Monastery of 40 Saints

The Monastery of the Forty Saint Martyrs is a destroyed Eastern Orthodox monastery in southern Albania that overlooks the seaside city of Saranda. The monastery was built in the 6th century AD and is said to have been the most prominent pilgrimage place in the Ionian Sea area for at least a millennium. The monastery’s name, Agioi Saranta (meaning Forty Saints in Greek), was moved to the nearby city of Onchesmos. The land was turned into a military base under the People’s Republic of Albania (1944-1991). Only a portion of the basilica-style church’s side walls remain today.

The monastery’s church was the region’s greatest basilica-style church, equivalent to that of the episcopal see of Nicopolis. The church’s main building seems to be late antique Christian architecture, with similarities to the seven-apsed banqueting hall of the palace of Lausos in Constantinople, which was completed about 530-550 AD.

The basilica was a rectangular construction with a single apse, exonarthex and esonarthex, as well as two short tower structures on the outside. There were six apsidal chambers in the inside. As evidenced by the pilasters that separate them, each was most likely roofed with domes or half domes. In at least one room, there are traces of late antiquity paintings. Two individuals with haloes holding open books and a painted colonnade are among the representations. In the western side of the building, there is a crypt.

On the sides of the building, a number of dedicatory Greek inscriptions composed of broken tile and potsherds have been discovered, some of which date from the 5th and 6th century.

Demetrios Evangelides, a Greek archaeologist, conducted a survey and excavations at the monastery in 1913. Luigi Maria Ugolini, an Italian archaeologist, released the first study on the monastery’s basilica in the 1920s, describing it as one of the best religious structures he had researched in Albania. A new assessment provides information on the shifting architectural styles as well as the crypts and decorations.

History

The monastery was most likely built during the time of Byzantine Emperor Justinian (527–565 AD) and served as a shrine until Albania’s communist period (1944-1991). The basilica church, as well as dormitories for pilgrims and other visitors, subterranean chambers, holy water springs, and crypts, were all part of the monastery’s complex. There were forty little chapels in the subterranean chambers, each dedicated to one of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste slain during the Early Christian era. During the High Middle Ages, the monastery’s name was changed to Onchesmos, a neighboring seaside city. Saranda, the contemporary village, grew out of the former.

The monastery remained an important pilgrimage place until the Ottoman invasion of the area in the 14th and 15th century, when it was repeatedly destroyed. However, throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, it drew fresh interest. The basilica was abandoned and destroyed in the early twentieth century, although images from the early 1930s show that some of its towering walls were still surviving. Every 9 March, the roofless church was the site of religious events. Furthermore, a limited number of monks seem to be there at that period. The basilica and the bell tower in the early twentieth century.

The monument was demolished and reduced to broken pieces during World War II (1944): it was either destroyed by German artillery or Allied planes. During the People’s Republic of Albania’s atheistic campaign in the 1950s, it was destroyed. The land was turned into a military installation, which prohibited the monument from being preserved. It stayed such until the 1997 Albanian Civil War.

Much of the basilica’s huge construction has long since been dismantled, with just the side walls remaining. For the local Greek Orthodox community, however, it still has religious significance, and pilgrims continue to place flowers there.