Saranda’s Etymological Odyssey: Unraveling the Roots of a Coastal City’s Name
The origin of the name of Saranda.But what does the legend say? It is said that 40 Roman soldiers left to carry out a military mission, but the place is not known. The origin of these soldiers was Armenian, Asian and European. Mission charged by order of the Roman military command. The legend says that, while sailing, bad weather forced them to anchor in the bay of Onhezmi (today’s Saranda). Local residents, who were of a different religious faith than the soldiers, Orthodox, caught them and after many questions forced them to change their religious faith, or otherwise be subjected to the death penalty in tubs filled with cold water. Once in there, they would stay until the bodies were frozen. Those determined in their religious faith, Catholic, did not accept the conversion of the faith, but death by sacrificing to freeze in tubs of cold water. The following days were spent in complete isolation, until the day of their execution. A detail that should be mentioned, if it hadn’t happened we might not have the current name of the city, is that before the execution one of the soldiers dies and 39 remain. to join the group, since 40 should have died together and not the 39 that remained. The servant accepted and thus their number was completed to 40. At the last moment again the pardon of life was offered in exchange for the change of religious faith, again the execution was accepted by the Roman soldiers in the name of the glory of God. And so it happened. They put all 40 in the tubs of cold water until their bodies froze. And it happened on the 9th of distant March in antiquity in the 6th century. The monastery that was built for the sacrifices of the heroes For this heroic sacrifice, the convicts themselves, the Orthodox religion, proclaimed all 40 saints, where even today in the Monastery with the same name there are engraved their names. The monastery, or the great basilica, was built as a result of this legend, on the hill east of the city of Saranda with a Roman architecture and construction. The above ground floor of this rare Monastery consists of a church with 7 cones (opisida) built on the eastern side of the monument.
The central hall consists of a developed architecture that is formed by the intersection of many arches, many windows and two large entrances (one from the east and the other from the west), all formed by arches, or vaults. The courtyard of this monument goes out in front of the western door and presents the panorama of the sea and the beautiful city of Onhezmi (Saranda). This was destroyed by the English bombings during the war for the liberation of Saranda, where the English allied forces opened the way for the partisan teaching, after the German forces were deployed in the monastery and today there are two or three arches left on the western side. While the underground floor which is called Kryptoportiku, which is a construction that is formed by a large vault built on the western side, which is located in the depth and deeper still two other vaults that enter in the form of a tunnel and on their sides traces of paintings and frescoes with figures of saints. There are also small chambers on both sides that, according to archeology specialists, probably complete the detail of the legend of the freezing tubs of the 40 saints. On the western side, even today, there are the old staircases, where visitors performed the pilgrimage on the 9th of March every year and entered the rooms of the underground floor, where the leaders of the Monastery, of the Orthodox faith, placed aromatic plants such as laurel, oregano, rosemary, basil, etc., creating a state of paradise and the visitors who came out to the east of the basilica with 7 shells, came out liberated and “cleansed” spiritually from the aromas of the “paradise” of the underground chambers. The cryptoportic was also used as a cemetery, but not for the citizens, only for the servants of the monastery, a tradition that we also find in the faith of the Bektashi sect even today. In addition to the stairs, the inhabitants of Onhezmi also used the road along the hill of Saranda during their pilgrimage, the traces of which are still there today.