Pictures from Mt Athos (Part 5): Iviron Monastery

I realized this morning that I had forgotten to post the last set of photos from Mt Athos which a friend very kindly shared with me. The first four parts were published in late September and October, from the monasteries of Simonos Petra, Koutloumousiou, the church of the Dormition in Karyes, the administrative center of the Monastic Republic, and the Skete of St Andrew. This final set was taken at Iviron Monastery, the third in the Athonite hierarchy, which was founded in the 980s by monks from Georgia. (The name derives from “Iberia”, the Greek word for the Caucasus.) Iviron was very influential in the development of Georgian language and liturgy, but the community waned over the centuries, and the last Georgian monk died in 1955. The photos below include views of the original, very beautiful cosmatesque floor and marble panels on the walls, very little of which survives on Athos, and some pictures of liturgical items in the museum.

These first two photos were taken on the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary (which falls on September 21 on the Gregorian Calendar), during the All-night Vigil, the concatenation of Great Vespers, Orthros (Matins and Lauds) and the First Hour. The term “all-night vigil” is something of a rhetorical exaggeration, but on Athos, not by much; the service began at 8 p.m., and ended at 2 a.m.

This plate with three candles attached at the back is used for the ceremony called the Litia. There are five loaves of bread on the plate, and in the three cups below them, wine, oil, and some grains of wheat. These are blessed towards the end of Vespers; during Orthros, the bread is distributed to the clergy and faithful, tinged with the wine, and a cross of the oil is painted on each person’s forehead, a symbol that the feast has now formally begun.

A view of the main church, called the “Katholikon” in Greek, from the central plaza.

Byzantine-era fortifications.

Another view of the Katholikon.

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Pictures from Mt Athos (Part 4): The Skete of St Andrew

Here is another group of pictures graciously shared by a friend who recently visited Mt Athos, this time from a monastery called the Skete of St Andrew, about a kilometer from the administrative center at Karyes, in the center of the peninsula. “Skete” is a Greek word of uncertain origin which means a monastery which is dependent on another; there are twelve such on Athos. That of St Andrew is actually the largest monastery on the peninsula, but it is not part of the hierarchy of twenty major monasteries, which includes only the ancient ones founded in the Byzantine period.

It was originally a small house dedicated to St Anthony the Abbot, founded in the 15th century after the fall of Constantinople, dependent on the Vatopedion monastery, then rebuilt in the mid-18th century and jointly dedicated to St Andrew. In 1841, Vatopedion gave it to Russian monks; under the patronage of Tsar Nicholas I, it was massively rebuilt, and the community grew to over 700. In the early 20th century, it became the center of a very peculiar heresy founded by one of its monks, known as the Imiaslavie doctrine, the belief that the name of God is God Himself. After this heresy was condemned by the Russian Orthodox Church, the community was violently dispersed by the Russian Imperial Navy; four monks were killed, and many others injured. After a long period of decline and abandonment, it was repopulated by Greeks at the beginning of this century. The monastery possesses the relic of the skull of St Andrew which was returned to the Orthodox Church from the Vatican in 1966. 

The entrance to the monastic complex.

Frescos of the titular Saint, Andrew the Apostle, known as the First-Called in the Byzantine tradition...

and another of St Anthony the Abbot, called Anthony the Great in the East, the original titular Saint.

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Pictures from Mt Athos (Part 3): The Church of the Dormition at Karyes

We continue with the pictures which a friend has graciously shared with us from his recent visit to Mt Athos, this time from the little town of Karyes (population 135), right in the middle of the peninsula, which serves as the administrative center of the Monastic Republic. The main church, dedicated to the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, is also called the Protaton, after the Protos (the Greek word for “first”), the monks who serves as the administrative head of the entire community. The church was founded in the early 10th century, even before the completion of the Great Lavra, the first monastery of the Athonite hierarchy. (Below the divider, there are some pictures of the town and of the view of the sea.)

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Pictures from Mt Athos, Part 2: Koutloumousiou Monastery

Here is another set of pictures graciously shared with us by a friend who recently visited Mt Athos, this time from the Koutloumousiou Monastery, which is 6th in the Athonite hierarchy of the 20 great monasteries. It was founded in the 1060s by a man named Kallistos Koutloumous, a prince of the Seljuk Turks who converted to Christianity, and received its first major benefactions from the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081-1118). For a long time, it was populated predominantly by Romanians, and the present structure of a large courtyard with the church in the middle mostly dates from the 14th century, with some later rebuilding and fortification.

A first view of the church. Below the break are a lot of pictures of the church’s interior, including some very nice frescoes in the narthex.

Going up into the monastery building...

one sees the wooden semantron, a board which is knocked with hammers, as a way of calling the monks to services, just as western churches use bells.

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Pictures from Mt Athos, Part 1: The Monastery of Simonos Petra

A friend of mine recently visited the monastic republic of Mount Athos, and very kindly agreed to share some of his pictures of the visit with us on NLM, for which we are very grateful. There are enough pictures that they will be spread out over several posts. We begin with the area where pilgrims arrive by ferry, and are welcomed, followed by the monastery of Simonos Petra (Simon’s Rock), founded in the 13th century on a large rocky outcrop by St Simon the Athonite, who lived in a nearby cave. The monastery as we see it today results from a rebuilding in the 19th century, after the complex was destroyed by a terrible fire. Simonos Petra ranks 13th in seniority amongst the twenty main monasteries on Athos, and is noted for its expertise in Byzantine chant. We are particularly lucky to get to see the interiors of some of the churches in this fashion, and of course, the views of the peninsula itself are just magnificent.

The ascent to the main plaza of the monastery complex.

The katholikon, or main church of the monastery...

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Amalphion - A Documentary about the Benedictine Monastery on Mt Athos

I just learned about an interesting documentary which was published two months ago on the YouTube channel of the French-language Catholic television outlet KTO TV, about a Benedictine monastery of the Roman Rite on Mt Athos. (Closed captions are available in English.) When the Athonite peninsula was first settled as a monastic community in the later 10th century, the Italian city of Amalfi, (located on the gulf of Salerno, to the south-east of Naples), was a powerful maritime republic, with merchant ships traveling all over the Mediterranean. The Latin monastery was founded out of Amalfi, and therefore called Amalphion by the Greeks. The investigation in this video begins with documents from the archives of Athos which were photographed in the later 19th century by the French military; the photographs are now kept at the Collège de France, a research institute in Paris. The earliest reference to Amalphion is a document which was approved and signed by the very founder of the Athos community, St Athanasius the Athonite (ca. 920-1005), which means that a Latin presence was was part of the life of the Holy Mountain from the beginning. 

Scholars have long been aware of the fact that the Great Schism, the supposed definitive break between East and West in 1054, was not as abrupt or total as later historiography imagined, and Amalphion continued to exist well past it; as one of the Greek monks interviewed here says, the schism was “neither immediate nor absolute.” But the monastery did decline, in no small part because Amalfi (which is very small) declined before the growing power of Venice, the power which led to the Sack of Constantinople in 1204, the event which did bring about the definitive rupture between Byzantium and Rome. The last references to Amalphion in the Athos archives (also shown here) is in a document of 1287, by which time it was in ruins and abandoned, and its land had been turned over to the monastery known as the Great Lavra, the first on Athos. The documentary shows the only structure which remains, a tower which was turned into a defensive work against Ottoman incursions on the peninsula.

The researcher travels to the Georgian monastery on Athos, Iviron, to investigate its connection to the monks of the West. We also see a lot of really nice shots of daily life on Athos, including some (fairly brief) footage of the liturgy, and the natural beauty of the peninsula, which is impressive.

A Film of Mt Athos More Than A Century Ago

Just a few days ago, a YouTube channel posted this video, containing footage taken on the Holy Mountain of Mt Athos, the famous “monastic republic” on the peninsula of Thessaloniki in northern Greece, more than a century ago. The opening title is in French, and just says “Mt Athos, 1918. Hermitages and Monasteries.” At 8:40, a second title appears, also in French, “Easter procession, Iviron and Vatopedi”. (Iviron is the monastery of the Georgians, founded in the 980s; Vatopedi was founded slightly earlier, by disciples of the founder of monastic life on the peninsula, St Athanasius the Athonite.) The soundtrack, which is liturgical singing in Church Slavonic, is clearly not original, since pictures with sound were not invented until 9 years later. 

We have previously shared a few films which show what life is like in modern times on Mt Athos, to whatever small degree the words “modern times” can be applied to it. One of these was originally broadcast on the CBS program 60 Minutes in 2011, but the post by which we shared it is now functionally useless, since the videos were embedded with the now-defunct Adobe Flash player. Happily, 60 Minutes reposted the piece to their YouTube channel just a couple of months ago, along with others covering Lourdes, the Ethiopian monastic complex at Lalibela, as well as the Vatican Library. Where the 1918 film shows nothing inside the churches of Mt Athos, (which I suspect the makers were formally prohibited from doing), 60 Minutes were allowed to bring their cameras inside and film the liturgy, giving us a very rare close look at the whole monastic life of the Orthodox Church, the liturgy, the buildings, the artistic treasures, and the tremendous natural beauty of the Athos peninsula.

Video Follow-Ups on Two Recent Items

Here are a couple of videos which relate to items recently posted on NLM. On April 5th, we included in our third Laetare photopost some images of a solemn Mass celebrated on the Annunciation at St Michael’s Church in Leawood, Kansas. The thurifer at that Mass was Mr Harrison Butker, the place-kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs; two days ago, EWTN posted an interview with him, in which he discusses his reversion to the practice of the Faith, and the role the traditional Mass played in it. The celebrant, Fr Shawn Tunink, is also interviewed, and has some good things to say about the appeal of the traditional Mass especially for the young.

On May 1st, we shared a new documentary about the monks of Mt Athos. The YouTube algorithm which suggests things one might be interested in, based on previous viewing history (and which at least for me, has a lot of bizarrely counter-intuitive ideas about what those might be), got something right for once, and offered this video from a channel called Orthodox Gardener. The channel is more about gardening than orthodoxy, and its creator describes himself as a “reformed Protestant; I’d say my theology is more Calvinist.” At the beginning of this year, he visited the Virgin Mary’s garden on Mt Athos, and posted this video of his trip. It’s mostly just shots of the scenery (which are very beautiful, of course), and some bits about the difficulty of getting from one place to another, but at 20:00, he has some interesting things to say about the veneration of relics. One of the monasteries he visited had relics of the forearm of St John the Baptist, “a part of St George (and it feels weird to say ‘a part of’)”, and a piece of the True Cross. In the channel’s introductory video, posted just under a month ago, he described himself as “on a pilgrimage ... towards converting to Orthodox Christianity.” This makes for an interesting example of how very often, the separated brethren (do we still say that?) only need to see the historical customs of the Faith in order to perceive the truth within them, and of the beliefs that created them.

A Wonderful New Documentary on Mt Athos

Here is a beautifully filmed documentary about the monks of Mt Athos, which I am sure our readers will enjoy very much. Stylistically, it has a good deal in common with The Great Silence; there are a lot of still shots and scenes of the peninsula’s natural beauty, and it is, most appropriately, fairly quiet, with no musical soundtrack. The focus is on the lives of monks in the sketes and hermitages, rather than the great monasteries (the country monks, so to speak, rather than the city ones); around 50:00, we see a small group of them, including one who normally lives completely alone, come together to celebrate Christmas. At 1:07:30, there begins a stretch in which one of the monks receives priestly ordination at the Pantokratoros Monastery, of which his skete is a dependency. The ordination ritual is mixed with scenes of monks working in the kitchen to prepare the celebratory feast, since the day is that of the Transfiguration: a lovely reflection on the fact that in the life of the monastery, every service, no matter how humble or exalted, is rendered to and received by Christ. I shouldn’t like to spoil the scene, but definitely continue watching from there to the scene of the new priest-monk working back at his skete, which is incredibly moving.