Aetolofos (Greek: Αετόλοφος, Greek pronunciation:[ae'tolofos]) is a village and a community of the Agia municipality.[2] Before the 2011 local government reform it was a part of the municipality of Agia.[2] The community of Aetolofos covers an area of 13.534 km2.[3]
History
In the Middle Ages, the settlement was known as Vesaina (Βέσαινα), which in the corrupted form Desiani (Δέσιανη) continued until the early 20th century.[4][5] Vesaina is first attested in the 11th century, as a bishopric and in an inscription found in Agia of a certain Euthymios, "protospatharios of Vesaina".[4] A letter of Michael Psellos mentions the bishopric as being very poor.[4]
About 1.5 km from the modern village lies the abandoned village of Vathyrema, where there are also traces of a Byzantine-era settlement, and a church dedicated to St. Nicholas.[4]
The Swedish orientalist and traveller Jakob Jonas Björnståhl visited the village in 1779, reporting that the "Greek village of Dessen, in Turkish Büyükköy", had a hundred houses and four churches.[5] In 1791, the Greek scholar Grigorios Konstantas, in his landmark Geographia Neoteriki, mentioned "Dessen" (Δεσσέν) as a Christian-inhabited village with 150 houses, located on the plain, south of Agia. Almost all the inhabitants are peasants (zeugitai), with a few weavers (yfantades). Primary products were wheat, sheep, and a little silk.[5] At about that time, the powerful Ali Pasha of Ioannina, who was put in charge of security in the area as derven-agha, made the previously free village over to his son Veli Pasha as a chiflik.[5] The English traveller William Martin Leake, who visited the area in 1809, describes the mansion erected in the village by Veli Pasha, who preferred to reside there rather than his official seat at Larissa, where the climate was not to his liking.[5] Veli's rule lasted until 1819, when Ali Pasha was deposed by the Sublime Porte and his properties and those of his children confiscated.[5]
The area became part of Greece with the rest of Thessaly in 1881, leading to the departure of the Ottoman great landholders and their replacement by Greek ones.[5] In the early 20th century, Greek refugees from Eastern Rumelia were resettled in the area and received land.[5]
The current Church of the Dormition of the Theotokos lies on the ruins of an early Christian or Byzantinebasilica. Several Byzantine spolia are incorporated in the present structure, along with the synthronon of the old episcopal cathedral, which permitted the secure identification of Aetolofos as Vesaina.[4]
