In 96 AD, St John the Divine/Theologian was banished to Patmos by Roman Emperor Domitian. St John preached the Gospel of Christ around Rome – which was at that time, not okay. At that time, Patmos hosted a small penal colony where political prisoners were essentially left to suffer and die. St John took refuge in a cave on the hill leading up to what is now Hora.
Patmos has a fair number of freshwater wells and clearly, he found one. So, he lived in the cave for two years and wrote Revelations – which was ultimately added to the Christian Bible. The cave is now called The Apocalypsi. Through circumstances that aren’t completely known, St John escaped Patmos and made it to Ephesus – right near modern Kusadasi, Turkey and lived out his days there.
Today, people pay good money for boats to take them to Patmos for vacations where they stay in nice hotels, short-term rentals or even their vacation homes. Of course, there are people who live here year-round too. No one on Patmos feels exiled.
The water issue remains. There are only so many people a network of wells can support. The island began bringing water by boat to inject into the municipal water system – that was going in 2010 when Emily and I first came here. Every few days the water boat pulled up. In recent years, Patmos added a desalination plant on a scarcely visited part of the West Coast of the island – which as been so effective that in 2023, the municipality then expanded its plumbing network to alleviate the need for people to have water storage tanks in their homes filled by water trucks and their waste funneled into septic systems.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t entirely solve the water problem. There may be enough water to support the year-round population of 3,000, but not enough to support the number of visitors – both overnight and cruise passengers – who pass through Patmos each summer. Plus, there’s the issue of old pipes and not everyone buying water filtration systems.
As a result, there’s still a LOT of bottled water arriving on Patmos – especially this time of year. Yesterday, I saw an entire semi loaded entirely with bottled water. Bad for the environment, bad for people’s health with chemicals leaching in from the plastic.
While Patmos is (thankfully) far from one of the most visited Greek islands, its fortunes have taken a positive turn as a result of tourism. At this time of year, more people are showing up daily to sun themselves and swim on the incredible beaches.
Why were St John the Theologian and his penal colony friends – if he had them – sent to a place where people pay good money to be today?
That’s because beach vacations weren’t really a thing until after World War II.
Sure, people have always gone to the beach for a swim – maybe even relaxed for the day. But to actually plan a vacation around the beach in the course of human history is relatively new.
There are two main reasons: 1. paid vacation didn’t really exist until the mid-twentieth century and 2. even the wealthiest elites didn’t think of the beach as a place to spend their time until the late 18th to early 19th century. And even that was a slow adoption.
In fact, the first beach vacations were really nobility and wealthy people going to sea for their health. For almost a century, they weren’t even going in the water – and when they did, they were doing it for therapeutic reasons often in a crazy amount of clothes with doctors supervising. In the United States, the trend towards beach vacations began with the ultra-wealthy – at first plantation owners in the mid-1800’s and then titans of industry in the 1880’s – building mansions in places like Newport, Rhode Island to get out of the summer heat from cities like New York. As in Europe, actually swimming in the ocean was not on the agenda.
Revere Beach – America’s very first public beach just north of Boston – opened in 1896.
Still it wasn’t until developed countries had highways, cars and middle-class or better jobs giving them expendable income and paid vacation to bring the very idea of a vacation into the common man’s lexicon.
Otherwise, Greece wouldn’t have been so dirt poor for so long.
Instead, most Greek islands – were for farming and fishing and drier ones like Patmos were economically limited, with populations sizes to match.
Of course, Patmos had one thing few islands did, thanks to St. John – who I’m sure never realized the events he put in motion. As a result of things like the schism between Rome and Constantinople and the advent of Eastern Orthodoxy, The Monastery of St John the Theologian was built on Patmos around 1100. True to the nature of the times, the monastery was built fortified with turrets – similar to a castle because it had to be able to protect its inhabitants from invasion and piracy -which is a good reminder the world has been a scary place for a long time.
Hora grew up around the monastery largely because it took a lot of people a long time to build a fortified, castle-like monastery with an after-project of a fortified nunnery. In fact, it took generations to complete – meaning there was sustained work that could pass from father to son and so on. Interestingly, more recent research suggests the collection of people who founded Hora and became Patmian and Greek probably weren’t mostly Greek at all. Workers came from all around the Mediterranean and likely included people from modern-day Egypt, Turkey, Israel, Lebanon, Italy, Croatia, Bulgaria, etc. Modern Patmos began as a blue-collar immigrant-melting pot under the auspices of the Patriarchy (the Orthodox term for Dioceses).
Eventually, the monastery was complete and while there was a certain amount of trade, agriculture and fishing – it was very small. The Byzantine Emperor had given the entire island of Patmos to the Patriarchy – which began granting or selling land around the island which in turn increased the island’s productivity and allowed the population to expand. At one time, my home along with everyone else’s belonged to the monastery and the road between Skala and Hora that we use today was traversed by donkeys.
No one was pulling up to the port, renting a donkey and a one-room stone house and spending a few days on the beach, working on their tan while eating watermelon-feta salad.
Sometimes, when I ride around Patmos, I look at some house I haven’t noticed before – especially in the middle of the island, in very non-touristy locations and I wonder who owns it. Is it a vacation house – maybe with a great view? Did someone – like me – just want a piece of Patmos and bought something affordable, even if it’s a little out-of-the way? Or is it property of some long-time Patmian family who was happy to get a piece of land for themselves when the Patriarchy divested? Did they buy it? Was it a grant? Were they actively farming it?
There are a lot of stories on Patmos I’ll probably never know and certainly not on the radar of the average visitor.
All the same, it helps to remember the unpleasant truckload of water bottles is one of the better problems for Patmos to have. An island that had been vibrant in the Hellenic period, then left for abandoned after Rome conquered which was used as Devil’s island for early Christian adherents is thriving. Sure, it could be done a little more sustainably. And I get annoyed when people with rental cars, quads and scooters make bad turns or park poorly and jam up the already narrow roads. But the people of Patmos are thriving in no small part because people with good paying jobs with paid vacation appreciate this beautiful island. And fortunes turn.
