After three days of battle and under orders from the hegumen (abbot) of the monastery, the Cretans blew up barrels of gunpowder, choosing to sacrifice themselves rather than surrender.

The Monastery is situated on a rectangular plateau on the northwest side of Mount Ida, at an altitude of 500 m.[2] The Arkadian region is fertile and has vineyards, olive groves and pine, oak and cypress forests.

The presence of Mount Ida, which is a sacred mountain because it was legendarily the childhood home of Zeus, made the area attractive to early settlers.

Five km to the northeast, the city of Eleftherna had its cultural peak in the time of Homer and in classical antiquity, but its influence was also felt in the early Christian and Byzantine periods.

[5][Note 1] However, in 1837, Robert Pashley found evidence to suggest that it was impossible for the monastery to have been built on the ruins of another city,[6] so this idea has lost credence.

In 1951, the professor K. Kalokyris published an inscription dating to the 14th century and verified the hypothesis that a monastery was dedicated to Saint Constantine in this period.

This is known thanks to a letter of the Patriarch of Alexandria, Mélétios Pigas, in which he wrote that the inauguration ceremony was entrusted to Klimis's successor, the hegumen Mitrofanis Tsyrigos.

Although this letter wasn't dated, one can place it between 1590, when Mélétios Pigas was ordained the Patriarch, and 1596, when the hegumen Nicéphore succeeded Tsygiros.

The monastery became a great centre for the copying of manuscripts, and although the majority were lost during the destruction of the building by the Ottomans in 1866, some survive in foreign libraries.

In the spring of 1648, they controlled the major part of the island, with the exception of Heraklion, Gramvousa, Spinalonga and Suda, which remained under Venetian rule.

Tournefort notes "400 measures of oil" produced each year, a figure which would have been doubled if the monastery did not give the inferior olives to charity.

Franz Wilhelm Sieber, during his time in the monastery, recalled the hegumen's cellar and attributed the making of the wine to an excellent grape raised in high altitude, but that it was not produced at Malvoisie.

But the traveller mentioned their sad state, noting that he had never seen books in such bad condition and that it was impossible to distinguish the works of Aristophanes from those of Euripides.

On 30 March 1856, the Treaty of Paris obligated the Sultan to apply the Hatt-i humayun, which guaranteed civil and religious equality to Christians and Muslims.

In the month of July 1866, Isma'il Pasha sent his army to capture the insurgents, but the members of the committee fled before his troops arrived.

[21] At his departure, numerous local residents, mostly women and children, took refuge in the monastery, bringing their valuables in hopes of saving them from the Turks.

[22] Since the mid-October victory of Mustafa Pasha's troops at Vafes, the majority of the Turkish army was stationed in Apokoronas and were particularly concentrated in the fortresses around the bay of Souda.

[23] From Episkopi, Mustafa sent a new letter to the revolutionary committee at Arkadi, ordering them to surrender and informing them that he would arrive at the monastery in the following days.

[24] On the morning of 8 November, an army of 15,000 Ottomans and 30 cannons, directed by Suleyman, arrived on the hills of the monastery while Mustafa Pasha waited in the Messi.

[27] The messengers returned later in the night with the news that it was now impossible for reinforcements to arrive in time because all of the access roads had been blocked by the Ottomans.

[31] The remains of numerous Cretan Christians were collected and placed in the windmill, which was made into a reliquary in homage to the defenders of Arkadi.

This group published a brochure on The question of the Orient and the Cretan Renaissance, contacted French politicians and organized conferences in France and in Athens.

The battle lasted two days and two nights; the convent had twelve hundred holes found in it from cannon fire; one wall crumbled, the Turks entered, the Greeks continued the fight, one hundred fifty rifles were down and out and yet the struggle continued for another six hours in the cells and the stairways, and at the end there were two thousand corpses in the courtyard.

On the pediment, there was an inscription that read: "Lord, watch over the spirit of your servant, the Hegumen Neophytos Drossas, and of all our Christian brothers.

The architecture of the building is heavily influenced by Renaissance art, as the church was built in the period in which Crete was a colony of the Republic of Venice.

In the smaller part of the front of the church, constructed by square blocks of regular brickwork, the primary element is four pairs of Corinthian columns.

[46] Slightly before the Turkish attack, and in fear that it could easily be broken into and the monastery blown up, the munitions were moved to the cellar, which was situated approximately 75 centimetres below where it had been originally placed, which was more secure.

the Cretans perished for freedom[Note 6]The refectory, the place where the monks took their meals, is located in the northern aisle of the monastery.

[53] An inscription commemorates the sacrifice of the fallen Cretans: Nothing is more noble or glorious than dying for one's country.Of an octagonal shape, this structure is the former windmill which was later transformed into a storage room.

[51] It served as a boneyard for a short time after the siege and acquired its current shape in 1910 at the initiative of Dionyssios, then the bishop of Rethymnon.