Mount Athos

DIMITRI CONOMOS

Located in northern Greece, the peninsula of Athos has for more than 1,000 years been the principal center of male monasticism for all Orthodox Churches. Since Byzantine times it has offered its diverse landscape to religious habitations for Albanians, Bulgarians, Geor­gians, Greeks, Moldavians, Russians, Serbs, and Wallachians. Exceptionally, a Benedic­tine monastery operated there from the 10th to the 14th centuries.

Athos is dedicated to and protected by the Virgin Mary. Of the twenty ruling monasteries existing today (many more are known from earlier times), seventeen are Greek, one Serbian, one Russian, and one Bulgarian. Each monastery sends an elected representative for twelve months to Karyes, the capital of the peninsula, where, in the building of the Holy Community, adminis­trative decisions ofpan-Athonite concern are made. Otherwise each monastery is a self­governing, independent entity within the monastic federation.

Aside from Athos’s monasteries there are other smaller settlements, each of which functions as a dependency of one of the twenty main houses. First are the sketes. Typ­ically, a skete is a compound containing three to six cottages – each of which may have from around two to ten monks – clus­tered around a church, known as the Kyriakon (a monastery church is called the Katholikon). Every cottage has its own chapel: services are conducted by its inhabi­tants on weekdays. On Saturday evening and Sunday morning, however, the entire population of the skete worship together in the Kyriakon. Because the number of monasteries has been fixed by charter at twenty, the term “skete” has been given to a number of large edifices, such as the Skete of St. Andrew (formerly Russian, now Greek) which is under Vatopedi Monastery, and that of Prodromou (Romanian) which is under the Great Lavra. In all respects these large foundations look and function like monasteries.

After the sketes come the isolated cells (kellia) – small domiciles with integrated chapels that house one or two monks. Then the smaller huts (kalyves or kathismata), and finally the solitary, some­what inaccessible hermitages (hesy- chasteria) and caves (spelaia) for those who have received a blessing to live the ascetic life entirely in seclusion. The parent monasteries care for these dependencies by providing, whenever necessary, food and clothing. In most cases, however, these dwellers are self-sufficient: some cultivate vegetable patches and orchards; others engage in handicraft (wood and metalwork) or icon painting.

Prayer life in the monastery follows the sequence of services for the year as arranged in the church hymnals. Katholikon worship is mostly from sunset to sunrise (with breaks for ameal and time in one’s cell) – an arrangement that leaves all of daylight for monastic work and other duties (diakonimata). This system of monastic life is known as cenobitic and requires that all monks pray, work, and eat in common. The dependencies, however, are idiorhythmic: there is

more flexibility in how a day is divided up. Weekday worship here concentrates on the steady repetition of the Jesus Prayer instead of the canonical hours. On Sundays and feasts the appointed liturgical services are celebrated in the normal way.

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Sherrard, P. (1960) Athos, the Mountain of Silence.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sherrard, P. (1982) Athos: The Holy Mountain.

London: Sidgwick and Jackson.

Speake, G. (2002) Mount Athos: Renewal in

Paradise. New Haven: Yale University Press.