. The latter dating was quite common in Crete, even if the Venizians already had occupied the island for centuries. From this fact one can conclude that many inhabitants culturally and religiously still considered themselves to belong to the Byzantine Empire.

 

 

From the inscriptions we can be certain that the Fokas brothers decorated the following churches:
Agios Georgios in Embaros, Agios Konstantinos and Eleni in Avdou and Agios Georgios in Epano Symi.
 

 
Furthermore there are a few churches that are attributed to the brothers, but there are no inscriptions to confirm it:
Eisodia Theotokou in Sklaverochori and
Agios Georgios in Avdou.