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Turn left after crossing the wooden bridge, and after walking for about 100 m you will
arrive at the steps leading up to the church. Yılanlı Kilise consist of a flat-roofed
cruciform naos with an apse, a barrel-vaulted narthex on the west and a burial chamber
with an apse adjacent to it.
As you enter the vestibule of the church you will see some remaining parts of a fresco
depicting the Entombment of Mary the Egyptian, with St. Zosimus and the Lion. This
painting, quite unique in Cappadocia, is unfortunately very badly damaged. From here you
enter a narthex opening into the church to the right. On the flat roof of the church
itself can be seen a cross in low relief. The main apse contains an Ascencion, the eastern
vaults an Annunciation and Visitation, with a Koimesis and a fresco depicting Constantine
and Helena on the right and the Last Supper and Crucification on the left.
At the top the western wall of the narthex there is a fresco showing Christ sitting in
judgement with the Twenty Four Elders of the Apocalypse on either side of him, each
holding one letter of the Greek alphabet. Below them there are the Forty Martyrs of
Sebaste (modern Sivas). Beneath the Christ in judgement one can see St. Michael weighing
the souls according to their sins and good deeds in the presence of Satan. A monster with
three heads is devouring the damned. In the middle we see the wicked in the Rivers of Tar
and Tartarus. On the right, there are four naked women being bitten by serpents. The first
woman is being bitten by eight snakes, probably because of the sin of adultery. In the
case of the second woman, snakes are biting her nipples because of her refusal to feed her
children, the third woman is being bitten on the mouth for having committed the sin of
calumny, while the fourth one is being bitten on the ear as a punishment for the sin of
disobedience. The paintings, which are clear evidence of the hostile attitude of monks
towards women as source of impurity, are obviously a subject of great interest to
feminists.
Notice Christ in the west vault sitting cross-legged in the
Islamic way. |
