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The Burial Crypt at Hosios Loukas
Beneath the great domed Katholikon is a burial crypt, accessible only by a stairwell on the southern side.

The crypt has three distinct areas: the entrance way; the main interior space which includes nine groin-vaulted bays and a sanctuary with a vaulted bay and an apse; and three vaulted passages, referred to formerly as bone vaults.

The crypt’s frescoes were until recently covered in hundreds of years of dust and hidden but in the 1960s the crypt underwent a cleaning by the Greek Archaelogical Service which revealed their remarkably well preserved state with the exceptions of the apse which has lost most of its plaster exposing brick and stone, as well as the entrance vault and groin vaults which have suffered slight damage from water seepage and minor vandalism, mostly on the lower lunettes near the entrance.

The crypt contains frescoes on the entryway and its vault, eight lunettes around the walls with depictions of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection, and forty medallion portraits of apostles, martyrs and holy men, abbots including Philotheos, as well as numerous inscriptions. C.L. Connor claims it has "the most complete programme of wall paintings surviving from the Middle Byzantine period."

It is believed that most if not all of the crypt frescoes were painted after 1048 AD and the death of Theodore Leobachus, a wealthy, government elite believed to have been one of the prominent patrons and who later in life became the abbot of Hosios Loukas.

The sanctuary of the crypt contains a prosthesis niche, an altar, and a chancel barrier which all indicate that the Eucharist was likely celebrated here as part of the services of burial and commemoration of revered religious figures, or as part of the ceremonies relating to the healing cult of Saint Luke.

When Hosios Loukas was frequented by pilgrims or members of Saint Luke’s healing cult, visitors would sleep not only in the Katholikon, but in the crypt itself where the tomb was kept along with two others, believed to be abbots. Saint Luke was believed to have been a miraculous healer, levitator, miraculous feeder and prophesier during his lifetime; after his death, all of the miracles associated with him involved the healing power of his tomb. Connor says that accounts in The Vita of St. Luke, written by an anonymous monk, indicate that “healing agents” associated with the tomb include but are not limited to exposure to “oil from the lamp above the tomb, moisture exuded from the tomb, and dreams experienced when sleeping near the tomb in the practice called incubation.” The tomb was well frequented before and after the completion of the complex, but following completion it became the focal point of the miracle cult of Saint Luke. There is evidence that some wishing for miracles stayed for periods of up to six days near the tomb or in adjacent rooms.