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early Christian hermits settled on Mount Athos (northern Greece) shortly
before the year 1000. Since then, the Holy Mountain has been the stronghold
of Orthodox Christianity, with its rituals and traditions unchanged throughout
history. Byzantine monasticism is characterised by a strict hierarchical
order where the simple monk is the lowest step of the ladder. The Byzantine
monk is a mystic, his life is devoted to prayer and obedience to the elder
who is responsible before God for his soul. Legends are still strongly
believed among the monks and hermits as are miracles. All of them accepted
without having to be submitted to long bureaucratic procedures, as it would
be required in the Roman Catholic Church. After all, monastic life is lived
as a sacred poem and miracles are the believer's spiritual food.
Access to Athos is granted through a lenghty bureaucratic procedure and is still completely forbidden to women due to the existence of the Avaton (an edict issued by Byzantine Emperor Constantine Monomachos in 1060 banning women and female animals). After
years of crisis, when the monastic population had shrunk so much that extinction
was feared, today there is a gradual increase in vocation. Indeed, many
young men, some coming from countries such as France and Australia, choose
to spend the rest of their lives on the Holy Mountain. After all, Mt Athos
has always been a shelter for the castaways of life. It is hard to agree
with this extreme view of life. Nonetheless, many people have expressed
their admiration for these men despite their opposite ideological points
of view. This is the case of XIX-Century English traveller R. Curzon, who
concluded his “Visits to Monasteries in the Levant” thus: “[…] it is difficult
to understand by what process of reasoning they could have persuaded themselves
that, by living in this useless, inactive way, they were living holy lives.
They wore out the rocks with their knees in prayer; the cliffs resounded
with their groans; sometimes they banged their breasts with a big stone
and some wore chains and iron girdles round their emaciated forms; but
they did nothing whatever to benefit their kind. Still there is something
grand in their strength and constancy in their faith. They left their homes
and riches and the pleasures of this world, to retire to these dens and
caves of the earth, to be subjected to cold and hunger, pain and death,
that they might do honour to their God.”
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