Nicholas Kourtaliotis

Venerable Nicholas Kourtaliotis was an ascetic of Crete, endowed with the gift of working miracles. He struggled in the south and centre of the island in the second half of the seventeenth century and reposed around 1670.

Details of his life survive only in the oral tradition of the island, above all in the district of Agios Vasilios in Rethymno. According to the popular synaxarion, he showed mercy from childhood: he gave the poor the provisions of his father's house, and the jars were always found full. His father blessed him to follow the ascetic life. He went off into the mountains, forests and gorges of Crete and reached a great height of holiness. He lived for a time on the Messara plain, and before his repose returned to the district of his birth. Near the spot where his chapel now stands, a companion of his grew thirsty, and the saint stretched out his hand and five springs gushed from the wall of the gorge, flowing to this day.

In the Kourtaliotiko Gorge, near the bottom, stands his small chapel, which pilgrims reach by descending many stone steps. According to tradition his tomb is nearby, but it has not yet been uncovered. The saint has not been recognized by an official act of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, but he is included in the Cretan hagiologion, and his memory is kept with great splendour on 1 September (new style). A service to him was printed in Athens in 1879.