Mount Athos: The Monastic Republic Founded in 963

Mount Athos is a mountainous peninsula in northern Greece that has been the most important centre of Orthodox Christian monasticism for more than a thousand years. Its organised monastic life began in 963, when the monk Athanasios founded the Great Lavra with the backing of the general and future emperor Nikephoros Phokas. Today twenty monasteries form a self-governing community, the “Holy Mountain”, that preserves an unbroken tradition reaching back to the Byzantine Empire.

Hermits before the Lavra

Athos is the easternmost of the three fingers of the Chalkidiki peninsula, about 50 kilometres long and rising to a marble peak of 2,033 metres. Its forests and isolation attracted hermits by the 9th century. Pious legends tell of a visit by the Virgin Mary and of early hermits such as Peter the Athonite, but reliable evidence begins later.

In antiquity Athos was known for dangers rather than holiness. A Persian fleet was wrecked off its cape in 492 BC, and the Persian king Xerxes had a canal dug across its narrow neck before his invasion of Greece in 480 BC. Traces of the canal can still be seen on the isthmus north of the monastic territory.

In 883 the Byzantine emperor Basil I issued a document protecting the Athos hermits from shepherds and local officials, a sign that a recognised community already existed. Monks lived in scattered cells and small groups, meeting at Karyes in the centre of the peninsula, where a protos, or first monk, presided.

Athanasios and the Great Lavra

Athanasios, born in Trebizond around 920, became a monk and the spiritual father of the general Nikephoros Phokas. In 958 he came to Athos. After Nikephoros conquered Crete from the Arabs in 961, he provided money from the spoils for a monastery, and in 963, the year Nikephoros became emperor, Athanasios founded the Great Lavra near the southern tip of the peninsula.

A lavra originally meant a group of hermits’ cells around a church, but Athanasios’s foundation was a large coenobitic monastery, where monks lived communally under a rule, ate together and owned nothing personally. Some hermits resisted this change, but the emperor protected Athanasios. He died around 1000, killed when the dome of a church under construction collapsed.

Around 971–972 Emperor John I Tzimiskes issued the first typikon, or constitution, for the whole of Athos. Written on goatskin, it is known as the Tragos (“goat”) and is still kept at Karyes.

Growth of the Holy Mountain

Other great houses soon followed. Georgian monks, including John the Iberian, founded Iviron around 980; Vatopedi was established in the late 10th century. In 1198 the Serbian prince Stefan Nemanja, who had become the monk Simeon, and his son Sava founded Hilandar, which became the cradle of Serbian church culture, as told in Saint Sava and the Serbian Church. Bulgarians, Russians and others also founded or supported monasteries, making Athos a meeting place for the whole Orthodox world.

In 1045 or 1046 a chrysobull of Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos confirmed the ban on women and on beardless youths and female animals. The rule, known as the avaton, is still observed.

Trials and survival

Athos suffered from pirates and raiders throughout its history. After the Fourth Crusade’s sack of Constantinople in 1204, the Latin rulers of Thessalonica controlled the area for a time, and between 1307 and 1309 the Catalan Company of mercenaries plundered the peninsula.

In the 14th century Athos was the centre of hesychasm, a tradition of silent, inward prayer defended by the monk and later archbishop Gregory Palamas. The church councils of 1341 and 1351 in Constantinople upheld his teaching, which shaped Orthodox spirituality for centuries.

When the Ottomans advanced into Macedonia, the monks submitted to Sultan Murad II in 1430 and kept their privileges in return for taxes. Athos remained under Ottoman rule until 1912, when Greek forces took the peninsula during the First Balkan War.

Monastic life and organisation

The twenty ruling monasteries have a fixed order of precedence, headed by the Great Lavra, followed by Vatopedi, Iviron and Hilandar. Only these twenty own land on the peninsula. Around them are sketes, which are villages of monks or groups of houses around a central church, and kellia, individual cells, as well as remote hermitages clinging to the cliffs at the southern tip.

For several centuries from the late Middle Ages many monasteries followed the idiorrhythmic system, in which monks kept private property and ate separately. A revival in the 20th century returned all of them to the communal, coenobitic life of Athanasios’s original rule, the last converting in the early 1990s.

Daily life follows ancient patterns. The monasteries keep the Julian calendar, which runs thirteen days behind the Gregorian, and some still keep Byzantine time, in which the day begins at sunset. Services fill much of the night and early morning, and on great feasts all-night vigils can last twelve hours or more. Work in gardens, olive groves, workshops and guest houses takes up the rest of the day, and meals are eaten in silence while a monk reads aloud.

Treasures of Athos

The monasteries hold one of the richest collections of Byzantine and post-Byzantine art in existence: icons, liturgical objects, embroideries, wall paintings and reliquaries. The Protaton church at Karyes contains frescoes from around 1300, traditionally attributed to the painter Manuel Panselinos.

The libraries are equally important, with many thousands of Greek, Slavonic, Georgian and other manuscripts, including illuminated gospels and early texts. Much remains to be catalogued, and the monks have opened some collections to scholars and exhibitions.

Many treasures were gifts from emperors, Serbian and Georgian rulers, Romanian and Russian princes and wealthy donors over the centuries, who sought the monks’ prayers. Under Ottoman rule, when the monasteries were often in debt, support from the Orthodox princes of Wallachia and Moldavia was especially important in keeping them alive. Fires, raids and thefts have destroyed some objects, which makes what survives all the more valuable for historians of Byzantine art.

The Holy Mountain today

Athos is a self-governing part of Greece, recognised in the Greek constitution, with a civil governor appointed by the state. The Holy Community at Karyes, made up of representatives of the twenty ruling monasteries, manages internal affairs, while spiritual authority rests with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

The monk population fell sharply in the 20th century, to around 1,100 in the early 1970s, but has since recovered to about 1,500–2,000. Male pilgrims may visit with a permit called a diamonitirion, and numbers are limited each day. UNESCO inscribed Athos as a World Heritage Site in 1988.

Timeline

• 883: Basil I protects the Athos hermits by imperial document.
• 958: Athanasios arrives on Athos.
• 963: Athanasios founds the Great Lavra.
• c. 971–972: John I Tzimiskes issues the Tragos, the first typikon.
• c. 980: Iviron is founded by Georgian monks.
• 1198: Hilandar is founded by Stefan Nemanja and Sava.
• 1307–1309: Catalan Company raids Athos.
• 1430: The monks submit to Murad II.
• 1912: Athos passes to Greece.
• 1988: Inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Why it matters

Mount Athos is a living link with Byzantium. Its monasteries preserved Orthodox spirituality, art and learning through crusades, Ottoman rule and modern upheavals, and they influenced Serbian, Bulgarian, Russian and Georgian Christianity, much like Rila Monastery did in Bulgaria.