Speaking of Corfu and its patron saint, Lawrence Durrell wrote: ‘The island is really the Saint: and the Saint is the island.’ For in Greece, each place has its own reverend patron and so does each individual Greek – a saint whose name he bears and whose annual name day he celebrates. In the case of a huge number of Corfiots, this is St Spyridon.
The saint is Corfu’s most revered and influential resident, his mummy encased in a silver reliquary and enthroned like royalty in the red-domed church that bears his name. The faithful who bend to kiss his tiny slippers would never countenance the fact that Spyridon was not always a saint, nor ever, indeed, a Corfiot. Born in the middle of the 4th century AD, he became a shepherd in the mountains of Cyprus, but though poor and uneducated he attained a reputation for piety, self-sacrifice and wisdom. He married, but his beloved wife died giving birth to his only child, Irini. When she came of age she was made a nun, and her father retired into a monastery.
Eventually, he was named Bishop of Trimithion, and accounts of his Solomon-like wisdom began to be recorded, mixing legend and fact. There are stories of miracles performed during his lifetime, but none compares with those the saint accomplished after his death in AD350. In life, Spyridon may have confined himself to meting out individual justice and homely logic; in death he would rout Turk, plague and famine.
Spyridon’s body was taken to Constantinople during the 7th century but by the mid-15th century that city was no longer safe for Christians, alive or dead, and George Kaloheiritis, the priest in whose church St Spyridon reposed, decided to move his holy charge. He set out across what is now northern Greece and eventually came to Corfu, where he married and produced three sons, to whom he willed the holy relics. His son, Phillip, also a priest, considered moving Spyridon to Venice, but the Corfiots’ tearful entreaties stopped him.
The Church of the Miracle working St Spyridon in Kerkyra is filled with votive offerings. There are four great miracles performed by the saint oil behalf of his island that are commemorated by processing his relics through the town. The first is commemorated on Easter Saturday, celebrating St Spyridon’s deliverance of the island from famine; the Palm Sunday procession recalls Corfu’s salvation from plague in 1629; the first Sunday in November marks its deliverance from cholera in 1673. The last great miracle was performed on 24 June 1716, when St Spyridon is said to have appeared to the Ottoman army, holding a ‘sword flashing lightning and furiously pursuing them’. The Ottomans fled, and the fourth annual procession of the saint was instituted on 11 August.
For the people of Corfu, the saint is a touchstone and talisman. The finest greeting and farewell in Corfu is Aghios Spyridonas mazi sou’ – ‘May St Spyridon be with you’.