Isle of Patmos, the Abode of St. John

1906

The isles of Greece, "where burning Sappho loved and sung," are forever reappearing in history. Even the least known of them all in antiquity, hardly mentioned by the prehistoric writers, but made famous by the visions of the best-beloved of the apostles, Patmos, is frequently familiarly spoken of, though seldom visited. For throughout the length and breadth of the Christian world many edifices stand in commemoration of St. John. Great and small, humble and grand, cathedrals, churches and chapels, they cover a period of history extending from the day when the conversion of Constantine made Christianity the official religion of civilization down to the present time.

At one end stands the little chapel built by the piety of the simple fishermen of Patmos above the cave where St. John passed the long days of his banishment from the mainland of Asia Minor. At the other are the central arch and the columns of the Cathedral of St John the Divine now being erected at the cost of a king's ransom and years of thought and patient toil. The contrast between the capital of the New World and the barren island in the Grecian archipelago, between the wealth of the twentieth century and the provincial village of the Roman empire, is typified by the unlikeness of the two structures.

Cave Refuge of St. John

High up on the steep hillside of the little island of Patmos is still to be seen to-day the natural cave in which St. John lived for many years and wrote his "Revelation." The cave, roughly divided into two compartments, is cut deep into the solid rock, the walls are damp with the natural moisture of the earth, and the only light comes from a single candle burning before an ancient shrine.

The city is built around the peak of the hill in a series of three or four tiers. One finds no poorer district and no exclusive quarter. The inhabitants appear to be equally prosperous or equally poor — and in either event equally content. The houses are all alike, square in shape, plain and unadorned, of one or two stories in height, and covered with simple, flat roofs. There are no sidewalks in the streets, which again, like the roadway, are paved with slabs of stone. No horses, or wagons, or traffic of any kind, with the exception of the trains of pack donkeys, ever pass through. Flights of stone steps in various places lead upward, from one tier to another until finally a second massive gateway is reached which marks the entrance to the main courtyard of the monastery.

Monastery a Refuge

The exact date at which the earlier parts of the monastery were first constructed is still at matter of conjecture, but according to the condition of life which existed in those far-off days, it had been built with the purpose of providing a refuge for the people in times of peace. Huge stone battlements completely surround the courtyard and the little chapel, with battlements within battlements and corridors and hidden passageways leading up to the different points of vantage behind the parapets. The monastery stands, a massive fortification, enclosing tbe church on the hilltop.

The cave itself is situated a short distance down the northern slope of the hill from the city wall. In the present day, a small chapel stands above the entrance. You are informed that the chapel is of recent construction, but this word "recent" is applied after the manner in which periods of time are counted by the inhabitants of the island. The informant probably means that it was built after the death of St. John. In appearance the chapel looks to be as old as the rock itself.

From a door in the interior of the chapel a crooked, twisted stairway of stone dips downward abruptly into the earth. This stairway is comparatively dark, illuminated merely by a shaft of meager light from the open door of the chapel above. At the end of the first flight of steps you are given a candle to light your further progress and are advised to move with caution over the slippery stones.

St. John's Pillow a Stone

The cave lies at the bottom of the second flight; it is divided into two compartments, the main body of the cave, where the shrine still stands, and a natural alcove in the rear in which, it is said, St. John spent most of his time, working and praying during the day and sleeping there at night. In the solid rock of the wall, close down to the flooring of the alcove is a smooth, round stone, which was used by St. John for a pillow, and directly above this, seen when the light is raised, is a long fissure running diagonally across the ceiling. Through this fissure the spirit descended and inspired/the "Revelation."

All this, however, belongs to the history of nearly 2,000 years ago. Since then, in better known parts of the world, cathedrals have been built and dedicated in the name of the saint who lived and worked in the cave of Patmos, where still to-day, as ever before, a single candle burns perpetually in front of the ancient shrine. Structures like the Church of St. John Lateran in Rome or the far larger Protestant Cathedral of St. John the Divine rising stone by stone on Morningside Heights, in New York, are works far beyond the resources of the simple fishermen of Patmos, but to the English church and to the Episcopal church of America, which is its lineal descendant, the island cave and the chapel over it must always be objects of special interest. It was by disciples of St. John that the southern province of what is now France was converted to Christianity, and it was from these provinces that the missionaries came to spread the gospel in England. The great Cathedral of St. John in New York is bound to the little Patmos chapel by a link nineteen centuries long. — Los Angeles Times.