Our January Trip to Louisiana....Part 3

Part 1 of our trip is HERE.
Part 2 of our trip is HERE.

About that other church..........

I had waatched a documentary on Youtube about the Malbis Plantation in Baldwin County Alabama about a year ago.

Here it is for your viewing pleasure in case you have time stuck at home lately with nothing better to do than to learn something.........



The church was a true work of art and I will intersperse photos I took inside with the information below.

In 1906 two men, Jason Malbis and William Papageorge came from Greece to Alabama(via Chicago) to found a colony of Greek immigrants.  Called the Malbis plantation it survived for many years and brought many Greeks here to live communally on the land.

Jason Malbis was born in Doumena Greece as Antonioa Markopoulos and spent the first half of his life as a monk in Greece.  He came to Chicago in 1900, changed his name to Jason Malbis and began looking for land to start an agricultural community like he knew back in the Old Country.  Malbis and Papageorge settled on acreage they bought in Daphne Alabama on which to found their dream.
The Malbis Plantation was a self-contained and self-sufficient community well into the 1970's.

Jason Malbis was on a trip back to Greece in 1939 when war broke out, trapping him there and in 1942 Malbis unexpectedly died, never to return to his community in Alabama.  He had left instructions in his will that a grand church dedicated to Mary, the Mother of Jesus("Theotokos" in Greek), should be built on their land and it was.

 It took 15+ years to raise the money needed but a church was erected, which was known as the Sacred Patriarchal and Stavropegial Monastery of the Presentation of Theotokos(or Presentation Theotokos)opening in 1965.

While the original community of Malbis Plantation eventually dissolved as people died off and/or moved away(the last original member of the community passed away in 2008)this Greek Orthodox Church stands as a testament to Jason Malbis' dream.

This is only one of six Greek Orthodox Churches in Alabama and the only one not under the  authority of the Green Orthodox Archdiocese of American but under the authority of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

It has no active congregation but special religious holidays and observances are held here as well as weddings.  There is a psaltist(chantor)from Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church located in nearby Mobile Alabama who gives tours of the Malbis Memorial Church but we weren't there on a day he gives tours.  That would have been a lot of fun to have a tour.

This Byzantine architecture Greek Orthodox church was dedicated in 1965 as a tribute to Jason Malbis and has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 2011 and on the Alabama Commission of Historic Buildings since 1977.

The Malbis Church is truly a gem of Byzantine art. Skilled laborers and artists(mostly from Greece) took five years to complete it.   Here is a portrait near the back of the nave of the church, of the church building, with parishioners entering and Jesus and his disciples depicted in the heavens above.

The walls are filled with iconography.  In the Greek Orthodox religion icons are of saints who are venerated not worshiped(that's reserved for God alone).  Veneration can take the form of bowing before them, kissing them, or standing and offering gestures of pious respect.

The Sanctuary and wall in front of  it were exquisitely beautiful by themselves.  This area is reserved for the clergy and can only be entered with the priest's blessing and to perform a specific task.  There was a wooden door with a circular opening so you could peek into this most holy of areas of the church where the holy table is housed.

This pulpit(or Ambon in the Greek Orthodox religion)was raised up(much like I've seen in some English Protestant churches)and intricately carved marble imported from Greece.

Also noteworthy was this carved throne sitting off opposite the Ambon to the right of the Sanctuary.  I didn't get a photo of the whole throne just this detail of one of the peacocks flanking it's sides.  I believe this is called the Bishop's throne and reserved for visiting clergy of high authority like a Bishop.  It is said the marble used in Malbis Memorial Church was mined from the same quarry that was used in Ancient Greece to build the Parthenon.

We went up into the balcony and here's a wide shot of the whole interior, or as much of it as I could get.

One think we all noticed in this church--all the stained glass was not representational, meaning it didn't depict any thing or person.  They were all geometric shapes inspired by Byzantine art.
Those massive pillars look like marble but upon closer inspection they are trompe l'oeil(literally "fool the eye" in French),painted to resemble marble.
The church both inside and out was also adorned with painstakingly created mosaics which I couldn't get good photos of unfortunately.

This small shrine/altar to the right of the sanctuary is dedicated to Jason Malbis and his body is interred behind it in the sanctuary.

But the crowning glory of Presentation Theotokos Church is the dome of the church in the center over the nave.  This artwork was created by an Iconographer from Athens, Greece named Spyros Tziouvaras, along with Haralambos and Chris Tziouvaras.  The dome depicts the artist's interpretation of the "Pantocrator" which in Greek means "the Holder of All Things" or God).

I knew Lorraine, being an artist herself, would enjoy a trip to this gem of a church in her town and Hubs is always up for anything involving religion.
So it was a great way to spend some time on a mild January day in coastal Alabama while we waited for Chris to get off work for the day.

Sluggy