Kotsinos

Kotsinos Κότσινος
Location
Kotsinos
Coordinates	39°57′N 25°16′E / 39.95°N 25.267°E / 39.95; 25.267Coordinates: 39°57′N 25°16′E / 39.95°N 25.267°E / 39.95; 25.267
Government
Country:	Greece
Region:	North Aegean
Regional unit:	Lemnos
Municipality:	Lemnos
Municipal unit:	Moudros
Population statistics (as of 2001)
Village
- Population:	3
Other
Time zone:	EET/EEST (UTC+2/3)
Elevation (center):	10 m (33 ft)
Auto:	MY

Kotsinos (Greek: Κότσινος) is a settlement on the island of Lemnos, Greece. It is part of the community of Repanidi, and the municipal unit of Moudros, and situated 25 to 30 km ENE of Myrina. Its population is 3 people (2001 census).

Nearest places

• Kontopouli, southeast
• Repanidi, south
• Varos, southwest
• Lybovitsi, NNW

Population

Year	Population
1981	16
1991	3
2001	3

Transportation

The village has about 4 km of paved road, 5 km of gravel road and has about 4 km of hydro and phone lines.

Geography

Much of the area are hilly and grassy and partly forested, some farmlands dominate some of the area.

Founding

Kotsinos was mentioned as Cocini for the first time in 1136 as a safe port with mercantile stairs. The church of Saint Blas near Kotsino in the use of the parish of the Venetians. It did not as its only inhabitants as it had thought that the nearby Hephaestia, the capital of Lemnos began to decline, from that time where the port of the Hundred Heads had suffered a considerable damages from raids. Nearly Kotsinos became the marketing center of the island's north coast. Later, it had spread the confidence, as it said the succeeded settlement of Hephaeatis, something that solemnly by many travellers.

The name

The name Kotsinos is derived from the Greek word kokkinos, meaning "red". The kk became a ts or tz by a sound shift similar to palatalization. Otherwise in text mentioned as Kokkinos, Kotsinos or Kotzinos. The name derived from the red soil which has the area's soil and also in the Lemnian land, the rest dug a neighbouring hill Despotis, the ancient Moschylo near the chapel known as Sotiros (the Saviour).

Medieval period

The area began to settle extentively during the Venetian rule (1207–76), when a castle was built by the Navigaioso family of the Venetian dukes of Lemnos. Hephaestia was abandoned and only the name "Palaiopoli" (=Old City) remained as a remembrance of the ancient city. In 1276, it was sacked and raided by the Byzantines and returned it, it had a feudal rule of Foscaro and Navigaioso families (Foscari - Navigaiozi).

Later on, during the early Palaiologos dynasty rule, the monasteries which had earlier been on the island began to fortify themselves.

Later on, it was mentioned as the same monastery began to share with John Prodromos and. In 1355, the castle chief Tzymalos received a vineyar at the Philotheou Monastery of Mount Athos.

In the same year, the location Kokkala (meaning bones) is mentioned near Kotsinos as a small settlement. It regarded the location "the Springs" which still exist today, which became Kotsinos' ordinary water supply via clay pipes. Angelis Michelis wrote that from there water was supplied to Hephaestia:

The Kokkala springs were used for supplying water to Hephaestia, as an evidence of large suspended pipes was discovered, directed from Kokkala to Hephaestia.

In 1858, Conze uncovered several trees upon the hills which the road headed to an area with the name Kokkala and it meant as a small settlement. The Kokkala spring was on the other side of the Lemnian hill and was mentioned by Tozer in 1889. Today, the area has two chapels, Saint Athanasius and Theotokos.

The castle

The Kotsinos castle was built in 1361 and in 1408 was received under the widow of John VII Palaiologos of the Palaiologos dynasty Irene Gattilusio in which she lived and died there in 1440, under the monastic name Eugenia. In that way, Kotsinos was runed by the Genoese Gattilusio and the Orthodox metropolitan moved the area from Kotsinos to Saint Paul Monastery in Livadochori, today as Metropolitan. In that time, its port began to serve better as an interesting station which brought in travellers from the time as well as the Russian monks Grethenios and Epiphanius. In 1464 when the Venetians fled from Lemnos, the castle was one of the three popular on the island. As Argyrios Moschidis wrote (p 151):

"...sono tre buoni castelli chiamandi Cochino, Mudron et Paleo Castron."

As it appears from the surviving ruins, the castle is founded at the top of an artificial hill 20m high and maintained an area of around 4 acres (16,000 m²) of land. The dug trench which connected with the sea, the northern side of the wall was founded insite the water. The fortifications was as high as 6 metres (20 ft). In the 15th century it was completely destroyed by the Turks.

Zoodochos Pigi

On the Kotsinos hill inside the castle, the monastery of Zoodochos Pigi above an underground spring in which goes down 64 steps (once 51 and then 57), made it to the area of the sea. Mainly when the castle trench was made, it provided an underground portico, as it did not lose the indispensable in water against a siege.

The monastery was mentioned in 1415 as an independent parish with the name Zoodochos Pigi of Sygkellos. It was recorded in 1154 in a wooden writing by Thevet as Agiasma, in 1677 by Covel as Panagia Kotzinatz and Hagiasma by Piacenza and Dapper (1680–88). In 1801, Hunt visited agiasma where he found a former monasery. Conze in 1858 founded a small church. In 1894, De Launay mentioned a church as much in the work even in the map and Friedrich in 1904.

The modern monastery was built in 1954 by the builder Giannis Fotiados with several Greeks from America and Australia.

Maroula

In 1478, Kotsinos passed in history as it was ruined by Suleiman the Magnificent. According to a rumor, as it extended to the west mostly from a poem in 1669 at the Dondini institute, the castle survived the last moment in the trust of Maroula in which her father was killed, grasped the stick and hearthenly the defending warriors which shelled the siege.

Little is known of her story, but we can say that the Turks, following their conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and later on of Eastern Europe, occupied Lemnos in 1462. However, in the contest for the control of the Aegean, they were soon expelled from the island by the Venetians. In 1478, according to the eminent historian on Lemnos Argyrios Moschides (Αργύριος Μοσχίδης), Lemnos was besieged and on the brink of reconquest by the Turks. The Lemnians, rather than become re-enslaved to them, joined the Venetians to repel them. In the decisive battle at the man-made and walled hill of Kotsinas, commanding the Bay of Bournias, the combined forces, following the heroism of the Lemnian maiden Maroula (probably daughter of a high-ranked officer), overcame the Turks who were winning and forced them to take to their ships and flee.

In his book Limnos (Η Λήμνος), p. 84, Moschides wrote regarding Maroula: "In the critical moment (of the battle) however, there appeared like an angel of salvation, a young Lemnian maiden by the name of Maroula who, upon seeing her father dying by the sword of a fanatic Muslim while defending an entry to the fort, and for the moment perceiving the consequences enslavement would bring upon her, the shame and dishonor, grabbed her father's sword which lay by his side in front of her, and charged against the enemy with such ferocity and valor, that she became a symbol of emulation to the defenders about her. Becoming encouraged by her heroism, they succeeded to dislodge their foes, forcing them to lose all hope of winning the battle and take to their ships and flee from the port."

Records exist that the Venetian Admiral Giacomo Loredano, marveling the heroism of the young maiden and wishing to reward her, offered her to marry whomever of his officers she would choose, adding that she would receive a rich dowry from the public treasury. Maroula proudly declined, saying she could not possibly marry a man whose character was not previously known to her. There are no known records as to what course her life took afterward.

Maroula became a legend and is called "new Amazon", "armed Pallada" and "Jean d’ Arc of Lemnos". Lemnos was saved from the Turks then, but it was to be for only a short while, as under a treaty in 1479 the island was ceded to them.

Evben today is doubtly during as much information that happened during the siege of Kotsinos and Palaiokastro (Myrina) as Maroula was a girl and the husband (? wife ?) of a killed warrior Georgios Makris in an episode that was hymned by the Italian poets and writers including Sabelico, Coelius, Calcagnini, Fulgosus, Vianol and especially by Greeks including Kostis Palamas, Aristomenis Proveleggios, Maria Lambadaridou-Pothou, Antonis Soupios, etc. A bronze statue of Maroula was erected in 1969 by the Lemnos Teachers Council, a work by the sculptor Hippocratis Savouras which reminds to the traveller of that heroic battle.

Ottoman period

In the first years of the Ottoman period, Kotsinos was known as a peaceful period. The port and the merchants gave life around the area. Jews, Venetians, Ottomans and Romians councilled a multicultural community. The port was metnioned in the entire port areas and its sources by travellers with different names: Piri Reis (1521 as Limãn-i-Kügânaz ή Cökenez), Belon (1548 Kokkino).

Belon mentioned the area around the castle, in the fieldy areas between the two ports had a large village with many vineyards and farms made with blonde horses, one of these which now has disappeared and are now only founded in Skyros. Other sources were also written by Thevet in 1554.

Other visits to the port by other travellers included Porcacchi in 1572, Rosaccio in 1580, Lubenau in 1586, Dy Loir in 1641, Boschini in 1658, Covel in 1677, Piacenza in 1680 and 1685, anonymous in 1685, Dapper in 1688 and Coro-nelli in 1696.

The Venetians returned to Lemnos in 1656 and 1657 and during the rule ruined its walls and buildings between these was its castle in which it oppositely ruined as known by Dapper in 1688. The settlement became unsafe and its residents fled. The Turk which remained in Kotsinos fled to Agios Ypatios and Livadochori for supervising the agricultural subdivisions in the northwestern and the centre of the island sourcably. Along with them were the Greek poor-farmers. The remainder resided to Repanidi and other seaside villages. Kotsinos was abandoned and aerially ruined the port productions.

In the 18th century, many thinked that yhr tuins was the same as ancient Hephaestia and by Meletios in 1728, Pococke in 1738, Hunt in 1801, Lacroix in 1848, Ragkavis in 1854 which mentioned as its name and not as a safe harbor, Frieseman in around 1780, Choiseul-Gouffier on a map mentioned Kotsino as a port with cuscoms but on a wrong spot and a text that wrote about the settlement and a port with a different name Bournias. It was inhabited by a few inhabitants. Hunt in 1801 and Richter in 1816 recorded only ruins.

In the later years lived other in no recovery and did not had 700 residents that was mentioned by Balbi in 1839. In 1858, Conze anchored at its port and had several warehouses and no stores. Tozer in 1889 knew Kotsino had an old pottery which had lived all of its life. Logically it was a member of the Tsoukala family in which arrived from Maroneia and had a pot shop from 1840. Another old pottery shop was recorded in the 1848 writing. In the same era, the building which a pottery shop was mentioned a school for the children of Repanidi.

The pottery was an old traditional art of the region. In 1304, it mentioned as Tzoukalaria. Potteries founded on the island by Randolph in 1680. The first glass was used from the Lemnian land for neutralized walls from the contaminated sippings. Lainades in which was known by others, had for several years with the last of Nikolas Tsoukalas (died 1991) and Tsamaidis.

Images of the ruined areas with some people and buildings around the port and its church gives for Kotsinos and De Launay in 1894, Hauttecoeur in 1903 and Friedrich in 1904. In the field areas had modest chapel, the remaining from the older times including Saint George (from an 1874 photo, a stone-wood temple with stairs marble and stone stairs and an old springs in the yard), Saint James built over a rubble, Agioi Giannides and a nearby chapel in Repanidi, Agia Kyriaki and Saint Athanasius.

Modern era

Pictures of ruins presents even today a winter settlement. It is entirely an abandoned fishing village, a fishing port for Repanidi. A few pottery shops which had halted to operate except for nearby Tsamaidis which are made with a touristic characteristis.

In 1981 it had 16 inhabitants and as a separate settlement of the community of Repanidi, it fell to only three in 1991.

See also

• List of settlements in the Lesbos prefecture including Lemnos

Bibliography

• A Moschidis I Limnos (Η Λήμνος = Lemnos) 1907
• Ang Michelis Repanidi (Ρεπανίδι) (1934)
• Belitsos, Theodoros, Lemnos and its villages by Th. Belitsos 1994.

External links

• Kotsinos/Kotzinos at the GTP Travel Pages

References