"Are You Orthodox?" (Part 5)

Brother Kosmas was grateful for the 100 drachmas I put into his hands "for the monastery" as I departed Iviron for the walk to Stavronikita.

The Panaghia Portaïtissa

Before leaving, however, I couldn't resist peeking into the chapel of the celebrated "Panaghia Portaïtissa."  The icon of "Our Lady of the Gate" has few peers in all of Eastern Orthodoxy.  Like many such highly esteemed images, the Portaïtissa is nearly invisible for the incrustations of gold leaf, jewels, and ex votos that shroud all but the painted faces of the Holy Mother and Child.

Supposedly painted by St. Luke himself, the icon is said to have been insulted in the home of a pious widow of Nicaea by messengers of the emperor Theophilos the Iconoclast (829-842), who threatened to denounce her for concealing an icon in her home.  One messenger pointed his sword at the Virgin's face but retreated when blood spurted onto him.  Fearing for the icon's safety, the widow furtively took it to the seashore and hurled it into the waves saying "You who can save us from an emperor's wrath can save yourself from the dangers of the sea."  Standing on edge in responsive salute, the icon headed west.

Seventy years later a pillar of fire reaching to the heavens and a voice asking by name for the hermit monk Gabriel the Georgian announced the icon's arrival offshore of Iviron.  In a cave somewhere between the monasteries of Xeropotamou and Roussikon, Gabriel was found and brought to the shore.  Given a boat, he rowed out to the icon.  Overcome with joy at getting close, he leapt out and walked the last distance over the water with arms outstretched to retrieve the icon.

It was Easter Tuesday when Gabriel brought it ashore and the monks, with great ceremony, installed it in Iviron's katholikon.  The next day, however, they discovered the icon lodged over the monastery's old entrance gate.  The monks returned it to the church, but again it was found over the gate.  After three instances of this auto-mobilism, the Virgin herself appeared to Gabriel and instructed him to build a special chapel for the icon next to the gate, "For I come to guard, not to be guarded."  It was in the chapel's late 17th century incarnation that I glimpsed the Portaïtissa that morning on my way to Stavronikita.

The Portaïtissa's stirring legend, however, has a glaring chronological flaw.  Iviron's founder (the warrior monk Thornic) didn't receive his imperial call to military duty until 979, and he didn't found Iviron until about 980.  So the Portaïtissa couldn't possibly have been received in Iviron's katholikon around Easter 912 (i.e., seventy years after the death of emperor Theophilos in 842), as the legend says, because Iviron's katholikon wouldn't be built for at least another sixty-eight years.

An image breaker, possibly the
Patriarch John VII Grammatikos (r. 837-843)
(detail from the 9th century Khludov Psalter)

But what legends worthy of the name have ever dissolved in the cold water of historical fact?  Certainly not the Holy Mountain's many legends of icons miraculously surviving the age of iconoclasm ("image breaking").  During the 8th and 9th centuries, the holiness of icons was denied and the veneration of images was officially  (sometimes brutally) banned by the Byzantine emperors and their clerical minions, setting iconoclasts ("image breakers") against iconophiles ("image lovers").  Theophilos, whose disrespect set the Portaïtissa on her 70-year voyage to Iviron, proved to be  the last iconoclastic emperor, iconoclasm being finally defeated in 843, a year after the close of his reign.  The victory is still celebrated each year with solemn processions of icons on the first Sunday of Great Lent, styled the "Sunday of Orthodoxy" in the Eastern Church.

Among monks, who by nature are prone to believe in miracles, the memory of iconoclasm's persecutions would naturally have inspired legends like that of the Portaïtissa.  Monks would recall the emperor Theophilos with particular revulsion for his decree of 836, which called for insulting iambic verses to be tattooed (some say branded) onto the foreheads of the brothers Theophilos and Theophanes, both iconophile monks (later sainted), whose epithet thereafter became graptoi ("marked by writing").

For the monks of Mount Athos, these were earthshaking events.  However inexactly, the Portaïtissa keeps their memory fresh.

She is still revered as a miracle-worker.  Centuries ago, I was told, she saved Iviron from Saracen invaders bent on razing the katholikon to the ground.  In 1404, a sword strike to the Virgin's neck by the pirate Barbaros (the mark is still seen) brought forth a torrent of blood that whelmed him to Christianity and (eventually) sainthood.  The Portaïtissa is so powerful that even a copy, devoutly painted at Iviron to the accompaniment of all-night vigils and then carried to Moscow, cured the gravely ill Alexius Michailovitch, the second Romanov tsar (r. 1645-1676).  In gratitude, he bestowed on Iviron the revenues of Moscow's St. Nicholas monastery, which provided a handsome income until the Russian Revolution.

*  *  *

The gate at Xenophontos monastery

Stepping through an Athonite monastery's gate can be slightly intimidating.  Beyond it, ancient cobblestone paths may lead through embowered forests or alongside dancing brooks; or a newly cut dirt track may mundanely connect point A to point B.  But whatever your route may be, the territory between monastic establishments will be essentially empty.  Gates separate the known from the unknown, safety from danger, monastic order from natural chaos.

A monastery's gate is typically the sole piercing in an otherwise impregnable circuit wall.  Stoutly  timbered and reinforced with iron, it is secured with cross bars and antique padlocks.  At sundown, the gatekeeper swings the great doors closed, locks them, and delivers the key to the abbot.  The doors will be opened for no one until sunrise.  Heaven help you if you linger outside too long or fail to arrive by sundown.  Leaving Iviron's secure little world behind, carrying everything I possessed in a cloth bag, left no doubt about how it must have felt to commence a journey in the Middle Ages.

*  *  *

It was mid-morning on a sunny September Sunday.  The dirt road to Stavronikita sloped gradually upward most of the way.  Heavy growth on both sides blocked any kind of view, a ruined kathisma here and there being the only break in the monotony.  For twenty minutes I encountered no one.

Then a tall solitary monk approached from the opposite direction balancing a wicker basket on one shoulder.  Mutual greetings led to conversation.  Brother Nestor looked to be in his mid-forties.  We quickly discovered our common Ionian Islands origins, he being from Zakynthos, the island immediately south of Cephalonia, my father's ancestral homeland.  Soon we were seated roadside sharing an early lunch of succulent sun-warmed tomatoes from his basket and a hunk of crusty bread retrieved from somewhere in his gown.

Brother Nestor was a hermit monk, affiliated with no particular monastery.  He was a builder and had been working in Karyes but was now returning to his kathisma near the skete of St. Anne, close to the monastery of St. Paul.

Our interchange lasted a full forty-five minutes, but it was mostly a monologue.  He needed to tell me of his past life and recommend how I should live mine.  As Charalambos (his worldly name) he'd been a merchant seaman and in the mid-1950s had spent considerable time in the U.S.  Everywhere he went, be it Brooklyn, Chicago, or Minneapolis, a local Greek wanted to "give" him a daughter to be his bride.  But married life and the temptations of the world were not for him.  He much preferred the peace and solitude of a monk's life, so he came to Mount Athos.  Temptation, he said, was the hardest evil to avoid.  "It's easy to refrain from killing or robbing, but not so easy to avoid going with women."  Much of his discourse of evil revolved around sex and relationships with women.

Brother Nestor had an answer for everything.  On learning that I was a lawyer, he told me how to plead cases in court:  "Say as little as possible, and the justice or injustice of your position will show itself.  If you're a good Christian, you'll win because God protects his own."  Christians have a great gift, he said.  "Only we can reach paradise and live with the angels."  He lamented "those poor Muslims and other heathens" who didn't have a chance.  They had souls, of course, but no hope for salvation.

On parting, he urged me to be a good Christian, to do good, maybe even become a monk.  More specifically, on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I should not eat oil, fruit, or cheese.  In fact I should eat moderate amounts of everything and very little meat "because that's the only way to keep your body in control" (again, the allusion to sex).  I had no need to worry about my health because, if I was a good Christian, God wouldn't let me get sick.