It is women who bring all these things together in a lived place and in collective memory.

Metropolitan Dionysios Karamitsas, whose name is inscribed on the marble lintel of the Church of the Taxiarchis in Mithymna, belonged to the family of my ancestors. He served as metropolitan from 1774 to 1801. In addition to rebuilding the church of the Taxiarchis of Mithymna in 1795, which had been destroyed by fire, he founded, among other things, the girls’ school next to the church. Today, only the chiseled stones of the entrance, scattered on the overgrown plot, indicate that something important once stood there. Initially, only daughters of wealthy families attended this school, among them my maternal grandmother, Athanasia Kyriakou Kazazi-Karamitsa. She is the little girl sitting cross-legged in this photograph below from 1896. The education of girls activated a very deep memory from the time of Sappho and her school for women. Despite the disruptions and gaps of centuries, we will encounter it again in 1530, at the “Women’s School” in the Holy Monastery of Panagia Myrsiniotissa, the only school for girls in the Greek world at the time, founded by Saint Ignatios Agallianos. At the “Women’s School,” girls were taught reading, writing, mathematics, music, and handicrafts. The two schools founded by Saint Ignatios contributed to the awakening of the national consciousness in Lesbos, on the run up to the end of Ottoman rule. [4]