Pilgrimage to Mount Athos [1 ed.] 1803742410, 9781803742410

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Mount Athos is the chief centre of pilgrimage for Eastern Orthodox Christians. As the spiritual hub of the Orthodox world it is also home to more than two thousand monks. Each of its twenty monasteries welcomes thousands of pilgrims every year to venerate its holy icons, to make their confessions, and to listen to the wisdom of its elders. This book delves into the nature of pilgrimage, for both Western and Eastern Christians. It describes the pilgrim experience both from the standpoint of the visiting pilgrim (be it men to the Athonite monasteries or women to their daughter houses elsewhere) and from that of the receiving monk. What is it like to live the life of a monk or nun for a few precious days? And what is it like for the monks (and nuns) to receive literally thousands of pilgrims every year? And are they true pilgrims or are they really tourists? What is so special about Athos? This book will answer these questions.

ISBN 978-1-80374-241-0

www.peterlang.com

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Pilgrimage to Mount Athos

Edited by Graham Speake

Graham Speake holds degrees in classics from both Cambridge and Oxford Universities. His publications include Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise (2nd edn. 2014), for which he was awarded the Criticos Prize, and A History of the Athonite Commonwealth (2018). He is President of the Friends of Mount Athos and has made twenty pilgrimages to the Holy Mountain.

Pilgrimage to Mount Athos

‘Mount Athos, for over a thousand years a centre for monasticism, has attracted pilgrims for nearly as long. This fascinating collection of essays discusses pilgrimage, the pilgrims, and the monks themselves. The Athonite ban on females has not precluded essays by women, testifying to the Holy Mountain’s appeal, transcending geography.’ – Fr Andrew Louth

Edited by Graham Speake Peter Lang

27-Oct-23 17:06:58

Mount Athos is the chief centre of pilgrimage for Eastern Orthodox Christians. As the spiritual hub of the Orthodox world it is also home to more than two thousand monks. Each of its twenty monasteries welcomes thousands of pilgrims every year to venerate its holy icons, to make their confessions, and to listen to the wisdom of its elders. This book delves into the nature of pilgrimage, for both Western and Eastern Christians. It describes the pilgrim experience both from the standpoint of the visiting pilgrim (be it men to the Athonite monasteries or women to their daughter houses elsewhere) and from that of the receiving monk. What is it like to live the life of a monk or nun for a few precious days? And what is it like for the monks (and nuns) to receive literally thousands of pilgrims every year? And are they true pilgrims or are they really tourists? What is so special about Athos? This book will answer these questions.

Pilgrimage to Mount Athos

Graham Speake (ed.)

Graham Speake holds degrees in classics from both Cambridge and Oxford Universities. His publications include Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise (2nd edn. 2014), for which he was awarded the Criticos Prize, and A History of the Athonite Commonwealth (2018). He is President of the Friends of Mount Athos and has made twenty pilgrimages to the Holy Mountain.

Pilgrimage to Mount Athos

‘Mount Athos, for over a thousand years a centre for monasticism, has attracted pilgrims for nearly as long. This fascinating collection of essays discusses pilgrimage, the pilgrims, and the monks themselves. The Athonite ban on females has not precluded essays by women, testifying to the Holy Mountain’s appeal, transcending geography.’ – Fr Andrew Louth

Graham Speake (ed.) www.peterlang.com

9781803742410_cvr_eu.indd All Pages

Peter Lang

20-Oct-23 19:00:50

PILGRIMAGE TO MOUNT ATHOS

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. The German National Library lists this publication in the German National Bibliography; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Speake, Graham, 1946- editor. Title: Pilgrimage to Mount Athos / Graham Speake. Description: Oxford ; New York : Peter Lang, [2023] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023030597 (print) | LCCN 2023030598 (ebook) | ISBN 9781803742410 (paperback) | ISBN 9781803742427 (ebook) | ISBN 9781803742434 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Christian pilgrims and pilgrimages--Greece--Athos. | Orthodox Eastern monasticism and religious orders--Greece--Athos. | Athos (Greece)--Religious life and customs. Classification: LCC BX385.A8 P55 2023 (print) | LCC BX385.A8 (ebook) | DDC 271/.81909495--dc23/eng/20230802 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023030597 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023030598 Cover image: Pilgrims await the arrival of the ferry at the Russian monastery of St Panteleimonos. Photo © Graham Speake. Cover design by Peter Lang Group AG ISBN 978-1-80374-241-0 ( print ) ISBN 978-1-80374-242-7 (ePDF ) ISBN 978-1-80374-243-4 (ePub) DOI 10.3726/b20934 © 2023 Peter Lang Group AG, Lausanne Published by Peter Lang Ltd, Oxford, United Kingdom [email protected] - www.peterlang.com Graham Speake has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editor of this Work. All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed.

IN MEMORIAM KALLISTOS WARE

Contents

Acknowledgements ix Graham Speake

Introduction 1 Sister Magdalen

1 Holy People and Holy Places: An Orthodox Reflection on Pilgrimage 5 Douglas Dales

2 Pilgrimage in the Western Church before ad 1000

17

Veronica Della Dora

3 Gazes from the Sea: Mount Athos through the Eyes of Women Travellers and Pilgrims

33

René Gothóni

4 Pilgrims or Tourists? Modern-​Day Travellers

61

Chris Thomas

5 The Path-​Clearing Pilgrimage

75

Archimandrite Methodios

6 Monastic Hospitality: An Athonite Monk’s Experience

81

Anna Conomos-​Wedlock

7 Monastic Hospitality: A Pilgrim’s Experience of Ormylia

103

viii

Contents

Rory Fraser

8 Monastic Hospitality: A Pilgrim’s Experience of Mount Athos

111

Metropolitan Nikolaos Of Mesogaia & Lavreotiki

9 Climbing to the Highest Place on Earth

121

† Metropolitan Kallistos Of Diokleia

10 Fifty-​Four Years as an Athonite Pilgrim

137

Notes on Contributors

153

Index 157

Acknowledgements

Most of the papers collected in this volume were first delivered at a conference held by the Friends of Mount Athos at Madingley Hall, Cambridge, in November 2022. The conference was originally announced for spring 2021, and was then twice postponed because of the global Covid pandemic. The society wishes to acknowledge with thanks the generous sponsorship received from the Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund, the Gerald Palmer Eling Trust, and the A. G. Leventis Foundation. The editor is deeply grateful to Professor Vladeta Janković and Fr Andrew Louth for their valuable assistance at various stages of the editorial process. The editor also wishes to thank the Friends of Mount Athos for contributing generously towards the production costs of the volume. Once again it is a pleasure to record our gratitude to our patient publishers for their courtesy and efficiency at every stage.

Graham Speake

Introduction

Mount Athos is celebrated for many reasons: for its incomparable natural beauty, for its distinctive monastic architecture, for its priceless treasures of Byzantine art, for its enduring spiritual traditions; but it is perhaps best known as the principal focus of pilgrimage in the Eastern Orthodox world. For more than a thousand years its monasteries and sketes have welcomed guests to their precincts, each one of whom should be treated as if he were Christ Himself. Since the time of St Benedict (sixth century) emphasis has been placed on hospitality as one of the most important monastic virtues, a virtue that was exercised perhaps even more fervently in the west during the first millennium. Different chapters here examine the exercise of that virtue both from the point of view of a monk and that of a pilgrim. Athos is also famous as a male preserve and there are good reasons for that in the monastic tradition. This book, which includes three chapters written by women, looks at all aspects of the Athonite pilgrimage experience, including the option for women that is now available at the nearby dependency of Ormylia. Nor are all the contributors Orthodox. Athos has always attracted a minority of non-​Orthodox pilgrims. Some may come for the first time purely out of curiosity; others come more regularly in order to experience something they find there that is lacking in their home spiritual environment. There are even some who come so often that eventually they are faced with the question of whether to become Orthodox. Those who aspire to be received into Orthodoxy on the Mountain itself (exclusively by baptism) are subjected to a rigorous course of catechesis which is profoundly challenging but ultimately richly rewarding. At what point does a visit become a pilgrimage? No doubt everyone will give a different answer to the question, and the underlying (if unvoiced) response is deeply personal. Perhaps we can agree that there is a

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sliding scale. Some will suddenly realize, perhaps after returning even the first time, that they have made a pilgrimage; others will require a few more visits, a few more conversations. It also varies according to the visitor’s/​ pilgrim’s background. Athos claims to be open to everyone, but it is surely more open to some than to others. Those who come from an Orthodox background will be less surprised by some of its manifestations than those who do not. I am thinking, for example, of the length of the services, the veneration of icons and relics, the rhythm of life, etc. Athos rightly claims also to be a beacon of pan-​Orthodoxy, and so it is; but there is no denying that it is also profoundly Greek. Greek is the common language in most of the monasteries; the great majority of pilgrims also are Greek. Those coming from a non-​Orthodox, especially a non-​Greek, background may therefore find themselves more at home in the non-​Greek monasteries, where everyone is to some extent an ‘outsider’. But as Sister Magdalen notes, ‘the etymology of “pilgrimage” implies a journey to a place where one is a foreigner.’ Nor is a pilgrimage intended to be comfortable. If anything, it should shake us out of our comfort zone and make us ask why we are here. It should, however, be accepted that Athos is not necessarily to everyone’s taste. Many go for a first visit and feel that once is enough. They have seen what it is like; they may or may not like what they saw; they may feel no reason to go again. We hope they may still feel sufficiently interested by their experience to want to read what the contributors to this volume have to say. Many points of view are represented here, and it is to be hoped that at least some of them will strike a chord with their readers. Some readers of course may not yet have had the chance to visit the Holy Mountain. Let us hope that they may be sufficiently intrigued by what they find in these pages that they decide to try it for themselves. And if they are reluctant to commit themselves to a first visit on the ground, they can always avail themselves of a ‘floating pilgrimage’, such as is described by Veronica della Dora at the end of her chapter. Certain aspects of life on the Holy Mountain may well be baffling or even off-​putting to a first-​time pilgrim. Chris Thomas is unashamedly honest about his first experience as a path-​clearer. But all credit to him: he persevered; he rose to the challenge; and now he cannot keep away. Not many people will react so passionately, either so negatively or so positively;

Introduction

3

but it is interesting that the Mountain can bring out such strong feelings in its visitors. It is perhaps not a place for half-​measures or for the faint-​ hearted. Equally moving, in a very different way, and equally frank is the penultimate chapter, by Metropolitan Nikolaos. Not for the first time he gives full rein to his imagination as he describes his relationship with the Mountain, while his prose ascends almost to poetry. The conference at which most of these papers were delivered had to be postponed more than once because of the Covid pandemic that affected the whole world in 2020–​2. Even the Mountain was not untouched by its ruthless advance; several monasteries lost members of their brotherhood; and for a while the fathers had to close their borders to visitors from outside. As we write, certain precautions are still in place and some houses are understandably wary of admitting large numbers of pilgrims at any one time. The sudden and total absence of pilgrims provided the fathers with an opportunity to take stock and consider if they had previously been admitting too many guests. Abbot Methodios of Hilandar has some interesting reflections on this, and it could be that in future greater attention will need to be paid to the quota system. Small brotherhoods cannot allow themselves to be overwhelmed; if they do, the pilgrims risk destroying the very thing that their pilgrimage seeks to find. The statistics for numbers of pilgrims entering the Mountain in recent years as quoted by René Gothóni in his paper are deeply disturbing. In such circumstances perhaps less is more. This was the first residential conference that the Friends of Mount Athos had held without the presence of our beloved late Metropolitan Kallistos (1934–​2022). He was present at some of the early meetings when the committee began to make plans for the programme. Sadly his repose in August 2022 meant that he did not live to see them realized. But of course he was with us in spirit, and his photograph presided over the proceedings. His deep love of the Mountain is evident in all the addresses that he gave at previous conferences, never more so than in the paper he gave in 2015, the conference that was held in honour of his own eightieth birthday. It therefore seemed appropriate that it should be repeated, both at the conference itself and in the published proceedings. It is therefore printed here without any alterations and the volume is of course dedicated to his eternal memory.

Sister Magdalen

1 Holy People and Holy Places: An Orthodox Reflection on Pilgrimage

We are all ‘strangers and pilgrims upon earth’ (Heb. 11:13), making our way to our true homeland. But Orthodox Christians past and present also go on specific pilgrimages in the sense of geographical journeys to sacred places to pray there. In particular, pilgrimages have been made to sites connected with the birth, life, crucifixion, and resurrection of the Lord.1 Jerusalem has been the most frequent focus of open pilgrimage since St Helena’s time; her finding of the Cross is still a major feast. Egeria’s fourth-​century pilgrimage text is famous for its descriptions of liturgical services in Jerusalem. Pilgrimages are made to Rome and to sites associated with other Apostles, saints, and martyrs. Old Testament sites also became destinations:  particularly Sinai. Pierre Maraval says that in the Byzantine Empire all the Oriental Christians were pilgrims, and all the Orient became a place of pilgrimage; his thesis is basically that pilgrimages were so widespread that there was no specific designation ‘pilgrim’.2 He contrasts this with a more otherworldly Christian outlook during the persecutions: a refusal to sanctify geography. There is a striking unanimity among the ancient and modern writers on pilgrimage. (a) Christians throughout the centuries have been encouraged to journey to holy places and visit holy people. (b) Egeria’s wide-​ranging sacred places figure on contemporary pilgrimages. (c) Jerome’s texts about Paula’s pilgrimage3 and texts of Gregory of Nyssa include warnings against 1 2 3

To be physically present there is a motivation described by St Gregory of Nyssa. Lieux saints et pèlerinages d’orient (Paris: Cerf, 2004). A year after the death of her husband, Paula of Rome pursued a pilgrimage (second half of the fourth century; near the date of Egeria’s) to tour all the holy sites, travelling with large entourages of both men and women. Her travels are documented by Jerome in his later writing addressed to Eustochium which discusses how Paula

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the negative impact of pilgrimages, caused by the encounter with wrongful ideas and the sight of scandalous behaviour.4 One finds in recent sermons on pilgrimage the same encouragement and the same warnings; perhaps the descriptions of behaviour ‘not to imitate’ are less graphic than the older texts … (d) Ancient and modern pilgrims speak of overcoming trials and temptations which acted to prevent the journey. (e) What Scrooge’s nephew says about Christmas expresses what many writers say about pilgrimage: it is the time ‘when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-​up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-​passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys’. All generations speak of the liturgical dimension of the pilgrimage, often culminating in a Eucharistic service at the final ‘place’.5 Some pilgrimages are made in quest of a particular gift or a miracle from God. But for all pilgrimages the ultimate goal is to receive the grace associated with that place. I live in a monastic community which has become a place of pilgrimage because the founder, St Sophrony the Athonite, is much revered, and people want to visit his dwelling place and his tomb. (During the Covid isolation I went many times to the burial crypt to pray at his relics on behalf of people who could not come in person.) I experience first-​hand the mystery of sacred locations. This aspect has itself been the object of academic studies. (One paper’s thesis is to investigate how far picturesque landscape interferes with or assists the spiritual experience of pilgrimage –​the authors refer to the Friends of Mount Athos as potential beneficiaries of this study.)6

4 5

6

participated in the environments they toured. He discusses that Paula exemplified an intimate and emotional connection with the sights, experiencing visual vividness of biblical events at each locale. Letters of Athanasius on pilgrimage; Peter of Iberia; Eusebius; the Bordeaux pilgrim. The 2019 St Sergius Liturgical Conference had the theme: ‘Pilgrimage Liturgies’. The prototype is the journey to Emmaus, where the hearts were already burning, the Scripture was opened, and finally, the Lord was made known in the breaking of bread. The papers are well worth reading. UKRI, authors Avril Maddrell, Veronica della Dora, Heather Walton, Alessandro Scafi.

Holy People and Holy Places

7

Christian studies start with a theological basis. Christ was on earth. God occupied a specific physical space on the map which is still there. The first theological mystery raised by the idea of pilgrimage is whether He is more present there now than anywhere else. Commenting on the words of the Lord, ‘I desire that my servant also be where I am …’, St Sophrony said: ‘This place [referred to by Christ] is not geographical but spiritual.’ When the risen Christ was approached by the myrrh-​bearing women, they fell at His feet and grasped them. But when St Mary Magdalene was alone, He said: ‘Touch me not’ –​she was more mature spiritually than they were. St Sophrony used to say that they were on the psychological level and she was on the spiritual level. The Lord affirms this by going on to explain in theological terms why the contact between Christians and the Lord should not remain on the earthly level: ‘For, because I am not yet ascended to my Father …’ (the rest of His words here are full of deep meaning but I stop here). In other words: ‘Once I am at the right hand of the Father, then I can be touched.’ It is in a new way, universal, accessible to all nations at all times. It is spiritual access. At the same time there will be physical, local, circumscribed access, for example, through the sacraments. However, even this does not absolutely localize the Lord’s presence: there can be many simultaneous services on earth, and the Church is intended to be world-​wide. So one can assert that the Lord is not more present now where He lived on earth. Access to Him is possible in all its fullness anywhere geographically. St Paul is placed in icons of the Ascension and Pentecost, which is stretching the chronology to show us that anyone who ‘puts on Christ’ after Pentecost is as much part of His body as those who had physical contact with Him during His ministry. His blood relatives still do not have privileged access. The Lord told us that we become His mother, His brethren, His kinsfolk, if we do the will of the Father. This theology raises the question: so why travel in order to receive grace? The etymology of ‘pilgrimage’ implies a journey to a place where one is a foreigner. (This is not to deny the value of local pilgrimages, where the destination is still important, though the journey is shorter.) One clear and often expressed reason to go on pilgrimage is to take time away from ordinary life, to go to a place away from ordinary life, in order to be spiritually

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refreshed for the next stage of ordinary life: time away to focus on the ‘one thing needful’. Sometimes the pilgrimage is associated with times when ‘ordinary’ life has been broken into by an extraordinary difficulty: an illness, inability to conceive a child, a major decision. People go somewhere for help, leaving everything except their problem behind. Particularly in Russia, there were also permanent pilgrims. They feature in literature, but they were a feature of the real Russia before the revolution. They renounced their past and set out with almost no possessions, with faith in God that they would be supplied with food and accommodation during their wanderings. Some of these wanderers have characteristics of the fool for Christ’s sake. They often had the appearance of poor beggars. They reminded people that we are not to love the world, as St John says. Helping them was considered a blessing. The most famous ‘full-​time’ pilgrim is the anonymous Russian pilgrim first made known to English readers from the ‘pea-​green book’ which features in Salinger’s Franny and Zooey. The Way of a Pilgrim and its sequel provide one of the main sources of teaching on the Jesus prayer in the Christian world. Abram’s call to ‘Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you’ (Gen. 12:1) is often cited in texts about pilgrimage as well as about monasticism. The difference is that the Orthodox monk or nun vows to remain in the place God shows. St Jerome is not the only Church Father to suggest that going about on pilgrimage is harmful for monastics. (Gregory of Nyssa is another.)7 However, many accounts of pilgrim journeys are about monks. It is not clear how many of them had not yet found their definitive ‘place of repentance’. Jerome says that the pilgrims were ‘surrounded by crowds of monks from all over the empire’. From the little history I have read on this, it seems that meeting fellow monks and famous elders was high on the list of motivations for monastic travelling. The monasteries in the Holy Land and Cappadocia became in their turn pilgrimage sites. Some lay pilgrims settled as monks at the holy sites. Even today, while ‘gadding about’ would still be frowned on, monastics go on pilgrimages.

7

Epistle 2, PG 46 1009–​16.

Holy People and Holy Places

9

Lay people, too, ‘renounce the world’ while on pilgrimage; the activities and encounters are less worldly than, say, a holiday, and the whole trip is a chance for spiritual as well as psychological renewal. The Incarnation stops us from turning religion into an escape from materiality. God works through matter even when He could work without it. Is this part of His reminder to us that we are not angels, despite the divine life we are called to? The grace acquired by holy people sanctifies their own bodies and the earth around them. Orthodoxy takes seriously the theology of synergy,8 to the point where until now we are sometimes accused of being semi-​Pelagian, because we insist on the equal need for God’s will and my will in my salvation. We do not claim that the wills are of equal quality, but that they are both equally needed. This means that a holy person is someone who has made God’s life his/​her own life. Human energies are divinized. A human person becomes a vehicle of grace, just as a piece of iron which has been in fire becomes itself a source of light and heat. Grace is uncreated, but it permeates matter. At the Transfiguration Christ’s clothes, and the air beyond His body, shone with grace. Potentially, in the words of Fr Alexander Schmemann’s famous book title, all the world is a sacrament. Meanwhile, a certain amount of matter has acquired grace-​ giving properties. Baptismal water is symbolic but more than symbolic in the Orthodox understanding: the actual water is the vehicle of the grace. This theology of the sanctification of matter and thus of place has the consequence that pilgrims want to be where the holy person was on earth. It can be their dwelling place, their tomb, their church. To be in direct contact with the relics of a saint is one of the many sacraments of the Church. When Christian churches were first built, it was on the tomb of a martyr, sometimes at the place of the saint’s death. People also go where there are objects blessed by a saint.9 The grace passes from one object to another. People will take home an icon or a prayer rope or a handkerchief placed on a relic or a ‘secondary’ relic such as the clothing of a saint. (Already in 8 9

‘We are fellow workers (synergoi) with God’ (1 Cor. 3: 9). Human and divine energies can be united, without either changing their nature. St John Chrysostom expressed the wish to go and see the prison and the chains of St Paul.

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Acts we read that handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched Paul were taken to the sick, and healed them (Acts 19:12).) I have been on a pilgrimage in Alaska to visit the island where St Herman lived. It was here that I realized that the saint’s presence is tangible where he lived. The islanders there speak of him as if he were still alive. For example, a young man told me that when he did something wrong his grandmother would say: ‘Go and get Fr Herman’s forgiveness.’ For him it was a half-​hour walk to the grave. The forest where St Herman’s hut was built felt like a vast cathedral. I told this young man I felt that and he said: ‘Yes, and when you live here you get to know exactly where it begins.’ This is another mystery … In baptism, if the water is in a font, we can answer the question about how much water is sanctified. But if it is in a river, we have to say we do not know. It is as if there were a spatial distance to which the grace reaches, like a physical odour. One could wonder how far the grace of a place reaches. St Gregory of Nyssa, who made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in ad 380, wrote that the holy places of Jerusalem had ‘received the footprints of life itself ’. ‘God has left a trace of Himself in Palestine just as perfume lingers in a room after the wearer has left.’ St Herman’s relics were removed to Kodiak Island at his canonization so that more people could have access to them. Until now, the soil where the saint had been buried is known to cure illnesses. Now we get to the heart of the matter. It is persons who are holy and who sanctify places. Pilgrims, too, are persons who bring their hope and faith to the persons associated with the place. The saints associated with a shrine are living and unique. It is indeed as fulfilled persons in God’s likeness that they are all-​embracing. Before St Sophrony died he said to me: ‘I am leaving, but if God gives me a place where I can pray and see, of course I will remain linked to this place and to each one of you.’ St Seraphim promised his nuns that he would hear them if they came to his grave and spoke with him as they did during his lifetime. Why did they need to be there? People like me who wonder such things should probably just humble their minds … My only excuse is that children ask me such questions. The personal aspect prevails; that we can affirm. Secondarily, there are holy objects whose locations are places of pilgrimage. In particular, there are the icons people go to venerate, or which are taken on journeys so that

Holy People and Holy Places

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people have a chance to venerate them. These icons are not treated like magic charms. They are used for contact with the holy person depicted. Their becoming objects of pilgrimage goes back to the first time a miracle took place after prayer before that icon. (Sometimes the miracle is that myrrh pours from the icon; I venerated an icon like that in America.) Let’s say someone prays at a certain icon for someone who has eye problems. A miracle ensues and word gets around. So other people with eye problems go to the same icon. God, and the saint, respond to their faith. That is one reason why you get ‘specialist’ saints and icons. Of course the saints are not limited in the scope of their intercession; it is the faithful who specialize their requests and it becomes a custom.10 These customs are often condescendingly dismissed as ‘popular’, in fact meaning ‘not as sophisticated as I am’.11 God and the saints respond positively on so many occasions that we cannot dismiss customs. Their theological basis lies in the respect God has for persons of all kinds. We may call it condescension on His part, but we must never forget that to create humans in His image and to join the human race is already a far bigger step of condescension. We cannot be patronizing about pious customs when God is so accommodating to us all. Some of the characters in Stephen Graham’s famous book on Russian pilgrims in Jerusalem are treated in a patronizing way by the author. I am not claiming that everyone on a pilgrimage is on the same spiritual or theological level; I am saying that people cannot ‘from outside’, to use the Pauline expression, measure the spiritual level as ‘low’ when they witness Christian practices which seem primitive to them. (I still recommend reading Stephen Graham’s book, especially the Archimandrite’s farewell address to the pilgrims. This address is an inspired reflection on visiting the Holy Land, and the final blessing echoes the Orthodox blessing for a journey: ‘May the God of Zion, Maker of heaven and earth, bless 10 11

It is said that the Lord asked St Barbara what gift she would like, and she said that she would like to heal lepers. Her reputation for this spread. So the saint was the initiator of this particular ‘specialization’. Some customs are based on childish theology or inaccurate history, but by no means all. One reads negative comments about the many heads of John the Baptist or hands of Mary Magdalene; but in these two cases authentic relics are known and venerated (Amiens, Simonopetra).

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you and lead your steps into the way of truth, and enable you to see the blessed Jerusalem, not this earthly one, but the heavenly one.’) The priests in Stephen Graham’s book echo the fathers we cited in warning pilgrims about chattering and gossip, and picking up bad ideas. Every year at St Spyridon’s relics they open the reliquary on his feast day and find the soles of his slippers worn down almost to shreds. (His body and his clothing have remained incorrupt.) There are annual photographs and scientific verifications, so that to deny this would be tantamount to shutting one’s eyes. The tradition grew up that he wears the slippers out in a year going to so many places to help people. After a miracle in a certain place they found sand from there on the soles of the shoes. So people go to his relics on pilgrimage, and as a blessing the clergy give out pieces of the worn-​out slippers they have replaced that year. Even from these fragments there are too many cases of miracles to be dismissed. Of course St Spyridon is no longer ‘in the body’; he visits people from heaven without physically walking to where they are. But at the very least, the worn-​out shoes and sand grains are a miraculous sign by God that the saint’s help is real. However, the mystery remains, because there are genuine cases of saints answering phone calls from people who did not know that they had departed; saints leaving money someone needed; saints leaving written messages. All grace is received (or rejected) by a person, that is, subjectively. But there is an objective reality in the grace of a holy place or relic. This grace is ‘objective’ in the sense that its presence does not depend on people’s receiving it. This is obvious if we consider another feature of Christianity: in the canonically performed sacraments, there is an objective sanctity in the consecrated matter. But even Holy Communion, as St Paul warns us in a fearsome passage in the letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 11:29), can be received unto death, and unto condemnation. This is analogous to the fact that some people who go to the Holy Land feel overwhelmed by the contemporary noise and the buildings which surround and hide the holy sites. Others come back saying that they lived the Gospels in reality. They would say that the Lord is more present there than elsewhere. Sincere pilgrims actually see the place with different eyes than other people. St Jerome, echoed by St Gregory, said: ‘To be at the places of the Cross and the Resurrection is profitable for those who daily take up their cross and

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rise with Christ.’12 In this context it is noticeable that on pilgrimage, time as well as space acquires iconographic characteristics. The past ceases to be long ago; it is the liturgical ‘today’. How long does the grace stay in a place sanctified by a holy person? St Porphyrios saw in prayer an ancient monastery at a location in Greece now covered with later buildings. He said: ‘This is a holy place.’ The owner of a bar on the site commented that surely it is no longer so, seeing what takes place there now. St Porphyrios said: ‘The holiness doesn’t go away.’ Perhaps in some places you need the grace of St Porphyrios to feel its grace. So the element of faith is critical for a ‘successful’ pilgrimage. This is another layer of deep mystery in our topic. C. S. Lewis writes well about the mystery of praying with faith that what you ask for will be given. It is not a matter of faking or contriving a feeling. It is a matter of closing your inner ear to doubt. People who approached the Lord with faith were healed; others saw His miracles and glorified God; others still attributed them to demonic power. Custom, as noted above, can increase the hope people have in a certain pilgrimage site. However, if, say, a person is not healed, this in itself is not proof either of their lack of faith or of the absence of grace in the place. Providence is beyond our understanding, let alone beyond logical patterns. Another mystery concerns the effort made by the pilgrims. In the Orthodox tradition there does not seem to be any merit attributed to self-​ inflicted suffering, such as going barefoot with bleeding feet. Nor is God to be bargained with: if I do that, will You do that? The idea of undertaking a pilgrimage as expiation can be found in the Church’s history. There are Anglo-​Saxon canons about this, though, as far as I know, it is not codified in Byzantine canon law. But the effort of the journey always counts for something, as shown by the fact that sometimes saints tell people to come to their shrine; or a spiritual father may recommend a pilgrimage. Then there may be added customs, such as approaching a holy icon on one’s knees (at Tinos, for example). Is the pilgrim’s effort a manifestation of his/​ her sincerity in asking for grace, not taking it cheaply? Is a gift more appreciated the more effort is put into preparing it? Is labour recompensed? 12

Letter 58; Gregory of Nyssa Letter 3.

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St Jerome’s Letter 71 says that Theodora, ‘as reward for the hardships of her journey’, will receive a ‘second circumcision’ immediately after her entrance to the Holy Land. Receiving pilgrims in Constantinople, Patriarch Bartholomew told them: ‘I know that just to come here means you have passed through great labour.’ The journey is important as well as the destination. This is true, even though obviously the journeys have become physically easier with modern transport. We may generalize this question: why do I need to subject my body to efforts such as fasting, standing in prayer for hours, and so on? Clearly, the most important contribution in prayer is humility before God. But Christian life is not intended to be comfortable lounging about. Even the shorter journey to our local church is a pilgrimage: if the world were full of grace, there would be no need of separate, a-​gios (unearthly), places for the Liturgy. The physical efforts of pilgrimage put the desire for help above one’s own comfort; this is a lesson our bodies need physically, not theoretically. Clearly, the grace received is not absolutely conditional on the effort. Grace is a gift: yet another mystery. As we have seen in our monastery, many pilgrimages are undertaken post factum to visit a shrine in thanksgiving for a blessing received by prayer at home. A monastery I know in Australia has a church dedicated to St Irene Chrysovalantou. Many parents who were unable to have children have prayed to St Irene, and come to the monastery to show their offspring to the nuns. The abbess told me that an unusual percentage of them are twins … I am afraid that all this talk does is raise mysteries. In Greek they say that it is not the place but the manner of life which saves. Not the τόπος but the τρόπος. That is why the universality of God’s presence prevails over the idea of pilgrimage. The Passion and Resurrection are vividly lived liturgically all over the world. A saint’s heavenly life (lived in the Holy Spirit who is everywhere present), is also universal. There is a title hadji which is added to the name of a pilgrim who has bathed in the River Jordan, and it has become an inherited part of many Greek and Cypriot surnames. But there is no common obligation to take any pilgrimage. [A parenthesis: coming to the topos without the appropriate tropos is exemplified by tourism, which other speakers will address; I briefly mention it because it affects the well-​frequented Orthodox pilgrimage sites.

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Of course a tourist may become a pilgrim. But the management of such sites as the Meteora in Greece is difficult to combine with monastic life. Sometimes lay people make long stays at the site to help the monastics. But tourist invasion was one of the reasons why Elder Aimilianos of blessed memory took his monks to Simonopetra.] Preaching before a pilgrimage, a priest said: ‘Whether the destination is the Holy Land, Mount Athos, Constantinople, Cappadocia, or any of the other traditional Orthodox Christian treasuries of history and faith, the ultimate destination of a pilgrimage is into our own heart to discover Christ.’ Such an inner disposition blesses and enriches a journey to an outward destination. St Jerome claimed that ‘the Briton … no sooner makes progress in religion than he leaves the setting sun in search of a spot which he knows about only through Scripture and common report.’13 If this British wanderlust is connected with longing for God, a pilgrimage will, in St James’s words, be effectual and avail much (cf. James 5:16).

13

Jerome, Letter 46.

Douglas Dales

2 Pilgrimage in the Western Church before ad 1000

Why include consideration of pilgrimage in the Western Church before ad 1000 in a symposium concerned with pilgrimage to and from Mount Athos? It is because much that emerges as fundamental to Western pilgrimage during those centuries formed the common spiritual hinterland for the emergence of Mount Athos as an organized focus of monastic life and pilgrimage in the tenth century. Indeed, this crucial development itself has to be seen within the wider context of comparable developments in Kiev and in England at that time, where there were significant royal and aristocratic endowments of monastic life, supported by cults of relics, as focal points for Christian pilgrimage. In the case of Kiev, this development was nurtured from Athos itself. Features common to East and West during the first millennium of Christianity include fascination with the Holy Land and the holy city of Jerusalem, the cult of the True Cross, and the vocation to spiritual exile that underlay many early monastic conversions and migrations. Notable too was the role of relics of various kinds that enabled people far away to participate in the spiritual potency of major Christian centres like Rome, Constantinople, and of course Jerusalem itself. The spiritual significance of Mount Sinai and its ancient monastery exerted a potent attraction that motivated arduous and memorable pilgrimages from the West, as well as the interest and support of Pope Gregory the Great. In due time, Athos itself became a place of pilgrimage for Western visitors, for example, Nicholas of Cusa, whose visit there early in the fifteenth century transformed his theological vision. The existence of a Benedictine monastery, founded by merchants from Amalfi, and the interventions of various popes in defence of the Holy Mountain demonstrate the importance of Athos to the Western Church in the Middle Ages.

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Christian pilgrimage from the West took off in the fourth century, after Constantine protected the Church from persecution, and his mother Helena became closely associated with the recovery of the principal Christian sites in Jerusalem and elsewhere, including discovering, it was believed, the relic of the True Cross. Major basilicas were created on the alleged sites of the Cross and the Resurrection in the holy city, and of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Early in the fourth century a traveller from Bordeaux recorded his experiences in the Holy Land during a visit dated to 333.1 A most interesting and famous account of another pilgrimage from the West was composed by an intrepid woman pilgrim from Spain called Egeria, writing early in the fifth century about a journey probably made between 381 and 384. It is incomplete as it stands, but it portrays vividly and in detail the liturgical life of the churches of Jerusalem, and it also recounts a visit to monastic communities at the foot of Mount Sinai.2 It is matched by a later account by a pilgrim from Piacenza in Italy, writing sometime between the years 551 and 570, who also visited the monastery at Sinai, which was by now a well-​established institution, fortified by the Emperor Justinian.3 Its reputation was well known in the West and Pope Gregory the Great sent gifts to furnish its infirmary, writing directly to its Abbot John in 600. He also wrote with more personal gifts to a priest called Palladius, who was living there. In an earlier letter, written in the summer of 594 to a friend and noble lady called Rusticiana, Gregory commented on her reported pilgrimage to the Holy Land and to the monastery of Sinai, chiding her for taking too superficial an interest as a mere tourist! Earlier he had encouraged her to embark on a pilgrimage for the good of her soul. Gregory would have dearly loved to go to Sinai himself, but he doubted that Rusticiana had taken to heart all the holy things and people 1 2 3

The text of the Itinerarium Burdigalense is in Corpus Christianorum, series Latina: CCL 175.1–​26. Egeria: Diary of a Pilgrimage, trans. G. E. Gingras, Ancient Christian Writers 38 (New York: The Newman Press, 1970). The best discussion of the significance of these two pilgrimage accounts in relation to Sinai is in History and Hagiography from the Late Antique Sinai, ed. S. Brock et al., Translated Texts for Historians 53 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010).

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that she had seen on her travels.4 It is notable that the monastery at Sinai remained on the spiritual horizon of Western Christians long before the Crusades made visiting it so popular. For example, an ancient Latin Psalter buried in the famous library in the monastery is a crucial witness to Spanish Mozarabic liturgical usage at the time of Charlemagne.5 Archaeology has amplified the picture given by these striking texts.6 For Western Christians in the fourth century and thereafter, Rome became the principal point of pilgrimage and devotion. The reign of Constantine (306–​37) marked a key moment in the development of the catacombs as places of pilgrimage. The roots of such devotion lay in the older practice of commemorating there the death and burial of early Christian martyrs, and later others. Under Pope Damasus (366–​84) the formal cult of the martyrs took off in conjunction with the building of magnificent basilican churches in Rome itself, notably St Peter’s, St John Lateran with its baptistery, and St Paul-​outside-​the-​walls. Burial near the tombs of the martyrs became highly desirable, as did collecting relics associated with such places in the form of oil, dust, or cloths that had touched the corporeal remains of the saints. A notable site in Rome was on the Appian Way where elaborate facilities were built for pilgrims coming to venerate the memorial of Peter and Paul near where the church of St Sebastian now stands. They left graffiti expressing their pious hopes and prayers. This was paralleled by the creation of the basilica of St Paul-​outside-​the-​walls on the Via Ostia close to where his martyrdom had been similarly venerated. Now the basilica embodied, in a highly visible way to visitors coming into Rome from the port, the pact between emperor and Church. Symptomatic of this appropriation of the martyr tradition of Rome, which the popes exploited to such dramatic effect, were other relics associated with the holy city and its saints. These disseminated its influence in 4 5 6

The letter of Gregory to the Abbot John is letter 11.2; to the priest Palladius 9.1; his correspondence with Rusticiana was extensive: 2.27 in 592; 4.44 in 594; 8.22 in 598; 11.26 in 601; and 13.24 in 603. See D. J. Dales, Alcuin: Theology and Thought (Cambridge: James Clarke, 2013), 53; the manuscript is MS Sinai Slavonicus 5, fol. 83v. The most recent conspectus is in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Archaeology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).

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tangible form far and wide, being eminently portable. Reliquaries begin to appear early in the fifth century decorated with images of martyrs and saints.7 This artistic development was closely paralleled by Christian sarcophagi, whose decoration marks the transition from pagan to Christian symbolism. Relics were sought for the consecration of new churches, enabling worshippers to feel physically and spiritually connected with Rome as the holy city of the martyrs full of sacred sites. The only comparable point of influence at this time was of course Jerusalem itself, from which devotion to the True Cross sprang, and from which there flowed a distinctive tide of reliquaries associated with it. In a letter of Paulinus of Nola to Sulpicius Severus, who was the biographer of St Martin of Tours, written around the year 402, he was able to offer a fragment of the True Cross, given to him by a noble woman pilgrim, who had received it directly from the bishop of Jerusalem. An epitome of this complex web of spiritual associations may be found in the treasury of Monza Cathedral, north of Milan. The church was created by Queen Theodolinda, the wife of the king of Lombardy. She lived between 570 and 627 and was a friend and protégée of Gregory the Great, active in reconciling differing Catholic populations, as well as drawing Arian Lombards, including her husband, into the Catholic fold. There remain twenty-​six glass ampullae, little portable vessels filled originally with oil from lamps burning at the shrines of various martyrs in Rome. Alongside these are sixteen beautifully decorated metal ampullae from the Holy Land, again originally filled with oil from lamps from various shrines there. There is also a seventh-​century register containing a list of the martyrs from whose tombs these relics emanated. The metal ampullae from the Holy Land date from before the Persian conquest of Jerusalem in 614, which led to a ban on Christian pilgrimage there for a while. They are superbly decorated, mirroring early Christian mosaics and other church decorations. No less striking is the royal jewellery at Monza inspired by Christian tradition coming from Byzantium and Rome itself, as well as from Lombard workshops. One such example is the Staurotheke of Adaload, a reliquary of the True Cross from the end of the sixth century, named for Theodolinda’s 7

Ibid.  222f.

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son, and probably a gift of Gregory the Great to her for his baptism in 603. It is believed to have been a gift from the patriarch of Constantinople to Gregory himself when he was the papal ambassador there. The cross of Agilulf, her husband, is another most beautiful example of late Roman metalwork, richly decorated with semi-​precious stones and four drop pendants. The gold gospel covers of Theodolinda set classical cameos within a cruciform design, decked with jewels. Thus, royalty and Romanitas were enfolded within a Christian framework of rich theological association. At a humbler level, the treasury contains other trophies of pilgrimage: five small bags woven out of palm leaves, later associated with the Apostles, and two fragments of Egyptian woven cloth from the robes of Gregory himself. Other cloths associated with relics were preserved from this period, comprising corporals given by the pope to the Lombard king for use when celebrating the feasts of martyrs, and another cloth associated with a relic of the Virgin Mary. They are precious fragments and examples of so many other highly portable items which have since perished. Such a rich collection also sheds light on the gifts which Gregory the Great sent around the same time to the king and queen of Kent, Ethelbert and Bertha, to accompany St Augustine’s mission to Canterbury in 597. All these demonstrate the potency of Roman Christianity, both artistically and politically. Rome beckoned to the new Christians north of the Alps and their rulers as limina apostolorum, the thresholds of the Apostles Peter and Paul, the closest contact possible for them with the world of the New Testament and the heroic age of early Christian martyrdom. It was also the gateway to the rich culture of the Great City –​Constantinople itself. Around this time there arose a very distinctive form of pilgrimage, emanating from Ireland. Following the call of God to Abraham to leave his home and native land, St Columbanus departed around the year 590 from Ireland with twelve companions as a peregrinus and subsequently a missionary, travelling via Britanny to Gaul.8 After stormy collisions with some of the established bishops and kings there, he nonetheless managed to found several monasteries that became highly influential in later centuries, 8

See D. J. Dales, Light to the Isles: Mission and Theology in Celtic and Anglo-​Saxon Britain (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1997/​2010), 67f.

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notably at Luxeuil and Bobbio. He fell out with his companion St Gall, however, who worked with other Irish hermits like St Fridolin, evangelizing the area around Bregenz in Switzerland. Columbanus wrote to several of the popes, including Gregory the Great; and also to Pope Boniface IV, asserting that ‘we Irish, inhabitants of the world’s edge, are disciples of Saints Peter and Paul … and we accept nothing outside the apostolic and evangelical teaching, the Catholic faith as it was first delivered by you, who are the successors of the holy apostles, and is now maintained by us unbroken’.9 This is an interesting reminiscence of how Christianity came to southern Ireland from Rome directly at the time of St Patrick but independently of his own mission.10 Rome featured strongly in Irish spiritual imagination and loyalty. A poem about St Columba, who died in 597, said that ‘by his mighty skill, he kept law firm; Rome was known, order was known: knowledge of God was granted to him’. In an Irish saint’s Life, there is a vivid memory of a pilgrimage to Rome by an Irish peregrinus called Abban. One day, as he was walking by the shore of a harbour in Ireland, he saw three ships in the port starting out for Rome. He entered one of the ships to join the pilgrimage to which they were bound. After he was made head of the company of pilgrims, they had a fair journey to Rome. In Rome they were met by a person who used to give a first night’s lodging to every pilgrim who entered the city: he welcomed Abban into his home. The story ends with Gregory the Great ordaining him as a missionary priest to his own people in Ireland.11 Another Irish peregrinus called Bairre also went to Rome where Gregory the Great wished to ordain him as a missionary bishop: when he lifted up his hands to do so, flames came down from heaven. Even stranger is the story of another saint called Colman Ela who claimed Gregory ‘the golden-​mouthed’ as his tutor and father-​in-​God. Many years later, at home in his monastery in Ireland, he seemed to hear the passing bell of Gregory’s death in Rome and fell down distraught. He prayed that his monastic community might also hear the bells, which they did! No one can confirm whether Gregory’s 9 10 11

Ibid. 70; from the fifth letter of Columbanus. Ibid. 30. The mission sent by Pope Celestine was led by a priest called Palladius. Lives of the Irish Saints, trans. C. Plummer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1922), vol. 2, pp. 6–​7.

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impulse to send missionaries to the Anglo-​Saxons was not prompted by Irish contacts of this kind. Nevertheless, Christianity came to them from Ireland as well as from Rome, and the holy city features in many other Irish saints’ Lives from this period. Towards the end of his Ecclesiastical History telling how Christianity came to the Anglo-​Saxons, Bede described Egbert, a noble Englishman who went to Ireland for his spiritual formation, where he nearly died of plague. Plunged into deep repentance bordering on despair, he vowed to God that if he survived to make amends for his sins, he would live in exile and never return to his native land of Britain.12 Egbert’s influence remained strong in the land of his birth, however, until his death in 729. He was instrumental in initiating the mission of St Willibrord to the Low Countries, and also in finally reconciling the island monastery of Iona to the Roman manner of calculating Easter, which had proved so controversial and divisive at the Synod of Whitby in 664. St Aidan, the founder of Lindisfarne, was a similar missionary and peregrinus, sent earlier from the monastery of Iona at the behest of King Oswald of Northumbria. Bede took great care to convey the spirit and ethos of the Irish missionaries, who did so much to nurture Christianity in England in the seventh century. The personal calendar of St Willibrord is further evidence of how such pilgrimage, with Rome at its heart, formed the spiritual life of this generation of Anglo-​ Saxon Christians, with its careful commemoration of the Roman saints and martyrs alongside more recent English saints.13 Bede also records how certain Anglo-​Saxon kings made pilgrimages to Rome at the end of their reigns, as did the controversial English bishop, Wilfrid of Northumbria, on several occasions. Bede’s own monastery at Monkwearmouth-​Jarrow was itself a beneficiary of several pilgrimages to Gaul and Rome made by its founder, Benedict Biscop.14 During these journeys he assembled a significant library of books which were the foundation of Bede’s learning and writing. In his Lives of 12 13 14

Bede’s Ecclesiastical History 3.27, ed. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1969). The Calendar of St Willibrord, ed. H. A. Wilson (London: The Henry Bradshaw Society, 1918). Dales, Light to the Isles, 131f.

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the Abbots, Bede described how Benedict ‘left his own country and went to Rome, where, in fulfilment of his long and ardent desire, he made sure that he visited the tombs of the Apostles and venerated their relics’.15 After two years of monastic training at the island monastery of Lerins off Cannes in southern France, and being ‘overcome by love of the Prince of the Apostles, he made up his mind to tread once more the streets made sacred by the presence of St Peter’s body’. On his return from a further visit to Rome in 671, he told the king of Northumbria with enthusiasm ‘how many sacred books and holy relics of the blessed Apostles and martyrs he had brought back’ with a view to creating his own monastery with royal support. Bede describes how craftsmen and glaziers were brought from France to create a stone building at Monkwearmouth-​Jarrow of Roman Gallic design. Two other trips to Rome brought back more treasures as Bede also describes in his Ecclesiastical History. These included icons to hang in the monastic church as well as a musician to teach Roman chant. At the end of his life Benedict told his monks how on his many pilgrimages he had visited no fewer than seventeen monasteries, collating elements drawn from their various customs around the Rule of St Benedict for the life of his own monastery. The earliest remaining copy of that Rule was copied in England at this time. For Bede himself the Christian world was epitomized in the life and resources of the monastery that nurtured his whole life, education, and imagination. Few could actually go on pilgrimage in those days, however, and the journey to Rome or further afield was long, arduous, and dangerous. Instead, the canon of the Mass recalled week by week a panoply of Roman saints and martyrs, whose relics were brought to England by Benedict Biscop and others. Patterns of church dedication, for example, at Canterbury, mirrored the dedications of the Roman churches around the Caelian hill from where Augustine and his monks came: the cathedral church of the Saviour, now Christ Church; the extra mural monastery of St Peter and St Paul, later called St Augustine’s; the revived Roman chapel of St Pancras nearby; the parish church of Quattuor Coronati; and the ancient Roman 15

Bede’s Lives of the Abbots, 2, in D. H. Farmer (ed.), The Age of Bede (Harmonds-​ worth: Penguin, 1965), 186.

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chapel of St Martin where the mission began. Bede’s own monastery had a principal church dedicated to St Peter, and an oratory dedicated to St Lawrence the Roman deacon and martyr.16 Within the liturgical life of the monastery some replication of Roman patterns of devotion could also be made. Bede’s own beloved abbot, Ceolfrid, decided to depart on pilgrimage to Rome in 716, ‘to breathe his last breath amid the localities sanctified by the bodies of the blessed Apostles and martyrs of Christ’. He took with him the remarkable Codex Amiatinus, a complete copy of the Vulgate Bible, as a gift for the pope. But he never got as far as Rome and it is now in the Laurentian library in Florence.17 Bede included in his Ecclesiastical History a fascinating account of how the abbot of Iona, Adamnan, wrote a book on the holy places … based upon information dictated to him by Arculf, a bishop from Gaul, who had visited Jerusalem to see the holy places. He had wandered all over the promised land and had been to Damascus, Constantinople, Alexandria, and many islands of the sea. But as he was returning to his native land by sea, he was cast up by the violence of the tempest onto the western coasts of Britain. After many adventures he came to Adamnan who received him very gladly and listened to his words. He quickly committed to writing everything that Arculf had seen in the holy places and which seemed worthy of remembrance.18

Adamnan gave a copy of the book to the king of Northumbria, who was a friend, and thus Bede was able to epitomize it in his own Ecclesiastical History. Adamnan also wrote a brilliant Life of St Columba and he was a theologian of similar calibre to Bede himself. Bede clearly found the description of places in the Holy Land fascinating and also illuminating of the text of the Bible. Continual fascination with such distant but important biblical locations ensured that Bede’s tribute to Adamnan was not forgotten, and in the early twelfth century a librarian of the Benedictine

16 17 18

E. O’Carragain, The City of Rome and the World of Bede ( Jarrow Lecture, 1994). See illustrations of these two manuscripts in Anglo-​Saxon Kingdoms –​Art, Word, War, ed. C. Breay and J. Story (London: British Library, 2018), 21 and 34. Bede’s History 5.15; Adamnan, De Locis Sanctis, ed. D. Meehan, Scriptores Latini Hiberniae 3 (Dublin, 1958).

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monastery of Monte Cassino in Italy, Peter the Deacon, collated Bede’s summary of Adamnan with a version of Egeria’s Itinerary.19 Arculf ’s account, so carefully recorded by Adamnan and appreciated by Bede, is matched by the account of another epic pilgrimage undertaken in the middle of the eighth century by an Englishman called Willibald, who later became bishop of Eichstatt in Germany. His account was recorded by an English nun called Huneberc at the monastery of Heidenheim.20 With his father and brother, Willibald left England from Hamwich near Southampton and crossed to Rouen, ‘visiting the shrines of the saints that were on their way to Rome and praying there’. They reached Lucca in Italy, but the journey had taken its toll on their father who died there. After a dangerous journey across Italy, they made it to Rome, which was their goal, climbing the Sancta Scala up to St Peter’s basilica. The summer in Rome brought on fever that nearly killed the brothers. They travelled on via Naples and Sicily and from there to Greece. From Corinth they sailed to Ephesus and Miletus in Asia Minor. From there they crossed to Cyprus and from there to Asia Minor again where they were arrested by Saracens as spies. Finally, they obtained permission to go on to Damascus, from where they walked to Galilee to visit Nazareth and Cana. They climbed Mount Tabor and moved on to Tiberias, Capernaum, and Bethsaida. They stayed in the monastery at Caesarea before bathing in the Jordan at the place of the Lord’s baptism. Lodging first at the monastery of St Eustochium in the Judaean wilderness, they at last reached Jerusalem. Later journeys took them into Syria and to Emesa, winding up in Constantinople, from where they returned to Rome with the pope’s emissaries in 728. Willibald reported his travels to Pope Gregory III who sent him with a message for St Boniface in Germany. His journeys took him a full seven years before he ended his days as bishop of Eichstatt. The account of his travels is vivid, absorbing, and memorable. The letters of Alcuin of York, who joined the court of Charlemagne in the last part of the eighth century, shed a great deal of light on the hazards 19 20

The sole manuscript of Egeria’s Itinerary, discovered in 1884 in Arezzo, had originally belonged to Monte Cassino, having been written there in the eleventh century. In The Anglo-​Saxon Missionaries in Germany, trans. C. H. Talbot (London: Sheed & Ward, 1954), 152f.

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of travel to and from Rome at that time.21 Alcuin travelled to Rome at least twice and perhaps more often: the first time was as a young companion to his master Aelberht, who was archbishop of York, where Alcuin grew up and was educated. In his famous poem about the church of York, Alcuin recorded Aelberht’s love of travel and pilgrimage, seeking books like Benedict Biscop before him, strong in his devotion to Rome, its holy places, and its monasteries. It was on his way back from a second visit to Rome in 781 to collect a pallium from the pope for his friend and contemporary, Eanbald, the new archbishop of York, that he met Charlemagne once again in Parma, who summoned him to join his court. Alcuin’s interest in obtaining relics from Rome probably dated from his first encounters with the major Christian shrines of the Apostles and martyrs there. Pilgrimage could cause problems, however, as a diplomatic letter reveals that was probably drafted by Alcuin and sent in 796 from Charlemagne to Offa, king of Mercia, and overlord of southern England. Its first item concerned the bona fides of so-​called pilgrims on their way from England to Rome, who were actually merchants trying to evade taxes along the way. Elsewhere there are reports of English women pilgrims ending up as prostitutes in Italian cities. It was no mean feat to make it safely to Rome and then return to England. There is a striking allusion to Rome and the impact it made upon Alcuin personally in his treatise De Ratione Animae, written in 801 towards the end of his life. Commenting on the nature of memory, Alcuin said: ‘just as a person who has seen Rome has it inscribed in his mind and knows its essential form, so when he hears the name of Rome recalled, he immediately turns his mind into his own memory, where its form lies hidden, and recognising it, he draws it forth.’ Rome clearly haunted the memory of Alcuin. In a poem he described it as ‘the capital and wonder of the world, golden Rome, now only a barbarous ruin’. In a letter to a friend warning him of the hazards of travelling to and within Italy, Alcuin described picking his way along streets lined with ruins on his way to the basilica of St Paul-​outside-​the-​walls. In a poem to the new Pope Leo III, Alcuin prayed that ‘the saints would protect him by their holy prayers, whom Rome still holds within the circuit of its mighty walls’. The Aurelian 21

See D. J. Dales, Alcuin: His Life and Legacy (Cambridge: James Clarke, 2012), 109f.

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walls were, and are, indeed mighty; but the wasteland between the nodes of activity within the confines of the city were no less vast and sad. Alcuin was in touch with both popes, the formidable Hadrian I and the hapless Leo III. He composed Charlemagne’s epitaph for Hadrian which can still be seen, engraved on black marble from Belgium, high in the portico of St Peter’s basilica. It was an elegant memorial to a great pope and also an assertion of Carolingian determination to revive the glory of Christian Rome on both sides of the Alps. By the tenth century, archbishops of Canterbury and York had to travel to Rome to obtain the pallium from the pope personally. This was the sign of their primacy and of the close relationship of the English Church with Rome. Thus, in the middle of the tenth century, St Dunstan travelled over the mountains to Rome, a cold journey that had nearly finished off one of his predecessors.22 Dunstan relied on monastic hospitality along the way, almost running out of supplies on one occasion. He finally arrived in Rome as a pilgrim where ‘he made offerings at the shrines of the saints, and ministered to Christ’s poor, before returning in peace from his journeyings to his native land’. Some of the dreams and visions of Dunstan reveal the deep impact that Rome had made upon him. The calendars and homilies of the later tenth century reflect the awe with which Rome was regarded, despite the fact that the papacy reached its lowest and most sordid ebb at this time. As a symbol of Christian antiquity and authority, its spiritual potency still eclipsed its manifest weaknesses. Others also made pilgrimages to Rome, for example, a priest called Aethelmod and a bishop called Cyneweard. When Oswald became archbishop of York in 970, he too went to Rome with gifts for the pope from King Edgar. Another rich Englishman who was blind made the long trek to Rome for healing, but in vain. Only prayer at the shrine of St Swithun in Winchester saved his sight. Persistent failure to pay Peter’s Pence, which was a tribute sent to Rome from England, obliged a person to take it personally to Rome with a 30-​pence fine in addition, returning with a certificate to prove it, and then paying a further fine to the king. Another aristocrat sent 22 See D. J. Dales, Dunstan: Saint and Statesman (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1988/​ 2013), 51f.

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to Rome to purchase corruptly a dispensation from his marriage, which Dunstan calmly overturned as archbishop of Canterbury. Pilgrimage was also a good way of sustaining links between churches and clergy. During Athelstan’s reign earlier in the tenth century, a bishop of Worcester made a significant visit to the continental monasteries of St Gall, Pfäfers, and Reichenau. Dunstan’s younger colleague Oswald went for a while on pilgrimage to the monastery of St Benedict at Fleury, which claimed the saint’s body. Dunstan as abbot of Glastonbury forged links with monasteries in Flanders, where he experienced reformed monastic life at first hand while temporarily in exile from England, having challenged the young king Edwy for his immorality. There remains a record of the pilgrimage route of one of Dunstan’s successors, Sigeric, who went to Rome in 990 to collect his pallium.23 In Rome his first port of call was of course St Peter’s basilica; then the church of St Mary in Sassia in the English enclave close to the Vatican, called the schola Anglorum. This enclave had been created in the time of Alcuin and Charlemagne as protected accommodation for English pilgrims to Rome. Sigeric’s pilgrimage around the ruined city took in the major churches of St Agnes, San Laurence-​outside-​the-​walls, St Sebastian, St Anastasius, St Paul outside-​the-​walls, St Mary in schola Graecorum, St Sabina on the Aventine, St Cecilia, and St Mary in Trastevere; and nearby the church of St Chrysogonus. On the second day the tour included St Maria Rotunda and the Lateran cathedral, followed by lunch with the pope. Then on to the papal shrine of ‘Jerusalem’ with its relics of the Holy Land that was hard by the Lateran palace; then to Santa Maria Maggiore and St Peter ad Vincula, and finally to the tomb of St Laurence. This document also lists all the stages of the journey between the English Channel and Rome –​eighty in all. The whole journey took at least ten weeks’ hard slog, and longer if weather were bad in the mountains: Italy was still far from safe for travel. By the time of St Dunstan, England itself had developed many pilgrimage centres, many of them in the care of the newly restored or created monasteries, whose liturgical life commemorated them. Winchester 23

Memorials of St Dunstan, ed. W. Stubbs (Rolls Series 63, 1874; Kraus reprint, 1865),  391–​5.

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witnessed the spectacular revival of the cult of St Swithun, hitherto an obscure ninth-​century bishop, whose tomb became a major shrine of healing. St Ethelwold’s revival of Ely as a monastery was focused on the memory of its saintly founder, Queen Etheldreda, who lived in the seventh century. Appeals were made to the pope in Rome in support of some of these sensational monastic refoundations. The shrine of St Cuthbert in the north continued to attract English pilgrims, including royalty, when it was safe to travel there. King Athelstan gave lavish gifts to his shrine, some of which remain in Durham cathedral treasury to this day. Dunstan travelled there also with King Eadred and was able to testify to the fact that Cuthbert’s body was still without decay. Dunstan confirmed that this was also true of the more recent royal martyr, King Edmund of East Anglia, who was murdered by the Vikings in 869, and whose monastic burial place also became a focus for pilgrimage in the later tenth century. There is a graphic description early in the eleventh century by a monk of the New Minster at Winchester who, prompted by a vision of St Cuthbert, travelled without his abbot’s permission to the saint’s shrine which was then at Chester-​le-​ Street. While there he was privileged to wash the saint’s body, to comb and cut his hair, and then clothe it in new attire, bringing some of the old clothes home as relics.24 The Liber Vitae or Register of New Minster in Winchester, later known as Hyde Abbey, gives a comprehensive picture at the end of the tenth century of how England was full of churches claiming the relics of saints, local or foreign, as places of pilgrimage and veneration. Its relic list reflects the cosmopolitan litany of Western saints that had proliferated across Europe and England. It is perhaps in the calendars and liturgical prayers from the period that the fervour, hopes, and devotion of English Christians may best be detected.25 In the decades before the Norman conquest in 1066, English pilgrims went to Winchester to venerate St Swithun, and to Canterbury to venerate St Dunstan and St Alphege, an archbishop of Canterbury murdered by Vikings in Greenwich in 1012. Their hagiographies testify 24 25

The Hyde Liber Vitae, ed. W. de Gray Birch (Winchester, 1892), 97–​8. See Christ the Golden Blossom, trans. D. J. Dales (Norwich:  Canterbury Press, 2001), and A Mind Intent on God –​The Prayers and Spiritual Writings of Alcuin, trans. D. J. Dales (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2004).

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to some of the miracles wrought at their tombs, or by their intercession. Meanwhile elaborate liturgies were themselves a form of pilgrimage in and around the chapels of a major church or cathedral, while being surrounded on all sides by frescos and icons, gold and silver work, and many lights and music. England was truly a land of saints of native origin, and also those common to the whole Western Church, whose history and reality was brought near through their relics, and by their solemn commemoration each year at Mass in the monasteries, cathedrals, and parish churches. This is evident also in some of the wonderful illuminated manuscripts that remain from this period. For the Anglo-​Saxons, in common with Christians across Western Europe as the end of the first millennium approached, Christianity was global in its ethos, and was perceived to be a living spiritual past that enriched a living present experience of worship and memory. Pilgrimage at home and abroad and the veneration of relics helped to knit this framework of spiritual association together as communio sanctorum –​the communion of saints made tangible by their commemoration in holy places and by holy things. In a turbulent age, Rome remained the focal point of this communio sanctorum, with Jerusalem a more distant, but no less potent, horizon of Christian vision and hope and pilgrimage.

Veronica Della Dora

3 Gazes from the Sea: Mount Athos through the Eyes of Women Travellers and Pilgrims1

In the mid-​ 1950s the late Julian Chrysostomides arrived at Royal Holloway College in Surrey, England, to undertake her doctoral studies under the supervision of the distinguished Byzantinist Joan Hussey. On her first evening as a postgraduate student, she happened to be sitting at a dinner table opposite a postgraduate physics student. On hearing that Julian was about to embark on research in Byzantine history, the seasoned scientist warned her: ‘Be careful to master your sources. Prof. H. is very keen on sources. In fact, she herself often goes to Greece to look at manuscripts, even to Mount Athos. She rows to the coast and sits in her rowing boat while the monks lower the manuscripts to her in a basket, so that she can examine them.’2 This little apocryphal story does not only speak of the strong personality and rigorous scholarship of the British professor. It also speaks of the Holy Mountain in the Western imagination:  as a treasure trove full of unstudied manuscripts; as a picturesque site rendered even more intriguing by its thousand-​year-​old ban on women; and not least, as a remote awe-​inspiring place transferring some of its charisma on a charismatic teacher.

1

2

Parts of this chapter were presented in Greek to Agioreitike Estia (Thessaloniki) in 2007 and the Gennadeion Library (Athens) in 2015, and in English to the Friends of Mount Athos (London) in 2008. I am grateful to my hosts and audiences for their helpful feedback and to the fathers of Dochiariou for all their assistance. I dedicate this essay to the beloved memory of my late spiritual father, Elder Apolló of Dochiariou, who many years ago turned me from a tourist into a pilgrim. Julian Chrysostomides, ‘Foreword’, in Kathēgētria: Essays Presented to Joan Hussey for Her 80th Birthday (Camberley, Surrey: Porphyrogenitus, 1988), 9. I am grateful to Charalambos Dendrinos for bringing this story to my attention.

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Chrysostomides’s is just one of many tales about Mount Athos and women. The most popular ones chronicle breaches of the avaton, both real and imaginary: from the visit of Queen Jelena, the wife of the fourteenth-​ century Serbian Emperor Stefan Dušan, who was said to have been walked on carpets to prevent direct contact with the peninsula’s holy ground, to Patriarch Photius II’s excommunication of Miss Greece 1930 Alike Diplarakou for entering Athos dressed as a boy, or the imaginative scandal reportage by the French journalist Maryse Choisy, who claimed to have cut off her breasts, worn false moustaches, and reached the peninsula by boat, hidden inside a mattress.3 Whereas Diplarakou and her likes disguised (or claimed to have disguised) themselves as men out of pure curiosity, other women did so, guided by spiritual motivations. Tales of holy women embracing the ascetic rigours of male monasteries in disguise span from the early centuries of Byzantium to modern Greece.4 These women, however, never dared to breach Athos’s avaton, as Holy Photeine the Hermit (1859–​1926) makes clear in her autobiographical account. Used to dress as a boy from a young age while accompanying her father on his travels, upon his death, Photeine gave away all her possessions and contemplated pursuing her ascetic vocation on Mount 3

4

Maryse Choisy, A Month among the Men (New York: Pyramid Books, 1962), 11–​20. The book was originally published in French in 1931. Diplarakou’s tale is narrated by John Sack, Report from Practically Nowhere (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1957), 149. Queen Jelena, wife of the Serbian tsar and great Athonite benefactor Stefan Dušan, accompanied her son and husband to the Holy Mountain for several months in 1347 and 1348, probably seeking refuge from the Black Death ravaging in the Balkans at that time. See Alice-​Mary Talbot, ‘Searching for Women on Mt. Athos: Insights from the Archives of the Holy Mountain’, Speculum 87 (2012), 997, and more specifically:  Djordje Trifunović, Tsar Dushan o svom boravku na Svetoj Gori, Sa Svetogorskih izvora (Belgrade, 2002), and Maria Anna Milunović, ‘Servoi periēgētes sto Aghion Oros’, paper presented at the symposium Pente aiōnes periēgēseōn kai proskynēmatōn sto Agion Oros, 1405–​1930. Agioreitike Estia, Thessaloniki, December 2007. In her study, Zoukova includes the biographies of fifteen early Christian, Byzantine, and post-​Byzantine female ascetics disguised as men, from the second to the early twentieth century. See Eugenia Zoukova, Monastries pou askētepsan se andrika monastēria (Athens: Armos, 2006).

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Athos. In Thessaloniki, however, she learnt about the ban of the female sex from the Mountain. ‘When I heard this,’ she recalls, ‘I became very saddened. For a moment, I decided to go to the Holy Mountain as I was in the world, that is, as a man. But then I thought more maturely and said to myself: how can I despise the law of the Holy Fathers?’5 Instead, the saint resolved to travel to the Holy Land and withdrew into the desert. Whereas for modern transgressors Mount Athos was a mere object of curiosity, for Photeine it was an object of ascetic desire, as well as a holy place. As such, it demanded both spiritual proximity and physical distance. In these tales one can discern contrasting attitudes towards the Holy Mountain: on the one hand, frivolousness, curiosity, and contempt; on the other hand, awe, reverence, and respect. At a deeper level, these stories speak of opposed conditions that underpin, or indeed characterize, much of the extensive (male) travel literature on Athos: egotism and piety.6 Transgressors and holy women are nonetheless simply exceptions to the rule. Their stories mark but two extremes of a much wider and more complex spectrum. Buried amid myriad men’s pilgrimage and travel accounts, and largely invisible, or simply forgotten, are the voices of other women who experienced the Holy Mountain from the sea or from the border town of Ouranoupoli. This chapter explores some of their accounts. It considers testimonies of early Western tourists, of twentieth-​century humanitarian workers, of a participant in the first floating pilgrimages in the 1970s, and of an anthropologist observing those pilgrimages almost three decades thereafter. Presented in roughly chronological order, the accounts cover three generations of women over a period of one hundred years. This time span saw two world conflicts, a civil war, the construction of an asphalt road to Ouranoupoli, the introduction of motor boats, the arrival of mass tourism 5 6

Ioakeim Spetsieres, Hē erēmitis Phōteinē eis tēn erēmon tou Iordanou (Volos: Sot. Schoina, 1971), 39. I am grateful to Elder Gavriel and the late Elder Apolló of Dochiariou for bringing the life of this saint to my attention. Instances of both attitudes can be found, for example, in René Gothóni, Tales and Truth: Pilgrimage on Mount Athos Past and Present (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1994), and in Veronica della Dora, Imagining Mount Athos: Visions of a Holy Place from Homer to War World II (Charlottesville, VA:  University of Virginia Press, 2011).

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and of the internet, among other things. How did these women see Athos? How did their experiences change over the decades? How do their narratives differ from those of their male counterparts? And how do they differ from one another? To address these questions, we must first take a distance from the Holy Mountain and approach it from afar, from the sea.

Gazes from the Sea: Edith Wharton and Early Western Tourists In the disc of the sun I distinguished the pyramidal form of Mount Athos, close to which we passed by during the night. On the deck were several Turkish women veiled and crouching in a corner by the stern.7

This vivid vignette comes from George Ferguson Bowen’s diary of his journey from Constantinople to Corfu in 1849. The sea route from Gallipoli to Thessaloniki offered the British classicist plenty of scope to indulge in lavish descriptions of the famed landscapes of ancient literature and their ‘mountains of many memories’, as he called them.8 By contrast, the perceptions of those same landscapes by the Turkish women crouching on the deck remain unknown to us. Hidden behind their veils, in Bowen’s account, the women are faceless; their presence simply adds a touch of oriental charm to the journey. Whether those women also spotted Athos’s pyramidal cone on the horizon and whether they associated any specific mental images with it we will never know. This silence is nonetheless offset by first-​person testimonies of Western women travellers who purposely sailed off the coasts of the Holy Mountain only a few decades after Bowen’s journey. This time saw major changes in Greece and in the West, as well as a new perception of space, thanks to improved transportation and communication 7 8

George Ferguson Bowen, Mount Athos, Thessaly, and Epirus:  Diary of a Journey (London: Francis and John Rivington, 1852), 26. Ibid.  47.

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technologies. By the end of the nineteenth century, Mount Athos was no longer a remote corner of the Ottoman Empire, as it had been for centuries. It was rather a popular destination for Western travellers to the Levant. In 1897 the French periodical Revue Générale des Sciences Pures et Appliquées started to advertise Athos as one of the highlights of its educational cruises. Passengers were promised ‘all the great coastal monasteries in one day’.9 At the outbreak of the First Balkan War, the Holy Mountain lay just forty-​eight hours by rail and steamer from Vienna. As Frederick William Hasluck, librarian and Assistant Director of the British School at Athens, observed in 1912, ‘much of the difficulty and not a little of the romance of a pilgrimage to Athos has vanished with the coming of steam. It is steam today that brings you to Thessalonica, whether you travel by land or by water. And it is steam that carries you down the long bay [the Singitic Gulf ].’10 As a result, this period saw a booming increase in Western travel accounts, including occasional accounts by women. The earliest and most substantial testimony comes from the American novelist and designer Edith Wharton (1862–​1937), the first woman recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Wharton was raised in New York’s high society. Her paternal family, the Joneses, were a very rich and socially prominent family who had made their fortune in the real estate business. While abiding by the etiquette imposed by her social class, however, Edith longed for education and for travel much more than for gala parties and fashionable attires. At the age of twenty-​three she married Edward Robbins Wharton, a gentleman from Boston, twelve years her senior, who shared her passion for distant places. Three years thereafter, in 1888, the couple sailed through the Mediterranean for eighty-​two days with a wealthy Newport cousin-​in-​law on a privately chartered yacht. The cruise cost the Whartons as much as an entire year’s income. For Edith, it was a lifelong dream coming true, or ‘the crowning wonder of my life’ and ‘biggest step forward in my

9 10

Revue Générale des Sciences Pures et Appliquées, 15 December 1897, 929 (emphasis added). F. W. Hasluck, Athos and Its Monasteries (London: Kegan Paul Trench, 1924), 3.

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formation’, as she described the cruise many years later.11 The party travelled in style. Not only did the yacht have every comfort, including a deckhouse sitting room and two cosy bedrooms, each with a large bathtub, but wherever they went, all doors were opened to these privileged tourists.12 In Lesbos they were officially hosted by the local governor. In Corfu they were entertained by the consul’s wife. Off the shores of Mount Athos, the Turkish Agha paid them a visit on their yacht. Wharton kept a travel journal during this trip that was thought to be lost but was later published as The Cruise of the Vanadis. It is now considered one of her first works and her earliest known travel writing. Wharton uses the journal as if it were a camera immortalizing the breathtaking sceneries she passes through en route. Her encounter with Mount Athos marks a high point of her voyage. It is an encounter of progressive revelation. Approached from Lesbos in the evening, its peak rises faint and blue from the sea: ‘The nearer we drew the more beautiful it became, until at last its mighty wall was close before us, dark against the brilliant sky, as the sun set in a yellow blaze behind the low hills of the Sithonian promontory.’13 In the morning, the cone appears to the young writer in all its majestic splendour: ‘I can only compare the promontory of the Sacred Mountain to one of the wooded mountain-​spurs on the Italian side of a Swiss pass, torn up from its roots and prolonged into the Mediterranean’.14 While the two men go ashore to visit the monasteries, Edith orders steam up in her launch, and starts out on a little voyage of discovery: I was determined to go as near the forbidden shores as I could. I ran in close to Iveron and tried to photograph it, but the launch rolled so that I could not steady my camera. I then ran close in under the shore in the direction of Stavroniketa, passing a picturesque square tower used as a boathouse, with a fishing-​boat drawn up under its dark archway.15 11 12 13 14 15

Claudine Lesage, ‘Introduction’, in Edith Wharton, The Cruise of the Vanadis (New York: Rizzoli, 2003[1888]), 24; Hermione Lee, Edith Wharton (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), 82. Lee, Wharton,  82–​3. Wharton, The Cruise of the Vanadis, 173. Ibid.  173–​4. Ibid.  174–​5.

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Close to the coast, Wharton’s account acquires further sharpness, as more and more topographic details come into focus: a white chapel with a cross above its tiled cupola gleaming through the trees; terraced cultivations of olive trees, vines, and vegetables; trains of fat mules with pack-​saddles; and not least, the exotic inhabitants of that little enchanted world: A group of monks in a cottage sat in the sunshine watching me with evident curiosity. We went in so close to the shore that they clambered hurriedly down the hill to prevent my landing. With their shocks of black hair and long woollen robes flying behind them they were wild enough looking set to frighten any intruder anyway!16

Back on the yacht with her companions, Edith’s periplus continues along the other side of the peninsula. First, the yacht passes the ascetic cells near the point: ‘As we blew our whistle in passing, a hermit appeared on each balcony with the promptitude of the cuckoos in Swiss clocks when the hour strikes.’17 Sketes, ‘more akin to Alpine villages than to Greek monastic settlements’, subsequently come into view. ‘I have never seen a lovelier picture of sunny peacefulness than they presented as we looked up at them from the deck of the yacht’, Wharton enthusiastically notes.18 The great monasteries follow, parading one after the other as in a diorama:  St Paul’s, Dionysiou, Grigoriou, Simonopetra, Xeropotamou, St Panteleimon, Xenophontos, Dochiariou. Wharton was no passive viewer. She always documented herself about the places she visited. Her account of Athos thus includes general notes on its history and administration. It also features some of the commonplaces found in Western travel accounts, such as the monasteries being ‘full of treasures’ but inhabited by ‘a rough and illiterate set’.19 As with any Western traveller of her time, Wharton was ultimately after the exotic and the ‘picturesque’: picturesque landscapes, picturesque details, and not least, picturesque people. Keen to explore unbeaten tracks, the American writer was after an ‘otherness’ which was nonetheless never totally ‘other’. As with 16 17 18 19

Ibid. Ibid.  178–​9. Ibid.  179. Ibid.  172.

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her male counterparts, she was after an ‘unfamiliar’ which the traveller could appropriate and convey to her audience through the juxtaposition of familiar Western imagery, such as Swiss landscapes, for example. In the words of her biographer Hermione Lee, Wharton ‘wanted to see everything, and she looked with curiosity, judgement, and intense susceptibility to the beauties of colour, landscape, sea, and sky’.20 While Wharton’s account remains unmatched for its detail and vividness, her kinaesthetic experience of Mount Athos from the sea echoes the testimonies of later tourists. In an article appearing in a British magazine ten years later, for example, a certain Mrs Charles H. Nevill recounts how ‘one monastery after another appeared to glide past like a vast panorama’, as her yacht steamed slowly along the coast, … huge fortresses, following no regular plan, but each one adapting itself to the form of rock to which it clung. Some looked almost inaccessible, and as if a balloon would be the only feasible method of approach. … In the brilliant sunshine the great buildings looked a wonderful mass of colouring, their roofs in particular showing all the glowing iridescent hues of fine old copper plates.21

Thirty years thereafter, Isabel Anderson from Boston (1876–​1948) and her husband similarly envisaged the monasteries from their yacht as ‘dream cities of the imagination as they are seen in their succession and setting along the panorama of the promontory’.22 Like Wharton (and presumably Nevill), Anderson was a woman of high society. At just five years old, she inherited a fortune from her grandfather, which made her one of richest women in America. At the age of twenty-​one, she married a diplomat. The two lived a life of luxury filled with parties and extensive travels. The Boston Globe described the couple as ‘idle rich, born to money and accustomed to privilege … He did the diplomat thing; she wrote books and plays.’23 20 Lee, Wharton, 84. 21 Mrs Charles H. Nevill, ‘A Pic-​nic on Mount Athos’, The Ludgate, vol. 7 (April 1899), 483. 22 Isabel Anderson, A Yacht in the Mediterranean Seas (Boston, MA: Marshall Jones, 1930), 238. 23 ‘Two Noted Families Linked’, Boston Daily [Boston Globe], 11 June 1897, p. 1.

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The journal of their 1929 yachting cruise to the eastern Mediterranean, which was published the following year as A Yacht in Mediterranean Seas, devotes two long chapters to Mount Athos. These include extensive notes about the peninsula’s history, legends, current political situation, and not least, descriptions of the monasteries accompanied by a wealth of photographs taken from the sea and from the land. Unlike the young Wharton, however, Anderson, who was then in her early fifties, does not seem to have longed to venture close to the shore. Instead, she contented herself with the view of the monasteries from the comfort of the deck, and passed pen and camera to her husband, who was able to get ashore and visit them.24 While all these wealthy travellers were after romance and adventure in the East, they were always external gazers at once immersed in and separated from the places and sceneries they moved through. Their approach to Mount Athos was thus mainly aesthetic. Theirs remained a detached gaze, mediated by technology, regardless of their sex. From the mobile elevated platform of their yachts’ deck, the privileged tourists perceived the Holy Mountain as an image, or rather as a film unrolling before their eyes. Even when they went ashore, the men continued to approach Athos as such, or rather, they turned it into a collection of images to bring back home. If in between the female non-​visitors and the Mountain was the sea, in between the male visitors and the monasteries was the lens of the camera. Always a distance; a distance at once physical and ideological. The avaton did not preclude female tourists from interacting with the monks. Whereas the former were unable to visit the monasteries, the latter could visit their yachts to sell their handicrafts. Even then, however, the encounter continued to be mediated in one way or another. For Mrs Nevill, it was mediated through her camera:

24

Anderson, A Yacht, 236. In the final scene of the Andersons’ cruise to the Holy Mountain, as the yacht is steaming away, Athos’s point and Lavra become the dramatic backdrop for the encounter with another yacht from the New York Yacht Club chartered to a friend of the couple. As Mr Anderson recommends, visiting Athos from the sea was the best option, as it enabled (men) to visit the monasteries without giving up the comforts of the yacht.

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Veronica Della Dora [The monks] arrived after luncheon amid great excitement, and I managed to get a bird’s-​eye snap at them just as they were disembarking. They were dressed in long, flowing black robes, with large open sleeves, and wore on their heads a curious black cap like a saucepan without its handle. … They were delighted to be photographed, and one dear old man put himself into a solemn attitude, as if he were taking part in some religious rite.25

Captured through the lens of Mrs Nevill’s camera, the monks become exotic objects, or souvenirs, like the carvings the tourists eagerly purchased from them: ‘wooden spoons, walking-​sticks and “scratch-​backs”; rosaries made of shells, coral, amber, and olive wood; crosses and crucifixes. … The quarter deck looked like a fancy fair and we bought up everything.’26 A similar encounter is recorded in the reminiscences of the English classical scholar Jane Ellen Harrison (1850–​1928), a self-​professed agnostic and feminist, who journeyed along the shores of Athos in 1912 during her last trip to Greece. As with her tourist counterparts, Harrison contemplated the coast of the Holy Mountain on her boat while waiting for her male travel mates to return from their one-​day visit to the monasteries. Like other women travellers, Harrison was entranced by the beauty of the Mountain as seen from the sea, with its monasteries hanging ‘like birds’ nests all round the rocks’.27 Rather than being directed by mere curiosity or aesthetic appreciation, however, her interest in the peninsula was scholarly.28 She believed the Holy Mountain of Orthodox Christianity to be a 25 26 27 28

Nevill, ‘Pic-​nic’,  487. Ibid. Jane Stewart, Jane Ellen Harrison: A Portrait from Letters (London: Merlin Press, 1959), 134. Another woman who approached Athos out of scholarly interest was the American geographer Ellen Churchill Semple (1863–​1932). Semple travelled to Greece with two friends the same year as Harrison, as part of a world tour. While I am not aware of a personal account of her journey through Greece, other than a brief newspaper mention of her following by motorcar the route that Xerxes and his men had taken on the way to Thermopylae (Evening Post, New York, 9 November 1912), she left a most detailed and compelling study of pre-​Christian Athos. See her The Geography of the Mediterranean Region: Its Relation to Ancient History (London: Constable, 1932),  523–​4.

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shrine of the Mountain-​Mother (a Greek divinity of prehistoric origins), and the monks, who forbade women to set foot on the promontory, to be the descendants of the mythical Curetes.29 ‘Of course, as a woman’, she writes in her Reminiscences, I could not set foot on the sacred promontory. My friends started off elated in the early morning to visit the monasteries. We mere women were left behind in the yacht disconsolate … [The men] came back in the evening … and with them came some Mount Athos monks to see the ship and the women, and sell rosaries, etc. One of the monks –​a Russian I think, for I could not understand his Greek, gave me a sheet of letter-​paper with, for heading a brightly coloured picture of the Mountain Mother issuing from Mt Athos. He pointed to the picture and then to me, and then to the mountain, as though he would say: Well, we’ve smuggled in one woman anyhow.30

Whereas Wharton and Nevill’s encounters with the monks are mediated through the lenses of their cameras, that between Harrison and the Russian monk is mediated through a representation of the Holy Mountain. Yet, an invisible barrier persists –​a barrier between two different worlds that can hardly understand and communicate with each other.

Gazes from the Tower: Joyce Nankivell Loch The ephemeral gazes of female Western travellers stand in sharp contrast with the topophiliac gazes of women living in the shadow of the 29 ‘Mountain-​Mother’, in James Hastings (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. 8 (New York: Scribner, 1916), 868–​9. 30 Jane Ellen Harrison, ‘Reminiscences of a Student’s Life’, Arion 4 (1965), 337. Here the ‘Mountain-​Mother’ is the Mother of God, the patron of Mount Athos, who usually featured above coastal profiles of the peninsula in Russian prints akin to those offered to Harrison by the monk. Examples of such prints are discussed in my Imagining Mount Athos, pp. 110–​20, and ‘Circulating Sacred Place: Fin-​de-​siècle Russian Cards of Mount Athos as Traveling Object-​Icons’, in Catherine Brace et al. (eds), Emerging Geographies of Belief (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011), 168–​92.

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Holy Mountain. The most famous of them is surely the Australian humanitarian worker and war heroine Joice Nankivell Loch (1887–​1982). Together with her husband, Joice made the tower of Ouranoupoli her abode for over half a century and left us poignant insights into village life and the Holy Mountain in the aftermath of the Great Catastrophe of 1922 and during the tragic years of the Greek Civil War (1944–​9). Unlike Wharton and her likes, Joice was no aristocrat. Born in a remote cane plantation in northern Queensland, she escaped rural poverty by writing books. In 1920 she married First World War veteran Sidney Loch and moved to Great Britain and Ireland where they worked as freelance journalists during the Sinn Fein war. They subsequently went to work with the Quakers in Poland where they rescued countless refugees from disease and starvation. In May 1923 they were sent to Thessaloniki to aid the 1.5 million Asia Minor Greek Orthodox fleeing Turkish persecution. Sidney took advantage of physical proximity and paid a visit to Mount Athos. Meanwhile, Joice explored the nearby islets. The couple decided to camp there for the summer. Their attention, however, was immediately captured by the imposing Byzantine tower of Ouranoupoli, with which they instantly fell in love.31 The tower charmed the couple because of its picturesque appearance, as much as for its location on the threshold between two worlds: secular Ouranoupoli and the Holy Mountain. On the one hand, writes Joice, was ‘a small new village, built on rock and sand for the refugees … a waterless village that could only hope for the Virgin to perform one of the miracles for which Athos was famous’.32 On the other was Athos itself, ‘Byzantium still in all its glory … A mystic world; a world of wondrous beauty’.33 In existence since the time of Andronikos II Palaiologos (emperor 1282–​1328), the tower had belonged to the monastery of Vatopedi until 1922, when the Greek government confiscated the surrounding land for the benefit of the Asia Minor refugees, and Athos’s boundary receded a few miles towards the interior. The little chapel on the top floor started 3 1 32 33

Joice Nankivell Loch, A Fringe of Blue (New York: William Morrow, 1968), 113. Ibid. Ibid.  112.

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to be used by the newly settled refugees as the village church. In 1927 the Lochs decided to make the tower their home and occupied a room immediately opposite the chapel, and three rooms below, which opened on to a wide landing and balcony.34 In the years following their arrival, the couple saved the new village from starvation by starting a female rug-​weaving co-​ operative. The unique designs were copied by Sidney from the Byzantine mosaics of Athos’s monasteries. At the same time, Joice’s first-​aid abilities won her the title of ‘famous doctor’ among the villagers. Beside their philanthropic mission, however, the Lochs remained creative souls, inspired by the unique landscape beyond Athos’s land boundary. In winter Sidney disappeared for entire months searching for materials for his book on the Holy Mountain, where he made many friends. On the other side of the boundary, Joice’s imagination restlessly worked through the landscape glanced from her tower, a landscape surrounded by a mystical halo, perhaps because of its very inaccessibility: The charm of Athos lies deeper than in its exquisite setting; than in the grandeur of the mighty mountain shouldering into the sky; or the sea’s thunderous waves; than in the fantastic buildings; the loneliness; the solitude; deeper than its long monastic tradition … There is that spell which has made Athos what it is; that lured the ancient gods; that caused the little party of refugee monks to lean on their oars when they caught their first glimpse of Athos and to exclaim: ‘The Holy Mountain!’ Those who fall under that spell cannot get away.35

The dark outline of the ridge became part of Joice’s daily life. Every morning she saw the sun rise over the dark foothills of Athos, ‘streaking the world with shine and shadow … The land smudged with the austere darkness of olive groves, the wind lifting their leaves and ruffling them into freckles of sober grey and silver. The intense blue shine of the mountain intensifying as the light broadened, and the sea lying quietly under the dawn wind.’36 The tower by the sea gradually became an almost obligatory stopover for visitors to and from the Holy Mountain: Royal Navy officers, 34 35 36

Ibid. Ibid.  114. Ibid.  152.

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academics, diplomats, botanists, writers, artists, as well as Athonite monks and hermits. Everyone stayed at the tower and unfolded their stories from that wondrous monastic world –​a world Joice did not have physical access to, but she felt part of: Athos with its bearded citizens of monks, hermits and zealots fascinated us … At our village we felt part of Athos … The men disappear into it for all the seasonal occupations, and they return from time to time with payment in kind –​cupboards, ikons, grandfather clocks, pictures of the Russian Royal family; ancient pictorial maps; coffee beans; smuggled groceries … Monks too rode into the village to buy or exchange. They brought holy objects; shoes; coarse knitted socks … blessed dried grapes for the childless. Some of them called on us and stayed an hour or two and had a meal, or spent the night, for Sidney made many friends on the Mountain. They talked of miracles and ancient lore; of wondrous healings; of salvation from great perils; of the power of different icons.37

For Joice and her fellow villagers, Mount Athos was no mere scenery. It was a fluid topography stretching beyond the stone wall marking its boundary and pervading their everyday lives. As Sidney vividly writes in his book Athos: The Holy Mountain (1957), The promontory of Athos continued beyond the wall for twenty-​five miles until ending in the Holy Mountain. It touched village life more closely than the normal world which stretched for a hundred miles in the other direction to Salonika … There may have been two hundred square miles of reserved territory; but so rugged was it, so impenetrable most of it, so amazing a world, that it seemed more extensive, and entered village talk a hundred times a day.38

During the Second World War, Joice and Sidney flew to Romania and to the Middle East as agents for the Allies. They saved over a thousand Jews and Poles from the death camps. Then the Germans withdrew, and the couple returned to the tower to assist villagers during the Greek Civil War. During the Lochs’ absence from Ouranoupoli, the tower’s housekeeper and her son were killed, like many other villagers. The tower had 37 38

Ibid.  123. Sidney Loch, Athos:  The Holy Mountain (Thessaloniki:  Libraire Molho, 1971 [1957]), 15.

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become a place of horror. Victims were questioned there and some of them executed on the spot.39 The Holy Mountain had been desecrated too. Communist guerrilla andartes trespassed across the boundary. Accompanied by twenty-​five women combatants, they penetrated deep into the heart of the monastic republic and for a few brief hours captured the capital, Karyes, ‘that town that had never seen the shadow of any female before, except the birds of God’. As Joice painfully records in the last pages of her autobiography, [The andartines] had even swaggered down the street of the Holy Ghost with cigarettes in their mouths, their legs thrust into soldiers’ trousers, their hands on knives at their waists. They had stripped gold facings from the Scriptures, but left the books, saying: ‘These are more in your line than ours.’40

In 1954 Sidney suddenly died of a heart attack. He had just completed Chapter Six of his book on Athos. His last wish, to be buried on the Holy Mountain, could not be fulfilled. Instead, a large slab of rock from the Holy Mountain was placed on his grave in the American Farming School.41 One more time Athos travelled outside its boundaries, this time literally to become one with a man who had truly loved it. In 1982 Joice reposed at the age of ninety-​four. The funeral was celebrated by Bishop Kallistos Ware with the Orthodox ritual. Kyria Loch did not belong to any fixed denomination, but she had been a woman of God who had done more for her fellow human beings than any other woman the bishop could think of. Hundreds of Athonite monks attended the service. An entire village mourned their ‘great mother’.42

39 Ibid.  225. 40 Ibid.  223. 41 Erato Aikaterine Mellou, Taxidi stēn Ouranoupolē kai to Agion Oros (Thessaloniki, 1973), 22. 42 Susanna De Vryes, Blue Ribbons, Bitter Bread:  The Life of Joice Nankivell Loch, Australia’s Most Heroic Woman (Alexandria, NSW: Hale & Iremonger, 2000), 336.

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The Orthodox Gaze: Erato Aikaterine Mellou Joice’s story is passed down to us by another twentieth-​century writer who, like her, felt a special bond to Ouranoupoli and to the Holy Mountain.43 This time, however, attachment was dictated less by physical proximity than by a mixture of religious piety and patriotic feelings: for Erato Aikaterine Mellou (1923–​92) Athos was the ‘ark of Orthodoxy’, and its monasteries the rings of the ‘spiritual golden chain’ connecting her homeland, Greece, to the glories of its Byzantine past.44 Mellou was born in Thessaloniki, where she spent her entire life. Orphaned of both parents as a teenager, she was bequeathed a respectable inheritance which ensured economic comfort to her and her three siblings during the difficult years of the German occupation. Like Mrs Loch, Mellou had a strong philanthropic vocation and distinguished herself by her tireless humanitarian work. During the Italo-​Greek war of 1940–​1 she served in the Greek Red Cross as a voluntary nurse and helped the transfer of injured soldiers from the dangerous north Epirus front to Thessaloniki. In the following years she provided hot food, clothing, and shelter to countless Greek and Jewish children, and continued to serve the Red Cross in different hospitals of Thessaloniki until the mid-​1960s.45 Most of Mellou’s literary production is concentrated between the late 1960s and 1970s and is mainly inspired by her many excursions with her beloved husband, a renowned criminologist from Thessaloniki. As with the Lochs, it was during one of those excursions that the couple fell in love with Ouranoupoli. Over the years, they made the village a regular destination and their summer vacation place. To it, and to Mount Athos, Erato dedicated an entire book, which won her a prestigious prize from the Ministry of Tourism in 1970 and even the proposal to name a street

43 Mellou, Taxidi, 20–​3. The story of Loch is followed by myths about the tower. 44 Ibid.  30. 45 Alexandros Adamides, Timētiko afierōma stē mnēmē tēs Eratōs-​Aikaterinē G. Mellou (Thessaloniki, 1994), 14–​17.

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after her.46 Rather than a simple guidebook or travel account, Journey to Ouranoupoli and the Holy Mountain is a vivid essay and hymn of praise of the natural beauty of the peninsula, of its rich history, local traditions, and more remarkably, of its spiritual heritage. Indeed, critics credited Mellou for being ‘the first WOMAN to have provided [in her book] not only a description of the beauties and wonders of the Athonite monasteries, but also of their spiritual traditions and the renewal which the soul experiences in front of them’.47 Like Nankivell Loch, Mellou blends lyrical descriptions of the landscape with picturesque detail of village life, its seasonal rhythms, and local folklore. Unlike the Australian writer, however, Mellou is not a resident of Ouranoupoli. She is rather a vacationer and affectionate guest, as well as an attentive ethnographer. During her repeated sojourns, she visits the homes of the villagers and listens to their tales from Asia Minor by the crackling fireplace, as the rhythmic toll of the village church bell marks the passage of time. She watches the women as they cook traditional dishes or dye Easter eggs. She walks uphill to enjoy the view of the sun as it peacefully sets beyond the dark slopes of Athos. Mellou’s Ouranoupoli is itself very different from the poor village Joice first encountered in the 1920s. It has now become a renowned tourist centre, equipped with comfortable hotels and connected to Thessaloniki by regular bus rides. In a way, her book starts where Joice’s autobiography ends. On the last page of her memoir, Joice foresees the imminent and unavoidable transformation of the village and 46 Ibid. 23. Mellou’s other books include:  Otan oi theoi ginontan anthrōpoi (1968); Mythos kai erōtas (1976); Hēlioloustē Chalkidikē (1980); Delphoi-​Meteōra-​Rodos (1979); Spondē stē mnēmē tou (1982); and other unpublished works. To Ouranoupoli she also dedicated a poem reproduced in Adamides, Aphierōma, 58. I am grateful to Vasilike Fragkeskou, Rena Papadake, and George Pelides for helping me trace Mellou’s works. 47 Adamides, Aphierōma, 36. Later literary descriptions of Athos as observed from the sea by Greek female writers are found in Elene Ladia’s book Physiognōmies topōn (1992) and in Litsa Chatzephotes’s Selides Hēmerologiou (1996). The former describes a journey on a tourist boat along the peninsula, whereas the latter, like Mellou, a floating pilgrimage, this time with relics from Xenophontos. Both excerpts are included in I. M. Chatzephotes, Anthōlogia logotechnikōn keimenōn gia to Agion Oros (Athens: Ikaros, 2000), 222–​5, 406–​8.

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Mount Athos with the construction of the new road. Faced with change, the war heroine nostalgically greets the end of an era. By contrast, the Greek writer opens her account of the village as this transformation has already taken place. For her, change brought a new, hopeful beginning: Difficult years pass … The village comes back to life; it makes itself wings to fly; misery is cast away … People from all over Greece come here to have a good time … The blue sea is continuously filled with cutters, yacht men, and Chris-​craft boats from every corner of the earth.48

Mellou enthusiastically praises the new cosmopolitan look of the village, as much as its traditions. She juxtaposes the evocative images of Athos’s overgrown slopes and of its mysterious cone looming in the distance with vivid vignettes of villagers playing cards or following the American astronauts’ moon landing on the TV of the local coffeeshop.49 Under her poetic gaze, the night view of the new road illumined by the cars becomes an object of beauty. However, the writer also problematizes herself as the monks, who are becoming fewer and fewer, ‘quietly fall, like Athos’s wildflowers’, and that same road will soon bring ‘endless caravans of laypeople into the world of silence’.50 In Mellou’s book Athos continues to stretch beyond its land boundary by way of objects and people, as it did for the Lochs. Old villagers roast chestnuts and munch dried fruit which their boys brought to them from the Holy Mountain, while the writer interviews monks transiting through Ouranoupoli, or simply sips a cup of Athonite tea in the kitchen of her hosts.51 Unlike the Lochs, however, with the villagers and the monks Mellou shares her Orthodox faith. She is ultimately a pilgrim. Celebrating Easter in Ouranoupoli has a special value to her, because of its proximity to the Garden of the Mother of God.52 The sad toll of the bells and the mournful chants spilling out of the village church on Holy Thursday touch her soul and set her in a state of deep compunction. In the church she attends 48 49 50 51 52

Mellou, Taxidi,  14–​15. Ibid.  59. Ibid. 18, 56, 101. Ibid. 38, 58. Ibid.  39.

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services, not as a distanced onlooker, but as a participant experiencing the drama of Crucifixion and Resurrection in all its intensity. [On Holy Friday] the Apostolic readings cause us a lump in our throat. The priest processes the crucified Christ with the crown of thorns and chants, ‘Today He who hung the earth upon the waters is hung on the tree.’ Our eyes are suddenly filled with tears … The mournful toll of the bells continuously reminds us of the Godman’s sacrifice. Today each one of us has forgotten all our cares and afflictions. Our souls and hearts are filled with his martyrdom.53

Mellou’s approach to the Holy Mountain, to which she devotes the second part of her book, betrays the same intensity of feeling. In the prologue she explains to her readers that her account of Athos is based on eight cruises on a local motor boat, as well as on the testimonies of its two experienced captains and of monks she met in Ouranoupoli.54 Her perspective on the Holy Mountain thus combines the view from the frontier town with the view from the sea. Both views are nonetheless remarkably different from those of her non-​Orthodox counterparts. In Ouranoupoli, the gate to the Holy Mountain, Mellou writes, ‘you become more Christian, as you think that you are so close to this monastic corner, and yet so far.’55 On the boat, however, the writer is so overwhelmed by the view of the monasteries and by the sanctity of the place that distance is paradoxically annihilated: It is very early morning. The sun makes its timid appearance in the blue sky. White like a dove, the motor boat Athos moves slowly through the calm blue-​green sea. Charmed by the rare view of the south-​west slope of the Holy Mountain, we make sure we are not missing any detail. … On the deck, we become all eyes to admire the beauties of our motherland, to enclose every monastery inside of us, even from outside.56

As the boat slowly passes by the monasteries, Mellou is overcome with awe and compunction. The direct sight of those ancient structures is enough to fill her soul, even from a distance.57 If for Wharton and other 53 54 55 56 57

Ibid.  41–​2. Ibid.  70. Ibid.  56. Ibid.  71. Ibid.  77.

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Western tourists the monasteries were architectural curiosities or mere objects of wonder, for Mellou they are sources of Orthodox tradition and ‘channels of communication with God’.58 Likewise, nature is not simply an aesthetic surface or an object of beauty and admiration in itself, but an interface with the Creator. Athos’s lavish vegetation, its crystal sea, its mighty peak ultimately redirect her gaze to their invisible Maker, beyond the surface of appearances. Unwittingly, you completely forget yourself and spiritually unite with God … who calls you close to Him. You become happy, as you enter in communion with the entire cosmos and its Creator. You are so absorbed in His holy splendour that you repeatedly close your three fingers and make the sign of the cross, begging for forgiveness with all your soul. … Speechless, we turn our gaze upwards and admire the Creator and His works.59

Mellou’s experience of Athos is not simply visual, but deeply multisensual. The distant sound of the sēmandron summoning the monks of some remote skete for lunch reaches her ears and reminds her of the quiet rhythms and simplicity of monastic life.60 The Holy Mountain draws even closer as one of the captains goes ashore to pick up a hieromonk from Dionysiou and brings him to the motor boat. Unlike the monks visiting the yachts of early Western tourists, the cleric does not carry merchandise to sell, but the most holy relics of the monastery: the hand of the Forerunner, the holy girdle of the Virgin, and a piece of bone of Patriarch Niphon II. After taking part in a paraklesis led by the hieromonk, Mellou and her companions venerate the precious relics in turn. They become pilgrims in the Greek sense of the word: proskynein, to bow down (before a relic or an icon). The sacra become material bridges to the Holy Mountain –​and to heaven. Monks are no longer the wild or exotic creatures of Wharton and other Western tourists’ accounts, but loyal guardians of the author’s own faith. They are not ignorant simpletons but educated men, always happy to assist the writer with their knowledge of the Holy Mountain and of Orthodoxy.61 58 59 60 61

Ibid.  19. Ibid.  100–​1. Ibid.  106. Ibid.  90.

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Mellou calls her floating pilgrimage a transformative experience, a sort of ‘second baptism’, which turned her and her companions into ‘different people’.62 As she writes in the concluding pages of the book, Perhaps one day time will repress many other reminiscences, but the memories of Athos will always shine brightly inside of me. An inner light radiates from my beautiful dreamlike cruise and illumines the smallest corner of my soul, filling it with hope and longing for the Creator of All. … This little journey was an ascent of the soul up to heaven –​and out of a purified soul comes an unhurried prayer.63

The Enchanted Gaze: Philarete Kotse and Floating Pilgrimages Mellou was among the first participants in the collective cruises and ‘floating pilgrimages’ to Athos. Throughout the 1960s the monasteries were served by wooden boats able to carry no more than twelve passengers at a time and were mainly used for the monks’ basic needs. It was only in 1970 that the first motor boat arrived in Ouranoupoli, and with it the first regular tourist cruises –​a sort of mass-​consumption version of the early yachting tours of Athos. Pioneered by the skete of St Anna and the monastery of Dionysiou, pilgrimages with relics followed soon thereafter. By the late 1990s Ouranoupoli’s fleet included six boats, each having a carrying capacity of over 200 passengers.64 The number of visitors to Athos had by then grown by a multiple of about fifteen since Mellou first cruised the peninsula. The internet had just arrived in Ouranoupoli. It is at this time of economic prosperity for the village and of spiritual revival on the Holy Mountain that Philarete Kotse, a young Greek anthropologist

62 Ibid.  83. 63 Ibid.  111. 64 Filareti Kotsi, ‘La communication enchantée. Une anthropologie réflexive du tourisme religieux autour du Mont Athos (Grèce)’, unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Lyon, 2003, 223–​4.

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based in Belgium, turned floating pilgrimages to Athos into an object of study and personal fascination. Between 1997 and 2000 Kotse conducted extensive fieldwork in Ouranoupoli and took part in no fewer than sixteen tourist cruises and twelve floating pilgrimages to the Holy Mountain.65 In her unpublished doctoral dissertation and ensuing articles, the young anthropologist paints vivid pictures of the colourful microcosms temporarily assembling on the boats and in the village. We follow her at sea as she accompanies tourists and pilgrims on their cruises along the peninsula, jokes with the captains, improvises herself as a guide; or in the streets of Ouranoupoli, as she chats with villagers and travel agents, serves as a temporary saleswoman in a souvenir shop, and records in her diary the many oddities and contradictions of a traditional village seasonally transforming into an international tourist destination. As with Mrs Loch, Mellou, and other women based in Ouranoupoli, for Kotse the Holy Mountain is a living presence mediated through other people’s accounts: [In the village] everyone has something to say about [Mount Athos]. Men who have visited it want to talk about their experience. Men who have not visited should explain why they haven’t. The elderly talk about their experience as workers. Women express their desire to visit, hold endless discussions about the avaton, miracles, stories of monks, women who are proud to have touched a rock of that sacred world … This monastic peninsula was part of my daily research, even if through their stories.66

As with Mellou, Kotse also experiences the Holy Mountain from the boat, during her many cruises and floating pilgrimages. While both women share the same double vantage point (Ouranoupoli and the sea), however, Kotse’s gaze is ultimately not directed to Mount Athos. It is rather directed to those gazing at it, particularly female pilgrims. Unlike Mellou, her interest in pilgrimage is not dictated by religious belief, but by a personal fascination with its complex workings. For Orthodox women, the anthropologist notes, floating pilgrimages represent ‘the one and only 5 Ibid. 227, n. 285 6 66 Ibid. 68, 172.

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possibility to visit [the Holy Mountain], which they mostly construct in their imagination’.67 Through her pen, we discover the richness and multidimensionality of these pilgrimages. We learn about the peculiarities of the ephemeral mobile sacred spaces they create; how they come into being at sea and quickly dissolve back to the dock. We discover an unexpected homeliness onboard, as the mothers of the monks patiently queue to see their sons, and other women leave on the floor their plastic bags full of biscuits, feta cheese, olive oil, lentils, and other provisions for the monastery, ‘as if they had just returned from shopping in the supermarket’.68 As in any Orthodox pilgrimage, Kotse notes, participants in floating pilgrimages to Athos follow a dress code and set of behaviours which immediately tell them apart from secular tourists. The latter sunbathe on the deck in their swimsuits, play cards, laugh over a beer, photograph the monasteries. Pilgrims, by contrast, cross themselves, venerate the relics, give the monks lists of names for commemoration, fill their little plastic bottles with blessed water, seek spiritual advice. They engage in the act of worship with all their senses: Finally, the group arrives accompanied by their parish priest. I count the people on the boat: nine men and forty women ranging in age from forty to sixty-​five. All the women are dressed in long skirts. Many of them are dressed in black. Almost all of them wear a golden cross. The near total absence of cameras strikes me. We can hear the priest’s voice through the loudspeakers … As well as being the organizer of the journey, he acts as a guide. As we pass in front of the monasteries, he gives information about each one and narrates various miracles … He sings a religious hymn … and the pilgrims accompany him … During the floating pilgrimage, relics are kissed. This is the whole essence of pilgrimage: to feel the relics with the lips. The women search the contact. The relics are also touched … very rarely are they photographed.69

Unlike tourists, pilgrims do not experience Athos through the lens of the camera, but through direct contact with the monks, with the sacra, and with other physical objects from the Holy Mountain. 67 Filareti Kotsi, ‘The Enchantment of a Floating Pilgrimage:  The Case of Mount Athos’, Vrijetijdstudies 17 (1999), 5. 68 Kotsi, ‘Communication enchantée’, 293. 69 Kotsi, ‘Enchantment’, 9.

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Ironically, whereas the pilgrims seek contact, the anthropologist strives to achieve distance, the distance necessary to make sense of pilgrimage as a social phenomenon. In this, Kotse’s gaze is fundamentally different from Mellou’s, as is her experience of the Holy Mountain. In her account, introspection gives way to relationality. Union with God gives way to a continuous attempt to set herself outside the scene, while being physically immersed in it. Lyricism gives way to strategies for achieving this distance, such as writing her diary in a foreign language and sending it to her supervisor in Belgium through the internet. In this way, the author is enabled to watch the events ‘as through a frame’, or a little window. Whereas Mellou’s gaze penetrated beyond the surface of reality to touch the divine, the anthropologist endeavours to separate herself from her Greek and Orthodox identity to ‘fly over the surface’.70 Yet, the separation is never complete. Ultimately, what intrigues Kotse is enchantment, the temporary suspension of the ordinary.71 This is something she claims to have first experienced as an eight-​year-​old during an excursion from her youth camp in Sithonia to Ouranoupoli in the late 1970s. While the boys were taken to Athos’s monasteries, she and another little girl were exceptionally allowed to visit the tower, which at that time was still inhabited by its charismatic Australian lady and closed to the public. The experience left a deep mark on the young girl. ‘Twenty years later’, that same girl writes, ‘I became interested in the potential enchantment that a place can exert on its visitors. … I was fascinated by the unique location of Ouranoupoli: a vacation hub, but at the same time also the threshold of a sacred world.’72 During her fieldwork on the boats, Kotse’s gaze is transformed. It turns from the monasteries to her informants and their group dynamics. Yet enchantment momentarily suspends her status as a detached secular observer. Her scepticism is unexpectedly shattered and resistance to venerate relics overcome as, during a floating pilgrimage, she suddenly finds herself in front of the relics of St Anastasia ‘the Deliverer from Potions’:

7 0 Kotsi, ‘Communication enchantée’, 92. 71 Kotsi, ‘Enchantment’, 16. 72 Kotsi, ‘Communication enchantée’, 9–​10.

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I was the last to venerate the relics. Monk Spyridon explained to me which relic belonged to which saint. Even if don’t find it necessary to kiss the relics, when I found myself in front of the relic of St Anastasia, I felt a strong need to kiss it: my mother’s name is Anastasia … I would not know how to explain what pushed me to do so. It was an unexpected spontaneous act, but it produced in me a positive feeling of safety and euphoria. Today, three years later, the second name of my little girl (who did not exist at that time) is also Anastasia. Sometimes I still think of that spontaneous act of reverence towards the relics of this saint.73

For a moment, the anthropologist turned into a pilgrim –​on a boat, 500 metres off Athos’s coast.

Conclusions According to René Gothóni, the function of pilgrimage is to facilitate detachment from worldly preoccupations in a relationship ultimately oriented towards God. Whereas the English word points to the transformative potential of the journey, proskynema emphasizes direct contact with the sacra.74 Either way, pilgrimage entails an inward movement, a breach in the surface of reality eventually leading to a change of heart (metanoia). For Wharton and other Western cruise makers, Mount Athos remained a glittering aesthetic surface to be captured through the lens of their cameras. The monks either disappeared in the scenery or became exotic objects of curiosity framed and flattened through that same lens. By contrast, for Mellou and later female Orthodox pilgrims, Athos was a holy place –​and its simple view from the boat a transformative experience. Either as guardians of tradition or as spiritual fathers, the monks facilitated this transformation. For Mellou, the sequential view of the monasteries from the sea was not a simple picturesque diorama, as it was for Western female tourists, but a spiritual chain joining past and present 7 3 74

Ibid. 161, 376. Gothóni, Tales and Truth, 184–​95. The Latin word peregrinus indicates the wanderer ‘through the fields’ (per agros).

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and, above all, her soul to God. As Kotse showed in her ethnographic account, the women on floating pilgrimages were likewise active participants rather than distanced viewers. Pilgrimage does not simply entail an inner movement. Like tourism, or indeed any form of travel, it also presupposes some form of physical mobility. No period in human history has seen more dramatic transformations in transport and communication infrastructure than the century covered in this chapter: from nineteenth-​century tourists’ steam-​powered yachts to the first cars and asphalted road to Ouranoupoli; from the arrival of motor boats and mass tourism in the 1970s to the introduction of the internet in the late 1990s. Technological change deeply impacted travel to the Holy Mountain, as well as life on the Holy Mountain itself –​from the decline witnessed by Mellou in the late 1960s to the spiritual revival of the 1990s. These changes radically shaped the experiences of women travellers and pilgrims to Athos, or indeed enabled them to take place. In this sense, their story is the story of modernity: it is the story of globalization and time-​space compression, but it is also the story of encroaching secularization and its downfall. Finally, pilgrimage entails a destination place. Yet places are not fixed locations. Like pilgrims and tourists, they can also travel –​through objects and images; through people and their stories; and not least, through prayers. For the Lochs and Mellou, as well as for Kotse and her informants, Athos stretched beyond its land boundary and encompassed the entire village. For millions of Orthodox women, the boundaries of the Holy Mountain continue to stretch as far as Thessaloniki, Athens, London, Moscow, New York, and beyond. Feelings of belonging are both sited and mobile. Physical distancing does not necessarily mean ‘exclusion’, but rather potential participation through different, more sophisticated channels. In this way, the Holy Mountain continues silently to trespass across its boundaries and reach female non-​travellers and non-​pilgrims through myriad invisible threads –​as it has been doing since the beginning. In the eleventh century a certain Maria Lagoude wrote: From old and from the beginning, and so to speak, from the time I was in my mother’s womb I was raised by the monks of Lavra. During our entire life my husband and I have been devoted to the Lavra and have much faith in it because of the virtue of

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the fathers who live there and their compassionate soul-​loving disposition … At the Holy Lavra my husband and I found a harbour of salvation.75

As Alice-​Mary Talbot commented, this woman envisaged the abbot of the monastery as ‘her spiritual father, the Lavra as her mother, and herself as one of the brethren and children of the Lavra’ –​a place she never saw, even from the sea.

75 Talbot, ‘Women and Mt Athos’, in Anthony Bryer and Mary Cunningham (eds), Mount Athos and Byzantine Monasticism (Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 1996), 78.

René Gothóni

4 Pilgrims or Tourists? Modern-​Day Travellers

Framing the Question Of all metaphors for life, the most evocative is that of the departure, the journey, and the return. The departure is full of excitement about adventures to come. The journey is a series of hazards and transitions, of setbacks, challenges, and triumphs. The return marks the final transformation, fulfilment, and completion. Longing for adventures seems to underlie all journeys, both outer and inner, all ventures into scholarship and literature, music and art, all self-​imposed trials and ordeals.1 Every journey begins at the traveller’s station in life. Although the motives for going on a pilgrimage or a tourist journey vary, the underlying wanderlust for departure nevertheless seems to be that of perceived deficiency. Anne Osterrieth distinguishes three types of deficiency in medieval Christian pilgrimages, namely the sinner who seeks salvation, the sick person who seeks a bodily cure, and the lonely person who seeks revelation.2 In the early 1970s young men –​‘hippies’ –​arrived on Athos disrupting the silence in the monasteries by listening to music from their cassette radios. Aiming to control the visitors, the Athonites established a quota system limiting the number of permits (diamonitiria) issued per day to 100 for Orthodox and ten for non-​Orthodox applicants, and the number of nights to four. By restricting the number of visitors, the Athonites aimed at ensuring that the Holy Mountain would not become a tourist centre like Meteora. Nonetheless, the number of visitors increased from about 1 2

Anthony Stevens, On Jung (London: Routledge, 1990), 64. Anne Osterrieth, ‘Medieval Pilgrimage:  Society and Individual Quest’, Social Compass 36 (1989), 146.

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3,000 in 1970 to 148,365 in 2019, when the Athonites closed their borders due to the Covid pandemic.3 In 2022 the Athonites reopened their borders for pilgrims. The number of visitors to the Holy Mountain has not yet risen to the level before the pandemic, but monks in some of the monasteries still find it difficult to cope with the constantly increasing number of men who wish to enter Athos. The majority are Greek, of course, but there are numerous visitors from Western and Eastern Europe, Russia, and some from North America and Asia. The question whether the visitors are pilgrims or tourists is highly relevant and of great interest also for the Athonites. Our answer to the question depends on how we

• • • • • •

conceive of the words ‘pilgrim’, ‘tourist’, and ‘proskynema’; take into account the policy of the Athonites; consider the ritual aspect of proskynema; understand the concept of nous; listen to the experiences of pilgrims; and recognize that words and viewpoints matter.

Preconceptions of the Words ‘Pilgrim’, ‘Tourist’, and Proskynema In the dictionary we read that the word ‘pilgrim’, from the Latin peregrinus, denotes walking in an alien land across fields (from peregre, ‘abroad’, and ager, ‘land, field’). Originally, peregrinus meant a foreigner who lived outside the territory of Rome (ager Romanus) and travelled to a sacred place or a shrine to fulfil a religious duty, to pray, and to receive blessings or some other religious benefits.4 Consequently, the words ‘pilgrim’

3 4

Statistics supplied by the office of the Ouranoupolis Harbour Police. The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, ed. Lesley Brown, vol. 2 (Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 1993).

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and ‘pilgrimage’ are without premeditation conceived of as ‘traveller’ and ‘travelling’ –​read walking –​respectively. This is the preconception of the English word ‘pilgrim’ and how it is generally used and understood. The word ‘tourist’, on the other hand, denotes a person travelling abroad for pleasure, often as a member of a group of people making a tour during their vacations. A tourist enjoys visiting famous cultural places and other tourist attractions. Some tourists prefer to call themselves travellers rather than tourists as they have an itinerant way of life exploring foreign cultures and exotic places. The Greek word for ‘pilgrim’ and ‘worshipper’ is proskynetis, from the verb proskyno (‘I kneel and worship’). Its connotation differs from that of the English word ‘pilgrim’. Greeks go to shrines for the purpose of worshipping. It is neither walking, nor imitatio Christi, but veneration, that is the quintessence of Greek pilgrimages. When Greeks head for the church, they say: tha pao na proskyneso (‘I’ll go to worship’). This expression clearly epitomizes the essence of proskynema. As John Komnenos has aptly pointed out in his Proskynetarion, a proskynema embodies the ‘kneeling in front of icons and relics’, ‘kissing icons and relics’, ‘resting in the presence of the Holy’, ‘praying Kyrie eleison (“Lord, have mercy on me”)’, and confessing shortcomings and sins to a confessor or spiritual father, and especially taking part in the Divine Liturgy (Holy Communion).5 Scholars who hold a different view argue that Russians make pilgrimages by walking, which is described in the well-​known book The Way of a Pilgrim.6 It is true that Russians walk, but Fr Maximos (Constas) has pointed out that ‘the wandering life’ is characteristic of Russian spirituality.

5

6

There is an Athonite edition of John Komnenos’s Proskynetarion in the series Agioreitika Tetradia entitled Ioannou tou Komnenou, Proskynetarion tou Agiou Orous tou Athonos (Karyes: Ekdoseis ‘Panselinos’, 1984). See Veronica della Dora, ‘Light and Sight: Vasilij Grigorovich Barskij, Mount Athos and the Geographies of Eighteenth-​Century Russian Orthodox Enlightenment’, Journal of Historical Geography 53 (2016), 92. The Way of a Pilgrim. Candid Tales of a Wanderer to his Spiritual Father, ed. Andrew Louth with an introduction, trans. Anna Zaranko (Milton Keynes:  Penguin Classics, 2017).

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Therefore, ‘the wandering life’ is a more correct English equivalent of the Russian title than ‘pilgrimage’. He argues: Very often, as in the case of the present author [of The Way of a Pilgrim] the wandering has no visit to a place of devotion as its object. It is a way of life in which the early Christian ideal of spiritual freedom and detachment from the world is grafted onto the Russian feeling for the religious significant of nature as Mother Earth, and the truly Russian rejection of civilization out of religious motives.7

The Policy of the Athonites Having elucidated the preconceptions of the words ‘pilgrim’, ‘tourist’, and ‘proskynema’, we may continue to reflect upon the policy of the Athonites regarding visitors. In the early Church the catechumens, the hearers not yet baptized, were dismissed at the conclusion of the Liturgy of the Catechumens, while the faithful, the baptized Christians, remained to celebrate the mystery of the Eucharist, the Holy Communion. The Athonite monasteries continue this tradition. All men who have visited the Holy Mountain know that it is one monk’s duty of obedience to identify non-​Orthodox travellers and to advise them to remain in the narthex and not to enter the nave of the church. This is understandable, because the structure of the Divine Liturgy is divided into the Liturgy of the Catechumens and the Liturgy of the Faithful. The narthex is for the catechumens, while the nave of the church is for the faithful only. This simple plan of an Athonite church (katholikon) illustrates that at the beginning of the services and during the Liturgy of the Catechumens, all men stay in the narthex, but when the Divine Liturgy commences, Orthodox visitors enter the nave for the Liturgy of the Faithful. Only the Orthodox may take part in the Eucharist, the Holy Communion by the

7

Fr Maximos (Constas), ‘The Philokalia: An Annotated Bibliography’ (Simonopetra archives), p. 3.

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Pilgrims or Tourists? Modern-​Day Travellers Wall to the west

Wall to the east

▌ Narthex

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| area

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RD

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Figure 1.  The plan of the interior of an Athonite church

Royal Doors. In some monasteries only the Orthodox may share the table fellowship in the refectory of the monastery (trapeza) after the services. In accordance with the structure and the content of the liturgies in the church, there is a sharp distinction between Orthodox and non-​Orthodox visitors, or more precisely between those who are Orthodox and those who are still catechumens. Strictly speaking, this means that the dichotomy does not correspond to that between Greek and foreigner, or pilgrim and tourist. Many foreigners are Orthodox, notably from Bulgaria, Finland, Russia, Serbia, England, North America, and some other countries.

The Ritual Aspect of Proskynema Due to the similarity in the elliptical structure between transition rites (rites de passage) and pilgrimages, Victor Turner concluded that all pilgrimages form an ellipse and that the return road is psychologically different from the approach road. The ellipse metaphor of pilgrimage is significant, because it contains binary opposites such as departure /​

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return, deficiency /​deficiency made good, old man /​new man, death /​ rebirth, impure /​pure, illness /​cure, and lost /​ found. In an article entitled ‘Pilgrimage = Transformation Journey’ I reconsidered Victor Turner’s well-​known model of pilgrimage as a form of rite de passage and pointed out that the universal characteristic of a pilgrimage is not that of a transition rite. In my criticism of his conception, I referred to Arnold van Gennep, who in his book Les Rites de Passage clearly states that the one thing in common in transition rites is the transition from one social status to another, which means transition over a social threshold.8 The theories of rituals distinguish between transition rites, initiation rites, and rites of crises, all of which are definitive transitions from one social status to another, in other words one-​way streets with no return. A pilgrimage is neither of these, but it is evident that a pilgrimage is a rite. In June 2002 the former Prince of Wales, now His Majesty King Charles III, as the Royal Patron, invited the Friends of Mount Athos to hold an all-​day seminar in the Orchard Room at Highgrove. In his speech, he said: ‘I have now established myself as a kind of “swallow” that returns once a year to Mount Athos … and … the fact that I do come back like a swallow means that I am serious about it.’9 I have cherished this expression for the reason that I also recognize myself as a swallow in that sense. It seems to me that perpetuity is the one thing many of the visitors have in common. The notion of our Royal Patron, that he had become a kind of ‘swallow’ by perpetually returning to the Holy Mountain, is an elucidating case in point. I gladly confess to being indebted to him in suggesting that we can add to the theory of rituals yet another kind of rite, namely perpetual rites. The one thing in common is the perpetual movement between one’s station in life and a sacred place, a church, or a monastery. Allow me to reflect upon this notion in greater detail from yet another angle.

8 9

René Gothóni, ‘Pilgrimage = Transformation Journey’, in Tore Ahlbäck (ed.), The Problem of Ritual, Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis 15 (Åbo:  The Donner Institute for Research in Religious and Cultural History, 1993), 108–​9. ‘A Response by HRH The Prince of Walesʼ, Friends of Mount Athos. Annual Report (2002),  34–​5.

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Nous According to the Orthodox conception of the world, God created human beings in His own image and likeness.10 This means that every human being, despite being banished from the Garden of Eden, has a capacity to know good and evil, as well as to sense God’s energies and the holiness of sacred places like the Holy Mountain, for example. The Desert Fathers distinguish between an intelligible (noetic) and a sensible world. Adam and Eve fell from the intelligible to the sensible world due to their disobedience to God’s will; in other words, they fell into the realm suspended between pleasure and pain. The characteristics of the noetic and the sensible world are in opposition. Before the Fall, man (Adam) was living in a state of spiritual freedom with a capacity for spiritual pleasure enabling him to enjoy communion with God. Man was without sin and lived in a non-​sexual state, being subjected only to the law of ‘coming into being’ (Gr. génesis), a law in harmony with the principle of his nature. Man was not subject to the law of physical birth (Gr. génnisis) resulting from sexual intercourse, which was introduced only after the Fall.11 This original state was lost both through Adam’s misuse of his natural freedom and by the seduction of the Devil. The Devil persuaded Adam to direct his desires towards the sensible world and to prefer worldly pleasures to the spiritual pleasures for which man has a natural capacity. Thus, humankind became preoccupied with sensory things alone. In the Philokalia, the highest capacity and faculty of man is called nous. It has its abode in the divine intellect, which is the image of God in man, associated especially with that intellect. This intellect is distinguished from mind or reason (dianoia), in other words from the discursive, conceptualizing, and logical faculty of man. Unlike reasoning, the noetic intellect 10 11

Genesis 1: 26–​7. Lars Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor, Acta Seminarii Neotestamentici Upsaliensis 25 (Lund:  C. W. K. Gleerup, 1965), 154–​5, 164–​5.

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understands divine truth by means of immediate experience, intuition, or ‘simple cognition’, a term preferred by St Isaac the Syrian. The capacity of the noetic intellect constitutes the innermost aspect of the heart and is in fact the ‘organ’ of contemplation, in other words the ‘eye’ of the heart. Nous is that part of our mind that conceives God and that gradually may regain an insight into and knowledge of the creation. Due to the Fall, humankind lost the immediate and natural contact with God. In the sensible world we experience our conditions on the basis of our five senses, namely eyesight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. The word ‘sense’, from the Latin sentire, is useful in this connection. We have the capacity to make sense of many things in our human conditions. Nous, or the noetic intellect, can rightly be regarded as a specific sense for spirituality and spiritual pleasures, originating from the moment when God created man in His image and likeness. Perpetual pilgrimages confirm this notion. On the Holy Mountain men perceive the energies of God, even if it often is ever so vaguely. Many men are eager to return to the Holy Mountain. The more perpetually they visit the monasteries and take part in the liturgies, the more their nous is activated, and the more profoundly they perceive the presence of God’s energies. The magnetic feeling of sensing the presence of God makes many men perpetual churchgoers and pilgrims. They learn how to identify and reject the provocations of the Devil. With time they become more and more aware of the elusive temptations as they progress in their spiritual struggle. At this point the spiritual pleasures become more attractive than the sensible ones, and we may state that sensing their nous changes the focus of their life away from the sensible world to the pleasures of their progressing sense of the spiritual pleasures.

Some Pilgrims’ Experience This aforementioned spiritual progress is confirmed by a friend of mine who told me that

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Athos provides a kind of retreat. Having experienced it once, you want to return to its appealing asceticism, its simple life style. The daily walks, the different diurnal rhythms, the divine liturgies that last for hours, the lack of entertainments, all these lower the level of stress. Even the frugal meals in silence, while some monk is reading about the life of the saint of the day, become memorable experiences. On the Holy Mountain one really experiences the energies of God.

At Iviron While I was spending my Easter holidays in the monastery of Iviron in 1993, I sensed the presence of God’s energies for the first time in my life. I jotted down the following notes in my research diary: As soon as I embarked on Agia Anna with more than one hundred other men, my mood changed. With one book on Athos in press and another practically finished, I no longer needed to collect data or to conduct specific field-​research programmes. On the contrary, I felt a great relief simply in being one of them, albeit a foreigner among pious Greek proskynites. This lack of stress took me by surprise. It gave me an exceptional pleasure and a serene satisfaction. I no longer needed to be the participant-​ observer, programmed anthropologist, but merely an ordinary human being... on a proskynema with a personal quest, a personal transformation journey, as it were. During the late afternoon on Good Friday, my third day on the Holy Mountain, all four of us in the room rested in our beds. As the Greeks did, so did I change into my pyjamas, and there we were, all of us, lying between the sheets. One was reading the Divine Liturgy. Another was deep in sleep. The third was trying to have a conversation with me. ‘Mr Finland, what do you think? Is the God of the Hindus the same God as our God? Mr Finland, what do you think? Is there a life after death? Mr Finland, what do you think?... ’ I was too tired to answer all his questions, to which there seemed to be no end. It occurred to me that it was like lying on a bed in a hospital; the white walls, the simple beds, the sandals beneath each bed, and the expectant atmosphere; all reminded me of that. It was as if we were waiting for a major surgery, which in a way we were; the resurrection of Christ: Christ is risen, truly risen!

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René Gothóni This is how, in 1993, we prepared ourselves for the Easter service. The angelic antiphonal singing of the choirs was moving. I was especially touched by the words and tune of Kyrie eleison (‘Lord, have mercy on me’), perpetually repeated until I realized they were my ‘own words’ … I needed relief from an anguished nagging distress and the tension of a personal misfortune I had been living with in recent years. While my heart cried Kyrie eleison, my soul sensed the extended meaning of these words.12

Walking from Megisti Lavra to Karakallou A Greek medical student said to me, walking was incredible –​first of all tiring, physically very tiring. We walked from Megisti Lavra to Karakallou for twelve hours. The eye could see a long way –​the sky, the virgin nature, the mountain and valleys. The spirit soars in these parts. You get a splendid feeling. We had many rests. Drank only water. We climbed about 1,000 meters. Athos was right over our heads and then from 1,000 meters down to the sea and then from the sea up about 200 meters to Karakallou. I felt there, at 1,000 meters on Athos, between the trees –​it is impossible for me to translate my thoughts into words, it was the kind of experience you can live, not explain –​I found myself there, I returned to my roots as a human being. My mind became peaceful. I found myself as a human being.13

For the medical student it was the landscape of the Holy Mountain, the physical effort, and the wild nature that gave him a revelatory experience, summarized in the words: ‘I found myself there.’ He was not a proskynetis in the Greek sense of the word, more a wanderer like the anonymous Russian in the book The Way of a Pilgrim.

12

13

René Gothóni, Tales and Truth. Pilgrimage on Mount Athos Past and Present (Helsinki:  Helsinki University Press, 1994), 169–​70; id., ‘Kalo proskynima’, in B. Arell and T. Kärkkänen (eds), Athos  –​Monastic Life on the Holy Mountain, Helsinki City Art Museum’s Publication 93 (Helsinki: Maahenki, 2006), 17. Gothóni, Tales and Truth, 129.

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At the Skete of St Anne and at Stavronikita The word ‘tourist’ is sometimes connected with attributes such as ‘superficial’, ‘ignorant’, and ‘indifferent’; denoting a blasé sightseer. No one, I am sure, who has taken the trouble to obtain a permit (diamonitirion) to enter the Holy Mountain is a tourist in that sense. The inconvenience in applying for a visa and in making the effort to travel to the Holy Mountain is already an ordeal rather than simply joining a comfortable holiday tour. A non-​Orthodox Finnish friend of mine visited the Holy Mountain in October 2019. It was his fourth time on Athos. According to his experiences some men visit the monasteries mostly out of curiosity. Westerners have travelled widely and seen most of the European cities and other continents. Nonetheless, many of them do not consider themselves tourists. On the contrary, they call themselves travellers, Globetrotter in the German sense. According to them, it is more civilized to visit Athos than holiday resorts. Having been to the monasteries on the Holy Mountain, they have something extraordinarily exotic to tell their family and friends. They argue that visiting the Holy Mountain of Athos should be part of everyone’s general education. My friend was not entirely satisfied with his fourth visit to the Holy Mountain, because the ringing and use of cell phones intervened in the Athonite soundscape. The worries of the modern world intruded and broke the experiences of silence and timelessness. The bus from Daphne to Karyes used to be an old bus climbing slowly the steep road up to the administrative centre. You wondered: ‘Was it going to make it?’ Today, the buses are modern like those in the cities. Roads have been built and a number of cars –​taxis –​commute between some of the monasteries.

He travelled together with three other Finnish friends. The group was not homogeneous. The men did not regularly see each other in Helsinki. Nonetheless, they shared the same values of life and were equally interested in history and different cultures. On Athos they experienced an intellectual and spiritual fellowship with discussions giving much food for thought during their convivial gatherings in the evening. Their visit to the

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Athonite monasteries gave them a kind of bonding and spiritual nourishment, which afterwards continued to occupy their thoughts for months.

Conclusion: Words and Viewpoints Matter During my perpetual visits to the Holy Mountain, I have realized that a visitor may consider himself a pilgrim, a tourist, a Globetrotter, an adventurer, or a proskynetis. More often than not, visitors experience a spiritual transformation during the journey, and may even after some visits end up as Orthodox proskynetes. It is as if God has planted a seed in the heart of every visitor, which grows and urges them to revisit Mount Athos, as if they have been ‘kissed by God’. This is how Athos becomes a holy mountain also for non-​Orthodox foreigners and the reason why most of the modern-​day travellers have visited Athos several times, and why they plan to return in the near future. They have sensed the presence of God, the Athonite hospitality and spirituality, and consequently fallen in love with the Holy Mountain.14 In answering the question of whether modern-​day travellers are pilgrims or tourists, we need to reflect upon the following words and viewpoints:

• Greek proskynetes come to the Holy Mountain in order to get away from their everyday life and their worldly worries. They want to relax in the Garden of Panagia. Proskynema, in the Athonite context, is a form of therapy I propose to call agiotherapeia, in other words resting in the care of the holy energies. The Greek word for sunbathing is iliotherapeia. It is a beautiful word for someone from the north who likes to relax in the sun after the long dark and gloomy winter. Just as the rays of the sun touch the pale body and give it a nice tan, a remedy that refreshes the spirit, so do the energies of the Holy Spirit –​to paraphrase St Gregory Palamas –​touch the worried soul of a proskynetis. He writes: ‘But the divine and uncreated grace and energy of God is indivisibly divided, like the sun’s rays that warm, illumine, quicken

14

René Gothóni, Tales and Truth, 198.

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and bring increase as they cast their radiance upon what they enlighten, and shine on the eyes of whoever beholds them.’15

When a proskynetis is completely absorbed by the words and the presence of the holy, agiotherapeia is at work and he may sense a foretaste of what is to come. To what extent this revitalization is lasting, is unpredictable. The statistics inform us that a great number of proskynetes return a second time and even annually to the Holy Mountain, like swallows, as our Royal Patron so aptly described his experiences. This indicates that proskynema is a process of long duration. According to the Athonites, ‘you can never really rest before you are in the grave’.

• The Athonites distinguish between Greek Orthodox proskynetes, foreign Orthodox visitors, and non-​Orthodox visitors. During the Divine Liturgy the non-​Orthodox remain in the narthex as the Orthodox enter the nave for the Eucharist, the Holy Communion. This Athonite practice has its roots in the early Church, and in the structure and content of the Divine Liturgy, which is divided into the Liturgy of the Catechumens and the Liturgy of the Faithful.

Neither non-​Orthodox pilgrims nor tourists may take part in the Holy Communion. They are not proskynetes in the Greek sense of the word. Non-​Orthodox and tourists can rightly be conceived of as catechumens, who may enter the church half-​way and hence get inspiring glimpses of the Athonite spirituality. The first step is, of course, the fact that all visitors may enter the narthex and by standing in the pew (stasidi) experience the divine services from an audible and visible distance, and God willing, sense the presence of divine energies.

• Perpetuity is what many pilgrims, tourists, and proskynetes have in common. The word ‘pilgrimage’ is not, strictly speaking, a univocal concept, because the preconceptions and connotations related to the

15

St Gregory Palamas, ‘Topics of Natural and Theological Science and on the Moral and Ascetic Life: One Hundred and Fifty Texts’, The Philokalia, vol. 4, trans. and ed. G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware (London: Faber and Faber 1995), 377.

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word differ from those of the word proskynema. However, we may conclude that both pilgrimage and proskynema are perpetual rites. Perpetuity activates nous and the capacity to sense the divine energies of God and to discern good and evil. Perpetual rites may lead to transition rites; in other words, a visitor may, after some visits to the Holy Mountain, become Orthodox and, later on, even an Athonite monk. Even a tourist may become a monk. After all, this is the way many Athonites have become monks.

Finally, it is not for us to put labels on visitors to the Holy Mountain. A spiritual monk (pneumatikos) once said to me, ‘Who is to tell in what way the will of God acts? As far as I can see it, we cannot regard only Greek proskynetes to be pilgrims and all other visitors to be tourists. What really matters is not the outward labels we give to people, but the inward changes that are the result of the proskynema, which always, in one way or another, is the will of God.’

Chris Thomas

5 The Path-​Clearing Pilgrimage

I was in a hot room without air conditioning, in fact without any electricity. It was late –​past 9 p.m., which on the Holy Mountain is late. I was trying desperately to fall asleep. There were four other men in the room with me, three of whom snored in a way that sounded deliberate and co-​ ordinated. This was my tenth day on the Holy Mountain, my first ever visit, and I was replaying the details of the past twenty-​four hours, trying to understand my particularly melancholic mood. Each day for over a week I had been awake before 5 a.m. Today, a monk had woken us at 4.15 a.m. Church was uncomfortable. I am Orthodox by birth and tradition, but coming up to my fiftieth year I still had no idea which icons I should be venerating and in what order. I did my best to stay close to my room-​mate and fellow pilgrim so that I could watch what he did. I seemed to do it OK: nobody gave me a disapproving look. I found a pew at the back, away from all the things I found intimidating, but a monk pierced my sense of relief by kindly but firmly telling me, ‘I should move to the intimidating part of the church’ (my interpretation), and in any event ‘this is my usual pew’ (his words). I found another pew in the inner narthex and here I felt watched by the priest, by the monks, by the other pilgrims. They seemed to be saying, ‘you are not a real Orthodox’. I was definitely thinking, ‘I am not a real Orthodox.’ Around 7 a.m. the service came to an end. The congregation filed out into the adjoining trapeza for the first meal of the day –​breakfast for us, lunch for the holy fathers. It was a fasting day, so food could best be described as frugal and simple. This was also reflected in the parcel we were given for lunch: some bread and some olives and an apple each. By 7.30 we were on our way, today tackling a particularly steep path which had not been cleared for several years and which was consequently in a poor state.

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The day was hot, long, and physically challenging –​much more challenging than the previous days. Back at the monastery, it was time once again to grapple with the hose we generously called the ‘shower’. The water was so cold that we generously called it ‘refreshing’. After Vespers and trapeza, one of the fathers invited us to meet with him. In almost all respects, it was a privilege to listen to his gentle narration of stories from the Bible, but even this pleasure brought a challenge for me personally. I was the designated translator and the father spoke incredibly softly, very fast, and mostly without eye contact, all of which challenged my modest grasp of the Greek language. So back to the room, where my mind was now racing and, as I said earlier, despite the tiredness, sleep was nowhere near, and where my thought process had now taken a decisive and startling turn. Suddenly all the minor detail that was cluttering my mind was put to one side and all of my brain power was assigned to the business of examining the option of leaving the Mountain immediately, five days ahead of schedule: What would be the consequences of leaving early? How would I get back to England? Would anybody miss me? Would there be regrets? Would I be ruining it for the others in my group? Would maybe a helicopter be able to land at the monastery? I really did not like this place. This was a terrible predicament and a very low moment.

So what exactly changed between 28 May 2013 and 5 November 2022? The intuitive answer is that I do not know, but I realize that would make for a short and not very interesting talk. For many years the answer did not immediately come to me, and it was just easier not to share my feelings from that first trip and simply pretend that I loved the Holy Mountain from the beginning. But, as I have now shared with you, I did not immediately love the Mountain –​far from it.

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I have chosen to share the detail of my journey with you today because we are here to talk about pilgrimage. I am here specifically to talk about ‘path-​clearing’ as pilgrimage and I could hardly address this audience with a lie or even an omission at the heart of my story. So over the past few weeks I have forced myself to dig deeper and work harder to understand what happened: this is a summary. It is obvious to me now that the Mountain had left me feeling completely disorientated: my supposedly high status had melted away, my phone had no coverage, my fancy American Express card was pointless, church was forbidding, the physical work was punishing, my fellow warriors were smart and kind but they snored, I did not like the ‘showers’, I definitely did not like the toilets, I was unsure about the food, the hours were tough, and I could not grab a drink from the fridge when I wanted one. And then, eventually, it dawned on me: access to fridges, hot water, proper showers, soft beds, and fancy credit cards is, as we speak, available only to a tiny proportion of the people on this planet; and even then, these ‘comforts’ have been available only for a few dozen years. So why had I lived for so long thinking that these were my right? This very simple repackaging of the truth changed my life. I apologize to those more enlightened than me (everybody in this room) that it took me this long to understand something so simple and so essential. Within a week of returning from my first trip to Athos –​a trip I obviously did not ‘enjoy’ –​I resolved that I would return, not only to the Mountain, but specifically to the monastery with the poor showers and the non-​existent air conditioning. And this I did, not just in 2014, but also on another three occasions subsequently. In total I have been on more than a dozen pilgrimages to the Holy Mountain, including twice each year during the Covid period, 2020, 2021, and 2022. During those years, I was asked to lead several teams, and a few years ago I was invited to join the FoMA committee as the representative of the path clearers, a job I enjoyed immensely and which I have since passed on to my good friend Peter Desmond. My (now) two pilgrimages to Athos are the highlights of my year: as soon as I return from one, I have already started to plan the next one. Clearing the footpaths of Mount Athos really is the ultimate pilgrimage: we do not just visit, we do not just pass through; we temporarily become

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residents in the Garden of the Mother of God, and we also receive a blessing to tend that garden. And tending that garden provides us with a truly unique knowledge and understanding of the landscape that is matched only by the holy fathers who live there. Our approach to pilgrimage could therefore be described as being ‘from the ground up’, literally. Our presence in the monasteries of the Holy Mountain comprises a set of separate but connected pilgrimages: each pilgrimage has a set of stand-​alone objectives, but there is a clear set of benefits (and indeed a set of matching responsibilities) that come with a programme that is now more than twenty years old. The benefits are perhaps obvious:

• familiarity: after all these years, we know our way around the Mountain, we know our hosts, and they know us; • established respect: in our case, this familiarity has created a mutual respect which is both valuable and moving; • continuity:  we benefit from the work of our predecessors and we build the foundations for our successors, a virtuous circle; • length of stay: underpinning all the above is the fact that we typically stay at a monastery for a week, sometimes longer –​a rare privilege, as pilgrims customarily stay at monastery for one or two nights only.

The responsibilities are less obvious but just as important:





• our standards of behaviour are higher: as I have already said, we are part of something that extends over decades, so everything we do –​ good or bad –​has consequences, not just for ourselves, but for our group, for FoMA, and of course for those who will follow us; • we are there to pray of course, but we are also there to work:  this means that if our footpath-​clearing is ahead of schedule, we are happy to undertake other work, be it helping the kitchen staff or working in the monastery gardens or harvesting olives or grapes; • we never forget that we are pilgrims:  we are privileged to be there, we demonstrate patience in everything we do and we never ever complain.

So, taken collectively, the footpath-​clearing pilgrimages to Mount Athos are incredibly rewarding in a number of respects:

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• self-​selecting fellow pilgrims: everybody on our footpath pilgrimages has volunteered their time and makes a financial contribution to be there, which almost always makes them generous of spirit and one of life’s ‘givers’; • very distinguished fellow pilgrims:  possibly because they are givers, it is almost impossible to return from Athos without learning something from your fellow pilgrims, be it intellectual, religious, historical, or simply practical; • unique conversations are had:  emotional, important, confidential conversations which simply would not be possible anywhere else are a striking feature of footpath-​clearing pilgrimages; • consequently lifelong friendships are formed:  both with fellow pilgrims and fathers; • trust is created:  both in a practical short-​term sense but also in respect of words and deeds that require months and years to develop and come to fruition; • serendipity:  this comes with going to the Mountain with an open mind and the willingness to invest time in waiting for things to come to you –​very often, they surely, dramatically, and memorably do.

So I conclude with my own definition of a pilgrimage:

• it must be challenging/​ different:  this is really the essence of a pilgrimage; • it must give you room to breathe: however hectic a footpath-​clearing pilgrimage is, each day seems to offer long and interrupted tracts of time for thought and reflection; • it should bring new knowledge or perspective: this combination of challenge, difficulty, and reflection inevitably brings a new world view; • it must be shared: clearing footpaths on Mount Athos is a collective activity which I believe brings unique and important benefits; • it must have a story: a story that can be shared with your loved ones, with the rest of the world; a story that explains the pilgrimage and draws other people to it; and a story in which it is OK to be small and insignificant.

Archimandrite Methodios

6 Monastic Hospitality: An Athonite Monk’s Experience

Hospitality is a virtue which, like all other Christian virtues, has its origin in Holy Scripture. Hospitality is founded on love towards one’s neighbour, the second of the two greatest commandments of our Lord Jesus Christ which states: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’1 In the Serbian language, for the term ‘hospitality’ there are two words –​ gostoprimstvo and gostoljublje. As far as we know, such a distinction does not exist in English, French, or Greek. However, there is a noticeable difference in some other languages, for example, in German –​die Gastgeberschaft and die Gastfreundschaft, in Italian –​ospitalita and ospitevolezza, and in Russian –​ гостеприимство and радушие. In our opinion, there is an important difference between hospitality as an act of receiving someone and hospitality as love shown towards the one being received or the love of being hospitable. Hospitality, as an act of receiving someone, can be considered an evangelical commandment, by fulfilling which we perform a spiritual exercise. Depending on the level of accompanying zeal, and following a period of time, through the action of God’s grace, we obtain the virtue of love, which has as one of its manifestations this very thing –​hospitality. It is our sincere conviction that the difference in meaning between the words gostoprimstvo and gostoljublje marks the decisive step which divides duty from virtue. Considering this issue through the witness of Christian asceticism and virtuous living, we can conclude that offering hospitality coincides with God’s commandment of love of one’s neighbour. Through struggling and perfecting ourselves in this virtue, we become hospitable. Our efforts in

1

Matt. 22:39.

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fulfilling the commandment of hospitality lead us to the acquisition of the higher virtue which is love. Gaining the various fruits of virtues through exploits and in accordance with our God-​given gifts applies not only to all Christians, but also to all monastics. And for better understanding, we will quote an example from the lives of the Holy Fathers. One monk from afar came to visit the virtuous elder Arsenios the Great, desiring to gain spiritual benefit. However, the elder, from the moment of the first encounter, was silent and gazed at the ground, praying. After this, our travelling monk went on to visit a second and highly esteemed ascetic, Moses the Black, who warmly greeted him and lovingly offered hospitality. When asked by another monk, which of the two great ascetics appeared to be more perfect, the monk traveller answered, ‘He who showed me proper hospitality’. Having heard of this, one of the fathers in the skete desired through prayer to understand which of the two great ascetics was more perfect and more worthy of grace from God. In answer to his prayer, he saw in a vision two boats floating in the river. The one in which Venerable Arsenios sat was being steered and led by the Spirit of God. The second boat in which Venerable Moses sat was being accompanied by a group of holy angels. From this vision, it was revealed that both were holy men and, as in a boat, both were securely floating towards their goal –​deification and eternal life in the Heavenly Kingdom –​ however, with differing approaches, in accordance with the gifts given by the Creator. Venerable Arsenios had the gift of hesychia and prayer and, in this way, he served his neighbour, praying for the whole world, whereas Venerable Moses served his neighbour through his love of being hospitable. Therefore, as we are commanded by the Apostle Peter, ‘every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another.’2 In the remainder of our talk, we will use both words, hospitality and the love of being hospitable, even though both suggest the same virtue, in order to make clearer the difference in stages of progress within this virtue.

2

1 Pet. 4:9–​10.

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Hospitality in Monastic Rules and Tradition Where monastic statutes are concerned, one should be aware that they are based on the Gospel and that they help monks to apply teachings of the Gospel practically in their lives. Bearing this in mind, it is understandable why there is a need for hospitality to be further defined in monastic communities through statutes and rules, even though it originates from Christian teaching. This is necessary in order that the monks who do this exercise may perform it in a manner which will help them in striving towards perfection, on the one hand, and on the other hand, as a precaution: namely, to prevent them from overstepping the measure of treatment of or excessive closeness to the visitors, which may harm their souls. Rules on offering hospitality have always been a part of monastic statutes. They commonly regulate the manner of welcoming visitors, the duration of their stay, and what they should pay attention to while staying at a monastery regarding their behaviour and communication with monks. In the sixth-​century Rule of St Benedict, chapter 53, among other points, it is stated that: All guests who arrive should be received as if they were Christ … and let due honour be shown to all; the Superior shall break his fast for the sake of a guest, if it is necessary. When receiving the poor and pilgrims, the greatest care and kindness should be shown, because it is especially in welcoming them that Christ is received. Responsibility for the guesthouse also shall be assigned to a holy monk.3

In addition to the fact that monastic typika referred to hospitality from the earliest centuries, it was also common for great elders, who initially gathered monastic communities and established monasteries, to place emphasis on hospitality. Thus, at the end of their lives, when leaving a legacy to their spiritual children on how to continue their own lives, these elders pointed to philoxenia as one of the most important virtues. For instance, 3

K. O’Gorman, ‘The Legacy of Monastic Hospitality’, in The Hospitality Review –​ ‘The Rule of St Benedict’, , 2006.

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Venerable Euthymios left a commandment to his disciples before his death that the monastery door should never be closed to those who arrived, but must remain always open for guests, whom monks should accept under their roof and share with them everything they have, so that God’s blessing could always rest with them.4 Despite being aligned with the conditions of today’s life by necessity, typika of contemporary monasteries take their cue from ancient monastic statutes in the same monastic spirit. In this respect, the typikon of the Greek female monastery of the Annunciation in Ormylia states the following: Hosting visitors is practised with simplicity and love. Hospitality of priests and monks is performed carefully and piously –​especially with regard to male guests, separately, carefully, and in chastity. Hosting women, though, should be performed with piety, love, and simplicity. Acquaintances of the sisterhood are accommodated in guest rooms and they participate in divine services, and the Mother Superior is informed about them.5

St Anthony’s monastery in Arizona, USA, whose founder is Elder Ephraim, a former abbot of Philotheou monastery on Mount Athos, has the following notes in its typikon: It is very important for the visitors to understand that a monastery is not a place for vacation or entertainment, but a place of pilgrimage, prayer, and focus on spiritual life. It is with great joy that we offer hospitality to devout pilgrims who wish to participate in the spiritual and liturgical life of the monastery.6

There follow general notes on what is expected from the guests: apart of participating in divine services, they are supposed to behave appropriately and help in all tasks performed by the monks. With the development of cenobitic life, the reception of guests became a standard part of monastic life. Any monk or nun who would dare to say something against it was simply told to leave the monastery. 4 5 6

See Arhimandrit Justin Popović, Žitija Svetih za januar (Beograd: Manastir Svete Ćelije kod Valjeva, 1972), 644. Arhimandrit Emilijan [Aimilianos], Pečat istiniti (Manastir Žiča, 2004), 159. ‘O gostoljublju’ u Naš monaški život (Manastir Svetog Antonija Velikog, Arizona, n.d.), 212.

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St Basil ranks hospitality as a monastic priority, although he does note that guests who demanded better accommodations, richer food, or any special treatment should be dismissed as quickly as the monk who refuses to share his simple life with guests.7 The virtue of hospitality as part of the love of Christ was especially important to St Brigit, abbess of Kildare in Ireland. In pre-​Christian Ireland every man was required by secular law to provide hospitality to anyone who asked for it. St Brigit took this legal and social obligation for her people and, by infusing it with the love of Christ, transformed it into a holy rule and a godly art. She established numerous monasteries in Ireland, the most famous of which was the fifth-​century community at Kildare. These were centres of spiritual and cultural life, of education, as well as important stopping places for travellers. It was not only food, drink, and lodging which St Brigit provided for all who needed them, but the blessing of God upon all who came to her. And, conversely, it was Christ that she saw in everyone and in His name she gave hospitality to everybody.8 Monastic philoxenia is maintained and cherished in modern times, maybe more than ever before, since everyday life in the world has become extremely stressful, busy, and spiritually impoverished, so that people often look for sanctuary in a monastery as a form of spiritual oasis. The famous contemporary Elder Joseph, of blessed memory, former spiritual guide of Vatopedi monastery on Mount Athos for many years, appreciated philoxenia to a great extent and insisted on it. He considered it one of the most delicate tasks of obedience in a coenobium, because through it the visitors directly obtain spiritual benefit. What was especially characteristic of him was that, regardless of great poverty in which the fathers had often lived during his monastic days, he generously received everybody who wished to obtain spiritual benefit during their stay in a

7 8

See Monk Job, ‘Monastic Hospitality  –​Yesterday and Today’, Word Magazine (1980),  11–​12. See Mary Dugan Doss, A Gift of Hospitality: St Brigid, Abbess of Kildare, ; 14.02.2016.

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monastery, even if his brethren had no place to sleep since their beds were given to the guests.9 Here, in England, you have the best example of caring for guests –​ the monastery of St John the Baptist, Essex. Following the example of the monasteries on Mount Athos, on Sundays and holidays, everybody who is present at the Divine Liturgy is invited to stay for a meal afterwards. The adjusted typikon of the monastery gives the people an opportunity to spend a whole day in the monastery by confessing, attending Vespers, listening to talks in English and Greek, thus obtaining lessons for spiritual life and inspiration for the whole of the following week. The founder of the monastery, St Sophrony, knew the spiritual hunger of the soul of the Westerners and the atmosphere of their environment all too well, but he was also aware of the responsibility which a monastic oasis had in non-​ Orthodox surroundings. It is for this reason that he insisted on having guests’ needs met through philoxenia: through their actions, monks were supposed to show love and serve their neighbours with humility. He believed these were the preconditions for the burdened contemporary people to open their hearts to contact with God. During the recent Covid pandemic, when the gate of the monastery had to be closed to visitors, support was still provided to neighbours in a contemporary manner: through video links, guests were hosted at the table of love and fed with Christ’s word. This is how this monastery once again confirmed the truth that there will always be ways to treat one’s neighbours with love. At the very beginning, it should be stressed that philoxenia is one of the ways to effectively practise the evangelical commandment regarding love for our neighbours. Just as love is the greatest of all virtues according to St Paul the Apostle,10 in monastic teachings and tradition philoxenia is often ranked more important than other feats. The place and significance of philoxenia in monastic life is most clearly depicted through the fact that, despite the firmly established monastic rules 9 10

See Arhimandrit Jefrem Vatopedski [Abbot Ephrem of Vatopedi], Starac Josif Vatopedski (Vranje:  Manastir Svetog Prvomučenika i Arhiđakona Stefana, 2021), 216, 287. Cf. 1 Cor. 13:13.

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defining the manner and the measure of fasting, prayer, endeavour, and life in general, numerous examples are found in the writings of the holy fathers where philoxenia is set above the personal or monastic rule of fasting and prayer. One example is the following: ‘A brother came to a certain solitary, and when he was going away from him he said, “Forgive me Father, for I have made you break your rule.” But he replied, “My rule is to receive you with hospitality and send you on your way in peace.”’11 St Isaac the Syrian wrote: ‘When you give, be generous and with a smile on your face, and provide for your neighbours even more than they have asked for … For thus they may attract the unworthy to the good, since a soul through the agency of the body is quickly taught to fear God.’12 The same could be said about philoxenia, whose transfiguring effect on the one to whom it was expressed never fails, since it was sown as a spiritual seed into their soul. It is from this seed that, with God’s help, the wish to correct ourselves grows as well as becoming closer to God. In order to understand how all this happens, we shall present some thoughts of His Eminence Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia, of blessed memory, former President of the Friends of Mount Athos, to whose memory this conference is dedicated. In his study entitled ‘The Monastic Life as a Sacrament of Love’, in the section referring to spiritual fatherhood, hospitality, and prayer, he notes that, according to the tradition of St Pachomios, monks are to serve society in a direct manner. In the opinion of the Metropolitan, a monk does the greatest possible favour to the world through his spiritual struggle in which the most important weapon is prayer. He attaches equal importance to spiritual fatherhood, which is also an important means of enabling monastics to serve society, since the elders sanctified in grace, as spiritual guides, may have an effect on the transformation of one’s life. What is also very interesting is the Metropolitan’s pointing to the possibility that philoxenia, as a Christian virtue, may in a sense replace the institution of spiritual father: 1 1 Veliki starečnik, pouke pustinjskih otaca, ‘Obraz svetački’ (Beograd, 2013), 257. 12 ‘Podvižničke pouke prepodobnog Isaak Sirina’ u Dobrotoljublje II (Manastir Hilandar, 2009), 519.

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Archimandrite Methodios Even those communities that have within their walls no charismatic starets can none the less heal and guide others by welcoming them for a time into the life of the monastic family. Married men and women can return to their homes and work with fresh hope, a new inward unity, because they have shared for a few days, or even hours, in the ordered sequence of prayer and manual labour that comprises the daily monastic programme. Time recovers its meaning when punctuated by the ringing of bells and the beating of the simantron. The community itself acts as starets. So each monastery acts as a leaven to society at large, forming an oasis of apostolic fellowship in a world that grows increasingly lonely and unfriendly.13

It is important to keep this in mind, since it is not just monks and nuns who provide philoxenia that have spiritual gain from it, but it also benefits pilgrims, as confirmed by the centuries-​old experience of our Church. While most Orthodox pilgrims visit monasteries with an already established idea of what spiritual benefit to expect, there are many others that come out of curiosity or some other reason; nevertheless, even as such, they are not deprived of spiritual benefit. As we have already stated, hospitality is an integral part of monastic tasks of obedience and spiritual exploits. Yet, in order for these tasks to deliver spiritual benefits, to help them thrive spiritually, they must be performed in a proper way. At the same time, it means that not only can they fail to bring about spiritual benefits, but that they can even be harmful for us as well, unless they are performed properly. Despite having proved that philoxenia is among the most valuable virtues of monastic life, we often encounter certain rules that limit monastic hospitality in that they invite restraint and caution –​the latter being essential for preserving ‘the salt’14 of monastic life, not conflicting in any sense with the evangelical teaching of caring about our fellows. A monastic life implies the most attentive vigilance over oneself, given that a seemingly inconspicuous feature of the outer world –​seen from the perspective of someone not involved in monastic life –​may present the greatest of temptations and, ultimately, the Fall itself. Having said that, we believe that the 13 14

Kallistos Ware, ‘The Monastic Life as a Sacrament of Love’ (Address at the Fourth Orthodox Congress of Western Europe, Avignon, 10 November 1980), Ekklesia kai Theologia 2 (1981), 694. Cf. Matt. 5:13.

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need to preserve unique monastic spirit with every effort possible and stay always watchful in order to retain its specific ethos, shaped over centuries, is becoming clearer and clearer. The utmost sternness in this respect is found in one of the oldest monastic statutes, that of St Pachomios the Great, which even demanded that visitors altogether be banned from being received on the premises of a monastery, unless they are priests or monks. There were special courts intended for them, to offer them due hospitality. The saint would not deviate from these rules, even when confronted with reproaches, being firmly convinced that there was nothing more important than keeping the souls of brethren away from all sorts of temptations. Similar sensitivity, as expressed by ancient spiritual teachers in Orthodox monastic tradition, was shown by our contemporary, St Paisios the Athonite. In his Epistles, meant for those preparing for monastic life, he deals in detail with the issues and challenges to be considered upon joining a monastic community. In this respect, he provides some particular directions about what a novice should do with a view to starting successfully a monastic life. When receiving guests is concerned, he warns them of the following: ‘One of the most serious problems that one should, as a novice, take care of is the issue of guests. Not only should you avoid them at all costs, but you should ask an elder to provide a cell for you as distant from the guesthouse as possible, in order for you to forget all about the world and worldly affairs.’15 St Paisios also notes that beginners are like a camera: they imprint in their memory every image they see, so he advises them to stay as far as possible from guests until they have forgotten everything that is worldly and until the world inside them ‘changes through a spiritual transfiguration of divine love’, which will give them strength to free themselves from bad impressions and thoughts. In the end, the purpose of these directions is quite clear: distancing from visitors as residents of the world, who share its characteristics both consciously and unconsciously, is a necessary prerequisite for cleansing the

15 Starac Pajsije Svetogorac [St Paisios], Poslanice (Vranje:  Manastir Svetog Prvomučenika i Arhiđakona Stefana, 2013), 61–​2.

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mind of a monk, for which a monk strives with his asceticism so that he may reach the state of pure prayer and communion with God.

Hospitality on Mount Athos In the Athonite tradition great importance is attached to the practice of hospitality and philoxenia as a virtue, just as in monastic tradition in general. How much philoxenia is appreciated in the conscience of the Athonite monks is proved by the fact that, during the divine service on the feast of the Holy Fathers of Mount Athos, celebrated every year on the second Sunday after Pentecost, among all other monastic efforts and virtues of these venerable men –​such as fasting, prayer, vigil, confession, martyrdom, pastoral and episcopal service  –​the virtue of philoxenia stands out as a special one. Even though Mount Athos is isolated from the rest of the world, numerous pilgrims visit its monasteries and sketes during the whole year. It is full of visitors who have the opportunity to be spiritually refreshed by monks.16 Part of Athonite philoxenia is that the monasteries receive all men regardless of faith or nationality. The Athonite monks open the door to all, receive visitors warmly, and talk to them with kindness. This feature is present not only in the monastic coenobium, but it is practised by hermits and cell monks. In spite of great poverty in which they often live, they are hospitable to everyone, pleasant, and approachable, seeing every man as a unique person. They interrupt their rest, and even their prayers, to look after their fellow man.17 In their poverty, fathers share with visitors all they have, and –​what is more important –​they offer spiritual food such as comfort and advice.

16 See Atanasije Angelopulos, Monaška zajednica Svete Gore (Manastir Hilandar, 1997), 147. 17 See Arhimandrit Joanikije Koconis, Svetogorski starečnik: izreke svetogorskih staraca (Beograd: Zadužbina Svetog manastira Hilandara, 2004), 350.

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The monastic community of Mount Athos, spiritual by its nature and existence, has formed and organized itself for more than ten centuries as a special community with self-​governing status. The uniqueness of its administration, as well as the rules of internal and external organization of monastic life, are prescribed by the typikа of Mount Athos. The provisions of the typikа aim to enable the monks to fulfil their mission as well as possible: life in Christ equally in the spiritual, administrative, and working spheres. Hence, every expression of monastic life, both spiritual and material, should be directed towards this goal.18 The same could be said about the hospitality to which the monks of Mount Athos are especially inclined and dedicated. For example, in the ‘Short Typikon of the St John Chrysostomos Monastery on the Holy Mountain’, written at the beginning of the twentieth century for the needs of the brotherhood of the Hilandar Kellion of St John Chrysostomos, in the chapter ‘Pilgrims of our Brotherhood’, among other things, we read this: It is our custom to welcome our brothers and worshippers of the Holy Mountain who arrive by sea to the port of Daphni. … everybody is to be accommodated in our family; their rooms are to be kept clean and exemplary; should they wish for a cup of tea or something to eat in their guest room, the superior is to be immediately informed, and then act accordingly. On their departure, the pilgrims are to be given a present as a form of blessing by the superior himself or by the monastery steward. … When the pilgrims leave Mount Athos, their names are to be mentioned during divine services. Guest apartments are to be cleaned, scrubbed, bed sheets washed, as well as chairs, tables, walls, floors, and thus made ready for the new guests.19

After the description of such attention towards pilgrims, the typikon further explains the manner of providing charity, where the primary idea is that members of a brotherhood, supported by the contributions of generous benefactors, are to provide charity to those in need: ‘Everybody is to be given bread and some money, so we could receive the Lord’s gifts as well.’20 1 8 Cf. A. Angelopulos, Monaška zajednica Svete Gore, 55–​6, 63, 158. 19 Otac Justin Popović, Monaški život po Svetim ocima (Beograd:  Manastir Svete Ćelije kod Valjeva, 1981), 189. 20 Ibid.  190.

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Metropolitan Kallistos Ware of blessed memory –​to return to his written legacy –​speaks about Athonite philoxenia from the perspective of monastic love for neighbours: I can recall Fr Gabriel, abbot of the monastery of Dionysiou on Mount Athos, saying to me how wrong it was for the monks to complain about the large number of visitors: guests, he said, are not a burden but a privilege. He added that his own monastery divided whatever income it had into three parts: one third for the upkeep of the ancient buildings, one third for the food and clothing of the monks, and one third for the needs of the visitors. So the circle of monastic love is never closed, for there is always room within it for the stranger and outcast. ‘In as much as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me’ (Matt. 25: 40).21

When discussing philoxenia within the ancient tradition of Mount Athos, it has to be stressed that, above all, it is based on a large number of miracles that had occurred throughout history, which were understood by the monks of Mount Athos as unequivocal declarations of God’s will regarding the significance of philoxenia; and we know that accordance with God’s will is the very essence of monasticism.22 At the end of the nineteenth century the abbot of a Russian monastery on Mount Athos, Elder Jerome, said the following in his legacy on the miracle of God’s mercy which enabled his brotherhood to help the poor during a period of great scarcity: You are aware how long has the Lord tempted our monks with great scarcity as well as serious debts, since it was not until the Crimean War that they were able to provide charity to the poor. However, when our monks decided to share, with absolute renunciation, the last crumbs of their bread with the poor, … abundant charity from all over Russia started coming to St Panteleimon Monastery. With that kind of support in those times of destitution, monks had no need to save up and they provided support to many poor.

2 1 Kallistos Ware, ‘The Monastic Life as a Sacrament of Love’, 693. 22 ‘As the hart parched with thirst pants for running water (cf. Ps. 41:2), the monk longs for a knowledge or grasp of the good and divine will.’ St John Climacus, ‘Step 26. On Discernment’ in The Ladder of Divine Ascent, trans. Colm Luibheid and Norman Russell (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1982), 244.

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Holy Mother of God, the Abbess of the whole of Mount Athos, has clearly shown through several miraculous apparitions that it is Her wish for the monks of Mount Athos to be hospitable. We should mention a miraculous apparition of the Holy Mother of God from the beginning of the twentieth century in the Russian monastery of St Panteleimon on Mount Athos. This monastery has long cherished the tradition of providing charity to poor monks, homeless people, strangers, and all the residents of Mount Athos in need, even when the monastery itself suffered great hardship. A monk, whose obedience was to be a photographer,23 took photos of such an event. In the black-​and-​white photograph which was developed afterwards, in addition to the poor waiting in line with a few monks, a figure of a poorly dressed woman appeared. She was humbly holding a piece of bread which she had just received as charity. Monks realized that it was the Holy Mother of God Herself who, through Her apparition, showed that She observed the charity provided for others as if it was given to Her.24 Nowadays, this photograph is enlarged and set up on the wall of the monastery, while in the place where the Mother of God appeared there is an incorruptible water spring. Our turbulent times bring new spiritual challenges for the souls of everyone. These challenges are experienced even in the monastic communities of the Holy Mountain which, even though detached, are not entirely separated from the world. One of these challenges, connected to our current theme and unparalleled in our history, is the great number of pilgrims, who daily visit the Garden of the Most Holy Theotokos. Entry to the Holy Mountain has been greatly simplified and the entry permit or diamonitirion is obtained without much difficulty. Besides this, the improved roadways and various transportation options have greatly reduced the time spent travelling to the Holy Mountain and thereby also contributed to the current situation. It is important to understand that the present high frequency of visitors has the potential to endanger the monks’ attentiveness and, quite often, the 23

In the monastery of St Panteleimon the greatest collection of photographic negatives on glass is kept. 24 Cf. Matt. 25:40.

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monastic typika. The pastoral and missionary work provided to newly arrived visitors becomes a priority for the spiritual fathers and, consequently, they have less time for the spiritual guidance of their own brotherhoods. In the light of this difficulty, it is important to understand that contemporary man has a genuine need for the Holy Mountain. Many, with deep trust, turn to this monastic republic in order to experience and witness the level of devotion which these monastic communities possess in service to God and service towards the salvation of souls, which has continued for over a millennium. Likewise, many are impressed by the historical and cultural wealth, which maintains an altogether unique place in Christian Byzantine heritage. For visitors, Mount Athos is like a sort of time-​capsule, in which they can, at least for a moment, live some other kind of life, far away from the restlessness and turmoil of the modern world. It is important to find the proper measure in order to offer, in our current times, traditional Athonite hospitality and also to limit the number of pilgrims which is essential to maintaining the genuine monastic life on the Holy Mountain. If this balance is disturbed, in a very short time, the monastic communities on Athos will become incapable of living the authentic monastic life. Paradoxically, the gradual disappearance of Athonite monastic life would prevent the pilgrim from finding what he yearns for: the authentic experience of the Church and life according to the evangelical commandments experienced through monastic struggle, all of which has been undisturbed and protected throughout its thousand-​year history.25 In order for the monastic communities of Athos to face these modern challenges, and in order to provide a proper solution, a great deal of spiritual wisdom and faith is needed.26 25 In the history of the Church, there are examples of monastic settlements disappearing in the bustle of banal tourism, for example, the monastic communities of Meteora. 26 As long as the authentic life on Mount Athos is preserved, we believe that it is possible to provide a solution for all possible challenges, even concerning the pressure of great numbers of people who want to visit it. All rules that could be set, from restrictions of numbers of visitors to properly arranged tourist guide services and offering hospitality in a good manner, would be useless if the main purpose of cenobitic monasticism would be lost.

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Recently, the Holy Mountain, along with the whole world, was faced with the great crisis caused by the Covid-​19 epidemic and, following, involuntarily, the recommendation of respective authorities of the Hellenic Republic, had been forced to completely close her borders for pilgrims. This period of isolation offered the fathers an opportunity to review the reality and to renew their traditional way of life, treasured for centuries. Unexpectedly, the fathers were given the opportunity to turn towards their original calling: communal worship, hesychia, and praying for the salvation of the whole world, particularly in a moment when such prayer was most needed. Currently, Mount Athos is again open for pilgrims, albeit with certain restrictions. Only in firm faith, steadfastness in the divine services, and unshaken spiritual struggle can Mount Athos overcome all temptations, including those of a contemporary nature. Preserving these values, the Holy Mountain will continue to be a place of salvation for all those who have left the world in order to embrace God, as well as a lighthouse of salvation for all Orthodox Christians and all who are spiritually enlightened.

Hospitality in Hilandar Monastery For more than eight centuries now, the Holy Monastery of Hilandar has been a place for God-​seeking souls, mainly from Serbian-​speaking countries, who think of themselves as spiritual children of Venerable Simeon the Myrrh-​streaming and St Sava. Also Hilandar has always nurtured an awareness of the fact that the monastic order, as well as the internal spiritual disposition of the monastic community, can only have, as their prototype, what has been prescribed by Fathers of the Orthodox Church and teachers of monastic life. At the same time, Hilandar, as an integral part of the monastic community of Mount Athos, is governed by the principles of Athonite tradition as well. All this implies that our monastery has always dedicated much attention to hospitality and philoxenia. St Sava, the first Serbian archbishop and founder of the Hilandar brotherhood, composed a typikon that serves as the basis for the rules of

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its daily life, consulting, for the most part, the typikon of the Byzantine monastery of Theotokos Evergetis as well as homilies of St Theodore the Studite.27 In Hilandar’s typikon, chapter 38, entitled ‘Concerning Giving to the Brothers at the Gate’, St Sava left detailed instructions on providing hospitality and giving alms to the needy: What shall be said you should treasure very much, for it greatly multiplies the benefit and salvation for you. And what is that? It is distribution at the gate and the comforting and watching over strangers and the weak, for the sake of whom we have built the hospice, begging the site from some devout Christian. There we will comfort strangers and provide whatever care we can to those that are sick and confined to bed.28

What is more, the philanthropy of St Sava goes beyond care for the living, and his typikon, in the same chapter, provides us with detailed instructions on how to properly organize burial ceremonies for strangers: ‘And the dead need to be buried. A burial place for strangers is built for them.’ This is not surprising, for he believes that it is more important to take care of the souls of strangers than their bodies  –​in his words, ‘so that you should not, by providing them with anything less than that, forget what is better and more necessary to be done’. In addition, he commands that all the necessary prayers should be said for the deceased, as if he had been a member of our community. St Sava concludes with the following words:  ‘For, we shall not bid farewell to anyone without attending to their spiritual needs’29 –​ that is, either for the living or for the one that, according to God’s will, has found his final rest with us.

27 See Arhimandrit Tihon Rakočević, ‘Šta je čitao Sveti Sava’ u Zapovesti Svetog Save monasima Studenice (1206/​7) u odnosu na uzor’, Bogoslovlje: organ Pravoslavnog bogoslovskog fakulteta u Beogradu’ ISSN 0006–​5714 (br. 1, 2015, 294–​310). 28 The saint expects the monks to provide enough for the needy through their abstinence, but even if this is not the case, he concludes that this is also ‘pleasing to God’, when he writes: ‘This should be from your abstinence. And if it is not possible, at least let it be from the surplus, because it pleases God, if it is possible’ (Monaška zajednica Svete Gore, ‘Hilandarski tipik’, 103). 29 Ibid.

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In some of the previous accounts featuring the concept of philoxenia in monastic heritage in general, some of the mentioned examples reveal the somewhat superior position of this virtue in comparison to others. We believe that the attitude of St Sava was the same, and the confirmation in this regard can be found in chapter 29 of his typikon, where he first commands that no member of the community, the abbot included, shall prepare a special meal for himself, but all are to eat at the common table, and only to make an exception in case of hospitality. He, as a great ascetic, has even underlined the importance of this command by calling the Lord Himself and the Holy Mother of God to be his witnesses in this matter, his exact words being, ‘… and I also command you the following, before our Lord and Holy Mother of God our Sovereign Lady …’30 The text then says that this strict command can be bypassed in case of illness,31 which is perfectly reasonable,32 but he maintains that hospitality is yet another circumstance when the aforementioned command can be altered.33 By paying respect to the heritage of its founder and heavenly patron, Hilandar has tried to maintain the virtue of hospitality through eight centuries of its existence. For the purpose of this narrative, we consider that the most appropriate examples would be taken from some more recent elders of the monastery. One of them is Elder Nicanoros, epitropos and spiritual father of Hilandar, who was the Protos of Mount Athos in 1963, when the millennial anniversary of this unique monastic republic was celebrated. He was also famous for his devotion to hospitality: he would welcome visitors from all over the world with love and a brotherly hug, regardless of their religious, ethnic, or political designation. ‘We are all brothers in Christ and we 30 ‘Each shall have the same food and drink. You shall not cook separately, I command you, not to thyself, nor to the Abbot … nor to any other among the brethren dwelling in the flock.’ Ibid. 31 ‘This is how the sick should be treated, for they need better food and drink, given the state of their weak body.’ Ibid. 32 ‘This seems reasonable to me, so the brethren shall obey without stumble.’ Ibid. 33 ‘In case a guest arrives, let the Abbot … or anyone who is the senior in the monastery prepare a meal and serve a guest properly. For the guest, and only for that reason, may the Abbot instruct different meals to be prepared.’ Ibid.

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should act accordingly’, he maintained. When visitors from Serbia arrived at the monastery, Elder Nicanoros would greet them at the gate, together with his fellow brothers, warmly saying: ‘God bless you all, welcome, my children, it was high time!’ He would justify the Hilandar hospitality by claiming, ‘We are not concerned with the duration of respective visits. St Sava provided for us so that there is enough of everything both for the community and for our guests. The place frequented by people, where one can feel embraced by spiritual warmth, is a blessed place.’ In another testimony of Elder Nicanoros’s virtue of philoxenia, he thought that by welcoming visitors with love, one actually welcomes the Lord Himself.34 This is the account of an event as the elder perceived it: Once, there was a visitor to our monastery with whom I had no opportunity of conversing until the end of that day. In the evening, before I began my prayer rule, I heard an internal voice saying to me: ‘Here I am, I have come to your monastery, and you found no time for me.’ The elder took this address as if coming from the Lord Himself, and that is why he perceived it as a reproach, indicating that by failing to find time for this pilgrim, he failed to show the love for Christ Himself.35

We should also mention the missionary role of Hilandar monastery, which is closely related to the concept of philoxenia, with mutual mergings in some respects. One of the most respected Hilandar monks of the last century, Elder Mitrophanes, was particularly devoted to this role, which is reflected in his words: Hilandar has an emphasized missionary role. Our people from Serbia, upon their visits, are not interested only in icons on the walls and the contents of our treasury … they are equally interested in hearing advice on how to continue their lives in relation to the church and the people … Thus Hilandar assumes yet another dimension that requires a lot of strength and preparation.

So, according to Elder Mitrophanes, the monks welcoming visitors have a pronounced missionary role, which spreads its influence on the internal 34 ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me’ (Matt. 25:40). 35 See ‘Starac Nikanor Hilandarac’, Izvori: Borba za veru, urednik V. Dimitrijević, 2017.

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transfiguration of the visitor as well. In his own words: ‘Each and every word of ours should radiate spiritual warmth and a constant wish that the one who leaves the monastery should depart with his thoughts pure and with his views established, that he should take with him some solution: I am going to think in another way, I am going to act in another way.’36 An injustice would be done to Elder Mitrophanes should one of his spiritual pearls, by which he enriched the knowledge of younger monks, remain unmentioned. The story goes that we, younger monks, being novices and inexperienced in monastic life, found the multitude of visitors at the end of the twentieth century difficult to cope with, since we were in the middle of preparations for a jubilee –​eight centuries of the monastery of Hilandar. At that time, Elder Mitrophanes was the first epitropos, so we naturally turned to him with our complaints. His reply was: ‘My children, many of those who come as tourists might return as pilgrims.’ Some might retort: ‘That may be an attractive theory, but we are not sure that it is supported by daily routines of your monastery, since you do not welcome all those who express the wish to be welcomed, and certain limitations have to be introduced.’ Each form of monastic asceticism must be performed with adequate measure, in accordance with the powers of those who strive for that goal. If that is ignored, instead of gaining any benefit, one might suffer spiritual damage. Much like the accounts of fasting, of vigil, or of any other aspect of asceticism, which are, naturally, beneficial for monks, providing that a proper measure is applied, if monks perform exploits beyond their measure, spiritual struggle will surely not be useful for their souls. The same goes for hospitality. Everything that has been said so far unambiguosly shows that philoxenia cannot be expressed in figures, but certain statistical data may reveal the scale of the measure in question, proving how one monastic community can perform this feat. To be specific, we would mention that, prior to the outbreak of the Covid-​19 pandemic, Hilandar used to receive between 15,000 and 17,000 visitors a year. The majority, of course, are pilgrims from areas where Serbs live. However, they do not all come with the same inner disposition. Professor Vladeta Janković, 36

Dimitrije Stefanović, Duhovni razgovori sa hilandarskim monasima. Uspomena na oca Mitrofana (Beograd: ‘Signature’, 2005), 112.

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former Ambassador to the UK and one of FoMA’s patrons, who has been a friend and dear guest of the monastery for several decades, wrote about what they get during their stay at our monastery: A stay in Hilandar calms and strengthens people regardless of age, social position, education, or experience. The complex creations of famous musicians, painters, and writers, just like the touchingly simple, poorly spelled entries in the monastery’s book of impressions, testify to this. In a way, the walls of Hilandar are like a viewpoint from which a completely new perspective opens on the spiritual realm, but also on one’s own life performance. It is a place of re-​examination and reckoning, an island outside the mainstream of everyday reality, where a person creates an intimate balance sheet, gathering himself for a moment and orienting himself for the remaining part of the journey.37

At this point, there may be a voice commenting, with a tinge of disbelief: it is possible that Mr Janković, as a professor of literature, has, with his inspiring words, presented things as being far more sublime than they actually are. If someone were to ask me, ‘Father Abbot, we would like to know about the impressions of a rural countryman from Serbia on his encounter with Hilandar. Could you, please, answer this question?’, my answer would be, ‘Yes, of course!’ On one occasion, at a time when I was the epitropos, a journalist from Serbia visited Hilandar and asked me for a blessing to browse through the books of impressions in the monastery, as he wanted to make a collection of the most inspiring accounts and published it subsequently as a book. Every day he would go through these accounts, the decades-​long yield, in a rather enthusiastic way: he sincerely welcomed those that featured profound emotions, but he was equally disappointed by the observations of famous Serbs, intellectuals, which, in his opinion, were unbecoming of their reputation. Until one day he stormed out of the room, very excited, and asked me to join him, so that he could read to me a piece of writing by a common Serbian farmer. Milisav was the name of the author of this account –​a common name in the Serbian countryside. One should bear in mind the fact that in the mid-​1990s it would have been financially extremely difficult for someone like Milisav to head for Greece and, subsequently, 37

Vladeta Janković, Beočug, ‘Srpska književna zadruga’ (Beograd, 2011), 5–​11.

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Mount Athos: in order to obtain funds for such a journey, he would have been forced to sell some of his products. This is what made the journalist so excited about this particular account: ‘I hear from my fellow villagers, “Milisav, are you crazy? Why would you want to visit Hilandar again? You have been to that place fifteen times at least!” And my answer is: “I sell a calf –​and I’m off to Hilandar for the sixteenth time!”’

Anna Conomos-​W edlock

7 Monastic Hospitality: A Pilgrim’s Experience of Ormylia

The story of my monastic experience of Ormylia began well before I was born. My parents, Dimitri and Danae Conomos, were married in Oxford in 1979 and they decided to spend their honeymoon in Greece, in a monastery  –​not the same one:  my father went to Simonopetra on Mount Athos and my mother to the sister monastery of Ormylia in Chalkidiki, northern Greece. When the time came for dad to pick mum up, she complained, ‘Why didn’t you bring me here before we got married?’ The nuns of Ormylia love retelling this story and adding, ‘good thing he didn’t bring her here before they married or you would never have been born!’ And so I was born in Vancouver, Canada, and soon after, I was whisked to Greece so that I could have my forty-​day blessing at Ormylia. A few months later I was baptized at a dependency of Ormylia and Simonopetra –​ the church of the Ascension in Athens. These monasteries marked all the important occasions in family life because the abbot and founder of Ormylia, Elder Aimilianos, was my parents’ spiritual father. So the story of Ormylia has to begin with the story of Elder Aimilianos. Elder Aimilianos was born on 5 October 1934 in Piraeus, Athens. My husband and I married on this date in honour of his memory. He was born in Athens but his roots, his spiritual roots and influences, were from Asia Minor. His paternal grandparents had been teachers in Cappadocia; his grandfather had studied theology before the forced exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey in 1922. Elder Aimilianos would speak about their example and lifestyle and how they had influenced him as they lived their life by the Church calendar, the feasts of the Church, and with an active prayer life. They had essentially lived like monastics in the world. In fact, after the death of his grandfather, his grandmother became a nun,

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as did his mother later in her life, and was given the name Aimiliani. Their deep faith influenced the elder and he inherited their gift of teaching. While at high school in Athens, he joined the ‘Zoe’ movement which was an organization that sprang up after the war to bring teaching, catechesis, to the young people, especially in the form of camps, publications of spiritual books, and Sunday school. We were fortunate enough to enjoy these camps as children and later on as leaders as well. This was an avenue for the elder’s gift of teaching and storytelling. Because of his love and passion for speaking and working with young people, he initially decided, after his theological studies, to go to Africa and become a missionary. He was advised by his colleague, who is the present Archbishop of Albania, Anastasios, to live in a monastic community for a while in order to gain the necessary experience. So he went to central Greece to meet Metropolitan Dionysios of Trikala, a very dynamic character, also from Asia Minor, who had been busy resurrecting monastic life in various parts of Greece which had fallen into some decline. This was in communities on the island of Lemnos where he had been previously posted, and now Meteora, the complex of monasteries perched like eagles’ nests on top of volcanic rocks in central Greece. The elder stepped into this scene in the 1960s and was tonsured a monk by Metropolitan Dionysios and given the name Aimilianos. In 1961 he was ordained a priest and placed in the monastery of Doussikou, dedicated to St Vissarion. Far away from his spiritual father and from the life he had imagined for himself, this was a dark, stagnant time for the elder. He was surrounded by elderly monks that he could not relate to and buildings that had fallen into decay, but it was also a time that would profoundly influence the direction of his life. He had an experience at this monastery: all the darkness he had felt was transformed into light; he saw light everywhere, penetrating everything around him, and this light-​filled state found its fulfilment in the liturgy. Liturgy became a central part of his encounter with Christ. From then on he was devoted to the services and the liturgy and he started to write a study on monastic life, its focus being one of prayer and the liturgy. He emphasized the importance of cenobitic life, where the community lives a common life under the elder, with Christ at

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the centre, and the focus of the monastic programme being the services and the Divine Liturgy. Little did he realize how important these studies would become when the time would eventually come for him to set up his own monasteries. After the experience at St Vissarion, Metropolitan Dionysios saw that he was ready for the new role he had prepared for him. Elder Aimilianos was made abbot of the largest monastery on Meteora, Mega Meteoron. He especially loved helping the youth of Trikala and would say: ‘Since there is one absolute truth, you want everyone to share in this. You don’t want them to live a mediocre life but to experience heaven!’ He would be sent to schools and as well as attending to their spiritual requirements he would also think of their practical needs and would bring rubbers, pencils, and stationery. For many of them it was their first experience of confession. The pupils soon realized that confession with the elder was not about reciting lists of sins, but an experience, an encounter so profound, that for many of them that first meeting marked the beginning of their own journey to monasticism. The monks of Simonopetra have often told us stories about those teenage days in Meteora … how they would climb out of their bedroom windows in the middle of the night and cycle up to the monastery to attend the midnight vigils and pray the Jesus prayer with the elder. When the service was over, they would freewheel down the hill at full speed before the break of dawn, climb back through the window and get into bed before their parents woke up and discovered they had been missing! These young men, aged between fourteen and sixteen, became his first monks at the monastery of Mega Meteoron. Meanwhile the young women of Trikala were also inspired by this wonderful spiritual father. For some of them it was because their brothers or cousins that had become monks and novices at Mega Meteoron; and the females began to form a community nearby at the monastery of the Saints Theodore. It was around this time –​the early 1970s –​when my father got to know the community. He was visiting Greece from Australia and arrived at Meteora in an orange Volkswagen ‘beetle’ which he had affectionately named Kirikiri. He remembers how the monks would always welcome

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the arrival of Kirikiri and its passengers with great warmth and generous hospitality. In 1973 Elder Aimilianos was invited by a small group of elderly monks on Mount Athos to repopulate the ancient monastery of Simonopetra. Simonopetra is named after its founder, St Simon the Myrrh-​bearer, who saw the star of Bethlehem over the place where he founded his monastery. It is seven storeys high and perched right on the edge of the cliff overlooking the sea. After the passing of Metropolitan Dionysios, Elder Aimilianos and his community relocated to Simonopetra. The old monks greeted them with tears of gratitude. But what about the female community at Saints Theodore? They could not go to Mount Athos. And they did not want to be far away from their spiritual father. Elder Aimilianos had to find a property for his spiritual daughters and he wanted to find a place near enough to the Holy Mountain. And so, in 1974, Ormylia was discovered on the second peninsula of Chalkidiki. Elder Aimilianos purchased a piece of land previously owned by the monastery of Vatopedi. The only buildings were a small church dedicated to the Annunciation (1842) and several buildings in ruins that had been inhabited by shepherds and animals for the last fifty years. The nuns talk about the dung, the snakes, spiders, scorpions, the lack of windows, roofs, and running water … But they didn’t mind. With the help of the monks and friends, they started restoring and building on this new property without any idea of where this initiative was going to take them. The community started with about forty and now has about 120 nuns. The buildings are beautifully designed; the care and attention to detail is incredible. Little did they know that Ormylia was destined to become known around the world and we were privileged to be there in those first, early stages. The monastery of Ormylia was inextricably linked to so much of our lives, from the curtains that hung on our windows, hand-​woven by the nuns, to our first wooden pencil cases for school made by the nuns, to our spiritual life and routine. During the summer we would always be at Ormylia for the feasts of Elder Aimilianos, Abbess Nikodimi, St Mary Magdalene, the Dormition,

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together with all the other children and families that were spiritual children of Elder Aimilianos and have now become our lifelong friends. We knew that we had a constant source of prayer and love to draw on. The monastics were always there, watching us grow and change, while they remained unchanging and full of love. I remember we would even use them as a measuring tape to see how tall we were getting, while they seemed to get shorter! Ormylia defined our formative years. I can safely say that the monasteries gave us a unique and precious schooling. My first (sung) words, aged eleven months, were: Κύριε Εκέκραξα (‘Lord, I have cried’), which I had already heard countless times at the monastic vigils that I would scream my way through as a newborn baby. While the other children at school were singing ‘Baa baa black sheep’, I was singing Byzantine chants in the first tone. While others were bringing their favourite toys to our ‘Show and Tell’, we would bring the prayer rope that we had been taught to knit using nine knots to represent the nine ranks of angels. We loved spending summers at the monastery farm. The farm was the designated children’s space. A nun would play her pipe in welcome as hordes of children would race along the dusty road through the olive groves towards the farm, we would baptize dogs and chickens, collect eggs, feed the goats, play basketball games, and we even built our own ‘mini-​monastery’ in a barn by the farmhouse which we had dedicated to St Modestos, the protector of animals. In fact we were so proud of St Modestos that I spent my lunch breaks at school in Birmingham collecting recyclable items in order to raise money for our ‘mini-​monastery church’. We had already chosen the roles for our ‘mini-​monastery community’: I was the chanter, my brother the priest, my sister a nun, our best friend the abbess (she is now a nun at Ormylia; she became a novice at sixteen), her brother the abbot, and so on … This was my precious other life, the one that was so close to my heart. I would relish the long walks through the camomile and poppy fields, listening to nuns telling us stories about St Mary of Egypt or St Seraphim of Sarov or the Mother of God. And my favourite stories were about the nuns themselves, how they used to escape from home secretly at night to

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go to midnight services, how their mothers had vehemently disapproved of their calling, and then ended up becoming nuns as well! I also loved the all-​night vigils: lining up in the semi-​dark church to receive the blessing from the abbess, feeling her squeeze my hand in that special personal way, being given a chair up at the front if I could prove that I could stand v-​e-​r-​y still. And then our favourite moment! At the half-​way point in the service, all the children –​and only the children –​are hurried out of church. We are taken through the starlit night, across the sweet-​smelling courtyard, all the way to the children’s centre. Our hearts are bursting with excitement! We are treated to the most delicious sweets and to the most spine-​tingling stories about the legendary Vlahouli, the monastery dog, who saved the lives of so many sheep, goats, rabbits, and chickens from greedy predators. Then we return to the vigil just in time to watch the gold polyeleos (chandelier) spinning round and round in the centre of the church to the rhythm of the chanting. We join the nuns at the choir stand and we bellow out ‘Kyrie eleison’, and for those few hours we are convinced that the whole world revolves around us. We would always prepare a special play or concert to entertain the nuns on Easter day, and in the process, we would each discover and develop our talents. We never knew the fear of performing in public since we were given so many opportunities to do this at the monastery and the nuns are the most encouraging and enthusiastic audience imaginable. Once a year, on Easter day, we were taken up the bell tower and taught to ring the bells and the semandron in the unique Athonite rhythm. We were allowed to make as much noise as we pleased! We loved being included in the diakonimata, the monastic obediences, which included fruit-​picking, the painting of stones to sell in the shop, cleaning, and serving Greek coffee and loukoumia to visitors. The visitors were always very curious when they saw us working at the monastery … ‘Why are you in the monastery?’ ‘We are having a holiday here.’ ‘REALLY? Why?’ ‘Because there’s nowhere else we would rather be, the people here are the happiest people in the world, and my experiences here are the most joyful part of my year.’

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As an adult I can see how these experiences gave us everything: faith, freedom, discipline, routine, creativity. For my sister, Thalia, it was the drawing. She went on to study iconography and mosaic at the Prince’s School in London. She is now an artist and teacher. For my brother it was the practical side of life: woodwork, metalwork, carving, and building. He is now an engineer. For me, it was the music and the stories. I developed a low voice, like the nuns of Ormylia who were instructed by Abbot Aimilianos to sing with andreia –​manly strength and depth. And so my voice evolved accordingly. It was unusual, and now in my profession as a storyteller I use all these skills that the monastery freely gave to me. When I got married, I could not wait to take my husband to Ormylia and give him a taste of the life that I had the privilege to know. It was an experience that perhaps I and all of us Athonite children took for granted. After our visit my husband said, ‘You must be so grateful to your parents for sowing these seeds for you, so that it was all ready-​made for you when you were born, and you were given an Athonite childhood which I now have the privilege of sharing and knowing as well.’

Rory Fraser

8 Monastic Hospitality: A Pilgrim’s Experience of Mount Athos

Crouched in the corner of an Oxford pub the night after my finals, I made a new friend. His name was John-​Francis Martin, an effusive Byzantinist instantly recognizable from his mop of golden hair and sparkling blue eyes, which made him look like a cross between a Raphael and a poacher –​ accompanied by a distinctly Irish lilt. I already knew him by sight, as he had narrowly avoided running me down on his bike several weeks before, but it was not until that night that we met properly. The subject over which we instantly clicked, and to which our conversation was dedicated for the rest of the night, was Mount Athos –​a magnetizing name of almost mythical significance, whispering of great churches, libraries, and the relics of Byzantium. Almost exactly twenty-​four months later, in the middle of the Covid-​19 pandemic, I received an unexpected phone call from John-​Francis. Rather than the usual ‘pandemic small talk’, he posed a different question: would I like to go to Mount Athos in July? After months cooped up in rural Rutland, where every family meal was an exercise in trench warfare, the answer was an unflinching yes. *** A few weeks later, I found myself tumbling out of an airport taxi into a dusty port in rural Greece, before boarding the ferry to the island of Ammouliani, my final destination. On landing, I was met by John-​ Francis who, simmering with excitement, whisked me off to a local taverna to meet the rest of the party. They were a diverse group, ranging from a Parisian consultant, with a thin copy of Balzac protruding from his crisp linen jacket, to a dreadlocked Irish goatherd playing a pipe, not

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to mention an academic, architect, lawyer, two soldiers, civil servant, and a banker, all under the age of thirty. What followed can only be described as a forty-​eight-​hour bonding session, fuelled by Irish gusto and executed with Mediterranean flair. Within a few hours, suitcases still in hand, we were in the midst of a fiesta. John-​Francis had joined several of the locals in a sort of Hellenic-​Irish jig, while everyone clapped to the sound of quavering bouzoukia. The following day, the party continued on water as we cavorted across the bay on hired boats, pausing only to swim to a local island for lunch. With hangovers burning off faster than the salt on our backs, Covid seemed very far away indeed. Or was it? That evening an e-​mail arrived saying that we all needed negative Covid tests to enter Athos. Our adventure seemed thwarted. Our solution, as is often the way in Greece, lay in the fish market. Here John-​ Francis bumped into our Airbnb host who, it transpired, was also one of the chief medical officers for northern Greece and offered to test us. As a token of our thanks, that night we held a feast in his honour where each member of the group sang a song from their home country. In return, through a haze of cigarettes and ouzo, our host regaled us with stories of the Holy Mountain. The following morning, we rose at dawn in order to catch a boat from Ammouliani to Ouranoupolis. The views were spectacular: water merging from aquamarine to turquoise to a rich cobalt blue from which soared the mountain itself, like a holy Vesuvius. In Ouranoupolis we had our papers checked by some exceedingly humourless officials before an emergency trouser shop, as shorts are banned on the peninsula –​alongside women, speaking at meals, and swimming. Finally we boarded the ferry to Daphni, the main port on Athos, thus crossing its zealously guarded border. This second journey was even more amazing than the first. Swathes of virgin bush rose out of the water interrupted only by the odd hermitage which, with their whitewashed walls, resembled cubes of cottage cheese nestled in the landscape. Suddenly someone shouted ‘monastery’ and we all leapt for the railings where we saw a cluster of high machicolated walls, towers, and domes, like a castle, alluding to the pirates that once combed the shores. It was as though we were sailing back in time.

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On arrival in Daphni, we were met by Dimitri, our wonderful organizer and guide, who welcomed us to Athos, ‘the Garden of the Mother of God’, before scooping us into a minibus and rocketing into the hills. While many aspects of life on Athos are relatively modern, the roads, and the regulations that govern their use, are not one of them. After a journey that makes a ride on the Blackpool Big Dipper look pedestrian, we arrived in Karyes. From here we walked to the skete of St Andrew –​a sort of mini-​ monastery –​where half of us were to stay. *** In reality, there was nothing ‘mini’ about St Andrew’s. An avenue of cypress trees led to a pointed gateway, behind which soared a medley of sugary pediments, onion domes, and spires. It was as though a corner of the Kremlin had been picked up and dumped next to the Aegean, speaking of Tchaikovsky, balalaikas, and the Romanovs. Stepping into the main courtyard, with its derelict buildings and overgrown gardens, it became clear that St Andrew’s had seen better days. As Dimitri explained, owing to a theological spat, the skete had been sacked by the Tsar in 1913 and had never quite recovered. Given the heat, nor had we. The cooler island climate of Ammouliani had given way to a furnace on land and we were all utterly exhausted. After being welcomed by the Abbot, we collapsed into our dormitory for a siesta. This was wishful thinking. As soon as we did so, there was a light tap on the door and a request for us to move several tonnes of potatoes. Half an hour later, caked in dirt, morale low, we were about to trudge back to our dorm when one of the monks produced some loukoumi and a bottle of vodka from beneath his flowing black robes. ‘Payment,’ he whispered, with an enormous grin. It seemed we had passed the test. Famished and dehydrated, the goods went straight to our heads, resulting in a raucous, albeit rather giddy, conversation. The monk’s name was Fr Nikodemos who, with his booming voice, jovial temperament, and hedgerow of a beard, looked a little like Father Christmas crossed with Rasputin. He was delighted to discover that some of our group were Irish and went on to talk of his desire to retire to a monastery on the west coast of Scotland. After slightly puzzled probing, it transpired that this was because of (a) the more bearable

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climate, and (b) its proximity to a convent. Finally, he announced, ‘I must show you the skull of St Andrew tomorrow, and the Romanov throne!’ (the skete’s prized relics), before marching off to vespers. As he did so, we asked why he was being so kind to us. To this, he laughed and shouted over his shoulder, ‘I used to work for Guinness!’ Later that evening, I decided to explore the skete’s olive groves. The last strains of compline could be heard from the upper windows over the sound of swallows swooping between the belfries above and boar in the forest below. I was struck not only by the beauty of the scene, but by how it offered a glimpse of a lost world. While the rest of Russia had marched its bloody course, St Andrew’s had been left behind: a living relic not dissimilar to the jewelled caskets in its crypts. The following few days passed in a frenzy of activity. In the mornings we helped in the gardens, while the afternoons were spent scrabbling about the hidden paths to other monasteries, interspersed with powerful cups of Greek coffee with Fr Nikodemos in the monastery shop. Soon enough we were invited to stay at a different monastery. This was Vatopedi, St Andrew’s parent monastery, and one of the richest, having recently been endowed by a Russian oligarch who was cured of cancer by one of its icons. *** Another harrowing taxi journey took us to the other side of the peninsula where the dusty track gave way to a wide cobbled road, flanked by ancient olive groves, that snaked its way down to the sea. Collapsing out of the taxi, we leapt for a marble drinking fountain where, to our delight, the water was deliciously cool. As the liquid percolated through our bodies, we began to register our surroundings. On our left was a deep pool filled with flaming coy carp, while to our right, a view of terraced vineyards, orchards, and lush green hills over which the afternoon sun cast a golden haze. Porters arrived to help carry our bags before leading us under the domed entrance, painted a deep royal blue, and up a winding alley that emerged into the central courtyard. What greeted us was less a monastery than a small town. At the centre was a tower, not unlike a campanile, from which the cobbled ground rose sharply into a series of pavilions. Surrounding this was a jumble of facades:  some classical, with French

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windows and pediments, others cloistered, around which older monks strode, deep in conversation, rising to an assortment of towers, crenellations, and domes. Finally we arrived in the guest lodgings, a gleaming panelled room at the end of which was a table laid with loukoumi, water, and raki. Waiting at the table was a very tall monk with a jet-​black beard, kind brown eyes, and a soft, soothing voice who cannot have been more than thirty. The monk’s name was Fr Ephstathios. An immaculate host, he offered refreshment before welcoming us each in turn, learning our names, where we came from, and what we did. When I told him I studied English, his eyes lit up and he said, ‘I love Hamlet!’ and proceeded to recite one of the soliloquies, before explaining how before coming to Mount Athos he had been an English teacher and singer-​songwriter in Australia. Though only a few years ago, he spoke about his past, and indeed the outside world, as a dreamy, otherworldly place that belonged to an entirely different person. ‘When you become a monk,’ he explained, ‘you kill your former self and become a kind of ghost, a vassal for the Holy Spirit.’ This change occurred when, at about the same age as us, Fr Ephstathios had visited the Holy Mountain as a mere pilgrim, heard the Virgin’s call, and never left: now Mount Athos was his reality. Suddenly the bell sounded and it was time for dinner. Nothing could have prepared me for this. As we processed from the church under the refectory’s warped latticed ceiling, ancient murals of saints gazed sternly down from the walls on to marble tables –​salvaged from before the fall of Constantinople –​on which lay a mighty feast of fish, watermelon, and wine, accompanied by a suspicious number of condiments. The maître d’ monk then led us to a table which, to our dismay, was somewhat barer. Seeing our disappointment, he explained how, due to Athos’s adherence to Byzantine time, the rest of the monastery was enjoying a feast day, while we, still on Gregorian time, were two weeks behind and thus still fasting. Nodding meekly, we sat down –​it was clear that he was almost as confused by Byzantine time as we were. No sooner had we done so than another monk appeared by our table and began to translate the reading from the pulpit. Unfortunately, the reading being a rather abstract parable, and the

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monk’s English somewhat limited, this did not make a lot of sense, and was accompanied by increasingly frantic gesticulation. As the monks processed out of the refectory before us, it was our first opportunity to see the brotherhood as a whole. I was amazed not only by how young many of them were, but also the variety of faces, showing the range of Orthodox countries: some smooth and pale, with high foreheads and patrician noses, others wizened and dark, with Amazonian eyebrows under which wild eyes furtively returned our stares. After passing the Abbot, one hand clasping a great staff, the other poised in benediction, surrounded by a gaggle of bowed underlings, we emerged into the courtyard. Gone were the grave expressions that had just marched past us and instead we found what resembled an Italian piazza: the older monks nattering under the arcades, or catching up with returning pilgrims, while the younger ones buzzed excitedly between them. Exhausted by the events of the day, we went out on to the balcony to play baccarat. Beneath us, the monastery’s ancient walls swept down to a fishing village that perched on the edge of an enormous bay. Staring out across the Aegean, I said to John-​Francis, ‘You know this is all strangely familiar. I wonder if medieval Oxford was like this.’ At this he turned to me and replied, ‘either way, I could get used to it’. He was not the only one. Given the highly structured nature of monastic life, the following days blurred into one. We would be woken first by the call for matins –​an odd tapping noise that echoed through the building, as though it were a disorientated woodpecker. This was usually followed by a light tap on the door from whichever monk was on duty who, in the half-​light, looked more ghost-​like than ever. In the morning, after a breakfast of freshly baked bread, honey, and peaches, washed down with wine, all from the monastery, we would help in the kitchens, cutting fruit or scrubbing the tables and floors. Meanwhile the afternoons were given to exploring the hills with Fr Ephstathios, who was so busy batting off John-​Francis’s theological googlies that we usually got lost, resulting in some fairly intrepid detours. *** By far the highlight of our stay, however, was the all-​night vigil. In the morning a bishop arrived from Athens, looking strangely young and

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nervous compared to the senior monks around him, while in the afternoon everyone was sent for a compulsory nap. After a light supper the service began, marked by the sound of a light humming coming from inside the church. As the light began to die, the humming grew louder, reverberating around the cloisters like a swarm of ghostly bees. This was interrupted only by the murmur of conversation from the monks who flitted in and out of the service, their long black veils floating behind them like burqas. While many members of the group went to observe earlier in the evening, I decided to go last. It was around midnight when I passed under the great curtain that shades the church during the day. I stood alone in the painted arcade, while the Roman tunics on an army of saints glittered in the moonlight, as though urging me inside. Pulling open the door, I was hit by a blast of incense. The narthex, usually reserved for non-​Orthodox worshippers, was relatively quiet. Moonlight filtered through the smoke, rippling across the elaborately carved chairs that lined the walls and falling in spangled pools on the marble floor. Holding my breath, I passed through a pair of double doors into the next chamber –​for Orthodox worshippers only. The air was still heavier with incense, through which I could make out the figures of monks crouched in the stalls around the walls. Some venerated icons, others were nodding off, only semi-​distinguishable from the blackened murals which surrounded them. At last I passed through the final set of doors and into the heart of the church. The music was deafening: a deep wail that sounded half-​ Benedictine, half-​muezzin, ricocheting off the soot-​caked walls that swirled with saints, congregations, and councils. These were lit by a vast chandelier, as though a cobweb dipped in gold, which seemingly hovered in the air alongside gilded ostrich eggs and orbs of coloured glass. Behind this rose the iconostasis: a gilded confection of velvet and gold, mirrored in the marble floor below, which, polished from centuries of use, resembled a sheet of water on which floated the stern of a Venetian barge. Though I had no idea what was being said, it was as though layer upon layer of theology, history, and art was being peeled back to reveal the white-​hot core of a living faith. Suspended in that moment, everything that Fr Ephstathios had told us –​stories of pirates, martyrs, miracles, and saints; of the monastery’s

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foundation by a Roman emperor whose son was saved from drowning by the Virgin Mary on the very beach below us –​seemed tangibly close. Finally, the monastery’s most sacred relic, the belt of the Virgin Mary, was held aloft. Overwhelmed, I fell to my knees in prayer. As dawn began to creep up the nave, the monks filed out of the church and into the courtyard. In the rosy morning light we processed out of the monastery gates behind a great icon carried under a tasselled parasol. While the sun rose over the sea, so did our number, as pilgrims and monks came to join us from the surrounding cells, each taking a turn to bear the icon around the monastery walls. Suddenly I was ushered to the front and handed the wooden brace that supported it. Treading my way down the cobbled path, I felt less like I was carrying a thing than a person. Before I could think about it, someone took my place and I sank to the back of the group. *** A few days later, the rest of the group decided to climb Mount Athos itself. Keen to experience more of monastic life, as well as to write a little, I decided not to, and waved them off from the entrance. Being alone in the monastery was a very different experience, as one got to know the monks on a personal level. This was mainly through helping in the kitchens where, despite the language barrier, I came to understand their foibles and they mine, often accompanied by a mischievous wink and a slice of watermelon. There was something immensely satisfying about being given a single task and trying to do it well; of being a single cog in a well-​ oiled clock whose daily chimes reverberate back over a millennium –​a contrast made all the more apparent by the kitchen’s state-​of-​the-​art machinery. After meals I also enjoyed talking to the monks in the courtyard. Conversations ranged from the other pilgrims –​one day a general, another a supermodel –​or past royal visits from the former Prince Charles and Prince Philip (about whom they spoke in a loving, fraternal way, but completely without deference), to their lives before Vatopedi. I was fascinated to discover that one had been a renowned surgeon, while another had worked as a chef in a famous restaurant in Paris. We spent a merry

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evening swapping watering holes as he twirled his prayer rope between his scar-​pocked fingers. Perhaps most significant, however, was a discussion I had with Fr Ephstathios the day before we left. After nearly two weeks on Athos I was teeming with questions. Cornering him after breakfast, I asked if we could have a ‘serious chat’. He was more than happy to oblige. That evening, seated under an olive tree in the garden, I let the floodgates open: what underpins Orthodoxy? How does it differ from the Catholic Church? What are its practical implications for daily life? And crucially, how does he, a monk barely older than ourselves, reconcile himself to it? After listening carefully to my muddled rant, he answered with great compassion, clarity, and care. It became apparent that behind his gentle demeanour was not a series of scriptures, but the same powerful flame that I had felt a few nights before. What started as a conversation became more of a confession, and I rushed back before the curfew, feeling lighter than I had in weeks. *** As I write this now, in the depths of another lockdown, our trip to Athos seems something of a dream. A few weeks after we returned, the travel corridor to Greece was revoked. To have spent that brief window away from the pandemic among such kind and convivial company, in such a beautiful place, was a blessing that none of us will forget. Nobody stayed on like Fr Ephstathios, but we each left with a kernel of the Virgin’s Garden that will continue to grow: it is not a question of if we return, but when.

Metropolitan Nikolaos Of Mesogaia & Lavreotiki

9 Climbing to the Highest Place on Earth

Ascending to the Top of Mount Athos Back in August 1976, as a student, I had the good fortune to climb to the top of Mount Athos. There were two monks, one English and a French novice, and three laymen in our group. We set off from Simonopetra monastery and spent the night at the guest house attached to the main church of the skete of St Anne. In the afternoon we visited some fathers who practised hesychia and inner prayer. The beauty of their souls and the otherworldliness of their wise words were a true foretaste of the mystical ascent on the sharp peaks of the life of the spirit and the grace of God. Next morning at 7.00 a.m. we left the skete and started our climb. Within an hour and a half, we had got to the place called Stavros (‘the Cross’), an intersection of paths leading to monasteries and sketes on the southern side of Athos and one to the top. The going was terribly steep. After another two and a half hours, we had reached Panagia, an isolated chapel that stood between a few wind-​swept trees, the last stop before our final destination. It was the eve of the feast of Transfiguration. In the early afternoon I went off by myself to enjoy the scenery. I sat down under a lone tree and began to reflect peacefully. Two monks from the Great Lavra joined me. They greeted me gently and asked if they could relax for a while under the tree, and after a few basic questions about my whereabouts, in an atmosphere of silence, they started repeating the Jesus prayer with an amazing simplicity, as if it were something very natural and part of their routine of life. One of them, Fr Isaiah, was an ascetic who lived in the cave of St Athanasios the Athonite. The mere thought of his life filled me with an inexpressible sense of wonder.

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Later on, almost four hours before the sunset, the serving priest said the opening words of the Supplicatory Canon to the Mother of God and we began our ascent, all singing, carrying icons, censors, oil, candles, and suchlike. We were twenty monks and thirteen laymen in all. The weather was unstable and worse threatened. I will never forget that ascent. We walked with great devotion and compunction and stopped at certain places to offer a short litany, while the priest intoned the proper prayers. In less than an hour, we had reached the summit. We were at an altitude of 2,033 metres The view was breathtaking, even if the conditions were not favourable. The total area could not have been more than 35 square metres, and it was covered in sharp-​edged rocks that had been struck by lightning. A small chapel dedicated to the Holy Transfiguration of the Lord, where we attended vespers, took up half the summit. Far below, and more than 1,000 metres down, was the Romanian skete of Lakkou. To the left one could see other sketes, Simonopetra monastery, and the monastery of St Paul; and to the right, surveying from back to front, we could see the Great Lavra, Morphonou, Provata, scattered hermitages, and the monasteries of Philotheou, Karakallou, Iviron, Stavronikita, and up to Pantokrator. You could hardly discern the town of Karyes. A strong wind was blowing, and clouds had begun to gather and the sky to darken. We had to leave. We walked down very fast to Panagia, the chapel where in the end we held an all-​night vigil. We started at 8.00 p.m. and finished at 5.30 in the morning, just as dawn was breaking. The clouds had surrounded us on all sides, and it threatened rain. We left almost at a run at about 7.00 a.m., together with two others, and reached ‘the Cross’ in less than one and a half hours. On the way from the Cross to St Anne’s, I got lost. I came across two others who had also lost their way. We found ourselves in a truly desert-​like place. We did not know where to turn, when suddenly we caught sight of a moving mass of hair and patches of material. It seemed to be like a weird-​looking human; barefooted, hidden behind a patched and torn habit, his head covered by tangled and unwashed hair, yet one had the impression that here was a kind of unknown treasure. We looked at him in relief. We beheld him with fear. We listened to him in wonder. He showed us the way. At the crossroads he said something in a mixture of inarticulate shouts that we could not

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understand. After asking each other, we decided that he was talking about monasticism, as the safe way to salvation. ‘Will we be saved, we who live in the world?’, we asked him. He grimaced doubtfully and said, ‘Bit difficult to give a definite “yes”.’ When it is difficult to be saved in the desert of Mount Athos, how can one be saved in the barren desert of the world? Then he started repeating something that was impossible to understand. He broke off, started looking for something, and found a small piece of tile. With this he drew on a stone the word ‘ΑΓΡΙΟΣ’ (wild), and then rubbed out the ‘Ρ’ to leave the word ‘ΑΓΙΟΣ’ (saint). On Mount Athos, from being ‘wild’ man, one turns into saint, while in the world he remains wild. This is what we supposed he wanted to say: our whole struggle in this life is to erase that letter ‘Ρ’, to lose our wildness and become a saint. How simple, yet how difficult that is! This is what this ‘wild saint’ was telling us … The desert has its charms. It is full of such delights and surprises. Although my company wanted to visit Fr Ephraim in Katounakia, because of the threat of rain I decided to go straight to St Paul’s monastery. To be honest, the weather was actually an excuse. For some reason, I wanted to stay away from this giant of holiness and prayer. I thought that, if I met him, I would be forced in some way to become a monk. And I did not like the idea at all! So, I continued by myself. After more than an hour, almost running on a rough and difficult path, I passed through the gates of the monastery of St Paul. As I went up the cobbled way, I felt the first drops of rain. It poured down for three days. Unceasingly! At least I was relieved that I avoided going to Fr Ephraim after all. If I had gone, I would have come up against the wildness of … holiness. This is what I thought, trying to excuse myself. And I continued to suppress my calling inwardly! Just imagine, I think now, if I had been shut off in his hermitage for three days and had stayed so long with him! Three days with a person who had erased that ‘Ρ’ from his life and had replaced it with the ‘CHR’ of Christ. Three days with a saint in his hermitage. How sorry I am for myself ! I may have lost the best opportunity

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in my life. Man, when he is not free, is two things: blind and foolish. I cannot understand why I took such a fright at Fr Ephraim. Perhaps, in his presence, I would have taken the decision to fulfil my calling ten years earlier –​something that at that time I stubbornly refused even to suspect as a possibility. This was back in August 1976.

The Beauty of Athonite Wilderness The years passed by; thanks be to God, I finally decided to change my life course and was tonsured a monk. Fr Ephraim, whom I insistently avoided, had magnetized my soul and became the inspirer of my calling. I really wanted to live with him. God did not grant me this great gift. Nevertheless, being always attracted by the desert, I managed occasionally to have a small taste of it. Great Lent on the Holy Mountain; a whole month in the wilderness of Mount Athos. The kathisma of St John the Theologian is not particularly ascetic; it is spare, well maintained, discreetly renovated, and alienated from human consolation, just as it used to be in the old days. Access to the kathisma is both tiresome and difficult; the way back is so strenuous and uphill that it makes the way down even harder. A picturesque narrow pathway connects this spiritual ‘cape’ with the other Athonite monasteries. Built on a precipitous slope, it seems to be suspended above the sea at an altitude of approximately 25 metres. The rich flora, consisting of bushes, wild flowers, myrtles, a few almond trees and olive trees, all rooted in the shallow earth, makes the Athonite wasteland look less of a desert. Nevertheless, the numerous abrupt rocks, the boars’ footprints and diggings, the wild birds, the natural caves, the scattered prickly pears, the imposing and absolute stillness underline the roughness of the landscape. The climate is mild and quite dry. The view is wide but entirely plain, both natural and grandiose. You discern nowhere the trace of human creativity or construction. The only exception is the kathisma itself. A very small chapel dedicated to St John the Theologian covers its eastern side.

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Three small cells and a very simple kitchen are located on the first floor; below there is an archontariki and a small warehouse. All rooms have low ceilings, narrow doors, and typical Athonite windows manufactured in the same way that its founders would have done years ago, with modern material but traditional technique, reflecting the old monastic mentality. God bless the fathers of Simonopetra, who after the fire in 1990 renovated the kathisma with a great deal of respect for its history and tradition, as well as for its mission and purpose. In the background, above the dome of the chapel, Mount Athos can be clearly detected. A few lower slopes dive abruptly into the sea, creating a sequence of natural rocky bays that lead to various monasteries and monastic settlements; sketes, cells, caves, alienated hermitages, and the ‘mother’ of all, the Great Lavra, are sheltered by the voluminous mountain. Mount Athos conceals the mystery of human transcendence and godly condescension, which have coexisted for more than one thousand years at this blessed place. While the mountain is very high, the truth can only be sensed very deeply within one’s heart. Although the view is wide open, you feel it enfolds you. On the Holy Mountain, you do not simply seek the Kingdom of God, but you experience it within you. Right next to you lies the sea. Its vastness highlights the destination of every Athonite inhabitant, of every person: the search for the infinite, for anything that has no limits, end, or borders. When the sea is rough, it resembles the intense yearning for God. When it is calm, it transfers you to states ‘passing all understanding’ that cannot be achieved but are only granted by God. These are offered as consolation for the tough struggles, and as inspiration to the uncompromising ascesis. At the far end, the cape of Sithonia along with some small villages reminds us of the existence of the world. When the atmosphere is clear and the visibility high, one can see the Northern Sporades, a group of Aegean islands, lined up across the horizon. However, when your spiritual clarity is high, you see nothing of the world. You only perceive the mystery of God’s mercy and dispensation. The only consolation in the area where this beautiful kathisma is located is Fr Meletios. Although a foreigner, and a convert to Orthodoxy, he shares with us the Athonite monastic mentality. He is strong and tough,

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but generous in his ways. His husky voice resembles a crow. His whole appearance is entirely unconventional and ungraceful. Nevertheless, when you look at him, you can sense the spiritual wealth he conceals, of which he is not aware. He has no relation to my own civilized nature, which has been shaped by contemporary education and decent manners. He practises hesychia at the arsana, which is a quarter of an hour away. He is my closest neighbour, when he comes down from the monastery for two days a week. He is the woodman of Simonopetra, a true wild bird. He looks like a tilted rock or an unpruned tree with a real natural scent –​a mixture of earth and grass. His presence blends perfectly with the landscape and makes it even more picturesque. He knows all the newly planted trees, not only their position but also their needs. His pockets are full of rusted nails, pieces of dirty rope, wood, pocket knives, hammers, plastic bags –​anything you can think of that helps him prune, water, or tie up the trees. He throws nothing away, not even the broken nails, since they can also be useful, as he says. Last year he invited me to the arsana. He wanted to give me a surprise treat. So I went down there to meet him. He always smiles, but his smile on that day was particularly wide, for he would offer me his surprise treat. I tried to figure it out with both my senses and my fantasy, but with no success. He had prepared for me a drink made of boiled onion peels. I tried to take a sip but could not swallow it. I put some lemon in it, but there was no improvement. However, he drank it with such eagerness and enthusiasm as if it were nectar of the twelve ancient Greek gods. He was not in the least hurt that I did not dare to take a second sip, even though I appreciated his surprise treat, which was truly a surprise! His hands are usually loaded with wooden planks, tables, benches, buckets full of water, saws, reaping hooks, pruning knives of all sizes. With his knapsack on his back, he walks the narrow steep pathways with impressive ease and physical strength and endurance. Every now and then he cuts some wild grass and eats it hungrily, as if it were a piece of bon fillet, or stops to look after a tree. He constantly praises God for creating this earthly paradise. The smile on his face, however, disappears as soon as he arrives at the monastery. He feels uncomfortable there, as if entrapped in a cage. His sole consolation is the thought that in a few days he will leave again. In every sentence he utters, he repeats the words ‘your blessing’ three

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times. His hands are as harsh as sandpaper; his nails black, covered with earth; his soul sparkling white, cleansed by heavenly holiness; you want to suck it so greedily and delightfully as he did with the … surprise treat. He brags about being the best … mule of the monastery. Without realizing it, he is its best wild-​angel. Once I helped him carry some pieces of fibre foam, which were extremely big, although very light. He was constantly repeating the phrase ‘your blessing’. I truly didn’t know why he was so apologetic: was it because of the weight he asked me to carry, or because it was apparent that I was not used to hardships? Maybe the reason was his not having a third hand to carry my own share and he became the cause of my weariness. He is a man of an otherworldly logic. Fortunately, he lives in a world that he himself has created. This unrefined person, when he opens his mouth, becomes sweet and soft. He talks about trees, butterflies, flowers by using nicknames. He describes with such joy the variety of colours, the details of their shades, and the beauty of asymmetry. He sees everywhere, not only the hand of God, but His person, God Himself. Nature is his paradise. He never harms any living creature. He only chases the snakes because the superior of the monastery told him to do so. He considers our alienation from nature an unforgiven fault. There is no spiritual life without nature. When you look at him, you detect a reflection of the natural and spiritual flora of Mount Athos. When you hear his voice, your entire existence is filled by a heartfelt praise. I wonder if people of this kind will still exist after some years. He came to the Holy Mountain from Hungary. He is an imported product! At the beginning of last century, two Romanian monks lived at the kathisma of St John the Theologian. They were simple people, farmers, yet very pious and consistent to the monastic rule. There is an amazing story about them. One night two thieves came to their cell and knocked the door persistently. They entered hastily and asked the elder for money. However, the monks had no money. The thieves threatened them with their gun and insistently asked for gold coins.

–​ We are poor, the monks replied. –​ Your life or the coins, they answered back. –​ One moment, the elder said to them, and entered into the holy altar. He put on his stole, swallowed the Holy Communion from the

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artophorion, opened the curtain of the Holy Door, and said to the thieves gleaming with a heavenly light: –​ Now you can do to me anything you like.

The thieves, being terrified, disappeared. They went to Little St Anne’s, to the renowned spiritual father, Elder Savva, and confessed what had happened. Later on, Fr Savva informed the monastery about the event. The kathisma of St John the Theologian is a blessed place! It radiates peace, natural beauty, simplicity, a rich historical past, and above all the grace of God. Fr Meletios says it is true paradise. He is absolutely right. One cannot easily leave this place. Whenever I go there, I find it difficult to depart. This year my visit to the kathisma was transformed to a pilgrimage, for I sought something deeper, more spiritual. And all that, back in the year 2000.

Friends with Nature A few days have gone by, since my arrival at the hermitage. There is no one around to talk to, or even to wave from afar. The silence is imposing! My only companion is the splashing sound of the waves, the whistling of the air, the twittering of the birds, and the drops of rain. Nothing else. Here, one can easily reject modern civilization, which in a variety of ways reveals the ugliness of human egoism. Here, one hears almost nothing, so one’s ability to see becomes greater. One is taught many things, because one is not exposed to useless information. Natural asymmetry teaches harmony, beauty, and balance. One has no cares. One’s consolation are memories, but most of all the inner quest for God. Nature surrounds one’s entire being. Yet, being a city person all my life with a technological and scientific background, I cannot speak its language; I do not know its ways; I ignore its secrets. It is as if someone talks to me in a very melodic language, but I cannot understand the words. I enjoy the melody, yet I lose the meaning.

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A loud knock on the door breaks the absolute stillness. A dry but familiar voice leaves no room for me to question the identity of the person knocking. The tone of the voice has a peculiar sweetness. He is my teacher on nature and its secrets. He is my occasional visitor, whose inelegant appearance does not disturb in the least the overall quietness. It is Fr Meletios, the one who was swallowing the onion peels as if he were eating a delicious T-​bone steak. In fact, he was eating them with lemon and oregano. I went down to open the door. I can hear the abrupt scraping of the scythe. He loses no time. He has already started cutting the grass. His innocent, unprocessed smile captivates me. He has not been affected by the twentieth century, nor will he be influenced by the twenty-​first. Nothing can change him. While he was coming to see me, he was soaked through by a sudden storm. He does not seem to be disturbed in the least. He is dripping all over, even his moustache and beard. ‘How nice is the rain! God has made everything perfect’, he says. He is not disturbed even by natural ‘disturbances’. He enjoys all things. However, if you ask him to sit in a living room, he will not be able to differentiate the table from the sofa. He feels awkward. He sits more comfortably on the ground or on rocks than on armchairs. He walks more easily on the steep pathways than in the streets and hallways. He is a friend of nature; not only of flowers but of thorns as well; of fruit trees as well as of oak trees; of house pets and of wild animals, snakes and scorpions. He is a friend of sunny weather, but also of extreme weather conditions, rain, strong winds, and snow. ‘Praise the Lord from the earth, You great sea creatures and all the depths; Fire and hail, snow and clouds; Stormy wind, fulfilling His word; Mountains and all hills; Fruitful trees and all cedars; Beasts and all cattle; Creeping things and flying fowl’ (Ps. 148: 7–​10). Everything fulfils His word. Fr Meletios knows all the snakes, even their nests. He kills the poisonous ones, because he obeys the monastery. He does not understand the reason why, but he observes obedience. He enters the hermitage. He smells of grass clippings and wet soil. He venerates the icons of the chapel with reverence and a respectful familiarity, for he feels the place as his own.

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–​ Can I offer you something? I ask.

He is a bit difficult. He eats only what the area and the season produces. He disagrees with eating bananas. These are eaten only in Africa. Here they have a peculiar taste. He devours oranges with the peel.

–​ Do you have coffee, in fact Greek coffee? he asks. –​ It is Greek in the way it is brewed, but I doubt its origin, I reply teasingly. –​ Do not sow doubts in my mind. It is definitely Greek, since the ascetics drank it, so did Elder Joseph and Fr Ephraim.

I prepare the coffee. He takes out of his pocket a cracked pine cone. He puts it on the table right next to an alarm clock. Full of joy, he takes the risk to compare them with great easiness.



–​ Look, father. Which is more beautiful, the pine cone of God or the alarm clock of the factory? God has made everything beautiful! Needless to mention the beauty of the flowers that even King Solomon would envy. This cracked pine cone is nature; it is God. –​ Father, I tell him, you look both like a log and a blossomed almond tree.

He liked this comparison. He begins to talk about trees that blossom.

–​ The apricot tree next to the chapel has nineteen flowers. The other one next to the water tank will bear about three containers of apricots.

He opens his back pack and takes out an icon dedicated to St Ocean. He discovers saints with such names. This saint fits in this environment, he says, and continues talking about the saint’s life. We went outside for a while. Fr Meletios in his own world: full of doxology, joyfulness, kindness, graciousness. He loves nature, but not as an idol, but as God’s creation. He urges me to go with him to look for a cave.

–​ You take this pathway. I will take the road of the pigs, he says and disappears in the bushes.

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I lost my way after a short while and decided to return. On the way back, I found his boots and socks and started shouting his name. I hear his voice coming through the forest.



–​ I am coming. I have second thoughts … –​ Are you barefooted? –​ Elder Joseph and Elder Arsenios walked barefooted on Mount Athos for forty years. Most probably they had the blessing to do so. I am coming to put on my shoes. I have not washed my feet lately and I am afraid that I will pollute nature. –​ What about your shoes? Don’t they also pollute nature? –​ They are clean. Nature has cleaned them. There is nothing dirty here.

Where are the blackbirds? Have the swallows arrived? Have the flowers blossomed? All these are his friends that glorify God; they are innocent and of course they do not sin. Animals are humble; some crawl on the earth (pigs), some are patient because they do not complain when they carry loads (donkeys), others are meticulous because they work unceasingly (ants), others are full of joy and doxology for God, because they constantly praise Him (birds), although sometimes they carelessly damage the gardens. The coenobium of nature has the best monks. They excel in ascesis, obedience, and silence. Nature is the top school of theology, because it inspires you to constantly praise the Lord. Even frost is a great blessing, because it compassionately relieves the trees of the weight of their fruits. It can also be a temptation to them so as not to brag about their rich fruit production.



‒ The same also applies to monks, Father, he adds. ‒ Don’t you feel sad, when the animals destroy your gardens? ‒ I feel joy. I anticipate the damage as a pleasant visit. I always plant more roots so that the animals can have their own share. The only thing is that they do not have good manners. Fortunately, they do not have negative thoughts. ‒ Out of all the surrounding area, why do they pick your own garden? ‒ Do children in Athens eat only at home? Don’t they like to go to MacDonald’s once in a while? Likewise, the children of nature prefer the … cafeteria.

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Technology has made nature our enemy, our competitor. Firstly, it irritates nature, which, in turn, reacts more intensely. Secondly, we do not regard nature as our mother, but we prefer to treat it as our servant. Instead of learning from it, we try forcefully to alter it. However, nature is very old and stubborn. It does not change. On the contrary, it gets angry and takes revenge. This is why we view it as our enemy. We ignore its behaviour and do not know its secrets. We do not respect it. Instead, we are afraid of it. Our friends now are technology, fertilizers, machines, hastiness, and convenience. We do not let time do its own job. We force trees to bear fruits, food to be cooked. Even monks do their tasks hurriedly having as an excuse prayer, or tiredness. Everything is done in a hurry. Whatever lacks the salt of time and patience, is tasteless.

Holy Mountain: Avaton and God-​Trodden According to scientists, the higher one climbs, the more the gravity weakens, and the less one feels the attraction of the earth; thus, the bonds with it loosen, and one can more easily be detached from its demanding and forceful presence and become less earthly. Then οne begins to feel closer to heaven, which although it is indefinite, is true and desired. It appears more real than the earth, yet it is not tangible. The higher one climbs, the air becomes cleaner, the hearing is refined, the horizon widens, and our relationship with the truth becomes stronger. Truth is more convincing than reality. The Holy Mountain is par excellence the place where Orthodox monasticism has been practised for more than a thousand years in its absolute form. Undoubtedly, the passage of time leaves its worldly imprint on its body; modern civilization and technological progress have somehow affected it; moreover, monks, like all humans, have weaknesses or even passions that occasionally are uncovered. However, Mount Athos still maintains in an inexplicable secret way its blessed ethos, constant and unique revelations of its grace, its rare and distinctive spiritual depth, its vivid relationship with the Kingdom of God and the time of the Lord. Its

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mindset cannot be threatened by wrong choices or be destroyed by modernization; it cannot be influenced by alternating trends or even by human beings. You may see faults, yet you are not scandalized. You may witness mistakes –​even major ones –​yet you do not lose your hope. Its truth endures everything. The Holy Mountain is the truest mountain that exists. Climbing on its noetic peak, you feel the absence of time, of space, and of anything earthly. You experience heaven as it is described in Holy Scripture, the whole world as the one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, and eternity as more tangible than biological life.

I Will Lift Up My Eyes to the Mountains (Ps. 121: 1) Mount Athos is a mountain; in fact, it is a noetic mountain. It is a high point that one is called to ascend. This ascent can be experienced by ‘raising our minds on high’;1 it is directed to the ‘heart that gazes on high’, that seeks the Lord ‘who dwelleth on high’ (Ps. 113: 5). It is interesting that in the tradition of our Church, there are four mentions in Scripture that refer to mountains, on which revealing events took place. On Mount Sinai, Moses receives the Ten Commandments, namely the expression of God’s volition. He senses God descending upon the mountain which was wrapped in smoke, talks with Him, hears His voice, and sees His back (Exod. 19, 20, 33). On Mount Carmel, prophet Elijah prays, God hears his voice and responds to his prayer. He tastes the signs of His dominion and experiences His presence (3 Kings 18, 19, 20). On the Mount of Olives, the Ascension of the Lord takes place; He deifies the flesh that He has taken, and thus bestows on human nature a unique glory and honour. ‘O Christ, having taken upon Thy shoulders our nature, which had gone astray, Thou didst ascend and bring it unto God the Father.’2 1 2

Holy Thursday Matins, canticle 9. Matins of the Ascension of the Lord, ode 7.

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Lastly, on Mount Tabor, the Lord is transfigured, ‘the appearance of His countenance is altered’ (Luke 9: 29), He reveals His glory insofar as human nature can comprehend and glows with His divine and uncreated light (Matt. 17: 1–​8). The Holy Mountain has all the characteristics of these scriptural mountains: it is the mountain of the holy commandments, namely the place of the practical life, the place of patience, humility, and love. It is the place where one ‘constantly constrains one’s nature and unceasingly watches over one’s senses’.3 It is the place of extreme, incessant, and unyielding ascesis and renunciation. Moreover, it is the place of prayer and tears. Many monks practise unceasing prayer, day and night. The ascetics begin their all-​night vigil at sunset, whereas the monks at the coenobia at midnight; in the morning the Divine Liturgy is celebrated and during the day the service of the Hours follows. The divine words of the Jesus prayer are repeated by the monks, either at their cells during the time of hesychia and divine contemplation, or when doing their monastic tasks (obediences). The architecture of the churches underlines the intensity of the prayer. The daily routine, the long services, the hearts of the monks, everything is filled with the fragrance of the prayerful melody. Mount Athos reveals the transcendence of human nature. Its ethos is characterized by the godlike virtue of discretion, by an absolute and unconventional way of life and mindset that balances extremity and self-​restraint. The daily vigils, the absence of feminine consolation, the given obedience, the lack of personal choices, the daily programme and rubrics highlight the naturalness of the state above nature. On the Holy Mountain, the grandeur of human nature is uncovered. The place operates as a workshop of theosis. ‘Τhe angelic orders were amazed by your life in the flesh’, the Athonite monks chant in honour of their patron saint Athanasios the Athonite. Saints like Gregory Palamas become ‘eyewitnesses of His majesty’ (2 Pet. 1: 16). Saints like Maximos of Kafsokalyvia cast off the earthly gravity so that they can reach heaven. Saints like Nikodemos the Hagiorite convey 3

St John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent (Boston, MA: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1961), 1.

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their intelligence as enlightenment and translate their knowledge into revealing words. Saints like Paisios the Athonite, Ephraim of Katounakia, Joseph the Hesychast combine violence with grace, thus verifying the accuracy and long-​lastingness of the narratives in the Synaxaria. Saints like Kosmas the Aetolian, but also contemporary saints like Sophrony and Porphyrios, draw strength from the Athonite well and, in just a few years, were eternally transformed into universal theologians and preachers of the word of God. Yet Mount Athos is not only a place of human spiritual glory. The presence of God on the four mountains mentioned above is declared by the appearance of a cloud. On Mount Sinai, Moses enters a ‘thick cloud, and feels the presence of God but cannot see Him’ (Exod. 19: 16, 24). On Mount Carmel, the cloud breaks the silence of the sky and brings a rainstorm in a miraculous way (1 Kings 18: 44–​5). On the Mount of Olives, a cloud took the Lord from the sight of the Apostles and was lifted up into heaven (Acts 1: 9). Finally, on Mount Tabor, ‘a bright cloud overshadowed’ the Apostles, ‘and a voice from the cloud said: This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!’ (Matt. 17: 5). This cloud confirms the presence of God the Father. The Holy Mountain lives within the cloud of the grace of God. Holy relics exude a fragrance, holy icons bear myrrh, expectations are overturned, things hoped for are transcended, wonders surpass everyday events, God acts in a more powerful way than natural laws and human reason. Within the Athonite cloud, you enter as a visitor and ascertain, like Moses, that the tablets of the divine commandments are in your hands and, therefore, it is easier to follow them. You are astounded by its presence and overwhelmed by the ‘sign’ of God’s abundant grace. You feel it as a mystery ‘and fall on your face being filled with awe’ (Matt. 17: 6) like the Disciples on Mount Tabor, and you can hear the voice of God within you. You experience it as an inscrutable divine majesty and ‘gaze into heaven’ (Acts 1: 10) like the Apostles on the Mount of Olives and then you return home ‘with great joy’ (Luke 24: 50). If the Mount of God’s presence sheds its light through revealing visions, the cloud of divine mystery fills the heart with the humility of the uncreated grace. On the Holy Mountain, you experience miracles, you detect

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saintliness, you are enlightened by what you can see, you are nurtured by what you are unable to reach, you ‘let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus’ (Phil. 2: 5).

The Mountain of God (Ps. 68: 15) The Holy Μountain is the place where the heart is healed and the hidden man is revealed. It offers its shelter on spiritual peaks that you cannot reach with worldly reasoning. Here grace expresses the truth in an unusual way. The vital question on the Holy Mountain is not whether God exists, for it has been definitely answered long ago. Nor whether our God is better than the god of other religions. The word our is not being used in a possessive sense –​namely, God is mine –​but it expresses our desire to be adopted by Him, namely to become His children. Our purpose is to struggle to partake of His divine nature (2 Pet. 1: 4), to become related to Him, to feel His presence and have a taste of His experience. The value of the Holy Mountain does not lie on its saintly monks, no matter how many these are. Its greatness is hidden behind the fact that it is the place where God is rested. Among the multitude of icons that exist, some are distinguished by a special grace for reasons unknown to us, although they may portray the same saint as others; among the Lord’s twelve Disciples, there was His ‘beloved one’; among the different nations, there were His ‘chosen people’; among the many places He visited, He chose specific ones to work His miracles, such as the pool of Bethesda or Siloam. Likewise, God chooses locations within His creation where He reveals His grace in a special way. The Holy Mountain is the Mountain of God!

† Metropolitan Kallistos Of Diokleia

10 Fifty-​Four Years as an Athonite Pilgrim

‘A high mountain apart’ Among all the sacred places on this earth, the Holy Mountain of Athos is the one that I personally find most immediately attractive.1 Since my first visit in 1961, I have been drawn back to the ‘mountain of monks’ more frequently than I can now remember: perhaps some fifteen times, possibly more often. With good reason Athos has been styled ‘the monastic magnet’,2 and certainly its magnetic force is something I have felt continually since my initial pilgrimage fifty-​four years ago, and indeed for a number of years before that. During those fifty-​four years, what have I come to understand about the inner meaning and the spiritual message of the Holy Mountain? What changes have I seen? What have I come to regard as its contribution to the wider community of the outside world, throughout the Church as a whole and, indeed, beyond its boundaries? ‘We know that when any one of us falls, he falls alone’, states Aleksei Khomiakov, ‘but no one is saved alone’.3 How, then, do the monks of Athos contribute to the salvation of others?

1

2 3

In this paper I have incorporated material from two earlier articles:  ‘Mount Athos Today’, Christian, 3:  4 (1976), 322–​33; ‘The Holy Mountain:  Universality and Uniqueness’, in G. Speake and K. Ware (eds), Mount Athos: Microcosm of the Christian East (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2012), 175–​203. Compare the title of the book edited by R. Gothóni and G. Speake, The Monastic Magnet: Roads to and from Mount Athos (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2008). ‘The Church is One’, section 9, in W. J. Birkbeck (ed.), Russia and the English Church during the Last Fifty Years, vol. 1 (London:  Rivington, Percival & Co., 1895), 216.

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Let me begin with what has been for me the single most memorable experience on the Holy Mountain, when I ascended alone during the night to the summit of Athos in summer 1971.4 My intention was to reach the peak at sunrise. I was about to set out from St Anne’s around 10 p.m., when there was a sudden and violent fall of rain; and I wondered if it might be prudent to postpone my journey. ‘Go’, said Fr Elias, the monk with whom I was staying, ‘you may not ever again have another such opportunity. And if you go, you will never forget your experience.’ I am glad that I took his advice. In fact there was no more rain that night. It was a lengthy climb. My starting point at St Anne’s was about 300 metres above sea level, but to reach the summit I had to mount upwards for another 1,700 metres or more. I had chosen a night when there was a full moon, but in practice the moon was less helpful than I had expected; for I had forgotten that much of the walk was through thick woods where the moonlight could not penetrate. My immediate objective was the little chapel of the Panagia, about 500 metres below the summit, where I intended to rest before embarking on the final stages of the ascent. I came out from the woods into a rocky wilderness where the chapel ought to have been, but I could not see it anywhere. To make matters worse, I lost the path. Moonlight has the effect of flattening the landscape and making everything appear different. Blundering about in confusion for many minutes, eventually I sat down defeated. Then I looked up and saw to my surprise the chapel no more than 200 metres away. How strange that I had not noticed it before! After a short sleep on the chapel floor and a drink of cool water from the nearby cistern, I set out in the pale morning light for the peak of the Holy Mountain. The path is good, and there is no danger at all as long as one does not wander from it. But I kept in mind that, not long before, three Germans had left the proper route and fallen to their deaths. I arrived at the summit just as I had hoped, at the exact moment when the sun emerged in the east from the low clouds across the sea. I was confronted by an astonishing spectacle. After gazing for some time at the rising sun 4

I had previously ascended to the summit during the day in 1966, in the company of Gerald Palmer.

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in the east, I turned and looked northward, and saw the whole Athonite peninsula, thousands of metres below me, stretching away towards the mainland. It was like a relief map, with rocks and paths standing out with an amazing clarity. I could distinguish all the paths that I had been following for the past ten days, and even the exact points where I had missed the right turning (for in those days there were few effective signposts).5 Then, with my back to the rising sun, I looked westward, once more over the sea. The sight that met me was something I had never expected, and it will always remain etched in my memory. I saw the shadow of the Holy Mountain as a great pyramid of darkness, extending many miles over the sea and shrinking perceptibly as the sun behind my back rose higher. Surely there are few places in the world where such a phenomenon can be seen. As I stood in this way, alone at sunrise in the piercing cold on the top of Mount Athos, beside the (then) ruined chapel of the Transfiguration, I was given a dim inkling of the significance of the Mountain as a holy sanctuary, as a point in sacred space, a ‘thin place’ where the wall of partition between earth and heaven, between the present age and the Age to come, becomes so attenuated as to be virtually transparent.6

Wolves, Snakes, and Frogs I have begun these recollections of my visits to Athos over fifty-​four years by speaking of the Mountain itself, and this I have done for an important reason. Athos is indeed a mountain full of holy persons, of dedicated monks; and of this I shall speak in a moment. It is also a Mountain full of holy objects, of churches and chapels, icons, relics, chalices, crosses, and illuminated Gospel books. But, beside all this, it is more fundamentally in itself a holy mountain. While admiring the saints and ascetics 5 6

The working parties organized each summer in recent years by the Friends of Mount Athos have helped to remedy this. On the phrase ‘a thin place’, see Evelyn Underhill, Collected Papers, ed. Lucy Menzies (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1946), 196.

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who have dwelt and still dwell there, and while rejoicing in the spiritual beauty of the many works of art that it contains, we need also to appreciate the physical reality of the Mountain as such, the intrinsic sacredness of the material environment in which these persons and objects are to be found. In the words of Fr Nikon (1875–​1963), the hermit of Karoulia who inspired the English translation of the Philokalia, ‘Here every stone breathes prayers.’7 In common with other holy places –​such as Jerusalem and Patmos, Iona and Walsingham –​the Holy Mountain of Athos acts as a sacrament of God’s presence, as a burning glass concentrating the rays of the spiritual Sun with an especial intensity, manifesting the immediacy of the Eternal. To appreciate this physical reality, this intrinsic sacredness, the best way for the pilgrim is to travel on foot –​not to be driven in a minibus or Land Rover but to walk, if possible alone. This will frequently prove exhausting. The ancient mule paths are often steep, sometimes neglected, full of loose, sharp stones and overgrown with brambles.8 In summer the pilgrim will inevitably suffer from heat and thirst. But only so will he come face to face with the basic reality of Athos as a centre of stillness, a shrine of the Divine Presence. Along with the holiness of the Mountain, the pilgrim who travels on foot will also be struck by its outstanding natural beauty. Because of the presence of streams on every side and the absence of marauding goats, Athos –​especially in springtime –​is a veritable paradise. There are meadows bright with wild flowers, and trees covered with blossom; and everywhere there is the surrounding sea, with waves breaking over the rocks. Prince Mishkin’s words come to mind, in Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot: ‘Beauty will save the world.’

7 8

On Fr Nikon, see K. Ware, ‘Gerald Palmer, the Philokalia, and the Holy Mountain’, in Graham Speake (ed.), Friends of Mount Athos: Annual Report 1994 (published in 1995),  23–​8. On the neglect of the ancient paths of Athos, see P. Sherrard, Athos the Holy Mountain (London:  Sidgwick & Jackson, 1982), 43–​8. This incorporates material from P. Sherrard, ‘The Paths of Athos’, Eastern Churches Review, 9:  1–​2 (1979),  100–​7.

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This Athonite beauty is not vacant and static, but it is full of sounds and movement; for the Mountain is a refuge for many living creatures, non-​human as well as human. On my earlier visits, as I set off to walk alone through the more remote uplands, the monks warned me to beware of the wolves. I never saw any, but doubtless they saw me as they looked watchfully from the thick undergrowth beside the paths. I am told that there are now no more wolves on Athos, because they have all been shot. This is in some respects a pity, for wolves in their own way are hesychasts, seeking solitude and avoiding contact with humans; and so their continuing presence was an assurance that the Mountain has not ceased to be a place of seclusion. While I have never seen any wolves on my Athonite wanderings, I have twice met wild boar. The first occasion was just outside the skete of the Prophet Elijah. The second was in the deserted region above the Serbian monastery of Hilandar, on the path leading to Chromitsa, close to the border with Ouranoupolis. Here I encountered a whole family, father, mother, and two youngsters. Not more than 50 metres away, all four of them stopped in their tracks and stared at me, with curiosity but without apparent hostility. After I greeted them, they continued peacefully on their way, disappearing among the bushes. The solitary walker will also come across snakes, both great and small, which abound on the Holy Mountain. When I was staying for several weeks at Hilandar, working on the English translation of the Philokalia with my friends Gerald Palmer and Philip Sherrard –​both frequent visitors to Athos –​I used to go alone for a walk each afternoon in the surrounding woods. Every day, in exactly the same place on the path, I met a snake some 3 metres long, basking in the sunshine. On the first day I banged on the ground with my staff, but he showed no inclination to move, until I had addressed him politely, asking him to let me through. Then he slid into a gap in the adjoining wall; but as soon as I had passed I heard a swishing sound immediately behind me, as he slid out once more to resume his place in the sun. On the second day I had no need to bang on the ground, for as soon as I asked him he moved out of the way. On the third day I did not even have to ask, much less to bang on the ground, for of his own accord he moved aside as soon as he saw me approaching. Such is the rapport with the realm of nature that even a town-​dweller such as myself can

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quickly establish during visits to the Mountain. The monks who live there permanently, especially the hermits, frequently build up a relationship that is far closer. The many stories in monastic sources about beasts and saints are not mere legends.9 Not all my encounters with Athonite snakes have been as benign as my acquaintance with the snake of Hilandar. Once, in one of the more solitary regions of the Mountain, I heard nearby a strange sound, and I turned aside from the path to discover the cause. A rabbit had come down to a pool to drink and a large water snake had seized hold of its head and was gradually swallowing it whole, as the rabbit screamed aloud. I took note that it would be sensible not to bathe in isolated pools on the Mountain. The monks may not eat meat, but there are other residents on Athos who do so. I wondered at the time whether I should intervene to try and save the rabbit, but I decided that it was not my business to meddle in the affairs of Athonite wild life. I bore in mind the experience of a friend of mine who was making his way through the woods on the Mountain in the company of a monk. My friend has the ability to imitate bird song; and since the Athonite woods are full of birds he practised this gift as the two of them walked together. He called out to the birds and the birds duly replied. In tones of disapproval, the monk said to him: ‘Would you mind not doing that?’ ‘Why, what’s wrong?’ asked my friend. And the monk replied severely, ‘You are disturbing the natural order.’ Along with the snakes and birds, Athos is home to innumerable frogs. I know few sounds in nature as attractive as the singing of frogs, and Athos is one of the best places in which to enjoy batrachian harmony. Once I was staying, around the season of Pentecost, at the skete (or monastic village) of St Anne’s. Here each of the scattered dwellings has a garden, with its own cistern and its own contingent of melodious frogs. As I sat on a balcony around sunset, first I could hear the frogs many metres below me on the steep hillside, and then came an answering group many metres above. Others joined in from various cisterns on either side, and before long the 9

See the classic anthology by H. Waddell, Beasts and Saints (London: Constable, 1934); and compare the two books by J. Stefanatos, Animals and Man: A State of Blessedness (Minneapolis, MN:  Light and Life, 1992), and Animals Sanctified:  A Spiritual Journey (Minneapolis, MN: Light and Life, 2001).

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whole evening was alive with frog-​sourced music. I wished that it would never end. There is an Athonite anecdote, typical of the monastic sense of humour, about a group of monks who were celebrating the morning service. The frogs in the cistern outside were making an astonishing noise. So the superior went out of the chapel and said: ‘Frogs! We’ve just ended the Midnight Office and are about to begin Matins. Would you mind keeping quiet until we’ve finished?’ Whereupon the frogs replied: ‘We’ve just ended Matins and we are about to begin the First Hour. Would you mind keeping quiet until we’ve finished!’

Decline and Renewal: Threats and Hopes Having reflected on the natural environment, both inanimate and animate, of the Holy Mountain of Athos, let us turn our attention to the monks themselves. I am grateful that, on my first visit in 1961, I was in time to see Athos in what may be termed its ‘pre-​industrial era’. There were at that time virtually no roads suitable for vehicles, and indeed no actual vehicles to use such roads. The pilgrim, arriving at the port of Daphni, did not find a bus to take him up to the monastic capital of Karyes; he had to walk. But coming events cast their shadow before: on my second visit, in 1962, I found that a vehicle road from port to capital was under construction, in preparation for the celebrations of the Athonite millennium in 1963. In 1961 the only vehicle road was from the Russian monastery of St Panteleimonos, leading up far above to the woods that belonged to the monastery. The community had a lorry to bring down timber to the harbour. Through the modest sale of this timber the Russian monks hoped to raise a little money, for their economic position at that time was altogether dire. This road, however, did not connect St Panteleimonos with any of the other monasteries. With this one exception, I do not think that in 1961 any monastery possessed a lorry, Jeep, or Land Rover. I was told that the Serbian monastery had a tractor donated by Tito, but I never saw it.

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Alas! Today the situation has changed out of all recognition. A network of vehicular roads –​many of them ugly gashes across the hillside –​now joins all the twenty ‘ruling’ monasteries to one another, with the sole exceptions (as far as I know) of Grigoriou and Dionysiou, which have in any case outlets immediately on to the sea. Vehicles are to be found everywhere. The monks are surprised that I deliberately choose, whenever possible, to walk from one monastery to another, not out of voluntary asceticism, but because of the delight which such walks afford. They consider that this behaviour is unsuitable for a bishop. Other aspects of the ‘pre-​industrial era’ on Athos remain clearly in my memory. There was no electricity, and lighting was provided by oil lamps or candles. An electric system had been installed in Vatopedi in the 1920s or 1930s, but when I visited in 1961 it no longer worked. There was no running hot water in the monasteries; it had to be heated on a cauldron balanced on a primus stove. The monasteries were not connected directly to the outside world by telephone, although there was a primitive and inefficient telephone system joining the monasteries to each other. I believe that this was set up during the German occupation in World War II. It is easy to look back with nostalgia to the days of Athonite oil lamps, but more modern devices certainly have advantages from a practical point of view. There is, after all, nothing intrinsically numinous about primus stoves and oil lamps. Coming to Athos in 1961, all around me I saw evidence of decline. The monks constituted a shrinking and ageing population. Everywhere I was surrounded by grey beards, while the few beards that were black stood out as a marked exception. The fall in numbers was by no means new, but had started before World War I. In 1903 there were 7,432 monks, more than half of them non-​Greeks. By 1913 the number had dropped to 6,345: this was due mainly to the expulsion of some 800 Russian monks in the course of the dispute concerning ‘Glorifiers of the Name’ (Imyaslavtsy). Following the 1917 revolution, no more recruits came from Russia, and few Greeks chose to join the Athonite monasteries; in consequence, by 1943 there were only 2,878 monks, and by 1959 the number had fallen to 1,641. A low point was reached in 1971, by which time there were only 1,145. Most of

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these were over sixty years of age, and so there was every prospect that the decrease would continue. Surprisingly this did not happen. In 1972, for the first time since 1914, the number of monks actually increased, rising by a figure of one from 1,145 to 1,146. This upward movement has steadily continued since then, and today there are perhaps 2,000 monks on the Mountain. More importantly, these are not predominantly elderly, but are distributed more or less evenly among the different age groups. Indeed, there are monasteries where it is difficult to discover a grey beard among the serried ranks of black whiskers. Recently the overall numbers have ceased to grow noticeably; there has, however, been no significant diminution. This growth in numbers has been accompanied by a major alteration of spiritual atmosphere in the different communities. In almost all the monasteries that I visited during my visits in the 1960s, on a practical level there was a lack of hope among the monks, an absence of any expectation that the demographic situation would improve. Those with whom I spoke did not doubt that the Mountain enjoyed the special blessing of Christ and His Mother; but they viewed the future with quiet resignation rather than with any sense of confidence. I remember, for example, a conversation I had in 1968 with Fr Evdokimos, the senior epitropos in the monastery of Philotheou (it was at that time idiorrhythmic). ‘We are seventeen monks here,’ he said, ‘but we are mostly old men, and so all the work has to be done by about three or four. I am afraid that Athos will soon become like the monasteries of Egypt –​just ruins.’ (In fact since then there has been a notable revival of monasticism in the Coptic Church of Egypt; but that is another story.) I do not hear any of the Athonite monks speaking today in the way that Fr Evdokimos did fifty years ago. Today, combined with the quest for inner stillness, there is among the monks a sense of practical purpose, of dynamic energy. Sometimes one hears the phrase ‘springtime in the garden of the Panagia’, and this aptly describes the prevailing mood. Everywhere buildings are being restored –​sometimes, I fear, unwisely: there was a disastrous example some time ago at Dionysiou when a substantial part of the attractive external balconies was destroyed. But at any rate there are no longer the signs of structural decay that were all too apparent in the

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1960s. There is better sanitation in the quarters both of the monks and of the visitors; there are proper washing facilities, with hot water, and there is electric light. In most monasteries there is a welcome improvement in the cooking: no longer do lukewarm beans form the main staple of the diet, but eggs, green salads, and fresh fruit are usually provided. As for the monks themselves, there has been an evident change in educational level. In 1961, throughout the whole of Athos, I doubt whether more than a dozen monks had received a university education. Today in virtually every community there are members with university degrees –​not exclusively in theology but often in subjects such as medicine, law, or politics –​and there are a number who have studied outside Greece in western centres of learning. Several are authors of substantial doctrinal texts. Some of us, recalling the humble simplicity and the purity of the vision found so notably among the monks of an earlier era, may feel that there has been a certain loss. Needless to say, university education does not necessarily produce good monks. Yet so long as Athos contained virtually no monks who had pursued higher studies, it was difficult for the Mountain to provide the articulate inspiration and leadership that are so greatly needed by the Church at large. One of the most encouraging changes has been in the liturgical worship on Athos. In the 1960s, despite the lack of younger monks, the daily round of services was conscientiously performed in full; but often this was done in a hurried and perfunctory manner. A non-​Orthodox visitor said to me in 1961, ‘They perform their worship as a duty, but without joy.’ I thought this unduly harsh, but I saw his point. Now, however, in almost every monastic house the outward prayer life is markedly different. The standard of singing is greatly improved; the reading of the Psalms is more intelligible; the ceremonial actions are carried out with greater reverence; there is less talking in church. Most important of all, there has been a decisive revival of frequent communion. When I first visited the Mountain in 1961, it was the practice almost everywhere for the monks to receive the sacrament no more than once every forty days, that is to say, ten times a year, even though the Liturgy was celebrated daily, except in Lent.10 It was also the custom for them to 10 Among the twenty ruling monasteries at that time, the only exception to the

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observe before communion a strict fast of two or three days, without any use of oil in cooking. Since oil is allowed on all Saturdays throughout the year, with the sole exception of Holy Saturday (the Saturday immediately before Easter), this meant that, apart from Easter day, the monks never received communion on Sunday, but as a rule on Saturday. This was surely a strange anomaly. On my first visit to Athos, I attended the feast of the Nativity of the Mother of God (8/​21 September) at the Great Lavra. If I recall rightly, the feast fell on a Sunday. There was an all-​night vigil, with the participation of some eight priests and four deacons. But, when we came to the Liturgy, this was served by a single priest, without a deacon. At the moment of Holy Communion, out of a congregation of about 150, monks and lay pilgrims, to my astonishment not a single person came forward to receive the sacrament. I had a sad feeling of anticlimax. Today it is unthinkable that this should happen at a great feast in any of the main Athonite houses. At Simonopetra, for example, it is the norm for lay monks to receive Holy Communion two or three times a week. Throughout the Mountain there has been a true Eucharistic renaissance.11 What has been the main reason for this increase in the number of monks on the Holy Mountain, and for the renewal of the spiritual and liturgical life? Among the various possible answers, the most significant reason in my view has been the presence on Athos, over the past fifty years, of charismatic elders (gerontes), endowed with the gifts of discernment and pastoral guidance. The ministry of the abba (or ‘father in God’) has been a constant feature of Eastern monasticism from the time of the first monks such as St Antony and St Makarios of Egypt in the fourth century

11

forty-​day practice was at Dionysiou, where, under the guidance of great Abbot Gabriel, the monks received communion once every two weeks. There may also have been more frequent communion in a few of the hermitages. On reception of the Eucharist on Athos see Hieromonk Patapios and Archbishop Chrysostomos, Manna from Athos. The Issue of Frequent Communion on the Holy Mountain in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2006). St Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain (1748–​1809), along with other Athonite members of the Kollyvades movement, was a firm advocate of frequent communion, and indeed even of daily communion.

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up to the present day; but there have been periods of decline followed by periods of revival. On Athos the second half of the twentieth century has definitely been a period of revival. Prominent examples of such charismatic elders, from the 1960s onwards, are Fr Vasileios at Stavronikita and Iviron, Fr Aimilianos at Simonopetra, Fr George at Grigoriou, and Fr Ephraim at Philotheou (he has more recently established some sixteen monasteries in North America). It is a striking fact that, when Athonite monasteries have revived, this has been particularly in houses where the abbot is endowed with the gift of eldership. Today young people drawn to the monastic life are attracted not so much by the abbey as by the abba. They are looking, not primarily for a famous house with a distinguished history, but for a personal guide. Spiritual fathers on the Holy Mountain are of course to be found not only in the main monasteries but in the sketes such as Great and Little St Anne’s and Kafsokalyvia. One such geronta, in the middle of the twentieth century, was Fr Joseph of New Skete (1898–​1959). He gathered round himself a group of disciples who practised the Jesus prayer with special devotion. Setting out from New Skete, his followers have played an important role throughout the Mountain and elsewhere. More recently, a greatly revered elder was the hermit Paisios (1924–​94), who was glorified as a saint in 2015. I shall never forget the two hours that I spent with him in 1971, when we spoke at length about St Isaac the Syrian. I was greatly struck by his lightness of heart and his spirit of joy.

Guarding the Walls What, finally, has been the contribution of the Holy Mountain to the outside world? Although, as already noted, there are now well-​educated monks on Athos who are authors of serious spiritual works, the Holy Mountain is by no means a centre of scholarship, in any way comparable to the Benedictine Maurist congregation in eighteenth-​century France. What is said by Fr Theoklitos of Dionysiou, a leading Athonite

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spokesman in the mid-​twentieth century, is basically true, although somewhat overstated: In the Eastern Church, the existence of the ‘scholar’ monk is quite unknown … The monk finds no justification, under the ascetic and mystical theology that has been developed by the Fathers, except as a worker of virtue, as a contemplative soul called by God, giving to his brethren in Christ, because of his love for them, out of the abundance of his experience of the divine … Hence, the cell of the monk is not a room for scholarly research and writing, but a place for prayer, work, meditation and the tempering of the soul for special spiritual struggles, in an unworldly, solitary, quiet region.12

Much more important than scholarship and literary work is the provision of hospitality by the Athonite monasteries. From the earliest beginnings of monasticism this has been seen, in both East and West, as an integral part of the monastic vocation. As St Benedict of Nursia insists in his Rule, ‘Let all guests be received as Christ Himself, for He says “I was a stranger, and you welcomed me” (Matt. 25: 35).’13 Such also is the tradition of the Mountain. Abbot Gabriel of Dionysiou once said to me, ‘We divide all the money received by the monastery into three equal parts: one third for upkeep of the buildings, one third for the monks, one third for hospitality to visitors and pilgrims.’ Yet here there is today a major difficulty. In the past the majority of the visitors were genuine pilgrims and, because travel was difficult, their number was relatively restricted. When I stayed for a week at Great Lavra during October 1962, for the whole of that time I was the only visitor. Today, especially throughout the summer, the main monasteries are all but overwhelmed by a constant influx of visitors. Despite a strict quota system, the numbers are disturbingly large: perhaps nearly a hundred each night at the more accessible houses. What is more, most of these visitors are tourists rather than pilgrims; they come to Athos out of curiosity rather than religious devotion. The monks do their best to cope with this 12 Quoted in C. Cavarnos, Anchored in God. An Inside Account of Life, Art, and Thought on the Holy Mountain of Athos (Athens:  Astir/​Papademetriou, 1959), 210–​12. 13 Benedict, Regula Monachorum, §53.

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incursion, but the inevitable result is that one no longer finds on Athos the stillness and silence that was such an impressive feature on my visits to the Mountain fifty years ago. It is only to be expected that those who come to the Holy Mountain as genuine pilgrims are in many cases not content simply to attend the church services and to venerate the icons and relics, but they also hope to find monks to whom they can open their hearts, and from whose words they can receive healing. This brings us to a second way, alongside hospitality, in which Athonite monasticism serves the Christian community at large. From the very beginning of its history the Mountain has nurtured elders, charismatic guides who can offer spiritual direction. We have already spoken of the crucial role played by these elders in the revival of monastic life on Athos during the past half-​century. Not only do these elders provide assistance to the monks permanently resident on the Mountain, but they also minister to the many pilgrims who seek them out. But the visitor should not expect that he will easily and casually discover such elders. Often they are hidden. It is of course true that the ministry of eldership is not limited to monks. Spiritual guides are to be found among the married clergy and in monasteries for women as well as men, and likewise among the laity, both men and women. There are many ammas as well as abbas. But it can justly be claimed that the Mountain, while enjoying no monopoly, is yet to a pre-​eminent degree a centre where such Spirit-​filled counsellors are to be found. What is it that enables someone to act as a spiritual father or mother? It is above all their entry into the deep mystery of inner prayer. The true geronta is not merely someone who says prayers from time to time, but someone who is prayer all the time, a living flame of prayer, without interruption day and night, whether in solitude or in the company of others. And so we come to a third way in which Athos serves the world. Today, as in the past, the Holy Mountain continues to be an oasis of living prayer. I am not thinking only of intercessory prayer, although this does indeed play a prominent role in the prayer life of the Athonite monk. Yet beyond this all prayer –​not only prayer of intercession and petition but prayer that is exclusively contemplative –​supports and strengthens the Christian community as a whole. Every place where genuine prayer is offered, and par excellence each of the monasteries and hermitages of

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the Mountain, acts as a focal point, a powerhouse of noetic electricity, that renders the desert of the secular world less arid and forlorn. This, in the last resort, is the only way in which a monastic centre such as Athos can find its justification and raison d’être. For those who do not believe in the value of prayer, monastic life on the Holy Mountain will appear futile and pointless, a perverse waste of human talent. But for those who believe that the world is upheld by the prayers of the saints, the Mountain is indeed providing a service to the world that is creative and indispensable. The value of the Holy Mountain, and equally of every monastic house of prayer, is well illustrated in a story from fourth-​century Egypt. When the young Palladios was suffering from discouragement, he went to see his spiritual father Makarios of Alexandria and said to him, ‘Father, what shall I do? For my thoughts afflict me, saying: You are making no progress, go away from here.’ Makarios replied, ‘Tell your thoughts: For Christ’s sake I am guarding the walls.’14 I am guarding the walls: the Church is like a city; the monks are sentinels on the walls, keeping watch so that the other inhabitants of the city can pursue their occupations in safety and security. Against whom are the monks guarding the walls? The monks of Athos have a clear and specific answer: against the demons, who are the common enemies of humankind. The warfare waged by monks against the forces of evil is thus a battle fought on behalf of every one of us alike. With what weapons do the monks fight? With the weapon of prayer, and beyond that with the totality of their ascetic dedication and their personal sanctification. Such in essence is the way in which the Athonite monk assists the world: not so much by what he does as by what he is; not actively but existentially; not primarily by preaching, teaching, writing, or by external works of mercy, but by his very existence, by his continual prayer of the heart. Because there are persons of living prayer on the slopes of Mount Athos, our lives wherever we may be –​in North Oxford, in Chelsea, or Camden Town –​are rendered more stable, more fruitful, more joyful. We are never alone. Let us bless God for our Athonite companions, for the mystical support of our monastic partners and fellow workers.

14

Palladios of Helenopolis, The Lausiac History 18, section 29.

Notes on Contributors

anna conomos-​wedlock is a performance storyteller, coach, and author of Greek-​Australian descent, born in Canada, and living in London. Anna works internationally and delights in collecting stories both fantastical and real-​life and bringing them to life on the stage, screen, and page. douglas dales is a parish priest in the diocese of Oxford, having been for many years Chaplain of Marlborough College. He is the author of several studies of Anglo-​Saxon church history as well as a recent trilogy of studies of St Bonaventure. He was Chairman of the Friends of Mount Athos from 2021 to 2023. veronica della dora teaches in the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research interests and publications span cultural and historical geography with a specific focus on landscape, sacred space, and the geographical imagination. Her monographs include Imagining Mount Athos: Visions of a Holy Place from Homer to World War II (2011), Landscape, Nature and the Sacred in Byzantium (2016), and The Mantle of the Earth:  Genealogies of a Geographical Metaphor (2021). rory fraser is an architectural historian, painter, and presenter. His first book, Follies: An Architectural Journey, was published in 2020. He lives in London. rené gothóni is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Religion at the University of Helsinki, a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge, and a life member of the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters. His publications include The Unknown Pilgrim (2006) and Words Matter: Hermeneutics in the Study of Religions (2011). He also edited How to do Comparative Religion (2005), The Monastic Magnet: Roads to and from Mount Athos (with Graham Speake, 2008), Pilgrims and Travellers in Search of the Holy (2010), and Religious Experience North and South (2012).

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† metropolitan kallistos of diokleia was until he retired in 2001 Spalding Lecturer in Eastern Orthodox Studies at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Pembroke College. He was a monk of the monastery of St John the Theologian on Patmos and an assistant bishop in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain. His publications included The Orthodox Church (3rd edn. 2015) and The Orthodox Way (2nd edn. 1995) and together with Gerald Palmer and Philip Sherrard he was editor and translator of The Philokalia, 5 vols (1979–​2023). He was President of the Friends of Mount Athos until his repose in August 2022. sister magdalen studied theology and in 1975 joined the monastic Community of St John the Baptist founded by Archimandrite Sophrony (recognized as a saint by the Ecumenical Patriarch in 2019). Among other tasks she is involved in translation and in teaching the children whose families attend church at the monastery on Sundays. archimandrite methodios was born in 1970 in Čačak, Serbia, and studied electrical engineering at the University of Belgrade before joining Hilandar monastery as a novice in 1994. Tonsured a monk in 1995, he served as epitropos from 1998, to be elected abbot in April 2010. Recognized as an author and a theological thinker, he often lectures and officiates at Serbian and other Orthodox gatherings in the world. metropolitan nikolaos of mesogaia & lavreotiki holds degrees in physics, astrophysics, mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering and hemodynamics, and bioethics. His profound quest for God led him to Mount Athos, where he was tonsured a monk. There, in the persons of unknown ascetics and simple monks, he recognized the uniqueness and truth of the Orthodox faith. He is chairman of the Bioethics Committee of the Church of Greece and Church representative on various bioethical committees. In 2004 he was elected Metropolitan of Mesogaia & Lavreotiki, in Attica, Greece. graham speake studied classics at Trinity College, Cambridge, and wrote a doctoral thesis at Christ Church, Oxford, on the Byzantine transmission of ancient Greek literature. His publications include the Penguin Dictionary of Ancient History (1995), the Encyclopedia of Greece and the

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Hellenic Tradition, 2 vols (2000), Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise (2nd edn. 2014), and A History of the Athonite Commonwealth: The Spiritual and Cultural Diaspora of Mount Athos (2018). He is President of the Friends of Mount Athos. chris thomas FRGS, FRSA, is a seasoned path-​clearer, Vice-​Chairman of the Friends of Mount Athos, and co-​editor (with Peter Howorth) of Encounters on the Holy Mountain (2020). He is a very proud father of three, owner of Dexter the ridgeback, and a huge Arsenal fan.

Index

Abban 22 Abraham  8, 21  Adam 67  Adamnan, abbot of Iona  25, 26  Aelberht, archbishop of York  27  Aethelmod, priest  28  Aethelstan, king of England  29, 30  Africa  104, 130  Agha of Athos  38  Agilulf, cross of  21  Aidan, St  23  Aimilianos, Elder  15, 103–​9, 148  Alaska 10  Alcuin  26–​8,  29  Alexandria 25  Alphege, St, archbishop of Canterbury 30  Amalfitans, monastery of  17  America, North  65, 148  Ammouliani  111–​13  Anastasia, St  56–​7  Anastasios, archbishop of Albania  104  andartes 47  Anderson, Isabel  40–​1  Andrew, St  114  Andronikos II Palaiologos, emperor  44  Anglo–​Saxons  23,  31  animals  107, 131, 141  Antony, St  147  Arculf, bishop  25, 26  Arians 20  ‘ark of Orthodoxy’  48  Arsenios the Great  82  Arsenios, Elder  130  Ascension  133, 135 

church of the, Athens  103  Asia Minor  26, 49, 103, 104  Athanasios the Athonite, St  134  Athens  58, 103–​4, 131  Athos, peak of  118, 121–​4, 132–​3, 138–​9  Augustine, St  21, 24  Australia  14, 105, 115  avaton  34, 41, 54  Bairre 22 Balkan War, First  37  baptism  1, 9, 10, 21, 26, 53, 103  Bartholomew, Patriarch  14  Basil, St  85  Bede  23–​6  Belgium  54, 56  bells  108, 115  Benedict, St  1  Rule of  24, 83, 149  Benedict Biscop  23–​4, 27  Benedictines  17, 25, 148  Bertha, queen of Kent  21  Bethesda, pool of  136  Bethlehem 18  star of  106  Bethsaida 26  Birmingham 107  Bobbio, monastery of  22  Boniface, St  26  Boniface IV, Pope  22  Bordeaux pilgrim  18  Bowen, George Ferguson  36  Bregenz 22  Brigit, St  85  Britain  23, 25, 44 

158 Britanny 21  Bulgaria 65  burial 96  Caesarea 26 Cana 26  canon law  13  Canterbury  21, 24, 30  Capernaum 26  Cappadocia  8, 15, 103  Carmel, Mount  133, 135  catastrophe, Asia Minor  44  catechumens 64  Catholic Church  119  cenobitic monasticism  84, 85, 90, 104  Ceolfrid 25  Charlemagne  19, 26, 27, 28, 29  Charles III, King  66, 73, 118  Chester–​le–​Street  30  children  108–​9,  131  Choisy, Maryse  34  Christmas 6  Chromitsa 141  Chrysostomides, Julian  33–​4  Civil War, Greek  44, 46  Codex Amiatinus  25  Colman Ela  22  Columba, St  22, 25  Columbanus, St  21–​2  Commandments, Ten  133, 135  communio sanctorum 31  Communists 47  confession  63, 86, 90, 105, 119, 150  Conomos, Danae  103  Conomos, Dimitri  103, 113  Conomos–​Wedlock, Anna  103–​9  Constantine, Emperor  18, 19  Constantinople  14, 15, 17, 21, 25, 26, 36  Constas, Fr Maximos  63  Coptic Church  145  Corfu  36, 38 

Index Corinth 26  Covid–​19 pandemic  3, 6, 62, 77, 86, 95, 99, 111–​12, 119  Crimean War  92  Cross, True  17, 18, 20  Crucifixion 51  Crusades 19  Cuthbert, St  30  Cyneweard, bishop  28  Cyprus 26  Dales, Douglas  17–​31 Damascus  25, 26  Damasus, Pope  19  Daphni  71, 91, 111–​12, 143  deification  82, 134  Della Dora, Veronica  2, 33–​59  desert of Athos  123–​4  Desert Fathers  67  Desmond, Peter  77  Devil  67–​8  Dionysios, metropolitan of Trikala  104–​6  Dionysiou, monastery of  39, 52, 53, 92, 144, 145  Diplarakou, Alike  34  Dochiariou, monastery of  39  Dormition 106  Dostoevsky, Fyodor  140  Doussikou, monastery of  104  Dunstan, St  28, 30  archbishop of Canterbury  29, 30  abbot of Glastonbury  29  Durham 30  Eadred, king of the English  30 Eanbald, archbishop of York  27  Easter  50–​1, 69–​70, 108, 147  date of  23  eggs 49  Eden, Garden of  67 

159

Index Edgar, king of England  28  Edmund, king of the English  30  Edwy, king of England  29  Egbert 23  Egeria  5, 18, 26  Egypt 145  Eichstatt 26  elders  147–​8,  150  Elias, Fr  118  Elijah 133  Ely, monastery of  30  Emesa 26  England  17, 23, 24, 26–​31, 65  Ephesus 26  Ephraim of Katounakia, St  123–​4, 130, 134  Ephraim, sometime abbot of Philotheou  84, 148  Ephstathios, Fr  115–​19  Epirus 48  Ethelbert, king of Kent  21  Etheldreda, Northumbrian queen  30  Ethelwold, St, bishop of Winchester  30  Eucharist 6  Euthymios, Venerable  84  Evdokimos, Fr  145  Eve 67  exchange of populations  103  Fall of man  67–​8, 88 fasting  14, 75, 87, 90, 99, 115, 147  Finland 65  Finns 71  Flanders 29  Fleury  monastery of St Benedict  29  ‘floating pilgrimage’  2, 35, 53–​8  Florence  Laurentian library  25  food  115, 116  fool for Christ  8 

France  24, 148  Fraser, Rory  111–​19  Fridolin, St  22  Friends of Mount Athos  6, 77–​8, 87  frogs  142–​3  Gabriel, abbot of Dionysiou  92, 149 Galilee 26  Gall, St  22  Gallipoli 36  Gaul  21, 25  George, abbot of Grigoriou  148  German 81  Germans  46, 48, 138  Germany 26  Gothóni, René  3, 57, 61–​74  Graham, Stephen  11–​12  Greece  26, 100, 103  Greeks  62, 144  Greenwich 30  Gregory of Nyssa, St  5–​6, 8, 10, 12  Gregory Palamas, St  72–​3, 134  Gregory the Great, Pope  17, 18, 20, 21, 22  Gregory III, Pope  26  Grigoriou, monastery of  39, 144, 148  Guinness 114  hadji 14 Hadrian I, Pope  28  Hamwich 26  Harrison, Jane Ellen  42–​3  Hasluck, Frederick William  37  Heidenheim, monastery of  26  Helena, St  5, 18  Herman of Alaska, St  10  hermits  39, 46, 90, 140, 142  hesychia  82, 95, 121, 126, 134  Hilandar, monastery of  3, 91, 95–​101, 141, 143  typikon  96–​7  hippies 61 

160 Holy Communion  12, 63–​4, 73, 127,  146–​7  Holy Fathers of Mount Athos, feast of  90  Holy Land  8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 25, 29, 35  Holy Spirit  14, 115  hospitality  1, 28, 72, 81–​101, 149  humility 86  Huneberc, English nun  26  Hungary 127  Hussey, Joan  33  iconostasis 117 icons  2, 7, 9, 10–​11, 13, 24, 31, 46, 63, 75, 98, 117, 118, 122, 129, 130, 135, 136, 150  imitatio Christi 63  internet  36, 53, 56, 58  Iona, monastery of  23, 25, 140  Ireland  21–​3, 44, 85  Irene Chrysovalantou, St  14  Isaac the Syrian, St  68, 87, 148  Isaiah, Fr  121  Italian 81  Italy  26, 27, 29  Iviron, monastery of  38, 69–​70, 122  James, St  15 Janković, Vladeta  ix, 99–​100  Jelena, Serbian queen  34  Jerome, St  5, 8, 12, 14, 15  Jerome, Elder  92  Jerusalem  5, 10, 11, 12, 17, 18, 20, 25, 26, 31, 140  Jesus Christ  1, 7, 9, 13, 15, 26, 81, 83, 85, 98, 104, 133, 135, 145, 149  Jesus prayer  8, 105, 121, 134  Jews  46, 48  John, St  8  John the Baptist, St  52 

Index John, abbot of Sinai monastery  18  Jordan, river  14, 26  Joseph the Hesychast, St  130, 134, 148  Joseph of Vatopedi, Elder  85  Justinian, Emperor  18  Kafsokalyvia 148 Kallistos, metropolitan of Diokleia see Ware  Karakallou, monastery of  70, 122  Karoulia 140  Karyes  47, 71, 113, 122, 143  katholikon 64  Khomiakov, Aleksei  137  Kiev 17  Kildare, monastery of  85  Kodiak Island  10  Komnenos, John  63  Kosmas the Aetolian, St  134  Kotse, Philarete  53–​8  Lagoude, Maria  58–​9 Lakkou, skete of  122  Lavra, Great, monastery of  58–​9, 70, 121, 122, 125, 147, 149  Lee, Hermione  40  Lemnos 104  Lent, Great  124, 146  Leo III, Pope  27, 28  Lerins, monastery of  24  Lesbos 38  Lewis, C. S.  13  Lindisfarne 23  Little St Anne’s  128, 148  Loch, Joyce Nankivell  44–​50, 54, 56, 58  Loch, Sidney  44–​6  Lombards  20, 21  London 58  Louth, Andrew  ix  Lucca 26  Luxeuil, monastery of  22 

161

Index Magdalen, Sister  2, 5–​15 Makarios of Alexandria, St  151  Makarios of Egypt, St  147  manuscripts 33  Maraval, Pierre  5  Martin of Tours, St  20  Martin, John–​Francis  111–​12,  116  martyrs  9, 19, 20, 23, 24, 27, 117  Mary of Egypt, St  107  Mary Magdalene, St  7, 106  Maximos of Kafsokalyvia, St  134  Meletios, Fr  125–​31  Mellou, Erato Aikaterine  48–​58  metanoia 57  Meteora  15, 61, 104  Mega Meteoron  105  Methodios, abbot of Hilandar  3, 81–​101  Miletus 26  millennium of Athos  97, 143  miracles  6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 31, 54, 55, 92, 117, 135, 136  Mitrophanes of Hilandar, Elder  98–​9  Modestos, St  107  Monkwearmouth-​Jarrow monastery  23, 24  Monte Cassino monastery  26  Monza Cathedral  20  Morphonou 122  mosaics  20, 45  Moscow 58  Kremlin 113  Moses  133, 135  Moses the Black  82  Mother of God see Virgin Mary  Mozarabic 19  music  24, 31, 109, 117  Naples 26 Nativity of Christ  18  Nativity of the Mother of God  147  Nazareth 26 

Nevill, Mrs Charles H.  40–​3  New Skete  148  New York  58  Nicanoros of Hilandar, Elder  97–​8  Nicholas of Cusa  17  Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain, St 134  Nikodemos, Fr  113, 114  Nikodimi, abbess of Ormylia  106  Nikolaos, Metroplitan of Mesogaia & Lavreotiki  3, 121–​36  Nikon, Fr  140  Niphon II, Patriarch  52  non-​Orthodox pilgrims  1, 2, 61, 64, 71–​3, 117, 146  Normans 30  nous  67–​8,  74  novices  89, 99, 105  obedience  85, 88, 134 Ocean, St  130  Offa, king of Mercia  27  Olives, Mount of  133, 135  Ormylia, monastery of the Annunciation  1,  103–​9  typikon 84  Osterrieth, Anne  61  Oswald, king of Northumbria  23, 24, 25  Oswald, archbishop of York  28, 29  Ouranoupolis  35, 44–​51, 53–​4, 56, 58, 112, 141  Oxford  103, 111, 116  Pachomios, St  87, 89 Paisios the Athonite, St  89, 134, 148  Palestine 10  Palladios 151  Palladius 18  Palmer, Gerald  141  Panagia, chapel of  121, 122, 138  pan-​Orthodoxy  2 

162 Pantokrator, monastery of  122  Parma 27  path-​clearing pilgrimage  2,  75–​9  Patmos 140  Patrick, St  22  Paul, St  7, 10, 12, 21, 22, 86  Paula of Rome  5–​6  Paulinus of Nola  20  peregrinus 62  Peter, St  21, 22, 24, 82  Peter the Deacon of Monte Cassino  26  Peter’s Pence  28  Pfäfers, monastery of  29  Philip, Prince  118  Philokalia  67, 140, 141  Philotheou, monastery of  122, 145  philoxenia see hospitality  Photeine the Hermit  34–​5  Photius II, Patriarch  34  photography  38, 41, 42, 43, 55, 57, 93  Piacenza 18  pilgrims, numbers of  53, 62, 94, 99  Piraeus 103  Poland 44  Poles 46  population, monastic  144–​5  Porphyrios, St  13, 134  prayer rope  9, 42, 43, 107  Prophet Elijah, skete of  141  proskynema  63, 69, 72–​4  Provata 122  Psalms  129, 133, 146  Quakers 44 quota system  3, 61  Red Cross, Greek  48 refectory  65, 75, 115–​16  Reichenau, monastery of  29  refugees  44–​5 

Index relics  2, 9, 12, 17–​21, 24, 27, 29–​31, 52, 53, 55–​7, 63, 135, 150  Resurrection of Christ  14, 18, 51, 69  Romania 46  Romanians  122, 127  Romanitas 21  Romanovs  113–​14  Rome  5, 17, 20–​9, 31  Appian Way  19  Aurelian walls  27–​8  Caelian hill  24  catacombs 19  churches  19, 24–​5, 27, 29  St Peter’s basilica  26, 28, 29  Via Ostia  19  Rouen 26  Royal Holloway College  33  rug-​weaving  45  Russia  8, 65, 92, 114  Russian 81  Russians  11, 62, 63–​4, 144  Rusticiana 18  sacraments  7, 9, 12 St Andrew, skete of  113–​14  St Anna, skete of  53, 71, 121, 122, 138, 142, 148  St Anthony, monastery of, Arizona  84  St Athanasios the Athonite, cave of  121  St Eustochium, monastery of  26  St Gall, monastery of  29  St John the Baptist, monastery of, Essex 86  St John the Theologian, cell of  124–​31  St John Chrysostomos, cell of  91  St Panteleimon, monastery of  39, 92, 93, 143  St Paul, monastery of  39, 122, 123  Saints Theodore, monastery of  105–​6  Salinger, J. D.  8  Saracens 26 

163

Index Sava, St  95–​8  Savva, Elder  128  Schmemann, Alexander  9  Scotland 113  semandron  52, 88, 108  Seraphim of Sarov, St  10, 107  Serbia  65, 98  Serbian  81, 95  Serbs  99, 100  Sherrard, Philip  141  Sicily 26  Sigeric, archbishop of Canterbury  29  Siloam, pool of  136  Simeon, St  95  Simon the Myrrh-​bearer, St  106  Simonopetra, monastery of  15, 39, 103, 105, 121, 122, 125–​6, 147  repopulated 106  Sinai, Mount  5, 17, 18–​19, 133, 135  Sinn Fein war  44  Sithonia  38, 56, 125  snakes  127, 129, 141–​2  Solomon, King  130  Sophrony the Athonite, St  6, 7, 10, 86, 134  Spain 18  Sporades, Northern  125  Spyridon, St  12  starets 88  Stavronikita, monastery of  38, 71, 122  Stavros  121, 122  Stefan Dušan, Serbian emperor  34  Sulpicius Severus  20  Switzerland 22  Synaxaria 134  Syria 26  Tabor, Mount  26, 134, 135 Talbot, Alice–​Mary  59  Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich  113  Theodolinda, Queen  20, 21 

Theodora Spana  14  Theodore the Studite, St  96  Theoklitos of Dionysiou, Fr  148–​9  theosis see deification  Theotokos Evergetis, monastery of  96  Thessaloniki  36, 37, 44, 48, 49, 58  Thomas, Chris  2, 75–​9  Tiberias 26  Tinos 13  Tito, Josip Broz  143  tourists  14–​15, 18, 35, 38, 40–​2, 49, 52–​5, 57–​8, 61–​74, 99, 149  Transfiguration  9, 134, 135  chapel of  122, 139  feast of  121  Trikala 105  Turkey 103  Turks  36, 44  Turner, Victor  65–​6  typika  83–​4, 86, 91, 94, 95–​6  Vancouver 103 van Gennep, Arnold  66  Vasileios of Stavronikita and Iviron, Fr 148  Vatopedi, monastery of  44, 85, 106, 114–​19,  144  Vienna 37  vigil  116–​17, 122, 134, 147  Vikings 30  Virgin Mary  44, 97, 107, 115, 145  girdle  52, 118  miraculous apparitions  93  Vulgate Bible  25  Walsingham 140 Ware, Metropolitan Kallistos  3, 47, 87–​8,  92  Way of a Pilgrim  8, 63, 70  Wharton, Edith  37–​43, 44, 52, 57  Wharton, Edward Robbins  37 

164 Whitby, Synod of  23  Wilfrid, bishop  23  Willibald, bishop  26  Willibrord, St  23  Winchester  Hyde Abbey  30  New Minster  30  shrine of St Swithun  28, 30  wine  115, 116  women  as pilgrims  1, 27, 50, 52, 54–​5, 57–​8  banned on Athos  33–​59 see also avaton 

Index on Athos  34, 47  World War I  144  World War II  46, 144  Xenophontos, monastery of  39 Xeropotamou, monastery of  39  York  26, 27  ‘Zoe’ movement  104