Athos mountain - Muntele Athos

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Athos mountain or Acts (into the modern greekΆγιοv Όρος - Holy Mountain) is a mountain (2,033 m) and a peninsula (60 km long and 8 to 12 km wide, with a total area of ​​360 square km) in the north greece, in the Greek region of Central Macedonia, where there are 20 monasteries, 12 hermitages and a lot of Orthodox monastic cells, in which live more than 1500 Orthodox monks (data from the Greek census of 2011 indicate a population of 1830 monks). About half of the monasteries are conservative, following strict regulations regarding discipline and fasting.

About

History

The name of Mount Athos comes from a character in the mythology of ancient Greece, namely a Thracian giant who in his confrontation with the Greek god Poseidon will be thrown a huge boulder towards him, forming the steep block out of the sea that today bears his name. Mount Athos is famous in Greek antiquity, being considered in some local traditions to be the highest place on Earth, where, above the clouds, the gods gather to talk.

Vitruvius (1st century BC) relates that Dinocrates, the architect of Alexander the Great, proposed to the latter to sculpt Mount Athos to give shape to his patron, but the famous Macedonian king modestly refused, once again illustrating the ideal. classic of balance, for which "big" does not always mean and "appropriate".

The first mentions of Mount Athos appear since the earliest antiquity of Greece, Homer (VIII-VII centuries BC) mentioning him in the Iliad. In the 492 century BC. the Persians of King Darius I lost most of their fleet in a storm in the Aegean Sea as they circumnavigated the promontory of Akti (Actium), which relativized Mardonius' ground military success against the Greeks. In subsequent Persian military campaigns, Darius' successor, King Xerxes I, decided to cut off in 480 BC. a canal almost 2.5 km long at the base of the promontory, in order to avoid its laborious circumnavigation. The traces of this remarkable military engineering enterprise still mark the Actium isthmus. For the preaching of Christianity, the holy apostles were ordained, each in a part of the world. The Mother of God proclaimed Christianity on Mount Athos, torn by a storm on the way to the island of Cyprus, where she had set out to visit Bishop Lazarus, the resurrected 4th day of the dead. Being a secluded, wild, and hard-to-reach place, Christian monks began to establish modest residences on Mount Athos beginning in the second half of the ninth century AD. In the last half of the 10th century, the monk Athanasius of Trabzon (also known as "Athanasius the Atonite", or "Saint Athanasius") founded the first monastery with the help of his imperial patron Nicephorus II Phocas, a fact in which the first monks already set oppose. Despite their objections to organized monasticism, the rule of St. Athanasius will be imposed by Emperor John I Tsimiskes. In the following centuries, until 1540, several other monasteries will be built, by 1400 their number reaching a historical maximum of 40 (at the height of its glory, the semi-autonomous statehood of Mount Athos was populated by 40,000 monks), then under repeated blows of fires or attacks from outside (in the thirteenth century the Crusaders will plunder the settlement, later in the same century the Byzantine emperor (Michael Paleologu) himself applying a brutal repression against astonished monks who opposed, like all monks, the reunification of the church Christian occupation (of the Ottoman Turks) which began in the region with the occupation of Thessaloniki in 1430 will impoverish it, leading to the liberalization of community regulation, while more recent Turkish attacks in the 19th century during the war independence of Greece, will affect it even more seriously, on this occasion with new fires in which libraries have lost a good part of the collection of manuscripts and prints)) their number is halved.

In the 15th century some monasteries abandoned the strict regulation of the community under the leadership of an abbot, for a more liberal system, where the elected leadership is temporarily in the hands of "epitropoi", the monks being allowed under this regulation personal property of some objects. About half (11 in 1963) of the monasteries are conservative, following strict regulations regarding discipline and fasting. The poverty of the monks part of these conservative monasteries is visible in clothing and personal hygiene (according to the rule, the monk must be dirty and uncombed).

In independent Greece in the early twentieth century, however, Mount Athos has not yet achieved a well-deserved and lasting peace after so many foreign aggressions, as internal theological conflicts between monks provoked in 1913 an international crisis so serious that the intervention of fleet sailors was necessary. Russian military on stunned ground to quell passions. It all started with the writings of Ilarion, an obscure Russian monk whose opinion was that the repetition of the "prayer of the heart," far from being a mere Christian invocation, "radiates holiness." Some of the monks on Mount Athos saw this as a form of idolatry, with the Russian Orthodox Church itself critical theologians of Ilarion's conflicting thesis. The theological dispute between monks and churchmen quickly fell into open conflict and violence, as history shows us to have happened too often in the history of Christianity, so that Ilarion's partisans began to persecute those who did not share their views: after years of smoldering conflict, in 1912 the astonished Russian monk Anton (his civilian name Alexander Bulatovich) led a group of other rebels from his monastery who dishonorably expelled their old abbot, who did not share their unlimited piety, with nudges and pulling his beard. The following year, the Patriarch of Constantinople and a number of high-ranking Russian church leaders also failed to pacify the monastic population at Athos, for which reason the tsar decided to intervene… militarily. A gunboat and two troop carriers are urgently sent to the waters of the theocratic republic of Athos, the Russian military also landing violently (historians have not yet been able to agree on whether or not there was a human death due to the intervention of the tsarist army) deporting hundreds of the most rebellious elements of the "idolaters" camp, taken out of their cells under the convincing force of the jet of water cannons, as soon as in a last-ditch effort, an archbishop brought to Moscow declared himself incapable of pacifying the conflict. However, the conflicts between the Orthodox monks did not disappear with the intervention of the Russian imperial troops: an article in The Economist shows that the wounds between the two camps have not yet closed.

In January 2003, another front of internal struggles opened up in the Greek Orthodox world, following a 30-year-old theological dispute over the objections of monks atoned for the (pre-) ecumenical tendencies of the Orthodox Church. The astonished reproached the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew for generating a schism in the Orthodox Church, and once again the conflict became more than theological, and resulted in human casualties.

The Byzantine Empire collapsed in the 15th century, so that the new Ottoman Empire, of Islamic religion, gradually took control of the Balkan territories. They devastated many Christian monasteries, but some more isolated ones remained less affected or even intact. The population of monks was reduced because their welfare was seriously affected for 5 centuries by the fact that the villages "worshiped" (by taxes) of these monasteries almost all Romanians were taken. In the Middle Ages, few monasteries and hermitages survived, mainly due to systematic material aid (money and products) from Wallachia and Moldova (today Romania). This help was due to the blood ties with almost all Romanian villages around Mount Athos. Gradually, in the 19th century, through the donations of newcomers from the Eastern Orthodox (Slavic) countries, such as: Russia, Bulgaria and Serbia, the ensemble of monasteries diversified as an ethnic origin, each country exerting its influence on subsidized monasteries: it was the era nation-states in full expansion. In 1912, during the First Balkan War, the Ottomans were forced to leave and Russia, in the interest of political pan-Slavism, justified by the "mission of continuation of Byzantine Christianity" claimed control of the peninsula. After the conflict over the sovereignty of the region between the newly formed Greek state, on the one hand, and Pan-Slavic Russia, on the other, after the First World War, the peninsula received from the Great Powers the status of autonomy within Greece.

Location

Mount Athos is located on the easternmost promontory (called "Akti" in Greek, or "Actium" in Latin) of the Chalchidic Peninsula in northeastern Macedonia, Greece. The central mountain range defines the relief of the promontory and is oriented along its length, being well forested to the north (base of the promontory, less high) and culminating (2033 m) with the marble massif at its southern extremity, bathed by the waters of the Aegean Sea. The hilly relief of the Actium promontory favors viticulture, an occupation embraced since ancient times by astonished monks (in 1916, only at the Vatopedu monastery, more than 250 tons of grapes were transformed into wine).

Destinations

Monasteries

List of the twenty monasteries in the established hierarchical order:

Other destinations

Get in

Access by land on the territory of the Autonomous Republic of the Holy Mountain is not allowed. On Mount Athos, women are not allowed.

The entrance to the Holy Mountain is usually made by ferry, either from the port of Uranopoli, located near the Byzantine Tower (for the west coast), or from Ierrisos (for the east coast). Before boarding, all visitors must have obtained a diamonitirion, in the Greek alphabet, Διαμονητήριο, a form of Byzantine visa that is written in Greek and dated using the Julian calendar, being signed by four secretaries of important monasteries. The permission for access to the Holy Mountain and accommodation in the monasteries there is attested, during the pilgrimage.

In order to obtain diamonitirion, the members of the clergy must first have the blessing of the Patriarch of Constantinople.

ACTIVITY

Gastronomy

limb

The language spoken in Greek monasteries is GREEK, in St. Pantelimon Russian (35 monks), in Hilandaru Serbian (46 monks), in Zografu Bulgarian (15 monks), and in the hermitages of Lacu and St. John the Baptist (also called Prodromu) Romanian is spoken (64 monks). Some communities are more cosmopolitan than others. One aspect of the recent renewal is that, unlike monks from former communist Orthodox states, Greeks are more active, better educated, and more humble around the world than in the past. Given this interest and Greek nationalist English is currently spoken on the Mountain.

Links

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