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Mount Athos
Also called
HOLY MOUNTAIN,
In the 5th century BC the Persian king Xerxes I, to avoid taking his fleet around the treacherous cape, cut a 1.5-mile- (2.4-kilometre-) long canal through Aktí's neck, traces of which are still visible. Although hermits inhabited Athos before AD 850, organized monastic life began in 963, when St. Athanasius the Athonite, with the help of his Byzantine imperial patron, Nicephorus II Phocas, founded the first monastery, the Great Laura. Despite objections by the hermits to organized community monasticism, the rule of St. Athanasius was imposed upon them by the Byzantine emperor John I Tzimisces, who granted Athos its first charter (Typikon). A traditional prohibition bars women and female animals from the Holy Mountain. Several more monasteries were built in the 11th century. With the endowment of monasteries by Russia and other Slavic countries, the peninsula took on an almost pan-Orthodox character. By 1400, the number of monasteries had reached 40, of which 20 survive; the last to be built was Stavronikita, in 1542.
In the 15th century some of the monasteries abandoned the strict regimen of the community under the rule of an abbot for a more liberal system in which monks could possess personal property and be governed by two annually elected trustees (epitropoi).
When the Turks captured Thessaloníki
(Salonika) in 1430, the monks submitted to Turkish rule, a relation that led to
the rapid decline and impoverishment of the monasteries and increased adoption
of the more liberal system of governance. In reaction, the first skítes, or
ascetic settlements, were founded in the 16th century, grouped around a common
church as dependencies of the monasteries. In 1783 the patriarch Gabriel IV
introduced successful reforms with a new charter. The Athos community suffered
greatly from Turkish depredations during the War of Greek Independence
(1821-29), when entire libraries were burned. By contrast, the patronage of the
tsars in the 19th century brought about the expansion of the Russian monasteries
and their properties.
The community's present constitution dates
from 1924 and is guaranteed by the Greek constitution of 1975. The Greek
government is represented by a governor (dioikitís) appointed by the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs to underline the mountain's semiautonomy, but actual
administration is in the hands of the Holy Council (Ierá Sýnaxis), comprising
one representative of each of the 20 monasteries. Executive power is vested in
the Epistasia, composed of four representatives by annual rotation. Eleven of
the monasteries are presently conservative, and nine are liberal; discipline and
fasting are much stricter in the former. Most of the monasteries hug the coast
and consist of a quadrangle of buildings enclosing a church. The churches
contain some of the most important examples of Byzantine art, icons, and
treasures. The surviving libraries hold a vast number of classical and medieval
manuscripts, most of which have been cataloged. Pop. (1981) 1,472.
The Great Lavra is first in the hierarchy of monasteries and dedicated to the Dormition of hosios Athanasios, the wise monk and friend of the emperor Nicephoros II Phocas, who in A.D. 963 founded the first lavra (small group of hermits with a common superior and a central house of prayer) on Mount Athos at a site probably previously occupied by the ancient township of Akrothooi.
The monastery, a model of the coenobitic life and an example for those that followed, received generous gifts from Nicephoros II Phocas, his successor Ioannis Tzimiskes, and Basil II the Bulgar Slayer, and experienced moments of glory and grandeur down to the end of the l4th century. It was rescued from decline - the result of destructions and raids by pirates (15th-16th centuries) - by the patriarch Dionysios III (A.D. 1655), who gave his entire fortune to it. It was later rescued both by the Russian tzars and by the princes of the Danubian principalities. The great Cretan painter Theophanes and Frangos Katelanos both worked in the Great Lavra - the former in A.D.1535 and the latter in A.D.1560.
The so-called "Gospel of Nicephoros Phocas" with a scene of the Birth of Christ, in the sacristy of the Great Lavra Monastery
The mitre believed to have belonged to the Emperor Nicephorus Phocas (963-969).