Friends of Mount Athos. Annual Report

Transcription

1 Friends of Mount Athos Annual Report 1996

2 FRIENDS OF MOUNT ATHOS CONTENTS PRESIDENT The Hon. Sir Steven Runciman, C.H., F.B.A. PATRONS Mr Costa Carras The Very Revd. Professor Sir Henry Chadwick, K.B.E., F.B.A. Mr Patrick Leigh Fermor, D.S.O., O.B.E. Sir John Lawrence, Bt., O.B.E. Mr James Lees-Milne Professor Donald M. Nicol, F.B.A. Sir Dimitri Obolensky, F.B.A. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Dr Dimitri Conomos Dr Derek Hill, C.B.E. Dr Graham Speake, F.S.A. (Hon. Secretary) The Rt. Revd. Dr Kallistos Ware, Bishop of Diokleia (Chairman) HONORARY MEMBERS HRH the Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh HRH the Prince of Wales All correspondence should be addressed to the Hon. Secretary, Dr Graham Speake, Ironstone Farmhouse, Milton, Banbury OX15 4HH (fax ), from whom details of membership may be obtained. This report is private and not for publication. The contributions remain the copyright of the authors and may not be reproduced without their permission. The Society's Year by Graham Speake Report from the Mountain: 1996 Prayer of the Heart for the Faithful Living in the World by Elder Joseph ofvatopedi The Musical Tradition of Mount Athos by Dimitri Conomos Autumn Seeds from Athos by Rasophoremonk Aidan A Programme for the Development of Conservation on Mount Athos by David Winfield SYNDESMOS and Mount Athos: The Third Spiritual Ecology Camp by Dimitri Conomos Richard Halliburton and Mount Athos by Lewis Wright BOOK REVIEWS Archimandrite Vasileios (Abbot of Iviron Monastery, Mount Athos): Monastic Life as True Marriage; Beauty and Hesychia in Athonite Life; Europe and the Holy Mountain; Ecology and Monasticism. By Evangelos Perry Hieromonk Alexander (Golitzin), trans.: The Living Witness of the Holy Mountain: Contemporary Voices from Mount Athos. By Graham Speake Printed in Great Britain by Oxonian-Rewley Press Ltd, Lamarsh Road, Oxford 2 3

3 THE SOCIETY'S YEAR My Dear Friends, Spiritual refreshment is a commodity that is not always readily available in this world. There is, however, a guaranteed plentiful supply of it on the Holy Mountain, which is I suppose the principal reason why most of us return regularly as pilgrims. It is our aim, in this Annual Report and in the other activities of the Friends, to reflect some of that refreshment for the benefit of our members, some of whom may not have the opportunity to visit Mount Athos in person. Our need of such refreshment, as we go about our busy lives in the world, is often greater than we realize - until we read a story like the one told by Brother Aidan in his article, 'Autumn Seeds from Athos': 'A hermit who lived nearby Iviron was asked by someone what he did in his hermitage, how he spent his time. The answer was simply, "I live here." ' A similar episode is related by Evangelos Perry in his review of Archimandrite Vasileios's recently published essays: the devil asks a monk the same question, 'What are you doing here?' And the elder replies, 'I am keeping this place.' What do Athonites do, one is often asked. The answer is, they live on Mount Athos; or, put another way, they are 'keeping' Paradise. What can be more refreshing than that as we struggle to stay afloat in the whirlpool of our everyday lives? In addition to our usual 'Report from the Mountain' we are privileged this year to be given a translation of a homily by Elder Joseph, spiritual father to the whole brotherhood at the monastery of Vatopedi. His subject is the Jesus prayer and how it should be used by those of us who live in the world. As Evangelos Perry says of Abbot Vasileios, 'he does not write like an academic theologian'; and those who have read or listened to Athonite fathers speaking 'from the heart' will know what he means. Those who have not will learn from, and we hope will be refreshed by, Fr Joseph's words. We thank him for giving them to us. I was privileged to spend some time with the fathers of Vatopedi in January of During the vigil for the Nativity (24 December 1995 OS/ 6 January 1996 NS), a service of great beauty, richness, and joy, it was very exciting to witness the tonsuring of two new monks (see Plate 1), one a young Frenchman and the other a Greek. They were given only a few 4 5

4 hours' warning of this happening, which further enhanced the sense of drama for all those present. As Elder Joseph pronounced the new name of one of them, an unidentifiable black shade whispered to me, 'Your turn next'. 'He's married', hissed another shade. Even at moments of great spiritual significance and tension, monks can show their humanity and love. In the days after the feast I had the opportunity to talk more than once with Archimandrite Ephraim, Abbot of Vatopedi. He is a man of great warmth and deep piety who quickly endears himself to anyone he meets. He told me that he wished to come to England and to meet as many members of the Friends as possible in order to thank them personally for their generous support of the Vatopedi Appeal. I was so taken aback by this totally unexpected declaration that I could hardly believe my ears. A few weeks earlier Derek Hill, co-founder with me of the Friends and an artist of great distinction who often shares his experience of painting with the Prince of Wales, informed us that Prince Charles wanted to give a reception for members of the society at his country house in Gloucestershire. This too was an immensely gratifying but equally unexpected gesture and we had hastened to make known our grateful acceptance of the invitation. I now knew that I had to make the two events - the Abbot's visit to England and the Prince of Wales's reception- come together. Because it would not be possible for everyone to go to Highgrove, and because the Abbot wished to have an opportunity not only to meet our members but also to address them, it would be necessary to hold the AGM in the same week as the reception. This was perhaps not ideal, but in the circumstances there was no alternative. I put the suggestion to the Abbot there and then: it clearly found favour with him. On my return we put the suggestion to the Palace: there too, to my heart-felt relief, it was greeted with enthusiasm. There then followed a period of intense diplomatic and administrative activity while the parties concerned fixed dates, had second thoughts, changed their minds, and finally made firm plans. The details of this are too tedious to relate, but in retrospect they provide endless amusement. All this can be safely revealed because the outcome of these negotiations was, thanks to the hard work of many willing hands, a triumph for our society. Abbot Ephraim came to England with two other members of the Vatopedi brotherhood, Fr Isidore and Fr Nifon. Their motive, apart 6 from that mentioned above, was to spread a little spiritual refreshment wherever they went. They made good use of their time. They decided to base themselves in London so that they could pay courtesy calls in the capital and make excursions to other parts of the country. Evangelos Perry and his wife Loreto very kindly provided them with s~itable accommodation in their Dulwich home; and George Spanos put htmself and his motor car at their disposal for travelling purposes. Vatopedi is a largely Cypriot monastery and the Abbot made a point of visiting Cypriot communities in London, Liverpool, and Birmingham as well.as spending some time at the Orthodox Monastery of StJohn the Baptist in Essex. The reception given by HRH the Prince of Wales at Highgrove could not have been more splendid. The Vatopedi fathers arrived early for a private meeting with the Prince, together with HM King Constantine and the members of the Executive Committee. The Abbot presented the Prince, who is Patron of the Vatopedi Appeal, with a magnificent set of engravings of the monastery, and the two of them quickly established a rapport. An invitation was promptly extended to His Royal Highness to visit Vatopedi as soon as possible. Your Secretary then had the task of introducing the Prince to the members of the society. This was not easy, since many of them he had himself not met before. We were a party of about eighty, as many as the house can comfortably take; and since it was a fine evening, the Prince asked if we would like to see the garden. He then showed us round, pointing out various organic features that were of particular interest to the monks and conversing very freely with all his guests (see Plate 2). When the time came for us to depart, Prince Charles spoke of his 'deepest feelings' towards the 'magical monasteries' of Mount Athos, which he had visited for himself and which he believed it was so important to protect and preserve. In reply, Sir Steven Runciman thanked the Prince for his hospitality to the Friends and delivered a spontaneous and moving tribute to our host for his love of nature and religion, without which life would have no meaning, and to the enduring vitality of Orthodoxy. Two days later, on 30 May, the fifth AGM of the Friends took place in Oxford. We had hired the new conference centre at St Anne's College 7

5 for the occasion, which proved to be a most suitable venue. More than a hundred members and their guests attended for at least part of the day. Sir Steven Runciman opened the proceedings, welcomed the assembled company, and invited Bishop Kallistos to take the chair. The Bishop welcomed the Vatopedi fathers and called upon Fr Isidore to speak about 'The Monastic Revival at Vatopedi'. Fr Isidore is a young monk from Limassol in Cyprus who has been a member of the Vatopedi brotherhood for about seven years. He studied economics at an American university and speaks good English. Earlier in 1996 he became a monk of the great schema. In the monastery he works usually in the library. He began with a brief history of Vatopedi and a description of its buildings and the contents of its library. He drew particular attention to the importance of the Romanian archive which is currently being investigated by the archivist of the Centre for Modem Greek Studies, Dr Florin Marinescu. It is towards the study and preservation of this archive that the Friends' contribution to the Vatopedi Appeal is being directed. Fr Isidore took the opportunity to thank our members for their generosity and the Prince of Wales for his patronage and support of the appeal. With the aid of an excellent collection of colour slides Fr Isidore then took his audience on a tour of the monastery. First he showed us the buildings from the outside; then some superb examples of Byzantine icons and mosaics. The frescos in the Katholikon are attributed to the school of Panselinos: we were shown details of them both before and after their restoration. He also illustrated recent restoration work on medieval woodwork and on the iconostasis and the floor of the Katholikon. He then showed slides of a number of illuminated manuscripts of the Byzantine period and various other precious treasures, including a remarkable steatite icon and the celebrated jasper cup given by Manuel Cantacuzene of Mistra. He ended the tour by showing us some of the fathers of the monastery doing things together in both religious and domestic contexts. Fr Isidore went on to describe the various works currently in progress at Vatopedi: a computerized study of the treasures; restoration of the fabric of the refectory and kitchen; a new icon museum and exhibition area; work on the Katholikon; new workshops for conserving icons and other treasures; rehabilitation of the natural environment, etc. The new brotherhood, led by Elder Joseph from New Skete, arrived in and now numbers nearly sixty. They come from France, Romania, Australia, and the USA as well as various parts of Greece. Most are graduates. They follow the cenobitic way of life. Fr Isidore ended his talk by extending a warm invitation to the members of the Friends to visit Vatopedi and sample its humble hospitality. After a buffet lunch the formal business of the AGM took place under the chairmanship of Bishop Kallistos. In his Chairman's report he reminded the members of the purpose and nature of the society: to be a link and a bridge (syndesmos kai gephyra). As friends we should build bridges and establish links of friendship with each other; but we should also build bridges between Britain and the Holy Mountain (e.g. by means of our publications) and establish links between the various monasteries and ourselves. We are an educational foundation with educational aims, dedicated to providing information about the Mountain for the benefit of both pilgrims and the public. Another aim is to help the monasteries, when asked to, but never to interfere. We are not fund raisers, though we can act as intermediaries, as we have done, for example, in the case ofvatopedi. The Secretary presented the accounts for the year ending 31 December 1995 which had been made available to the members, and the Chairman called for their adoption, which was proposed by Mr Kedros and seconded by Mr Perry. Donations to the Vatopedi Appeal had reached 5459 by the end of 1995; during 1996 they rose by a further 12,223, making the sum raised so far a splendid 17,682 gross. The Secretary then proceeded to the election of the Chairman and members of the Executive Committee who had tendered their resignations and were offering themselves for re-election. Since no other candidates had presented themselves, he called for their re-election en bloc, which was proposed by Mr Lea and seconded by Canon Wybrew. There being no other business, the Chairman closed the meeting and, after a short pause, called on Archimandrite Ephraim to address the Friends on the subject 'The Athonite Spiritual Tradition with Special Reference to St Gregory Palamas'. The Abbot spoke in Greek, with simultaneous translation into English provided by Fr Isidore. The following paragraphs comprise a summary of what Fr Ephraim said. Athos is in a position to play a significant role for all people, both Orthodox and non-orthodox, because it is an ecumenical place. It exists for contemporary man who lives in the world and is overwhelmed by materialism and forgets his spiritual life. Today unfortunately man is 9

6 spiritually incomplete and confused. Athos is a major centre of unceasing prayer and a special place of Orthodox devotion. It is the last free remnant of Byzantium. As a place of sanctity and the home of virtues it can help modern man. Monks do not leave the world because they hate it or because they are lazy, but out of love for the world and even more out of love for God: they wish to attain the requisite qualities to worship God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength. Pure love for mankind is a fruit of their own love for God. Monks who undertake obedience to their spiritual father do not feel enslaved. They know what they are doing and why: they do it to gain humility. The main cause of evil in man is selfishness. Selfishness is the spiritual cancer. Apart from obedience, monks live by a rule of poverty (i.e. having no personal possessions) and by abstinence from passions and desires. In this way Palamas says that the monk frees his mind in order to be elevated to heaven. The third rule for a monk is chastity. With the help of divine grace a monk can attain virginity not only of the body but also of the heart. We know from divine revelation that fleshly sins are a great barrier to a full spiritual life. Palamas says that a monk can attain this by unceasing prayer and can become pure in heart; for it is the pure in heart who shall see God. This is easy to say but difficult to practise. It involves many years of struggle; but the struggle will make the man's personality whole. The message of monasticism is that through this struggle man should n~t ~earch for happines~ outside himself, but that the source of our joy is w1thm our hearts. That IS why Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is within you. Man is above all a spiritual being. If he wants to succeed, he must search for the uncreated light, as Palamas says, in order to taste the fruits of the Holy Spirit (love, joy, abstinence, endurance, tolerance, etc.). We regret that, of all the many people whom we see visiting Athos and on our journeys into the world, though they have many luxuries and everything they want, very rarely do we see anyone who is really happy and at peace. This is due to their loss of the grace of the Holy Spirit. The message of Athos to the world is that if a man does not acquire grace and find Christ in his heart, he will lose the game of life. This is why Athonites pray for the world - for peace, and that men will be sufficiently enlightened to make their main goal the acquisition of the grace of the Holy Spirit. In reply to questions, Fr Ephraim continued: Athos receives many visitors today, but the monks are reluctant to impose further restrictions on their numbers because so many of them are in search of spiritual guidance; they are worn out by the demands of 10 the world and they come to Athos to look for the authentic word and to talk to people who have living experience of it. The monks do have financial needs today to enable them to restore their buildings and conserve their treasures. They had become so few in numbers until recently that monks now think of themselves almost as new founders of Athos. But they will never put aside their spiritual work for the sake of preserving treasures. If a monk lives a life of continuing repentance, divine grace will free him from all passions and bring him to a natural life. He obtains the gift of clear, uninterrupted prayer which brings contrition of the heart and other fruits of the Holy Spirit. But the greatest gift to a monk is spiritual discernment and this is very much alive on Athos in an unbroken tradition. Elder Joseph the Hesychast, the spiritual father of Vatopedi's Elder Joseph, is an example of a contemporary saint who reintroduced Palamite theology to Athos. He was a carrier of the uncreated light - the light that is much stronger even than the mid-day sun. The Holy Spirit is all around us in the world, not only on Athos. To obtain its grace, we should follow the commandments of Christ and practise the Jesus prayer. Prayer provides the solution to problems. Just as an artist who wishes to learn an art seeks to follow a master, how much greater is the need for one who would learn the spiritual art (the art of arts and science of sciences) to find a spiritual father! Elder Joseph the Hesychast searched all over Athos for his. When he died, he had four disciples. Today he has some 500 spiritual grandchildren on Athos. After his talk Fr Ephraim presented every member of his audience with a spiritual memento in the form of a prayer rope from Athos. The next day the fathers returned to the Holy Mountain to prepare for the festival of Pentecost. They have asked me to thank the many members of our society who provided them with so much hospitality and kindness and made their visit so enjoyable and so rewarding. It was clear from the way in which they were received everywhere they went that their coming was very much appreciated by our members, who turned out in great numbers to meet them and listen to them. I am glad of an opportunity to say in print, on behalf of us all, that we are enormously grateful to them for making the effort to come here. Their presence did us great honour and brought us much-needed spiritual refreshment. We wish them peace and joy and pray that all their endeavours will be rewarded. It is gratifying to record that in the course of the year we have been able to support a number of other Athonite communities in addition to 11

7 Vatopedi. The year began in traditional Greek style with a Vasilopitta party, once again held in the inspiring surroundings of the Maria Andipa Icon Gallery in Knightsbridge. As always, we are much indebted to Mrs Andipa and to her son Acoris for their hospitality, to Ilias Lalaounis for so generously providing the prizes, and to Anthony Kedros for organizing the whole event from the depths of Gloucestershire and ensuring that everything ran smoothly. The profits from this party, rounded up to 1000, were given to the Romanian skete of Lakkou, to go towards the creation of a library. Lakkou was founded by Moldavian monks in 1760 with a fine church dedicated to St Dimitrios of Thessaloniki and as many as thirty-six cells. But during the communist period it declined, to such an extent that by 1977 there was only one monk remaining and the buildings were seriously dilapidated. Recently, however, new blood has arrived; they now number twelve monks; and more are ready to join them when the cells are made habitable. Priest monk Stefan Nutescu has written twice to say how grateful they are to us for our small contribution. The library is to be placed in the guest-house as soon as that building has been renovated. One of the advantages of the venue chosen for the AGM is that it provides a space suitable for the exhibition of pictures. It was therefore a great pleasure to be able to hang a selection of the paintings of the Holy Mountain done by our member Stephen Grady. Mr Grady lives in Chalkidiki and is a regular visitor to the Russian monastery of St Panteleimonos. He always donates a proportion of the proceeds from the sale of his pictures to that monastery. We are pleased to record that several were sold on the occasion of the AGM and that we were therefore able to associate the society with a small contribution to the Roussikon. In his capacity as President of SYNDESMOS, Dr Conomos led another very successful spiritual ecology camp, about which a brief notice is printed below. This year it took place at lviron. There are therefore no fewer than three contributions to this Report that are directly concerned with that (formerly Georgian) house. It is important that the Friends become known throughout the peninsula. We are the Friends of all Athos; and that means not just all the monasteries, but all the sketes, all the cells, and all the hermitages as well. No one person can become closely attached to more than one community. But there can be few Athonite communities of any size that do not have close links with at least one or two of our 350 members. May I therefore invite my readers to declare their interests? If you have a contact on the Holy Mountain with any individual monk or group of monks that you would be willing to share with the rest of us, please write and tell me about it. As Bishop Kallistos reminded us at the AGM, we should aim to build bridges - bridges for two-way traffic - with the communities on Athos. If you would be willing to act as an unofficial correspondent for a community, please let me know. For some years now we have been concerned about the rapidly deteriorating state of the frescos in the church of the Protaton in Karyes. These are attributed to the hand of Manuel Panselinos (fl. 1300) and rank among the most important examples of the so-called Macedonian school of painting anywhere in Greece. Our policy of not interfering in the affairs of the Holy Mountain without being invited has prevented our being able to do anything until recently. But in the summer we did receive such an invitation from the Holy Community and we were delighted to be able to secure the services of Mr David Winfield who is an internationally renowned expert on conservation issues in general and on Byzantine fresco in particular. In November Mr Winfield travelled to Karyes as the representative of the Friends and spent two weeks surveying the paintings and their current state of preservation.. His report, eagerly awaited at the time of writing, will we hope form the basis for a programme of urgently needed conservation. Meanwhile he has already filed a supplementary report suggesting a programme for the development of conservation in general throughout the peninsula. It seemed to us that this is a matter of such enormous significance for the future of the whole of Athos that it should be published as widely as possible and it is therefore printed below. Every effort will be taken to ensure that at least some of its recommendations are put into practice as soon as possible. Meanwhile we should record our sincere thanks to Mr Winfield for agreeing to undertake this commission at such short notice and for the trouble he has taken in compiling his reports. Events closer to home must not go unrecorded. In January our member the Rt Revd Richard Chartres was translated from Southwark to the 12 13

8 diocese of London. His installation in St Paul's Cathedral was an impressive and moving occasion, giving heart, and the promise of spiritual refreshment too, to our embattled national Church. It is to him that we are indebted for the regular provision of the magnificent Court Room of St Andrew's, Holbom, as the venue for our autumn meeting. Here it was that on 20 November about thirty-five members and their guests gathered to listen to Dimitri Conomos speak about 'The Musical Tradition of Mount Athos'. Dimitri is a renowned expert on Byzantine chant, and no mean chanter himself. But this time he illustrated his talk, not with his own renditions, but with those of Dr Alex Lingas (who gave a memorable performance at the Birmingham Symposium of 1994) and also a number of cassettes. The text of his talk, sadly without the contribution of Dr Lingas, is printed below. Members of the Friends continue to provide their services as translators of Hagioritic literature of one sort or another. Christopher Hookway is now well advanced with his translation into English of the Synaxaria, a presentation of all the Orthodox saints, which was published in French by Fr Makarios of Simonopetra in The Friends' contribution to this multi-volume project is funded by the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius. On a different scale, but no less appreciated by numerous pilgrims to Athos, is the map of the Holy Mountain published by Herr Reinhold Zwerger of Vienna. A new edition of this invaluable vade-mecum is about to appear, and the accompanying booklet about the state of the paths has been translated into English by our member Angelika Lorenz of Innsbruck. Habitues of the Vasilopitta party will be saddened by news of the death in November of our wine-making member Dudley Quirk. Mr Quirk designed a special 'Friends of Mount Athos' label for his 'Retsina', which has been the standard white wine at all our Vasilopittas. We shall miss his jovial presence and extend our sympathies to his widow Joan. Finally, members will surely join me in congratulating Derek Hill on his eightieth birthday and the award of a C.B.E., both in December. We are delighted to celebrate his devotion to Athos in general and to Chilandari in particular by reproducing his evocative painting of that monastery, done in 1986 (see Plate 3). 14 GRAHAM SPEAKE Hon. Secretary REPORT FROM THE MOUNTAIN: 1996 The past year has seen increased interest in the Holy Mountain in many quarters - quarters in many cases which are not traditionally associated with such interests. This phenomenon has to do largely with the promotion which the Mountain's 'cultural treasures' have received recently. A steady stream of high-quality publications (noticed elsewhere) emanating from the monasteries themselves has brought to a growing public a realization of the hitherto largely unsuspected extent of the treasures which they possess in terms of architecture, works of art, books and manuscripts, artefacts, and the natural environment. In 1997 the city of Thessaloniki occupies the role of Cultural Capital of Europe, and after some two years of preparation one of the most important events of the year - if not its centrepiece - will be an exhibition beginning in June at the Museum of Byzantine Culture concerned with the Holy Mountain of Athos. More than 500 treasures from Athos (drawn from seventeen of its monasteries) will be on display for six months, many of which have not left Athos before, and almost none of which have previously been seen by the female half of the population. (The decision to permit this was taken at the Extra-ordinary Double Holy Synaxis on 9/11 December 'after three days of lengthy discussion and profound heart-searching'.) Pressure was brought to bear to persuade the Athonite Fathers to allow an exhibition of the treasures in Athens as well, but this idea came to nothing. As will readily be seen, this increased interest and publicity has two aspects for the Fathers. On the one hand, it makes the message of Athonite monasticism...and of Orthodoxy known to a public which it would not otherwise reach, and it has to be said that, for example, in the coffee-table books produced so far, that message has been central, if unobtrusive. On the other, there is a danger that the 'cultural treasures' may rapidly become dissociated in the minds of the public from the living faith and way of life which, in the eyes of the monks at least, alone give them their real meaning. This, in turn, could lead to increasing demand for access to the cultural treasures, an attitude of mind which regards the Holy Mountain as no more than a unique museum with the monks as its picturesque curators, and the constant distraction of the Fathers from their prayer and work to attend to time-consuming matters of culture, accommodation, public relations, 15

9 communications, negotiations - in other words, the preoccupations of the secular world. Yet another consideration, however, is whether the monks have the right, even in their own self-defence, to withhold their treasures of Byzantine culture and history, the full importance and value of which are only now beginning to be fully appreciated by scholars. Is what the Athonites possess 'part of the cultural heritage of Europe' - and of the whole of mankind - or is it made up of sacred objects which belong exclusively within the context of Orthodox belief, worship, and monasticism? And if the answer to this is an Athonite ;:>aradox - 'both' - how is the balance to be kept between these two aspects of the same thing? Much of what follows in this report will illustrate some of the dilemmas of this sort which have in recent months been exercising the Fathers and all friends of the Holy Mountain. In the autumn of 1996 details of the subsidization of the Holy Mountain by the European Union and the European Investment Bank were revealed by the European Commission. This came in reply to a question from Mr Vassilis Ephraimidis, Euro MP of the Communist Party of Greece. It is interesting that Mr Ephraimidis's question was formulated in such a way as to speak much of the treasures of Mount Athos being the cultural heritage of all mankind - and to say nothing whatsoever of the religious dimension of these or of the Mountain. The total financing intended for the Holy Mountain amounts to 8,152,000 ECU, of which only 2,200,000 ECU is to be administered by the Centre for the Conservation of the Athonite Heritage. The rest of the sum is to be managed by third parties whom the Commission did not name. By October 1996, 37 per cent of the total sum (3,041,862 ECU) had been put to use, and the Centre had absorbed the whole of the sum to which it was entitled, the balance now being administered by third parties. The purposes of this financing cited by the Commission were the restoration of monuments, and the development of high-level cultural tourism in the region, a fact which was adversely commented upon in the Athenian press. An explanation to the effect that it just happens that the financing which goes to the Holy Mountain falls into a category, including other regions, where the aims are so described, and that thus this aim was not specifically applied to Mount Athos, failed to convince all observers of the innocence of the Commission's intentions. 16 Without doubt, the news concerning the Holy Mountain which attracted most attention during 1996 was the appointment in October of Mr Stavros Psycharis, Editor of the Sunday Virna newspaper, to be its Civil Governor, to replace Professor Georgios Martzelos. The vacancy occurred after the 'Thirteen' (the majority group of monasteries in the Holy Community which uphold the traditional self-governing status of the Mountain in the face of the claims of the Patriarchate) made representations to the Greek Government to the effect that Professor Martzelos and his deputy, Mr Vamvakas, were acting as 'agents' of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and habitually interfering in the taking of decisions by the Holy Community. The appointment of Mr Psycharis provoked a variety of reactions. Mr Theodoros Pangalos, who, as Minister of Foreign Mfairs, is responsible for his appointment, has refused to see anything strange in it. He chose Mr Psycharis from among the other candidates, he maintains, precisely because he would approach his duties 'from the outside' (i.e. objectively), the trouble with governors who are professors of theology and the like being that they tend to take sides in controversies which affect the monks. He has also given assurances that the appointment meets with the approval of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Fathers ~f Mount Athos, where Mr Psycharis is said to be a frequent visitor. This brings us to what in previous years has been the centrepiece of this report - relations between the Mountain and the Patriarchate. These seem to have been rather in the background in the past year, without differences having been happily resolved, however. For example, the Holy Community last year produced a book entitled The Status of the Holy Mountain, containing the opinions of various specialists on the question of the self-administration and autonomy of the Athonite community. There was a sharp reaction on the part of the Patriarchate: the Patriarch addressed a letter to the Community warning that, if the book circulated among the public at large, the authorities of Athos would be subject to serious sanctions. There has been a sequel to an issue which was reported last year in this connection-that of the future of Megiste Lavra. The Holy Mountain was visited on 9-12 January 1996 by a four-member exarchate (commission) from the Patriarchate to examine the question. The result was that the 17

10 seventeen-member brotherhood of the Chilandari kelli of St Nicholas Bourazeris at Karyes, under their Elder the priest-monk Kyrillos, was selected to man the monastery of Megiste Lavra, in accordance with the majority opinion of its Fathers. The brotherhood under Fr Kyrillos is widely respected throughout the peninsula. But it is clear from reports circulating at the time of writing that the Lavra's troubles are far from being resolved. The new representatives of the monasteries with the Holy Community for 1996 were: Elder Vartholomaios (Megiste Lavra), Priest-monk Palamas (Vatopedi), Priest-monk Kallinikos (lviron), Priest-monk Stephanos (Chilan.dari), Elder Niphon (Dionysiou), Priest-monk Philotheos (Koutloumousiou), Priest-monk Gervasios (Pantokrator), Elder Chrysostomos (Xeropotamou), Priest-monk Ioannis (Zographou), Deacon-monk Ioakeim (Dochiariou), Priest-monk Joseph (Karakalou), Elder Philaretos (Philotheou), Priest-monk Ioustinos (Simonopetra), Elder Silouan (Xenophontos), Priest-monk Photios (Grigoriou), Priest-monk Kyrion ( St Panteleimonos), and Elder Ephraim ( Konstamonitou). A conference was held in late November at the Music Megaron in Athens by Vatopedi which examined many aspects of the monastery's life. It was attended by representatives of Church and State, together with a number of scholars drawn from various disciplines, and was considered by all concerned to have been a success. Vatopedi has published a magnificent two-volume work on the monastery's life, history, and treasures. The English-language version will be published in the course of 1997 and will be reviewed in due course. The Greek Ministry of Health is reported to be considering the setting up of a health centre at Karyes. Such an arrangement would be extremely beneficial, as it would obviate the necessity for the Fathers to travel to Thessaloniki, or even Athens, for treatment. A committee of the Holy Community is considering plans for an additional jetty for access to the Holy Mountain. The site of Trypiti, used in the past for this purpose, is thought the most appropriate. 18 It is reported that in many parts of the Holy Mountain the so-called 'cancer' of the chestnut tree has reappeared in wooded areas, particularly those belonging to Karakalou and the Roussikon. Early in the year the Holy Community sent the sum of 5 ~illion drachmas to the Patriarchate of Serbia as a measure of support m the face of the problems caused by the influx of refugees which has followed the peace agreement with Bosnia. In April the sacred relics (the skull) of St Panteleimon were taken from the monastery of the same name (the Roussikon) to Moscow, where the saint is particularly venerated. The sacred relics were received by Patriarch Alexei II, representatives of the Government, and President Boris Yeltsin. During their stay in Russia (25 April to 11 June) they were venerated by more than 500,000 faithful, some of whom had to queue for up to ten hours. The relics last visited Russia under the tsars. The Greek Ministry of C ultur.e has decided that five large teams should be permanently engaged in the conservation and restoration of the treasures of the monasteries of the Holy Mountain. On the whole, the Fathers do not regard such arrangements as part of the secularization and invasion by the world and its technology. The view is that this is a phase rendered necessary by the need for the evaluation, restoration, and conservation of the Holy Mountain's monuments and treasures, and that when these tasks have been accomplished, in ten years' time perhaps, the 'world' will of its own accord recede, leavingathos in peace. In 1996 the annual grant from the Greek State to the monasteries of the Holy Mountain was set at 300 million drachmas, by a decision of the Council of Ministers. On 20 June the Holy Mountain was visited by the Deputy Minister of the National Economy, Mr C. Pachtas, who discussed with the Fathers current issues and the needs of the Athonite community. The Deputy Minister showed interest in a fairer distribution of resources, to include the long-neglected kellia, whose contribution to the life of the Holy Mountain is of great importance, and whose needs are also great. 19

11 PRAYER OF THE HEART FOR THE FAITHFU L LIVING IN THE WORLDl The question is always being asked, 'Is it possible for those living in the world to occupy themselves with noetic* prayer?' To those who ask we answer quite affirmatively, 'Yes'. In order to make this exhortation of ours comprehensible to those interested, but at the same time to make aware those who are unaware, we shall briefly explain this, so that no one will be placed in a quandary by the various interpretations and definitions of noetic prayer that exist. Generally speaking, prayer is the sole obligatory and indispensable occupation and virtue for all rational beings, both sentient and thinking, human and angelic. For this reason we are enjoined to the unceasing practice of the prayer.* Prayer is not divided dogmatically into types and methods but, according to the Fathers, every type and method of prayer is beneficial, so long as it is not of diabolic delusion and influence. The goal of this all-virtuous work is to tum and keep the mind of man on God. For this purpose the Fathers devised easier methods and simplified the prayer, so that the mind might more easily and more firmly tum to and remain in God. With the rest of the virtues other parts of man's body come into play and senses intervene, whereas in blessed prayer the mind alone is fully active; thus much effort is needed to incite the mind and to bridle it, in order that the prayer may become fruitful and acceptable. Our most holy Fathers, who loved God to the fullest, had as their chief study uniting with God and remaining continuously in Him; thus they turned all of their efforts to prayer as the most efficient means to this end. There are other forms of prayer which are known and common to almost all Christians which we shall not speak about now; rather we shall limit ourselves to what is called 'noetic prayer', which we are always being asked about. It is a subject which engages the multitude of the faithful since next to nothing is known regarding it, and it is often I This homily by Elder Joseph, taken from his book Athonika Minymata, has been translated by the Fathers ofvatopedi and is dedicated to the Executive Committee of the Friends of Mount Athos as a token of appreciation and gratitude for all that they have offered to Athos since the foundation of the society. Words and phrases marked with an asterisk(*) are explained in the Glossary on page misconstrued and described rather fantastically. The precise way of putting it into practice as well as the results of this deifying virtue - which leads from purification to sanctification - we shall leave for the Fathers to tell. We paupers shall mention only those things which are sufficient to clarify the matter and to convince our brethren living in the world that they need to occupy themselves with the prayer. The Fathers call it noetic because it is done with the mind, the 'nous', but they also call it 'sober watchfulness'* which means nearly the same thing. The Fathers describe the mind as a free and inquiring being which does not tolerate confmement and is not persuaded by what it cannot conceive on its own. Primarily for this reason they selected just a few words in a single, simple prayer- 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me' - so that the mind would not require a great effort in order to hold on to a long, protracted prayer. Secondly, they turned the mind within, to the centre of our reason, where it resides motionless with the meaning of the divine invocation of the most sweet Name of our Lord Jesus, in order to experience as soon as possible the divine consolation. It is impossible, according to the Fathers, for our ali-good Master, being thus called upon continuously, not to hear us, He Who desires so much the salvation of man. Just as a natural virtue that is aspired to can only be achieved by a conducive means, so also this holy work requires some indispensable rudiments: a degree of quiet; freedom from cares; avoidance of learning about and spreading the 'news' of things going on, the 'giving and taking' as the Fathers put it; self-discipline in all things; and an overall silence which stems from these things. Moreover, I do not think this persistence and habit will be unattainable for devout people who take an interest in this holy activity. A regular prayer time, morning and evening, always about the same time, would be a good beginning. With surety we have emphasized perseverance as the most indispensable element in prayer. Rightly it is stressed by St Paul, 'Continue steadfastly in prayer.'2 In contrast to the rest of the virtues, prayer requires effort throughout our entire lifetime, and for this reason I repeat to those who are making the attempt not to feel encumbered, and not to consider the need for endurance as a failure in this sober-minded work. 2 Col. 4:2. 21

12 In the beginning it is necessary to say the prayer in a whisper, or even louder when confronted by duress and inner resistance. When this good habit is achieved to the point that the prayer may be sustained and said with ease, then we can tum inwardly with complete outer silence. In the first part of the little book Way of the Pilgrim a good example is given of initiation into the prayer. Sound persistence and effort, always with the same words of the prayer not being frequently altered, will result in a good habit. This will bring control of the mind, at which time the presence of Grace will be manifested. Just as every virtue has a corresponding result, so also prayer has as a result the purification of the mind and enlightenment. It arrives at the highest and perfect union with God; that is to say, actual divinization (tbeosis). However, the Fathers also have this to say: that it lies with man to seek and strive to enter the way which leads to the city; and if by chance he does not arrive at the end point, having failed to keep up for whatever reason, God will number him with those who finished. To make myself more clear, especially on the subject of prayer, I will explain how all of us Christians must strive in prayer, particularly in that which is called monological* or noetic prayer; and if one arrives at it, one will fmd much profit. By the presence of the Jesus prayer man is not given over to temptation which he is expecting, because its presence is sober watchfulness and its essence is prayer; therefore 'the one who watches and prays does not enter into temptation.'3 Further, he is not given over to darkness of mind so as to become irrational and err in his judgements and decisions. He does not fall into indolence and negligence which are the basis of many evils. Moreover, he is not overcome by passions atid indulgences where he is weak, and particularly when the causes of sin are near at hand. On the contrary his zeal and devotion increase. He becomes eager for good works. He becomes meek and forgiving. He grows from day to day in his faith and love for Christ and this inflames him towards all the virtues. We have many examples in our own day of people, and particularly of young people, who with the good habit of saying the prayer have been saved from frightful dangers, from falls into great evils, or from symptoms leading towards spiritual death. Consequently the prayer is a duty for each one of the faithful, of every age, nationality, and status, without regard to place, time, or manner. With the prayer divine Grace becomes active and provides solutions to problems and trials which trouble the faithful, so that, according to the Scriptures, 'Everyone that calls on the Lord shall be saved.'4 There is no danger of delusion, as is bandied about by a few ignorant people, as long as the prayer is said in a simple and humble manner. It is of the utmost importance that when the prayer is being said no image at all be portrayed in the mind; neither of our Lord Christ in any form whatever, nor of the Lady Theotokos, nor of any other person or depiction. By means of the image the mind is scattered. Similarly by means of images the entrance for thoughts and delusions is created. The mind should dwell on the meaning of the words, and with much humility the person should await divine mercy. The chance imaginations, lights, or movements, as well as noises and disturbances are unacceptable as diabolic machinations towards obstruction and deception. The manner in which Grace is manifested to initiates is by spiritual joy, by quiet, and joy-producing tears, or by a peaceful and aweinspiring fear due to the remembrance of sins, thus leading to an increase of mourning and lamentation. Gradually Grace becomes the sense of the love of Christ, at which time the roving about of the mind ceases completely and the heart becomes so warmed in the love of Christ that it thinks it can bear no more. Still at other times one thinks and desires to remain for ever exactly as one finds oneself, not seeking to see or hear anything else. All of these things, as well as various other forms of aid and comfort are found in the initial stages by as many as try to say and maintain the prayer, in as much as it depends on them and is possible. Up to this stage, which is so simple, I think that every soul which is baptized and lives in an Orthodox manner should be able to put this into practice and to stand in this spiritual delight and joy, having at the same time the divine protection and help in all its actions and activities. I repeat once again my exhortation to all who love God and their salvation not to put off trying this good work and practice for the sake of the Grace and mercy which it holds out to as many as will labour a little at this work. I say this to them for courage, that they do not hesitate or become faint-hearted due to the slight resistance or weariness that they will encounter. Contemporary elders whom we have known had many 3 C f. Matt. 26: Acts 2:21. 23

13 disciples living in the world, men and women, married and single, who not only arrived at the beginning state but rose to higher levels through the Grace and compassion of our Christ. 'It is a trifle in the eyes of the Lord to make a poor man rich.' 5 I think that in today's chaos of such turn;10il, denial, and unbelief there exists no simpler and easier spiritual practice that is feasible for almost all people, with such a multitude of benefit and opportunity for success, than this little prayer. Whenever one is seated, moving about, or working, and if need be even in bed, and generally wherever and however one fmds oneself, one can say this little prayer which contains within itself faith, confession, invocation, and hope. With such little labour and insignificant effort the universal command to 'pray without ceasing'6 is fulfilled to perfection. To whatever word of the Fathers one might turn, or even in their wonderful lives, one will encounter hardly any other virtue given so much praise or applied with such zeal and persistence, so that it alone constitutes the most powerful means of our success in Christ. It is not our intention to sing the praises of this queen of virtues, or to describe it, because whatever we might say would rather diminish it. Our aim is to exhort and encourage every believer in the working of the prayer. Afterwards each person will learn from his own experience what we have said so poorly. Press forward you who are doubtful, you who are despondent, you distressed, you in ignorance, you of little faith, and you who are suffering trials of various kinds; forward to consolation and to the solution to your problems. Our sweet Jesus Christ, our Life, has proclaimed to us that 'without me you can do nothing.' 7 Thus behold that, calling continuously upon Him, we are never alone; and consequently 'we can and will do all things through Him.' 8 Behold the correct meaning and application of the significant saying of the Scripture, 'Call upon Me in your day of trouble and I will deliver you, and you shall glorify Me.'9 Let us call upon His all-holy Name not only 'in the day of trouble' but continuously; so that our minds may be enlightened, that we might not enter into temptation. If anyone desires to step even higher where all-holy Grace will draw him, he will pass through this beginning point, and will be 'spoken to'* regarding Him, when he arrives there. As an epilogue to what has been written we repeat our exhortation, or rather our encouragement, to all the faithful that it is possible and it is vital that they occupy themselves with the prayer, 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me', the so-called 'noetic prayer', with a sure faith that they will benefit greatly regardless of what level they may reach. The remembrance of death and a humble attitude, together with the other helpful things that we have mentioned, guarantee success through the grace of Christ, the invocation of Whom will be the aim of this virtuous occupation. Amen. noetic - of the nous, the intellect. The intellect in this case is not simply the reasoning faculty of man, but the faculty of the heart that is able to comprehend natural and spiritual realities through direct experience. It is the faculty by which one may know God through prayer. Thus noetic prayer is also often called the 'prayer of the heart'. the prayer - efhi. When used with the definite article, as opposed to a general type of prayer, it refers to the Jesus prayer, 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.' The Jesus prayer is rooted in the early monastic tradition of the Church, with the words having been drawn from the New Testament. GLOSSARY ELDER JOSEPH Monastery ofvatopedi, Mount Atbos sober watchfulness - nipsis. Often translated as both 'sobriety' and 'watchfulness', it in fact incorporates both. It is a non-morbid seriousness in which the nous, the intellect, maintains an alertness and awareness of its immediate state. monological prayer - prayer of a single logos, a single word or phrase. spoken to - this refers to the numerous biblical instances of God speaking to the hearts and minds of His righteous ones, communicating Himself directly to those who are pure of heart and seeking Him through prayer. s Cf. Sir. 11: Thess. 5:17. 7 John 15:5. s Cf. Phil. 4:13. 9 Ps. 50:

14 THE MUSICAL TRADITION OF MOUNT ATHOS 1 I would like to divide my talk into four sections, representing four stages in the musical tradition of Mount Athas. The first stage covers the tenth to the twelfth century, a period marked by music copying. The monks of the Holy Mountain made manuscript copies of musical works inherited from pre-athonite religious centres, both monastic and nonmon.astic. In this first stage we do not see evidence of newly composed mustc on the Mountain. Instead historians of music are grateful to the Ath?nite scribes for their industry in providing us with some of the very earhest monuments of ancient Byzantine hymns with notation. The second stage, from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, marks the twilight of the Byzantine period proper; but at the same time it marks an era of flourishing cultural and artistic creativity: the so-called Palaeologan Renaissance. Music had its own contribution to make to this revival; and Athas can now be seen less as a centre that preserved older musical traditions and more as one that produced skilled musicians and composers with a new and innovative style of chant. The next stage, the third, is the Ottoman period, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, which saw increasing artistic liberalism and even the absorption of oriental musical idioms into certain forms of monastic and urban sacred song. New styles emerge and Athonite composers, along with their colleagues in urban centres, embark upon fresh explorations that carry the music forward as a living art into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Finally, the fourth period is that of the present age. With the introduction of musical type in 1820, handwritten manuscripts cease; a standard repertory is widely circulated in printed anthologies (and more recen.tly on CDs ); and elements of Western European musical theory and practice are wedded to the pre-existing Athonite musical repertory and tradition.. The story of music on Mount Athas is fascinating and altogether umque. The Holy Mountain is one of the few places in the world that can boast a continuous recorded musical tradition that stretches back uninterrupted for over a thousand years. 1 This article is based on a talk given to the Friends of Mount Athas on 20 November Introduction Monastic life began on Athas in the year 963, but before the end of the first millennium scribes had begun copying musical manuscripts for the conduct of the sacred services on the peninsula. We know specifically that three Athonite scriptoria - at the Great Lavra, at Vatopedi, and at Iviron - produced manuscripts with musical signs well before the first quarter of the eleventh century; and these manuscripts constitute some of our very earliest specimens of musical notation anywhere, either in the east or in the west. Today there are altogether about 12,000 manuscripts (both musical and non-musical) preserved in the Athonite monasteries. Recent work in the libraries and catalogues of the collections suggests that 25 per cent of these handwritten books (i.e. about 3000) are musical. The greatest number of these (perhaps 90 per cent) date from the sixteenth century and later. The remainder are from the Byzantine epoch, from the tenth to the fifteenth century, and they constitute an important source of documentation for the evolution of not only the Byzantine musical style but also that of Byzantine musical notation and that of Byzantine liturgy. Only about 400 Athonite musical manuscripts (i.e. about 13.5 per cent of the total) have actually been studied by musicologists. Many more of course have been catalogued by codicologists; and the immense task of cataloguing all the monastic holdings of musical manuscripts is in the hands of the Athenian musicologist Grigorios Stathis who has recently produced the third volume of a projected eight-volume series. The present collections in the monasteries do not represent the entire corpus of manuscripts written on the Holy Mountain. Nor can we assume that the present location of a manuscript represents its original provenance. Volumes could be written about the migration of books and icons both to and especially from Athas. The exodus has only stopped in recent times with the enforcement of customs inspections. In the past there were very significant losses, some as a result of fire. There were other kinds of losses too. Fifty manuscripts originally from the Great Lavra are now in the Biblioteca Laurenziana in Florence, and seventy others from Athas may be found in the fonds Coislin of the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. Maxim the Greek took many Athonite manuscripts to Russia. In 1654 Arsenii Suchanov, a Russian merchant, purchased 504 manuscripts on Athas, and of these 27

15 some 400 came into the possession of the Synodal Library in Moscow (148 of these 400 belonged to lviron and 59 to Vatopedi). Yet other Athonite manuscripts are now in the British Library and in the supplementary Greek collection of the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. The colourful Russian Archimandrite Porphyry Uspensky (later Metropolitan of Kiev) not only stole entire manuscripts but also cut out decorative initials and miniatures from others. Stage 1: Music Copying on Athas, Tenth to Twelfth Century The largest library is that of the Great Lavra with about 2000 manuscripts altogether. Of these about 600 were written before They include some of the oldest monuments of Byzantine chant: the well-known Heirmologion B32 (with the earliest surviving music for the morning office; thanks to Uspensky two folios of B32 are now in St Petersburg), and r12 and 167 (containing our oldest music for Lent and Eastertide), all dating from the tenth century. Manuscripts from the eleventh at the Lavra include 172 and 174 (the scribe of these two manuscripts is the same and calls himself 'the humble Anthony') and a fragment of ~ 11. Six folios from Lavra 167 were torn out and taken to Chartres in 1840 by Paul Durand, the librarian and director of the local museum. One of these folios bore a very important tenth-century list of musical symbols with their names. By a stroke of luck, these six folios were partly photographed and partly hand-copied in 1912, thirty-two years before the city of Chartres became the target of an allied bombardment on 26 May 1944 which destroyed the Bibliotheque Municipale and with it the six folios that had been detached from Lavra 167. Thus we are in possession of one of the earliest lists of musical signs, with their names, that was ever compiled. Important as these Athonite sources are for the early history of music writing, it is certainly not the case that musical notation originated on Mount Athos. For we know that by 963 there already existed two independent systems of writing music-a simple type that most likely was created in Palestine early in the ninth century, presumably at the influential monastery of Mar Saba; and a more complex variety of slightly later origin that was used in urban ecclesiastical centres such as Constantinople and Thessaloniki. It is interesting to note that around the year 860, when the brothers Cyril and Methodius set out from Thessaloniki on their missions to Moravia, they took with them a primitive form of this urban notation that we find in the earliest Slavonic musical manuscripts. The Lavra manuscripts mentioned above also use the complex urban notation. Vatopedi MS 1488 was written in the first half of the eleventh century at Vatopedi. It is the oldest and most celebrated of the 350 musical manuscripts at that monastery. Its interest lies in the fact that it uses both notations, the Palestinian and the urban, for different parts of the book, even though the whole is the work of a single scribe. The two notations are kept quite distinct. In no case are they combined in the course of a single melody, and there is no trace of a transitional stage. Nor is there anything arbitrary in the choice of one notation over the other. Only too obviously the copyist of Vatopedi MS 1488 has drawn on two examplars - one for each of the notational varieties he has used. This manuscript clearly constitutes a sort of turning-point. At the time it was copied, an old system of notation was being displaced by a new one; and if this manuscript was the first to use the new system, it was also the last to use the old. For a comparative study of the two notations it surely is the ideal source. This sort of study has led to a clarification of hitherto ambiguous and obscure symbols, but we are still far from being able to make fully accurate transcriptions of either variety. Vatopedi MS 1488 is also of interest to students of liturgy since, uniquely, it supplies detailed directions for a small number of rarely celebrated services. Among them is the Pedilavium (o niptir), the office commemorating the washing of the disciples' feet. Historians of music go to great lengths in order to discover, as accurately as possible, the dates of the surviving manuscript sources. Why do they do this? A secure chronology enables them to classify the documents and to group them into families. It also constitutes the key factor in observing the evolution, over the decades, of musical symbols. Symbols in later manuscripts tend to clarify the ambiguities of earlier notation. Thus, by comparative analysis, scholars are able to come to important conclusions about Byzantium's unique and influential musical tradition. And this is precisely where the productions of the Athonite scriptoria are of immense importance since, without question, they provide the musicologist with the best documents for this kind of 28 29

16 investigation. For, as we can see, among the oldest documents of Byzantine chant anywhere, the greater number of them is either preserved in the monastic libraries on Mount Athos or originated on the peninsula. The performance of Byzantine chant Let us tum now from the written record to actual performance practice. When speaking of Byzantine chant, one must remember that first not everything that was sung was written down in notes, and secondly not everything that was written in notes was sung as written. To begin with, musical notation was simply a device, a graphic tool, invented to preserve a melody that was relatively new, relatively complex, and relatively difficult to sing from memory. Familiar items were not recorded but left to communal memory and to oral tradition. Furthermore, sacred chants, whether from the Latin west or the Greek east, were never meant to be rigidly or mechanically duplicated at each performance. A chanter's approach to the music could be compared with that of a jazz musician to a vocal or instrumental line. In both cases, improvisation was the hallmark of the style. In both cases, the skill and experience of the performer affected the musical rendition. The inscribing of a chant melody in a manuscript was, in the first instance, one man's application at one moment of a musical gloss on a traditional melody. Consequently the monuments of Athonite chant from the tenth to the twelfth century constitute one stage in a tradition of sacred music whose origins lie in the performance practice of the pre-notational era - the era of oral tradition and oral transmission. This one moment, captured for ever on parchment, joins with many other similar scribal moments to create the Athonite musical tradition. Pre-Athonite monastic music: the desert and the city Music on Mount Athos therefore did not come about in a cultural vacuum. Monastic music actually has its origins in the primitive psalmody of the early Egyptian and Palestinian desert communities that arose in the fourth to sixth centuries. Later on, monastic establishments developed in urban centres and absorbed some of the features of cathedral liturgy, features such as music and ceremonial. It was this mixed musical tradition that was inherited by the monasteries of Athos -a mixture of the desert and the city. In both traditions it was the Old Testament Book of Psalms (the Psalter) that first regulated the musical flow of the services. It was the manner in which this book was used that identified whether a service followed the monastic or the secular urban pattern. These psalms were sung by a soloist who intoned the verses slowly and in a loud voice. The monks were seated on the ground or on small stools because they were weakened by fasts and other austerities. They listened and meditated in their hearts on the words that they heard. The monks gave little thought to precisely which psalms were being used - they were little concerned, for example, with choosing texts that made specific reference to the time of the day, whether morning or evening. Since the primary purpose of the monastic services was meditation, the psalms were sung in a meditative way and in numerical order. The desert monastic office as a whole was marked by its lack of ceremony. But in the secular cathedrals the psalms were not rendered in numerical order; rather they consisted of appropriate psalms that were selected for their specific reference to the hour of the day or for their subject-matter which suited the spirit of the occasion for the service. The urban services also included meaningful ceremonies such as the lighting of the lamps and the offering of incense. Moreover, a great deal of emphasis was placed on active congregational pa.1:icipation. The psalms were not sung by a soloist totally alone but in a responsorial or antiphonal manner in which congregational groups sang a refrain after each verse. The idea was to have everyone involved in an effort of common celebration: there was no place here for individual contemplation. Now the monasteries that were founded in urban centres developed a definite liturgical character that was distinct from purely desert monasticism. The city monks knew the cathedral rite and we find that they combined the practice of the desert monks with the popular services in the towns; and this included ceremonial, antiphonal psalmody, and a more melodious choral chanting. Athonite monasticism adopted as ready-made this Byzantine liturgical and musical amalgamation. On the one hand, Athonite services used long continuous psalmody (following the Egyptian practice); on the other, they used specifically chosen hymns and psalms that were appropriate to the hour or occasion (following the urban practice). Musical responsibility was given to two trained choirs that followed notated manuscripts, and each choir had its own leader, the protopsaltes

17 Now I have referred already to the important activity of music copyists on the Holy Mountain, particularly in the large monasteries of Lavra, Vatopedi, and Iviron. But what of music composers and singers? The impressive Athonite manuscripts from the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries provide us with useful knowledge about the historical development of musical notation and about musical traditions from Constantinople's cathedrals and monasteries. But was there nothing original by way of music-making on the peninsula itself? The evidence seems to suggest that there was not; that there were no significant Athonite musicians before the last decades of the thirteenth century. Until that time the musical legacy received from the early Christian traditions of Egypt, Palestine, and the capital was adopted wholesale. According to John Meyendorff, the predominantly rural recruitment of the Athonite communities and their remoteness from major urban centres were not conducive to intellectual creativity. Their isolation was in fact deliberately sought and was protected by the imperially approved status of the Holy Mountain. This situation changed quite dramatically at the end of the thirteenth and during the fourteenth century. Several factors contributed to the sudden and much greater musical visibility acquired by Athos. Stage 2: The Palaeologan Renaissance By the early fourteenth century the focus of musical and artistic attention shifted to the Athonite republic. Athos, after all, was the only major Byzantine monastic centre that survived, practically untouched, the Turkish conquest of Asia Minor, the Latin occupation of many Byzantine territories in Europe, and the Slav advances in the Balkans. As a result, it acquired the prestige of uniqueness and began attracting numerous well-educated monks not only from the capital but also from Serbia, Kiev, Mount Sinai, and particularly Thessaloniki, which had become politically, socially, and intellectually a centre rivalling the importance of Constantinople. The presence on Mount Athos of many intellectual figures was in itself sufficient to raise its social prestige. It became impossible for the monks to maintain their former aloofness from the outside world. The monasteries' influence, prestige, and wealth made them assume an important role in shaping social, intellectual, and artistic trends of the day. 32 Plate 1. Evlogeite! Abbot Ephraim ofvatopedi tonsures a new monk under the watchful eye of Elder Joseph. (photo Graham Speake)

18 Plate 2. Philoxenia at Highgrove: HRH the Prince ofwales at home with Abbot Ephraim and the Fathers ofvatopedi, HM King Constantine, and members of the Friends. (photo Norman McBeath)

19 Plate 3. The Monastery of Hilandar ( 1986), by Derek Hill. Stjohn Koukouzeles and the dawn of new music-making on Athos From the monastery of the Great Lavra came the central and victorious figure in a new musical movement - a movement that changed the course and ethos of Byzantine chant. Its legacy survives to this day. This person was the monk John Koukouzeles (c.l ), a singer, composer, music pedagogue, and scribe; known variously as 'the second source of Greek music after John of Damascus', the 'angel-voiced', or, most popularly, 'the master'. He was eventually canonized as a saint in the Orthodox Church, and as a result there exists a hagiographical vita, a short biography, which gives us almost all the facts we know about his life. According to his vita, Koukouzeles was hom and raised in Dyrrachium, in present-day Albania, but while still a boy he left to attend an imperial school in Constantinople as a protege of the emperor. The emperor is unnamed in the vita, but in all likelihood it was Andronicus II Palaeologus ( ), who was a patron of the arts. It appears that Koukouzeles was not the saint's real surname, but a nickname made up of two words: the Greek word for a species of bean, koukia, and the Slavonic word for cabbage, zeliya. Three questions might immediately spring to mind. What was John's real surname? How did he receive the salad name Koukouzeles? Why is there a Slavonic element in the nickname? The hagiographer does not answer the first question. He does not give any other name for his subject. But a fourteenth-century music manuscript from Koutloumousi does refer to the musician as John Papadopoulos and this surname appears occasionally in the manuscript tradition where the composer's works are copied. As to the second question, the hagiographer notes that when the young John went to school he knew little or no Greek and was teased by his school mates who asked him, 'What did you eat today?' To this he replied, 'Beans and cabbage' in Greek and Slavonic respectively. From then on, the nickname remained with him. In another episode of the vita we read that after many years John travels home to his mother. As he approaches, he hears her lamenting with the following non-greek words, written in the biography in Greek letters: 'Moe dete Ivan, gde ti si?' ('My child, John, where are you?') In later life, recalling the tune of his mother's lament, John composes a chant which, according to the biographer, he labels voulgara. This descriptive epithet, however, is nowhere to be found in music 33

20 manuscripts carrying Koukouzeles's compositions. It only turns up in nineteenth-century printed editions of church music. Bulgarian musicologists have, on the basis of this story, claimed our musician as a native son. They refer to him as Ivan Kukuzel angeloglasnets (the angel-voiced) and even claim to have discovered musical relationships between his sacred chants and Bulgarian folk music. More recently, Albanian scholars, noting the composer's birthplace, have made similar claims and similar statements about resemblances with Albanian traditional song. The vita goes on to say that Koukouzeles was eventually tonsured a monk at the Great Lavra and that he would spend his weekdays in a chapel outside the monastery walls in quietude (besycbia). At weekends he sang in the katholikon. The biographer makes no mention of the saint's prolific compositional output, nor of his music's immense popularity over the entire Orthodox world. For there scarcely exists a single musical anthology written after the first quarter of the fourteenth century that does not contain Koukouzeles's work. Moreover, composers contemporary with him, and those that followed, were all influenced by his innovations and new musical techniques. What were these revolutionary changes and what was there about them that made them so immediately receptive? What was there about the musical and cultural climate at the time that led to the widespread application of the Koukouzelian style? I shall mention just a few of the most significant features of these reforms. To begin with, we note in the works of Koukouzeles a marked expansion of both music and text. The composer increases the length of traditional melodies in three ways: (i) by setting very many notes to the individual syllables of the sacred words (melismata); (ii) by interpolating new words and phrases in preexisting texts, thereby giving him scope to write more music; (iii) by inserting long passages of nonsense syllables set to music into preexisting chants - syllables such as te-re-re, to-ro-ro, ti-ri-ri, and so on. These are usually known as teretismata, and for the past 600 years they have come to occupy a key musical position in Athonite vigil services. But Koukouzeles does not only lengthen the time that it takes to perform his chants; he also expects virtuosity of his singers. A typical Koukouzelian tune is highly sophisticated, skilfully arranged, very complex, and spans a wide vocal range. This is Byzantine bel canto at its best: an idiom that is extremely ornate and florid and described by 34 the late medieval Greek artists as 'kalophonic' or 'beautified'. Koukouzeles was the greatest exponent of this style. The application of these kalophonic innovations signalled a significant breakdown in the classical Byzantine tradition of a one-to-one, tightly knit correspondence between word and tone in sacred music. Now there was a profound shift of emphasis away from age-old models and a new surge of interest in purely musical techniques. It was a revolutionary attitude towards music's function in Orthodox worship. Having taken this step, there was no turning back. Composers following Koukouzeles's example went to great lengths to achieve special individual effects and variety. The same psalm and hymn texts were subjected to an endless number of beautified artistic settings, each more skilful (more kalophonic) than the last. The time was more or less ripe for these reforms of Koukouzeles. By the end of the twelfth century the monastic services had been amplified by a wealth of new hymnography, particularly from the Studite monastery in Constantinople. At the same time Byzantine musical notation had evolved to the degree that it was capable of capturing the new melodies with all their detail and nuances. Finally, the Palaeologan era was itself a period of artistic and cultural revival in spite of the waning political fortunes of the empire. The kalophonic tradition of Koukouzeles, his contemporaries, and followers became the accepted Byzantine music that was adopted at the Athonite metocbia in Moldavia as well as in the new music schools of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Serbia and Bulgaria. Stage 3: The Ottoman Period (Mid-Fifteenth to Nineteenth Century) The kalophonic tradition of music-making begun by Koukouzeles and the Palaeologan composers on the Holy Mountain flourishes in the new Ottoman era and is characterized by an unprecedented artistic liberalism and even the absorption of external musical idioms of non Christian origin. Modem scholars have tried to trace musical survivals of the Byzantine period in the compositions after Many have considered that the entire artistic creation of the Ottoman years was merely an extension of Byzantium. Anything perceived as departing radically from the Byzantine mould was viewed as decadent and aesthetically inadequate. Consequently the Ottoman period has been deprived of any 35

21 systematic musicological investigation. Somewhat indiscriminately, the musical productions of the Tourkokratia are labelled either 'Byzantine' or 'post-byzantine' to the neglect of what actually should be seen as an innovative, neo-hellenic artistic movement, comparable with other artistic expressions of the age. Manifestly significant is the change in what ought to be understood as the Athonite musical tradition. Now it is not only what was created, sung, and cultivated on the peninsula itself, but also what was absorbed from outside and made its own: in certain genres this was Turkish secular song and instrumental music and Muslim sacred melody. A number of Athonite scribes and musicians contributed to this lavish lyrical style, such as the monk Clement and the two Vatopedian composers and teachers Ioasaph the so-called 'New Koukouzeles' and the priest monk Arsenios the Younger, all of whom flourished at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Ioasaph was an unrivalled calligrapher of music, while Arsenios was the first of many composers to base his chants on Ottoman national music and instrumental melodies, such as the piece that he identifies as 'the syrinx (pipe], known as mouskali (pan-pipes] by the Ishmaelites [i.e. the Muslims]' or another with the provocative title 'the gypsy woman'. There are many other works whose origin is simply described as ek ton exo (from outside) or exoteriki (foreign). These were very new but lasting influences on Greek church music. Kosmas the Macedonian, active as a composer and teacher at Iviron between 1665 and 1700, wrote a passage of teretismata which he called atzemikon erotikon (love song). And Panayiotis Chalatzoglou (d.1748), a student on Mount Athos (though never tonsured a monk), displayed an academic interest in the musical relationships between Christian religious music and foreign secular songs. In this connection he wrote a fascinating monograph entitled A Comparison between Arabo-Persian Music and Our Sacred Chant in which he reveals his wide knowledge of the richness, diversity, and similarities of both these traditions. The Ottoman period therefore, both on and off the Mountain, is one of new artistic styles and impulses, occasionally flavoured with the exotic Anatolian sound of the conqueror's music. The old Byzantine musical practices were subjected to artistic improvisations and even the notation needed to be reworked to handle the refinements of the new melodic tendencies. As such, sacred chant, following the other arts, particularly after the seventeenth century, participates in the establishment of a recognizable modem Greek aesthetic. It may take a great many years for scholars to acquire a thorough familiarity with all Athonite music throughout this long period, but the path that this tradition will take becomes fairly obvious and it appears fully and completely in the printed music books that begin to circulate after The invention of Byzantine musical type marks the end of a long and fascinating tradition of the Byzantine music manuscript. The lviron folk-songs Of particular interest to folklorists and ethnomusicologists was the discovery by Spyridon Lambros in 1880 of thirteen medieval Greek secular folk-songs with Byzantine notation that were recorded on seven folios and hidden in the binding of Iviron MS 1203 probably by a certain priest monk Athanasios of Iviron sometime during the seventeenth century. From a literary perspective the texts are important in that they represent some of the earliest extant examples of Greek demotic poetry. For the musicologist the value of the discovery lay in the fact that, apart from these melodies, no other secular vocal music copied in Byzantine notation was known. And this thanks to the wayward musical thoughts of an lviron monk. On 14 November 1959 Arka Mandikian sang a selection of the songs on the BBC from transcriptions by Egon Wellesz. The photographs used by Wellesz were taken by John Leatham (a member of the Friends of Mount Athos) who had visited lviron in September After Wellesz's death in 1974 I inherited Leatham's excellent photographs of the Iviron folios and decided to re-examine the folk-songs with a view to analysing their melodic structure. The scribe of this undated MS 1203 identifies himself in the following manner: 'The present kratematarion was written by the hand of me, Athanasios, the unworthy and highly illiterate priest monk from the city of Thessaloniki, of Athenian origin, surnamed Kapetanos, from the monastery of Iviron; and, 0 readers of this, pray for me and do not curse if it contains not a few mistakes.' It is generally agreed that Lambros's dating of the manuscript and the folk-songs to the seventeenth century is a reasonable approximation. One song is about the capture of Bosnia in 1463 and another is about the siege of Paros in 1537, the latter thereby providing a terminus 36 37

22 post quem. On palaeographical grounds the script and the notation confirm the seventeenth-century reckoning. The folk-songs from lviron MS 1203 represent a random selection of thirteen popular melodies from medieval Greece. One can imagine an aged Athanasios at lviron recording from memory some of the favourite songs of his youth in Thessaloniki and hiding the leaves in one of his chant manuscripts. As musical compositions, the settings are written in a fairly simple style. They are neither excessively ornate nor complex - unlike many ecclesiastical chants of the same period. The fact that chant notation could be used to record secular tunes in the seventeenth century points dearly to an alliance between these two genres and demonstrates that there was a degree of musical interdependence. We are certainly lucky to have these folk-songs. They can aid us in determining the extent to which contemporary Greek demotic song is related to older musical forms. Stage 4: The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries The emergence of the printed music book after 1820 led to a standardization of the chant repertory both in mainland Greece and on Athas. Selected popular works of the great Constantinopolitan masters of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were typeset and included in anthologies of chant. But alongside these, simplified western-style melodies were also making inroads in popular editions of sacred music published, for example, by the influential Zoe movement. For a short time Athos could not resist the increasingly fashionable Italianate style that was being introduced by western-trained musicians and by the great influx of Russian monks on the Mountain before But this was soon to be counterbalanced by the new sounds of the Asia Minor refugees who flooded into Greece and eventually on to Athos after the 1920s and 1930s, precisely when the Russian population on the Mountain was entering a decline. To begin with, the church music of these Anatolians, though very much a continuation of the earlier tradition of Ottoman times, was rejected by the Greek urban middle classes as vulgar and Turkish. They had become enamoured of the sweet polyphonic choirs, some of them with organ accompaniment. But, in time, radio, the gramophone, and television also proliferated sophisticated European styles; and these styles, though in a neo-byzantine dress, have affected certain repertories of Athonite music even to this day. 38 Even as early as the eighteenth century there is evidence of a sharp negative reaction by the Athonites to city church music. An anonymo~s hand writes in a Vatopedi manuscript the following sharp remarks m verse: The psalmodies of Byzantium like the nightingales are heard; While those of the Holy Mountain resemble the tunes of guileless swallows; But the ones in Athens warble like the falcons; And the psalmodies of Crete are the arid squawking of the crows. There has indeed been a revival of traditional eastern-style chant on the Holy Mountain, just as there has been of traditional icon-painting. But, wittingly or unwittingly, elements of western diatonic music have blend~d with the chant - a phenomenon reminiscent of what we observed m earlier centuries with the infiltration of Ottoman sounds into Byzantine melody. Another feature of Athonite musical life in the post-war years has been what I term the cult of the virtuoso. Until its very recent return, choral music fell into a decline on the peninsula and instead one heard master soloists improvising and elaborating chant with extraordinary vocal skills and deft oriental turns. The most famous of these soloists was the deacon Dimitrios Firfiris (d.1991), whose evocative voice and improvisational skills created a sensation both on and off the Mountain. At every major panegyri on Athos Firfiris was invited to lead the chant and for this he was paid a handsome fee. Since the mid-1970s, with the revival of monastic life led by young, educated monks, the musical emphasis has begun to shift from performance by an individual to that by the group. For many years Simonapetra alone employed full double choirs for every service, each day of the year. Its example has recently been followed by Vatopedi. This more traditional performance practice is gaining popularity in convents and monasteries on the mainland and abroad. Moreover, use of the Book of Psalms - the ancient song book of the early monasteries - has been revived, and new melodious settings for them have been composed. About eight years ago a suave, lyrical melody set to a religious poem by St Nektarios of Aegina was composed by a monk at Simonopetra 39

23 and subsequently recorded on cassette tape. Within two years this melody circled the globe. It has captured the hearts of Orthodox choir masters worldwide. The hymn, entitled '0 Pure Virgin', can today be heard sung in Japanese, French, Tinglit, Italian, Russian, Swahili, Arabic, Romanian, English, and many other languages. Its popularity is entirely due to the fact that it combines familiar elements of two different musical cultures: the harmonic and metrical features of European lyrical ballads with the vocal production and exoticism that evoke a flavour of the east. What of the future? I believe that we shall observe a greater degree of choral singing as opposed to soloistic virtuosity, though the latter will not disappear entirely for some time. Athonite music will also be greatly commercialized in the near future. (One of the monasteries has recently signed a major contract with Virgin Records.) On the other hand, there has also been a recent tendency to examine the old manuscripts in order to rediscover earlier traditions and vocal practices. Western musical tendencies, though perhaps never acknowledged as such, may continue to blend with the chant. The Athonite musical tradition has adapted over the centuries to changing cultural tastes and conditions. This identifies it as an art that is living and flexible. At all events, because of its prestige, Athos will be a pace-setter for musical trends well beyond its own territory. DIMITRI CONOMOS Oxford AUTUMN SEEDS FROM ATHOS Before I came to live as a monk here in the Stiperstone hills in Shropshire, His Eminence Archbishop Gregorios asked me to go to Mount Athos for about two years, to gain experience there. Since then, I have returned to the Holy Mountain about twice a year. Usually such visits are with a number of other pilgrims from Britain; last October there were six of us (the wives of three of our company meanwhile went to the convent of Ormylia, which made the week a literal holy-day!). Like a forester gathering seeds for his planting, I make a practice of writing down those conversations that I have had with monks ~r pilgrims on Athos which have been particularly helpful; I try to do thts the same day in order to retain the freshness of the event. These spiritual 'words' are like seeds, which can be planted back in the west. This article consists of some such conversations which we as a group, or I individually, had on this last October pilgrimage. Except for Archimandrite Vasileios, the Abbot of lviron, who is already well known, I have not given the names of the monks since I am sure they would want anonymity. Everything is a translation from Greek. Of course not every word of each meeting is here recorded, but only those things which were remembered at the time of recording them and which are suitable for publication. Soon after our arrival at lviron, Fr Vasileios kindly agreed to give us as a group some of his time. We gathered one evening in the newly completed ~est reception room. Its ceiling is a play of white-painted arches, a perfect mamage of function and beauty. The east side of the room looks on to the sea ~nd the vegetable garden. To the south lies the dense chestnut forest, and bebmd, the majestic Holy Mountain itself 'Geronda ', one of us asked, 'would you give us some words concerning bow we as Orthodox can better live the Christian life in Britain?' If you live the spiritual life truly, you will become truly British. If we do not grasp on to merely created things, like our ethnic background, but rather seek uncreated life, paradoxically we bring out the best and the most authentic in our culture. What I impressed upon Fr Aidan before he returned to England was to. live there as an Orthodox 40 41

24 Christian, not presenting the Church as something strange, exotic, and eastern, but as truly English. I myself learned respect for Englishness through a Greek friend, Koodrobis, who lived some years in England. But to live as God intends us to live, in an uncreated way, to make created things like human culture to be participants in uncreated life, we must first die. The exaltation of the Cross is the means of uniting the whole world. Orthodoxy is the life of resurrection, but it is also the life of the Cross. We can only experience this resurrected life via the Crucifixion. In Holy Week we live through the Passion of the Lord, and then in Pascha we live His Resurrection. But then each week in the year should become also a Holy Week: on Wednesday we commemorate the Lord's betrayal, on Friday His Crucifixion, on Saturday His harrowing of Hades, and on Sunday His Resurrection. But again, not only each week, but each Holy Liturgy can become a Holy Week and Pascha: in it we hear the Lord's teaching, we experience His self-offering, His sacrifice, and so on. But we can go even further. Each moment can become a Pascha as we unite our breath with the Jesus prayer. Christ enters the depths of the Hades of our hearts as we breathe in with the prayer, and as He rises through the prayer He raises us up with Him, to make us share in His uncreated, divine life. It is then that we fmd that we have the Spirit dwelling in us, that our every breath becomes a doxology. Then every facet of life becomes an expression of Pascha, from the Incarnation right through to Pentecost. Our different jobs in the world then become a service [ diakonima in the Greek, the term used in monasteries for the particular type of work which each monk is given at the beginning of the year and through which he serves Christ, his fellow monastics, and pilgrims] in the single Liturgy of the Church. We then make no division between daily life and the Liturgy. On a practical level, what does this then mean concerning the frequency of celebrating the Liturgy and of receiving communion? Fr Tikhon, a Russian monk who lived in a cell not far from Stavronikita, said that it needs only one Jesus prayer prayed with compunction to attract Christ to us, whereas a thousand repetitions without compunction will lead us nowhere. Likewise, celebrating the Liturgy or communicating with compunction brings grace more than mindless frequent celebration. 42 The cell and church of St Gregory V, martyr and Patriarch of Constantinople, and distant view of lviron. By Brother Aidan. How patient do we have to be in our spiritual life? I ask this because here in the monastery I see the monks progressing with the aid of the daily cycle of services and all the other elements of monastic life, but outward life is different for us in the world. The monastic and the person in the world are both humans. The layman cannot have five to six hours a day in church services, but he should try to arrange his time so as to have a time set apart each day in which to pray and read and quieten himself. And he should have a place at home or somewhere else which is set apart just for prayer. How can one find a quiet heart in the midst of many worries about different relationships? In relationships it is important to know the right time to say and do things, to have in mind the age and character of the other, in order to give the right medicine. Also it is impossible to advance without difficulties. We must learn to know the right time. Like the Lord who, when the Nazarenes wanted to cast Him off the edge of a cliff, walked away through their midst. He 43

25 knew that His time to die had not yet come. When it did come, at Gethsemane, He walked willingly to the Cross. We too must dissolve ourselves so we can be raised into that other life, into the uncreated life of God. When we live in this way, we greet the hardships more than the easy times, because we realize that it is through these hardships that we can participate in uncreated life. It is like the devil throwing stones at us to kill us. We pick up the stones, saying, 'Thank you; I wanted to build a church but had no stones; but now you have provided them.' So the devil stops throwing them. Again we say, 'Thank you. Now I can get on with the building.' All the details of our lives have importance in this way, since they are all potential stones, however small, for building our lives in God, or rather for God building our lives in Him. As we live liturgically, we begin to see that everything comes, like a spring, from the Holy Trinity; that all the various facets of life have one source, the will of God. We must learn to know the right time, the kairos. Consider Moses. God told him to hide in the cleft of the rock while He passed by. By staying in that place where God sent him, Moses saw God 'pass by'; if he had moved, he would have seen nothing. A hermit who lived nearby lviron was asked by someone what he did in his hermitage, how he spent his time. The answer was simply, 'I live here.' When we are frenzied with activity not according to God's will, we are like people running on a tread mill, not getting anywhere; we appear to be moving but are not. In God's time it does not matter if things appear not to be happening, because we see God; we contemplate Him and are content. The humanists of the Renaissance period tried to resurrect classical Greek thought, without God. They failed. The Christians in Byzantium did it successfully because they sought to unite themselves with what is beyond culture, that is, with God, and in this way were they able to bring to fruition all that was good in classical thought. I think that those of you here who are teachers and artists have a great responsibility to enter church life, since by your work you have an especially broad effect on a culture's direction. True theology is poetry, music, harmony in all facets of life. It is not something legalistic, something within the narrow confines of scholastic logic. It leads you to an open space One ewning after the services and the obediences of the day bad finished, I went to the kitchen to see Fr E. It was a cold evening, so the warmth of the massive wood-fired oven was welcome. There was no light other than that which came from the fire. As we were talking, Fr E would shift great boiling pots of soup around the top of the stove, taking out or putting in more of the heavy iron rings which controlled the amount of flame coming out of the top. I asked him to talk to me about what be bad found to be the most important thing in the spiritual life. I try to see the whole of life without compartments. I get up in the morning, do my cell rule, go to the services, rest, work in the kitchen, go for a walk, visit my friends the frogs, snakes, turtles, and birds down at the river - it is all one life. Everything then becomes a game, a life enjoyed in God. When I do these things because I feel I have to, purely out of a sense of obligation, then joy flees. People sometimes talk about the sacrifice needed to become a monk, but where is the sacrifice in giving up something small to get something big? Yes. I know the Geronda often speaks about bow the saint sets us free, bow be creates a space of freedom and warmth which attracts others, for we are created for this freedom and love. When one bas tasted this divine life, nothing seems too valuable to give up in order to drink more deeply of it. I have noticed that when we try to give people love and affection in a sentimental or purely human way, or even just out of a sort of gushing enthusiasm, we can end up thrusting ourselves upon them, rather than creating this space. We end up suffocating people and driving them away. Yes, I know what you mean. I know a monk, a very good monk whom I love dearly, who one day was more than his usual super-active and energetic self. He saw one of the monastery cats in the courtyard - the most friendly and sociable of all the cats - and rushed up to play with it. Terrified by the sight of this monk rushing at him, calling out, 'Dear pussy, how are you? Come and play!', this most friendly of all the cats bristled its fur, hissed, and dashed away! Afterwards Fr M came to the kitchen saying how wild and unfriendly the creature was. Fr ]: When I became a monk, I had no idea of the horizons that lay ahead in the spiritual life. Each time you take a step forward, a new hill appears, new scenes open up. It is a struggle certainly, to go ahead, but 45

26 humorous way he claimed that, because he was not warmed supernaturally by this divine fire, he needed to warm himself by natural means. In the same conversation I said that there was need for us to make the spiritual intellect [nous] the centre of our being, rather than the rationalizing faculty; the former, being the eye of the heart, can know God directly, I said, whereas the latter can only know about God. Fr S commented: It is true what you say about the rational faculty; but concerning the intellect, it is not so much the nous itself which sees God, for 'no man can see God and live', as the Scriptures say, but rather the Spirit of God within the nous seeing Himself. It is God knowing Himself, seeing Himself, through us, through this eye of the heart, when we know God. The cell and church of St Gregory V. By Brother Aidan. you are encouraged by the knowledge that even greater blessings exist 'over the hill'. Some of us went to visit Fr S up in his cell on the hillside. There were already a number of people there. One asked Father if there were still people on Athos with whom he could speak about hesychasm. Father smiled and told the following anecdote about the well-known and loved Fr Pafssios of Karyes, who recently reposed in the Lord. Somehow Fr Palssios was at a conference of theologians on the subject of uncreated light. Various scholars gave learned papers on the subject. Towards the end of the conference they asked Fr Palssios if he could say something on their subject. 'What can I say about uncreated [aktisto] light?', he replied. 'I have to use a man-made [ktisto) woodburner to keep warm at night.' We know that, if any man knew the uncreated light in our time, it was Fr Palssios. Precisely because he had experience of this grace, he was unwilling to speak about it, and so in his characteristically 46 On a second visit to Fr S I met a Greek sculptor, apparently well known in the country for his modernist installations. Both he and his works seemed ridden with angst. It happened after our time there that we bad to leave together, somewhat in haste, because the night was closing in. It was a still, cool evening. We walked in silence for some time, up the dusty road, past some ruined cells, past a simple wooden cross which marked the border where the great fire of some years baclt had halted, on the feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God. Prompted by the disparity between his tortured art and his spending some days at a hermitage on Mount Athos, I asked what he was trying to express in his work. He thought for some time before answering: What am I trying to express? The love that is absent.' His angst came from the hell of not experiencing within himself the love which he somehow knew existed. One day a certain monk was speaking with me about his spiritual father, his Geronda. I have noticed how with time the Geronda has come to rely increasingly on intuition. In his talks he says that intuition guides him what to say, although he does prepare. Unless something breathes life, it is not worth saying, he once told me. We can say something that is quite true, but it will not breathe life if it is not spoken at the right time or in the right spirit. Gradually I have come to realize that we have to be careful not to be 47

27 involved in lots of literary activity that distracts us and the readers from the really important sources- the Scriptures, the Fathers, the lives of saints. Often by our well-meaning activity we can hinder God's work. We need to realize our uselessness to see God act. Once someone asked me to give them a few words about hesychasm, how they could gain a more intense inner life. I answered simply that the first thing is to realize that you are stupid. There are few things that obstruct our relationship with God and others more than a sense of self-importance. Once the Geronda was asked to speak to an anarchists' organization at a university. He said that he, as an Orthodox Christian, was the true anarchist because the love of Christ takes him beyond the mere keeping of laws. This living relationship with Christ takes a Christian beyond systems and philosophies and ideologies and even religion, all of which are too narrow for man's soul. This love of Christ in the Church leads a man to fulfil moral laws naturally, without his having to see them as a tyrannical restriction. Orthodoxy enables you even to surpass Orthodoxy itself, he said. 'On the other hand, you anarchists are not really anarchists, because you are bound by this system, by this ideology, which you call anarchy. Unless your anarchy enables you to surpass anarchy, it has failed.' As a group one afternoon we visited Fr B in his cell. It lies on the top of a high ridge, near the sea. It has a commanding view of the nearby-monastery. After he had shown us the various restoration works he had been carrying out on the old buildings, we went into the salon. As in the discussion with Fr Vasileios, we asked Fr B to give us a word about living our Christian lives in the west. By confession, communion, having a spiritual father, by studying the Fathers of the Church, we inwardly grow in strength of spirit. Only in this way can we be strong enough to avoid being tossed about by the winds of worldly change. There is a saying on Athos that it is not the place [topos] where we live that saves, but the way [troposj we live. So the Holy Mountain is ultimately not a place, but a way of living. This was borne out for me by a meeting with a young married Greek, Costas, who introduced himself to me on the boat coming back from Athos to Ouranopolis. I learned many things from him, 48 but what struck me most is the following. It was in reply to a question about how he tried to transplant his experiences on Athos into his life 'in the world'. And with his words I shall tie up this little bag of autumn seeds. We are all humans, monk and lay. And the devil is just as active inside monasteries as outside. I think the main difference between the monastic life and life in the world is that in the world there are not the spiritual alarm clocks, the reminders, which monasteries have. We are not called to prayer so frequently by bells and the daily rhythm of our liturgical life. We are not continually reminded by outward things that the one essential thing is to worship and serve God. So we who live in the world must try that much harder to remind ourselves of this. -= :ide. '::' RASOPHOREMONK AIDAN Gatten, Shrewsbury

28 A PROGRAMME FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONSERVATION ON MOUNT ATHOS 1 There is an ever-growing problem of conservation on the Holy Mountain and a ten- to twenty-year period of development is required to meet needs that are rapidly becoming more urgent. The Holy Community has made a tentative recognition of the problem by sanctioning the work of the Fathers Paul and Maximos and in setting up a modern conservation laboratory in the Holy Skete of St Andrew. Before my visit to the Holy Mountain I had considered the possibility of a conservation centre and of monastery conservation workshops and I was much encouraged to see that some preliminary practical steps had been taken towards this end. The Need for Conservation The Greek Government conservation workers and laboratories already have a vast overload of work throughout Greece and so the Holy Mountain does not get the priority that it needs. The practical need for conservation work throughout the Holy Mountain is obvious. There are acute structural problems with many buildings, together with the problems of environmental damage and natural decay that affect the treasury of contents. The physical state of monastery treasures can be worsened by the introduction of central heating, and by the use of unsuitable materials for their repair. The most obvious examples of this misuse of modern materials are the universal employment of cement for building repairs, and the use of modern glues and chemical products that are too strong for fragile ancient works. Central heating often becomes a conservation problem, since the environment that is suitable for a human being is often not suitable for the preservation of a work of art. The Holy Community has agreed to lend treasures to the city of Thessaloniki in celebration of its becoming a European City of Culture in This will be the first of endless requests for exhibition loans and it will be essential for the Holy Mountain to ensure that the best means of 1 This report is part of the fruit of a two-week visit to Karyes which the author made in November 1996 at the request of the Friends of Mount Athos. His other concern was ~o survey the frescos in the church of the Protaton and compile a report on the1r current state of preservation, details of which will be made available to the Friends in due course. [Ed.] so packing and transportation are employed and that the environmental conditions for exhibition are not harmful to their treasures. 2 Suggested Solutions In four respects the Holy Mountain possesses the potential for successful conservation. 1. Monks It has always been traditional for monks to practise the arts and crafts: wall-painting and icon-painting, book-making, woodwork, and building work. Monks with a liking for any of these crafts should be encouraged to learn the necessary conservation skills associated with their crafts. 2. Buildings Some of the monasteries have surplus buildings which would be suitable for conversion to conservation workshops. For example, at Iviron a suitable ground-floor area is already in use for the cleaning and conservation of manuscripts. 3. Materials Lllru:. For successful traditional repair to buildings, lime is necessary. For the repair of wall-paintings it is essential. The Holy Mountain is made of limestone and marble, which are the raw materials for burning to make lime. There must be many ruins of lime kilns along the length of the peninsula; it may be that one or two of these could be rebuilt, or new lime kilns could be constructed. Lime could become a marketable cash product for the Mountain to export. Wo.o,d. The Holy Mountain has the forests of its own peninsula and of Chalkidiki to harvest for timber, for construction work, and for fuel. It should, however, be emphasized that in their own woodlands the monks should adhere to a strict programme of renewal of forest to keep pace with what is being harvested. If this is not done, the increasing access by road to the forests and the use of chain saws will result in there being no forest in a few years' time. Woodland is a renewable asset only if it is carefully managed. 4. Time Conservation in the modern world is a difficult activity because it 2 See below, 'Environmental Control and Good Housekeeping'. 51

29 requires patience and time, and it is therefore very expensive. The Holy Mountain has a different and longer view of the purpose of life which might easily embrace conservation activities without incurring the vast expense necessary in the outside world. A Conservation School A centre for conservation activities has already been established by the Fathers Paul and Maximos at the Holy Skete of St Andrew. Monks with a suitable aptitude should be encouraged to join the school. Where further expertise is necessary, they should be allowed permission and funding to join a conservation course outside the Holy Mountain. The studios and workshops required will be as follows: Lime Workshops and lime kilns for the burning, slaking, mlxlng, and maturing for use of lime plasters and mortars. The establishment of a lime works and the relearning of forgotten expertise in the use of lime should be a matter of urgent consideration for the Holy Community. Work on the repair of the Protaton cannot begin until the right materials are available and the correct methods of using them are understood. I was fortunate enough to meet the painter, Fr Sisoyis, at Dochiariou. He already has an interest in lime and some understanding of the material. Perhaps he and the monastery of Dochiariou could be encouraged to set up a lime kiln and lime pits. Stone For the working and provision of the right stone for building repair, and the repair and conservation of ancient marble and mosaic. Painting Three workshops: one for the repair of icons; one for the repair of wall-paintings; one for the repair of illuminations in books. Books A workshop for the repair of ancient bindings and manuscripts, and for printed books. Wood Two workshops: one for the seasoning of timber and the repair of 52 structural timbers; one for skilled joinery, carpentry, and carving, and for the repair of decorative woodwork. Textiles A workshop for the repair of ancient textiles. This might provide a useful occupation for a nunnery outside the Holy Mountain. Metal A workshop skilled in working and repairing metal and in dealing with the universal problem of rust. Summary Such a programme may look ambitious, but not if it is seen as a development over a ten- or twenty-year period. A successful workshop might well begin to cover its expenses within a few years and end up producing revenue for the Holy Mountain by taking in outside work. Workshops need not be centrally located. Any of the workshops could be taken under the wing of a monastery with space and interest in the project. An advantage of having different workshops in different monasteries could be that conservation work could be traded without any money changing hands. For example, a manuscript could be repaired in exchange for the conservation of an icon. Environmental Control and Good Housekeeping No amount of good conservation work will achieve much without correct maintenance and the right environmental conditions. To achieve this, one monk in each of the monastic communities should be a trained conservator who has the additional skills of recognizing maintenance problems before they become serious, and of recommending the correct heating and levels of relative humidity. A model for these activities exists in the way that the National Trust in England looks after its hundred or so great houses which, like the monasteries of the Holy Mountain, are full of treasures. 3 DAVID WINFIELD Isle of Mull 3 For reference see H. Sandwith and S. Stainton, The National Trust Manual of Housekeeping (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991), Foreword by D. Winfield. Fr Paul at the Holy Skete of St Andrew has a copy of this book. 53

30 SYNDESMOS AND MOUNT ATHOS THE THIRD SPIRITUAL ECOLOGY CAMP IVIRON MONASTERY: 26 JULY-7 AUGUST 1996 SYNDESMOS, the World Fellowship of Orthodox Youth, is the only international Orthodox youth organization. It has the aim of encouraging co-operation, communication, and exchange among Orthodox youth groups and theological faculties and schools, as well as promoting a deeper reflection and understanding of themes of importance to the whole Church. Founded in 1953, SYNDESMOS today counts 120 member organizations in almost fifty countries around the world. SYNDESMOS has been involved in encouraging an awareness of the ecological crisis in the Orthodox Church since the Inter-Orthodox Conference on Environment Protection in Crete (5-11 November 1991). This conference recommended that SYNDESMOS serve as a co-ordinating body for the development of youth projects around the world. As a result, the Fellowship has organized work camps in France, in Russia, and on Mount Athos.l Moreover, SYNDESMOS has also produced a very valuable monograph entitled Orthodoxy and Ecology Resource Book (1996). The third Athonite Spiritual Ecology Camp was held at the Holy Monastery of Iviron at the invitation of its Abbot, Elder Vasileios. This monastery, originally a Georgian foundation, is dedicated to the Dormition of the Mother of God and is the home of the most celebrated miraculous icon of the Virgin, the Portai'tissa. It is one of the senior monastic houses on the peninsula, has a Katholikon of extraordinary beauty, and preserves some exquisite Georgian and Byzantine treasures, manuscripts, and works of art. Of the fourteen worker pilgrims who participated, there were two Albanians, one Frenchman, one Greek, one Palestinian, one Bessarabian, two Belorussians from Poland, four Romanians, and one Russian. I represented Great Britain and led the team. Most of our working hours were spent in Iviron's spacious gardens, orchards, and vineyards under the careful guidance of Fr Gabriel who was not only an excellent gardener, full of information about organic farming, but also a connoisseur of Hagioritic wines and an entertaining singer of Cretan folk-songs. The programme followed the pattern established at the two earlier Athonite camps at Vatopedi and Xeropotamou. This consisted of a mixture of hard work on the monastery's grounds (the best part of which was the time spent in the watermelon patch which included sampling the produce), church services (including multi-lingual chanting and prayers by the members of the group), evening talks with the Abbot and the monks, and visits to neighbouring monasteries such as Stavronikita, Karakalou, Philotheou, Vatopedi, and the Panegyri of St Mary Magdalene at Simonopetra (4 August). The fourth SYNDESMOS Spiritual Ecology Camp is scheduled to take place in July/August 1997 at Stavronikita. SYNDESMOS once again wishes to express its gratitude to the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Greece for providing travel grants for the participants from Eastern Europe. DIMITRI CONOMOS President of SYNDESMOS 1 See my articles on the first two camps in the Annual Report of the Friends of Mount Athas (1994), pp and (1995), pp The gardener's cottage, lviron. By Brother Aidan. 55

31 RICHARD HALLIBURTON AND MOUNT ATHOS The writings of Richard Halliburton are virtually unknown today, even in his native America. For two decades in the early twentieth century he was probably his country's most renowned adventurer and travel writer. Many of his books were written for children and teenagers. Among his exotic adventures were swimming the length of the Panama Canal and crossing the Alps on an elephant. His personal heroes included Lord Byron, Rupert Brooke, Lawrence of Arabia, and Oscar Wilde. Born to parents of Methodist persuasion near Memphis, Tennessee, he was raised in what might be described as a privileged environment. After graduation from Princeton University he set out to explore the worldand this continued until his death. His interest in Mount Athos was stimulated by the accounts of Lord Byron and Michael Choukas's Black Angels of Athos (1934). Halliburton's experiences on Athos were published in part in chapters in his Seven League Boots ( 1935) and Book of Marvels ( 1937). Some of his letters, journals, and photographs are in the library at Princeton. A letter to his parents confirms the date of his visit to the Holy Mountain as January Like Edward Lear, he seems never to have gained an insight into the deep spirituality of the monks and the Mountain. His observations are of interest, however, for they depict monastic life there in the 1930s, when most of the communities were idiorrhythmic and monastic rules and customs were somewhat relaxed in comparison wjth the present time. Halliburton came to Mount Athos not as a pilgrim but as a tourist, and was probably only the fourth American to document his visit. In the company of a guide who spoke Greek he travelled from Thessaloniki to Daphne aboard a small steamer, arriving there on 5 January Hiking to Karyes to obtain the required diamonitirion, he passed several animal farms on the outskirts of town. He observed one 'containing perhaps half a hundred chickens - all roosters; and a dozen head of cattle - all bulls... and a flock of sheep - all rams'. From Karyes Halliburton walked to the monastery of Pantokratoros, where he spent the first night. He noted that most of the thirty monks were elderly. At dinner time about fifteen monks gathered around his table, laughing, talking, and consuming several rounds of ouzo. 56 On 5 January he travelled on to Lavra. This was Christmas Eve and he described the all-night service in the church as 'a sight more dazzling and more gorgeous than King Midas' treasury'. Snow began over the night and Halliburton and his guide, departing the next morning, took two days to reach the monastery of Simonopetra. They spent the night in a hermit's hut. On arrival his clothes were soaked and the kindly monks provided him with a monk's habit including the kamilavka (hat) - which was blown away by the wind as he walked on the outside balconies of the monastery. Snow continued and trails became impassable. Over the next six days he frequented the monastery's library and attended the full schedule of services. He described the monks as friendly and, when 'animated with a bottle of wine', they revelled in rumours and tales of women who might have attempted to visit other monasteries. He noted that in the dining room after grace... there was a buzz of conversation'. At the time of his visit Halliburton was told that there were about four thousand monks on the Mountain. The communities at Lavra and Simonopetra each consisted of about a hundred monks. He regretted that he was unable to sense the true values of holiness and solitude on the Mountain, and did not wish to judge it unfairly. He predicted, however, that 'Mount Athos... will develop into one of the most ideal summer resorts in Europe.' Richard Halliburton was lost at sea in 1939 trying to cross the Pacific Ocean in a Chinese junk. At the age of six at Christmas I received a copy of Halliburton's Book of Marvels. This began for me a life-long fascination with the Holy Mountain. 57 LEWIS WRIGHT Midlothian, VA

32 BOOK REVIEWS Monastic Life as True Marriage. Translated by Elizabeth Theokritoff. $8.00/ Beauty and Hesychia in Athonite Life. $6.00/ Europe and the Holy Mountain. $ Ecology and Monasticism. $6.00/ These three translated by Constantine Kokenes. All by Archimandrite Vasileios, Abbot of lviron Monastery, Mount Athos. Montreal: Alexander Press, All are available in the UK from the Orthodox Christian Book Service, 95 Spencer Street, Birmingham B18 6DA. In one of these separately published essays (the longest is 32 pages) Fr Vasileios refers to an 'incident' recorded among the sayings of the Desert Fathers which conveys a forceful truth about the overindustrialized and polluted environment we live in:... the devil once saw a certain monk sitting and doing nothing. He asked him: 'Monk, what are you doing here?' The elder replied: 'I am keeping this place.' The devil said: 'Leave him alone; he's a bit mad.' But I think that?ionk's. resp~nse, 'I ~m keeping this place', has a theological meamng wh1ch bnngs to mmd God's command in the Book of Genesis 'to keep' Paradise. (Ecology and Monasticism) For many Christians in the west, the eastern way of seeking the inner life, putting aside the quest for 'social justice' or the institutionalized pursuit of good works, is difficult to grasp. Yet moral progress, so the Athonites believe, is impossible without this spiritual base. Pilgrims to the Holy Mountain will have noted that, immediately after the appointed Gospel for the day, the visit to Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38-42) is often read for good measure. It is of the essence of hesychasm for monks to choose 'that good part'. And even though we see them busy about their tasks while not in church or in their cells, they would not understand the western division of religion into 'contemplative' and 'active' orders. As Elder Vasileios explains: As a monk, you feel at rest because, what do you do? In that place, in that monastery, you dwell, you live and understand that there is a single essence an~ purpose for both the soul and the body. You understand that there 1s a bond between daily life and spiritual life, that daily life is not separated from spiritual life, and that prayer is not separated from work. (Ecology and Monasticism) 58 Archimandrite Vasileios is one of the most eloquent thinkers on Mount Athos. These meditations are the product of his travels outside the spiritual arena of Iviron - to address employees of the European Union in Luxemburg in 1992, or to Crete the year before, to shed monastic light on the Inter-Orthodox Conference on Environmental Protection. He remains firmly rooted in the Garden of the Panaghia, so readers curious about the controversial allegations made on the Mountain regarding the EU will be disappointed. Fr Vasileios did make an impassioned plea against totalitarianism, whether of a religious or political nature, which some (including this reviewer) might interpret as a delightfully subtle reference to the Vatican's role. One is bound to admit that, despite its literary merits, the ecological essay does not betray any obvious knowledge of, or practical concern for, the natural world. By a form of reasoning which is not altogether clear to me, Fr Vasileios concludes that St Isaac would not be worried by a nuclear holocaust: 'St Isaac says that if heaven fell and flattened the earth, the humble person would not be perturbed because other kinds of changes have already occurred within him, changes which are greater and more powerful.' Yes, but what about the less humble and the animals? The Elder tells us that St Isaac says that a pure heart means 'a heart merciful to all creation' and that a person who prays with tears 'cannot bear to see even a reptile or the smallest leaf of a plant suffering'. But does not the Abbot know that cruelty to animals in Greece by no means stops at Ouranopolis? Perhaps the monk I know who is 'training' his donkey not to bray has not read St Isaac. It is sometimes difficult not to see such writings as a sort of edifying propaganda which misleadingly gives the impression that all Orthodox live in harmony with nature. Some certainly do; but I think it would be a suitable metanoia to face up to the less happy reality from time to time. Fr Vasileios is at his best when writing as a mystical poet. Beautyor love of beauty (philokalia) - is the golden thread running through all four works. Of his return to the peninsula at sunset he remembers: The entire Mountain, Nature, the peak of Athos - the monasteries, forests and rocks - had all been filled with joyful light and imbued with heavenly beauty. The Mountain was invisibly revealing itself as being indeed 'Holy'. It was apparent that the holiness in its name was something inseparable from its very physical substance. And you felt that if it could be crumbled like a clump of earth, then from this very dirt 59

33 would come forth a dazzling light, the very same fragrance which had filled the universe on the day of Resurrection... The souls of the saints fly and flutter about, luminous and full of light. The relics of the saints emit the same uncreated and scintillating light; an indescribable and uncreated fragrance pours out from their tombs. Everything around is filled by the beauty of contrition and the fragrance of heaven. Reflecting on the beauty of Orthodoxy, Archimandrite Vasileios writes: 'This beauty of the Church is not an aesthetic category, but a spiritual charism. It is not acquired through training in fine arts, but in total participation and long years of life in the Church. It cannot be created, it cannot be composed from mere combinations of colours, concepts, sounds, forms or movements. It is simple and uncontrived. It is sent down from above from the Father of Lights (James 1:17)' (Monastic Life as True Marriage). Perhaps this is why the efforts of non-orthodox icon-painters and chanters never come to fruition. His thoughts on 'True Marriage' are vigorous, without apology to brethren not called to celibacy, though his words ring true enough for those who have passed the first flush of matrimonial passion: Fleshly marriage is not marriage worthy of man's nature or his expectations: it means ultimately becoming one flesh with some other mortal being and producing more mortal beings, all of them - parents and children - condemned to death. Formed by God and having the divine breath within him, man has need of God. He wants to live with Him. It is then that he has a normal relationship with himself, his brethren and the whole of creation. Just to live with one's fellow men, with temporary, fleshly and restricted interests, is a torment: it is a meaningless coexistence or the jostling of a crowd filled with noise and loneliness. But 'it is not good for man to be alone': man needs divine company. Profoundly theological, Fr Vasileios does not write like an academic theologian; and while he is not immune to the occasional purple patch, he offers us a rare insight into the mind of 'the authentic Athonite'. EVANGELOS PERRY Zapallar, Chile The Living Witness of the Holy Mountain: Contemporary V~ices from Mount Athos. Translated with introduction and notes by Hteromonk Alexander (Golitzin). South Canaan, PA: St Tikhon's Seminary Press, pages. Price p/b ISBN Available in the UK from Orthodox Christian Book Service, 95 Spencer Street, Birmingham B18 6DA. Here is an anthology of some of the best of modem Athonite spiritual writing. English readers, including this reviewer, m~y hav~ ~elt frustrated at hearing that the Holy Mountain is once agam functlonmg as the spiritual heart of Orthodoxy and yet being able to read so little evidence of the fact, at least in English. Our frustration is ended by the publication of this variegated garland. The volume has been assembled (and most of its contents translated) by Priest Monk Alexander (Golitzin) who was tonsured at Simonopetra and now teaches theology at Marquette University in the United States. Fr Alexander may have left the Holy Mountain in body, but he has surely not done so in spirit. His devotion to his Athonite fathers and brothers and to the paradise that they inhabit shines through on every page. European readers should not be deterred by the book's dedication to the translator's fellow Orthodox in North America: it has a universal appeal. In his Preface Fr Alexander reveals that his motive in preparing the book is to counter the reaction of those readers in the West who question the 'relevance' of an institution that is 'so old and so lacking in apparent social utility' as Mount Athas: 'In a world of Silicon Valleys who needs a Holy Mountain?' The answer is eloquently spelled out on the pages that follow. An introductory chapter on 'Athas, Past and Present' sets the scene for the spiritual texts that follow. Fr Alexander invites those familiar with the history of Athas and the place of monasticism in the Orthodox Church to skip these preliminaries and proceed directly to the body of the book. He should not be so modest. His 'Capsule History' is highly pertinent to what follows and well worth reading. His defence of the monastic life in a world obsessed with productivity ('Why Monks?') is as cogent as any I have read. Part One ('On the Way to the Holy Mountain') comprises two chapters, both from the pen of Archimandrite Placide (Deseille}. The first ('Stages of a Pilgrimage'} is his spiritual autobiography, charting a 60 61

34 journey that began with his entry into a Cistercian monastery at the age of sixteen and reached a climax with his baptism and subsequent tonsure at Simonopetra some thirty-four years later. His insistence that he has not 'changed Churches' but rather returned to the 'common source' of the Church of Christ is persuasive. But his plea that the plurality of Orthodox jurisdictions in France today be seen as a unifying factor in the spirit of Athonite pan-orthodoxy has a hollow ring in the wake of Estonia His other piece, 'Mount Athos and Europe', can have left his audience (representatives of the EEC) in no doubt as to the vital role that Athos can expect to play in the Europe of today. Part Two ('The Garden of the Theotokos, Portal of the Kingdom') is a mixed bag consisting of three short documents: an anonymous piece on 'The Garden of the Mother of God'; a biographical sketch of St Simon the Myrrh-Flowing, extracted from the Orthodox Synaxarion compiled by Priest Monk Makarios of Simonopetra; and 'The Tomos of Mount Athos in Defense of the Hesychasts', written by St Gregory Palamas and signed by all the leading Athonites in The last sits a little uneasily in the present collection and does not make easy reading; but it is a fundamental text for all that has happened since, so it is very useful to have it here. Thus prepared by a lengthy but necessary novitiate, the reader can at last immerse himself in the wisdom of the Fathers, for here, in Part Three, 'we arrive at the heart of the Holy Mountain'. In a piece entitled 'The Light of the Holy Mountain' Fr Makarios of Simonopetra embraces the reader and transports him like a pilgrim to Athos where he is 'no longer alone in the world, but... a member of a vast family... an adopted son of the Mother of God'. This leads naturally into 'A Contemporary Athonite Paterikon' - a compendium of spiritual anecdotes, 'a few pearls of an inexhaustible treasure', wonderfully evocative of the oral tradition of Athonite spirituality that naturally forms part of nearly every conversation on the Holy Mountain. Just to give a taste of it, I quote one paragraph from the stories about Fr Joseph the Hesychast (d. 1959): During this period, in spite of all his efforts, he could not get past the stage of vocal prayer. As soon as he would stop repeating aloud 'Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me...', his concentration would break up in different thoughts. One day, as he was looking toward Athos to ask the Mother of God to help him in his distress, he saw suddenly a flash of light, accompanied by a violent wind, burst forth from the chapel of the 62 Transfiguration which is located on the peak of the mountain. The radiance bent in an arc from its point of origin directly to Father Joseph, penetrating right to his heart: 'I immediately felt altogether transformed. I was filled with light and could no longer feel whether I had a body or not. At that point, the prayer began to repeat itself in my heart with the steadiness and regularity of a clock.' He re-entered his cave and sat down, his chin upon chest, to follow the prayer in his heart. But then he was carried off in ecstasy. He felt he had found himself transported to heaven, to a place where there reigned an indescribable calm and peace. One thought alone carne to him 'Oh God, make it so that I never return to the world, but stay here always, with you.' From that time on the prayer never stopped resonating in his heart. In Part Four, 'The Spiritual Father', the reader is at last introduced to Archimandrite Aemilianos, Abbot of Simonopetra, a revered figure and one of the principal movers in the current revival on Athos. Beginning as a solitary hermit at the Meteora, he has become a father to hundreds of monks and thousands more in the outside world. There is no one better equipped to discuss 'The Role of the Spiritual Father in an Orthodox Monastery', an interview given for the film Atbos, 1000 Years Are as a Day (1981). His next piece, on 'Martyrdom: Foundation of Orthodox Monasticism', was a conference paper delivered in Thessalonica in From yet another context follows 'Mount Athos: Sacred Vessel of the Prayer of Jesus', extracts from a sermon delivered at the cathedral of Drama in These are but the appetizers preparing us for the abbot's piece de resistance - 'The Experience of the Transfiguration in the Life of the Athonite Monk' - a poetic hymn to light, deeply learned, rigorously theological, a powerful example of charismatic writing - Athonite spirituality at its very best! Fr Aemilianos is as much loved off the Holy Mountain as on it, and nowhere more so than at the women's monastery at Ormylia. The final part of the book, 'Saint Herman of Alaska: Athos in America, and America's Gift to Athos', demonstrates how, in the life and work of St Herman, the Athonite tradition has travelled not just to Russia but even to the uttermost limits of the earth. Some 150 years after his death the saint has completed the circle of his pilgrimage with the return of his relics to Greece, and the book ends with two sermons by Fr Aemilianos celebrating their reception at Ormylia. I hope that I have conveyed an impression of the rich repast that awaits the reader of this admirable book. The translator has discharged his role with consummate skill and humility. He writes well himself; and 63

35 he has the gift of making words written or spoken in another language sound as fresh as when they were first uttered. The annotations are scholarly without being turgid (but the list of monasteries currently directed by disciples of Fr Joseph the Hesychast on p.289 n.18 should include Vatopedi}; and the Annotated Bibliography is invaluable. The illustrations, drawn by Fr Tikhon, are delightfully apposite. Anyone wishing to know more about the spiritual traditions of Mount Athos should buy this book. GRAHAM SPEAKE Oxford 64