Taxiarchis-Kerpini

The hermitage of Taxiarchis at Kerpini is a cave sanctuary with light fortification, set into a rock face at Velika, in the gorge between the villages of Kerpini and Kourouveli in Gortynia, a kilometre southeast of Kerpini. A road reaches the ground below the cave. Dedicated to the archangels Michael and Gabriel, it is normally associated with their feast on 8 November, though the local custom is to hold services on the first Saturday after 15 August. Nothing is known of its construction date or founders. It belongs to a common Post-Byzantine type, typical of the 17th and 18th centuries, especially in the Peloponnese, where such caves served monasteries and hermits as places of worship and ascetic retreat, but also as refuges for villagers in troubled times, and occasionally as hideouts for kleftes. Its condition today is not good, and its specific history remains unrecorded.