Saint Minas monastery at Aposami
About one kilometer southeast of the village Skalani, province Heraklion, at the position Aposami survives today the medieval monastery of Saint Minas (Agios Minas). Built at a very fertile area amid vineyards and olive groves endures until today the fate of abandonment and desolation as so many unknown treasures and monuments of Cretan countryside.
It still stands without a roof and walls. This is the only monastery that has been recorded in Crete dedicated to Saint Minas and the oral tradition tells that it has played an important role having housed the bishop of Crete, Saint Minas. Saint Minas church remained forgotten till 1980 when the professor at the University of Crete, Theocharis Detorakis, found some notarial documents in the state archives of Venice.
There is still a testimony of 1598 that granted the lands of the monastery for cultivation and a second, more important in 1627 which informs us that the monastery has collapsed and forced Piero Salamon to take action in order to repair the damage. After 1627 there are no documents for Saint Minas, so it is supposed that after the Turkish invasion of the island it was deserted.
