This month's World Heritage Site...

The Historic Centre (Chorá) with the Monastery of Saint John "the Theologian" and the Cave of the Apocalypse on the Island of Pátmos

The Isle of Patmos, Where Legend Says St. John Wrote the Apocalypse, Is Now a World Heritage Site

By Patrick Totty

Christian tradition has it that St. John, to whom Jesus entrusted the care of his mother as he was dying on the cross, later wrote the Gospel of John and the Apocalypse, or Book of Revelations. Previous biblical scholarship tut-tutted that traditional view of the books’ authorship, claiming that  “John “ more likely dated from the very late 1st century AD or early 2nd century AD. More recent scholarly speculation has all of the four gospels being written much earlier than previously supposed, so there is an outside chance that Jesus’ beloved disciple could have written or participated in the writing of the gospel attributed to him.

Whatever the truth of John’s authorship, further tradition has it that “the Beloved Disciple” wrote his books on Patmos, a small Aegean island in the Dodecanese chain off the southwest coast of Turkey. Greek Orthodox Christians founded a monastery dedicated to John on Patmos in the late 10th century. It has been a place of pilgrimage and of Greek Orthodox learning continuously since that time. The fine monastic complex dominates the island, and the settlement of Chora (established in the 12^th century) associated with it, contains many old religious and secular buildings.

In 1999, the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO declared two sites on Patmos as World Heritage sites. The Committee described Chora as one of the “few other places in the world where religious ceremonies that date back to the early Christian times are still being practiced unchanged.” It also cited the Monastery of Hagios Ioannis Theologos (Saint John the Theologian) and the Cave of the Apocalypse on the island, which, together with Chora, “constitute an exceptional example of a traditional Greek Orthodox pilgrimage center of outstanding architectural interest.”