Patmos museums
Ecclesiastical Museum
It is the museum of Saint John the Divine's monastery. The museum is in
the monastery facilities and exhibits precious religious vessels and
jewels, pontificals embroidered with gold, patriarchal mitres, icons,
gospels, rare sacred books, pyxes, plates, incensories etc.
Folklore museum
It is accommodated in the Sarandiri Mansion, which was built in 1625 by
masons from Smyrna and is being inhabited by the eighth generation of
this family. It houses furniture- most of which over 250 years old-
paintings, pictures, family heirlooms mainly from Odessa, a
foot-operated dental drill and an icon-screen with Russian style icons
of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries.
Municipal Library
The library was an initiative realized and sponsored by Nikolaos Mavris
son of Georgios who was a Doctor and the 1st General Commander of the
Dodecanese. The Library was built in 1950, right after the annexation of
the Dodecanese to Greece. It comprises a wealth of literary works as
well as the archives of Kasos whose author was Nikolaos Mavris himself.
Monastery Library
The historical library of Patmos is nowadays considered to be one of the
most important and best- organized libraries of Christianity. We can
distinguish the intellectual wealth it offers in three major categories:
a) the codes, b)… and c) the manuscripts. According to the booklist at
the beginning of the 13th century the library consisted almost entirely
of theologically oriented codes. Out of 267 codes in vellum and 63 in
cotton, accounting for 330, 109 were administrative, 107 are
characterized as moral codes and 31 concerned Saint John and constituted
the theological component of the library. The rest allude to a variety
of topics and only 20 codes are of a secular nature. Only one code
refers to a classical text: the Accusations of Aristotle. The monastery
library of Saint John the Divine had the same fate as all monastery
libraries whose future lay entirely in the hands of archbishops.
The booklist of 1355 manifests an impressive widening of intellectual
horizons while in the mid 14th century a multitude of books of all kinds
reached Patmos and monks started reading Xenophon and Plato. The great
philosophical School of Mystras, the contribution of Byzantine scholars
to the thought developed in the classical Italian hothouses of intellect
(from the end of the 14th century-onwards) as well as the trade of
classical manuscripts did not attract the monks' interest to more
contemporary matters. The vibrant spirit of Constantinople wafting to
the West had no impact whatsoever on Saint John's monastery library and,
even though the number of books was ever increasing, all books were of
religious content.
The library, the infirmary of the Soul as the marble slab of the bishop
of Laodikia Nikiphoros reads (1802), consists of a central hall with
rooms all around it accommodating the archives and biographic material.
In the central hall with the stone pillars supporting the roughcast
arches so distinctive of monastery architecture, special bookcases have
been placed covering every wall and hosting all manuscripts and old
books.
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