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Sphakia – The Vampires
Frangokastello was built in the fourteenth century, after the feudarchs
had demanded protection from the corsairs. It was called at first
Castel St Niketas after the patron saint whose chapel stands close by,
but quite soon the local nickname ‘the Frankish Castle’ caught on.
Such a stronghold in this turbulent area must have served also to
control the inhabitants of Sphakia, who until the sixteenth century were
as much of a threat to Venice as the corsairs. Crete was the target of
the Barbary pirates in 1537, when Khaireddin Barbarossa attacked,
having already harassed the western Mediterranean, the Peloponnese
and the Ionian islands.
The scourge fell on Canea, Rethymnon and Sitea, but also generally
on the south-west coast. It is round Frangokastello that stories and
memories of the pirates remain:
Sun, you rise in a flash, you give yourself to all the world;
Rise over all the earth, over all the inhabited globe!
Over Barbarossa’s roofs, sun, do not rise –
And if you do rise, my Sun, set swiftly –
For they have slaves, beautiful, in pain,
And your rays will be damp with the tears of slaves.
In the memory of the Cretans, the corsairs are a scourge of supernatural
power, descending on the coast like the irresistible storm wind.
It was not only that the pirates took fine young men away into slavery,
it was also that the Venetians, in their necessity to defend Crete,
became themselves more exacting. If it was not the swift ships of
Barbarossa it was galley service for the colonialist. Caught between
these two oppressive masters, the Cretans could only go to their saints
and their God for help. And most of the churches along the south coast
have their stories of miraculous intervention.
St Niketas near Frangokastello, for instance. One day some girls
were washing their clothes by the sea when a ship appeared and put
down a boatload of ruffians to seize the girls. A Christian who was on
board ship had the presence of mind to sing an apparently harmless
verse which contained a concealed warning, but the girls failed to catch
on, and one of them was abducted. Years later, on St Niketas’ day, her
master saw her weeping as she dutifully served him his glass of water,
and asked why. She told him; and prayed to the saint; and the miracle
happened – she woke up to find herself back by the saint’s chapel, safe
and sound.
Spratt heard a similar story, which explained why the ‘credulous
and benighted’ community round St Niketas on the Messara plain
hold the saint in such respect. The villagers had collected on the eve of
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