One of the greatest poets of all time, the creator of "Erotokritos", points out in the poem's epilogue, that he was born and created his work in Sitia.
Vitsentzos was the youngest son of Iakovos Kornaros. He was born on 26 March 1553, in the village Trapezonda, Sitia, an ancestral fiefdom, and was baptized in the summer of the same year.
He remained in the area of Sitia, especially in the villages of Trapezonda and Piskokefalo, till 1587-1590, that is till he was about thirty five years old; "he lived the life of a feudal landowner , in a multi-faceted world of servants and serfs, all of which were Greek Orthodox".
Just before 1590 he moved to Handakas near his brother Andreas, who was the founder of the Stravaganti Academy, a society of intellectuals responsible for significant philological and literary activities in the heyday of Cretan Literature. There he married Marietta Zeno, played an active role in the public life of Handakas, and, during the devastating plague of 1591-1593, took on the responsibilities of sanitary supervisor for the town and the region of Handakas. Financial documents and wills, published by professor Giannis Mavromatis, illustrate that these members of the Kornaros family were linguistically Hellenized. Even after settling permanently in Handakas,
Vitsentzos often visited his hometown of Sitia until his death. In fact, for an extensive period, from the end of 1598 to the end of 1600, we find that for most of that time he was in Sitia, where he possessed a significant amount of property. He died in Handakas after 12 August 1613 and before 24 April 1614 and was buried in the monastery of Agios Fragiskos.
His parents, Iakovos Kornaros and Zabeta (Elisavet) daughter of Ioannis Demezzo of Marko, whose marriage licence was drafted in Sfaka, Sitia, in 1542, are buried in the monastery of the Agia Aikaterini (the Frankish) in Xoporto, a suburb of Sitia.
Source: sitia.gr
Translated and edited by: Yallou