"Are you Orthodox?" (Part 1)

Many Septembers ago, I had a month to kill between the end of a judicial clerkship and the start of my first law firm job.  What else to do but spend the month in Greece?

Nowadays, memories of that long-ago trip keep flooding back.  Perhaps they're a reflexive antidote to the awful daily news from Greece -- the shattered economy, the austere hopeless future, the overwhelming flood of Middle Eastern refugees.

Zeus, in the form of a bull,
hooking up with Europa

Things were very different in 1980.  Greece was vibrant and full of hope.  European Union membership was less than a year away and seemed to be on everyone’s mind.  At last, Greece was going to take its place as a proper European nation.  The very name “Europe,” Greeks were quick to tell you, derived from cow-eyed Europa, the Theban princess whom Zeus abducted to Crete for amorous amusement.

But behind the bravado, Greeks were unsure of their Western bona fides, which had been compromised by a Byzantine millenium, four centuries of Ottoman paralysis, and a century and a half of spotty Westernization after independence in the early 19th century.  In 1980, Greeks boarding flights to London or trains to Paris still spoke of “going to Europe.”

That September, with Greece on the verge of redeeming its Western identity, I chose to spend a few days exploring Mount Athos, an ureconstructed throwback to Byzantium.  "It was too rewarding a holiday to go unchronicled," as John Julius Norwich, the popular historian of Byzantium, so aptly said of his own 1964 visit to Mount Athos.  I therefore offer this multi-part record of my experience.

But first, some necessary background.

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Mount Athos is actually a thirty-mile peninsula that points like an arthritic finger southeast into the Aegean Sea from northern Greece.  Starting from a low plain in the northwest, the peninsula rises gradually southeastward, bursting at its terminus into a majestic 6,000 foot conical peak.

The mountain’s influence on place names extends well beyond the peninsula.  Eighty miles away across the Aegean Sea one of the northern Sporades islands is called Skiathos, the “shadow of Athos.”

Still visible near the mainland, where the peninsula is lowest and narrowest, is the faint transverse scar of Xerxes’ Canal, now completely filled with sediment.  Commencing in 483 B.C. at the outset of his assault on the Greeks, the Persian tyrant spent three years digging a two-kilometer ditch wide enough for two triremes to pass through abreast.  He was determined to avoid the fierce storms that often rage around the end of the peninsula, one of which cost king Darius, his father, three hundred ships and twenty thousand men while attempting the same mission a decade earlier.  Using the canal, Xerxes safely transited the peninsula.  But like his father he met defeat farther south, for which the names Thermopylæ, Salamis, and Platæa echo down the ages.

A few centuries later, the architect Dinocrates proposed to sculpt the entire tip of the peninsula into an immense statue of his king, Alexander the Great.  The king's left hand would hold a city of ten thousand inhabitants; from his right hand a mighty river would flow into the Aegean Sea.  Fortunately for the age of monasticism, Alexander demurred.

 

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Because Mount Athos is home to the most important center of Eastern Orthodox monasticism, Greeks call it Aghion Oros, the “Holy Mountain.”  Its borders are entirely within the territory of Greece, but the Holy Mountain is completely independent.  For more than a thousand years its right of self-governance has been protected in turn by Byzantine emperors, Ottoman sultans, Balkan princes, Russian tsars, and now by Article 105 of the Greek constitution, which ordains that Mount Athos shall, “in accordance with its ancient privileged status, be a self-governed part of the Greek State, whose sovereignty thereon shall remain intact.”

To enter Mount Athos in 1980 was to return to the Middle Ages.  There was no electricity, hence no telephones, radio, or television.  The silence was punctuated only by natural sounds; and at night the complete absence of ambient light made the stars particularly brilliant.  What little running water was available had to be pumped from wells or collected at springs, but it was refreshingly cold and delicious.  Save for one old bus and the caïques that ran up and down each coast, there was no motorized transport.  But the necessity of walking or riding a mule from place to place gave you time to notice an unusual flower here or the detail of an arch there.

As in the Middle Ages, the wider world receded completely away.  Local concerns were all, and life became intensely Christ-centered.

Simonopetra (13th cent.), one of the
Holy Monasteries of Mount Athos

Monks lived humble and simple lives in a variety of residences.  The monasteries themselves, built in times of great faith, were grand and capacious.  But for upkeep they depended on large and vigorous populations and on the regular benefactions of emperors and kings.  The demise of imperial Russia and the collapse of the Balkan kingdoms had taken the expected toll on recruits as well as resources.  So in 1980, even though the monasteries still had income from metochia (ancient holdings beyond the peninsula), they were, with few exceptions, unkempt, dilapidated, and thinly peopled with aging monks.  Some of the larger ones were in ruinous state.

Monks also lived outside the monasteries, some in one of twelve sketæ, village-like communities, some quite large, dependent on an associated church.  Others lived in kellia, small farms, often with their own chapel.  Kalyvæ were similiar to kellia but smaller, and the monks were occupied with handicrafts rather than farming.  In a kathisma, usually one monk lived alone dependent on a nearby monastery.  Finally there were the hesychasteria, isolated hermitages in desolate spots, some in caves, others clinging at dizzying heights to steep cliffsides, approachable only by tortuous paths and steps.

A hesychasterion at Karoulia, the "Place of the Pulleys"

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Mount Athos is perhaps best known for its ban on women.  In fact the ban extends to all female creatures, though obvious exceptions are made for wild animals, birds, and insects.   For practical reasons, certain monasteries also allow female bees, she-cats, and even hens.   The ban also extends to eunuchs and the "beardless," meaning young boys, though the latter ban is widely ignored and the former is of limited utility these days.

The ban on women comports with traditional Eastern Orthodox practice, which bars women from monastic establishments.  Rightly or wrongly, it is believed that minds will refrain from dangerous thoughts if eyes cannot wander to shapely distractions.

Over the centuries, the ban has acquired mythical proportions.  In one version, the Virgin Mary, sailing from Joppa to visit her friend Lazaros on Cyprus, was blown off course to Mount Athos.  When she came ashore, the peninsula's pagan idols recognized her immediately and, admitting their falsity, shook themselves to bits.  Before leaving, Mary pronounced the peninsula her private garden and forbade it to other women.

Whatever the ban's origins, it has been strictly enforced through the centuries.  Since 1953, Greek law makes entry of any "female creature" onto the territory of the Holy Mountain a crime punishable by imprisonment.  Where this leaves the likes of Caitlyn Jenner is anybody's guess.

*  *  *

Mary, as Theotokos ("God-Bearer"),
crowning emperor John I Tzimiskes

Monastic life on Mount Athos is based on rules laid down in a series of typika, imperial charters.  The first and most important of these is the so-called Tragos (literally, "billy goat"), a nearly ten foot long roll of goatskin parchment.  Granted in 971 or 972, it bears the autograph signature of emperor John I Tzimiskes ("John in Christ our God faithful emperor of the Romans") and is kept in a strongbox in the archives at Karyes, the Holy Mountain's administrative capital.  It was last removed during World War II.

Legally speaking, Mount Athos is a theocratic federation governed by twenty "ruling" monasteries, each of which sends an elected representative to reside in Karyes for a year.  Together they form the Holy Synod, which has supreme administrative authority.  Day-to-day executive power is exercised by the Holy Epistasia, a committee of four selected from the Holy Synod.   Each of the four Epistatai holds one quarter of the Holy Synod's official seal, which validates the committee's documents only when all four pieces are united.

The Holy Mountain’s continuous independence since official foundation in 963 A.D. makes it the world’s oldest surviving republic by far.  Spiritual jurisdiction lies with the Greek Orthodox Œcumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul.  And just as Mount Athos has outlasted most political regimes, it has also outlasted Istanbul’s former name, Constantinople.

I turn again to Viscount Norwich:

"For the fact is that Athos is something infinitely greater than the sum of its monasteries.  It is not a community so much as a concept; and the grandeur of this concept, however misguided it may ultimately prove to be, can have a profound -- at times almost a shattering --  effect on those who wander within its range.  They find themselves by turns entranced and revolted, bewildered and enlightened, depressed and exhilarated, terrified and consoled.  . . . As they learn more of the Mountain, so they also grow to understand more of themselves; and they emerge beset with a maelstrom of conflicting emotions and impressions that can only be resolved on paper."

Quotations are from J. Norwich & R. Sitwell, Mount Athos (Harper & Row, New York:  1966) at p. 14.