The Festival Dedicated to Agios (Saint) Nektarios in his Monastery on the Island of Aegina, Greece

Authors

  • Evy Johanne Håland Author

Keywords:

death cult, festival, fieldwork, Greece, healing, pilgrimage, religion, saint cult

Abstract

In Greece the festival dedicated to the healing saint, Agios Nektarios, is celebrated on the island of Aegina on 9 November. This is an important healing festival dedicated to one of the most recently deceased saints; that is, the former bishop of Pentapolis, who lived a secluded life on Aegina until his death in 1920. The bishop was canonised as Agios Nektarios in 1961, becoming the island’s patron saint. His monastery is situated in a geographical area where the cult of deceased holy persons has been particularly important. A key ritual during the festival is connected with a chapel that is reserved to women. This chapel is part of the monastery dedicated to the saint and housing his skull. When I first visited the monastery in 1990, I learnt that Agios Nektarios’ relics reposed in more than eighteen churches in Greece and Cyprus. Today this has changed, since his relics have been spread out among many more sanctuaries, inside and outside of Greece; that is, worldwide. His body is indeed of the highest importance for the worshippers, and although several churches both in Greece and abroad today have a share of it, the main pilgrimage centre on Aegina possesses the most important part: his head that rests in a crown made of gold, while the saint’s relics repose in a casket inside his chapel.
The article is based on fieldwork which I have carried out on Aegina where I attended the festival in 1991, 2011 and 2012. The study explores especially into the healing function of the festival both for Greeks and the many pilgrims coming from abroad, especially from Romania.

Author Biography

  • Evy Johanne Håland

    Evy Johanne Håland, is a Norwegian Researcher, Dr/PhD, History, and a Government Grant Holder (Norwegian, statsstipendiat), Emerita from May 2024; Senior lecturer at SeniorUni Norge AS (https://www.senioruni.no/SeniorUni) from 2025. Since 1983, she has had several periods of fieldwork in the Mediterranean, mainly in Greece and Italy where she has also been conducting research on religious festivals and life-cycle rituals since 1987. Her publications combine fieldwork results with ancient sources, and the most important of her seven monographs are, Greek Festivals, Modern and Ancient: A Comparison of Female and Male Values (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing) 2 vols from 2017. She has also published many articles and book chapters on festivals and rituals in modern and ancient Greece. In 1990–2008 Håland was affiliated with, inter alia, the University of Bergen, Norway, where she worked as Lecturer/Research Fellow in history. Since 2009 she has lectured at several European Universities, and worked as a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellow at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece (2011–2013).

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Published

2024-12-31

Issue

Vol. 13 No. 1 (2024): THE RITUAL YEAR 13

Section

Articles