In AD 1299, a village in the area of Kake Rache on the island of Thasos was celebrating the construction of a new church dedicated to Prophetes Elias. An inscription commemorating this event survives immured in the west façade of the early modern church of Metamorphoses (Fig. 1.1). The inscription also lists the donors involved: the priest Kaloioannes and his entire village, who bore the expenses for the church, as well as the mason Loukas from Christoupolis (modern Kavala, a town opposite Thasos on the Greek mainland), who was responsible for its construction.1 This inscription thus bears witness to a collective act of donation in which an entire village pooled its resources to create a new focal point of prayer and ritual while reaffirming its collective identity by collaborating in an act of gift-giving and thanksgiving to God.