The bells are mournfully ringing, the sun has risen in the afternoon and oh Epitaph Agios Minas is ready again this year for a procession that takes place earlier than all the other Epitaphs in Thessaloniki.

Most people also know him as Epitaph of merchantswith its history lost in the lanes of memory.

Unknown Tradition

About what for over a century Agios Minas completes the detour during the day.

The first surviving images show how far back the tradition of creating an epitaph goes. intertwined with daylight and not by candlelight, it’s from his Good Friday 1917.

Black-and-white photographs from the French news show the decorated church, worshipers gathered in the courtyard, uniformed soldiers standing to the right and left of the place, beggars gathered on the steps, and the Epitaph exiting. church while the sun is still high in the sky.

“Who knows when it started… It has been a tradition for many years that on Good Friday the Epitaph to St. Minata comes out first in all of Thessaloniki, even during the day,” Holy Church priest Father Konstantinos Angelopoulos tells APE-MPE.

Because Agios Minas is the patron saint of Thessaloniki merchants.

According to him, Agios Minas is the patron of the commercial market of Thessaloniki. Not because it is located in the “heart” of the city, where today there are countless shops, but because in 1856 its renovation was done with the money of the merchants of Venice and the merchants of Thessaloniki.

This is evidenced by the baroque style in the interior and exterior of the church, as well as the pear-shaped windows of the holy church, which are the same windows as in the Panagia of Tinos.

“Since the repair of the temple was carried out with merchant money, it was “accepted” as a commercial temple. It may be that the first photographs show the circumambulation of the epitaph in broad daylight in 1917, but the story may go back even further and that this particular tradition began from 1856 onwards, so that merchants were consecrated and consecrated.” …adds Father Konstantinos.

The merchants and workers of Thessaloniki consider it a blessing that Epitaph passes by their shops while they are still open to the public making their last Easter shopping. And for this reason, every commercial deal “hangs” during the tour.

“I remember the epitaph of merchants in 1986,” the first words of the president of the Thessaloniki Trade Association, Pantelis Philippidis. Speaking to APE-MPE, Mr. Philippides explains that “from the moment the Epitaph begins in the church of Agios Minas, all activity at that time stops in the city center. This is an opportunity for merchants, as well as employees who work with uninterrupted store hours, to watch with feeling and reverence the procession of the Epitaph, the first to come out in the afternoon.”

Route through the center of Thessaloniki

Hymns of praise for Good Friday are sung at 3 pm, and the procession begins at 5 pm. The route has already been mapped out: from Ionos Dragumi it descends to Paralia and then returns via Ermou. In recent years, due to the work of the metro, the course has changed and Egnatia Odos has been “removed”.

“Several merchants who have shops in Egnatia ask us: “Will you come to us this year?”. We are asked, but the road is very narrow. I hope that next year, as soon as the metro is completed, we will succeed and return to the route we were on before the work began,” adds Father Konstantinos.

The epitaph of Agios Minas, thanks to its long history, has become the epitaph of all Thessaloniki, since everyone knows that it was the first to appear in the city. “And everyone participates wholeheartedly. Everyone considers it their epitaph. This is a very beautiful feeling,” adds the priest of the temple.

So this year, all the necessary road arrangements have been made again and everything will work “automatically” so that, in addition to merchants, scouts, gangs, representatives of church and military departments and many believers can be present.