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Every day we’re bombarded by the unending noise of traffic,
dings of phones, the constant chatter of society, a pounding symphony of busyness
that dulls the senses so much that we can hardly imagine true… silence.
High atop a mountain, perched over the sea, nestled within the walls of secluded monasteries,
lies a sanctuary of tranquillity where the only sound is the gentle whispers of the wind,
soft prayers, and the melody of peaceful contemplation.
And you’re never gonna get in
This is the Holy Mountain, Mount Athos, a self-governing state within Greece,
this 10km border and fence separates this monastic state from the rest of the world.
It’s the spiritual centre of Eastern Orthodox Christianity,
they’re the ones with the black robes, different crosses,
and fancy icons. Athos is like an Orthodox Vatican and Tibet rolled into one.
To visit here you’ll need to apply for a special visa months in advance,
not a Greek visa, an Athonite visa called the Diamonitirion. Even with a Visa only
100 Orthodox Christians are allowed in per day alongside 10 non-Orthodox
visitors. You’ll enter by boat and you can only stay for three nights.
Oh….you also can’t be a woman, they’ve been banned from Mount Athos for a
1000 years. Athos is the only state in the world with an all male population.
So what is Mount Athos, what is life like there, and are Molotov Cocktails an ecumenical matter?
Well, let’s find out!
FUNKY INTRO MUSIC PLAYS FUNKILY
While technically a part of Greece, the Holy Mountain is a 400 square kilometre state
within a state, run entirely by monks. The Greek constitution specifically says Mount Athos will
“in accordance with its ancient privileged status, be a self-governed part of the Greek state”.
These monks have their own government, parliament and capital at Karyes,
where they set their own laws, control their own borders, and don't pay any taxes.
Isolated between the dense forests and crashing waves,
these monks have prayed in Greek much in the same way they did when Byzantine
Emperors ruled over them. It's an unbroken tradition going back over a thousand years.
Here on the mountain, about 2,000 Orthodox monks with their untamed
beards and black robes live in one of the 20 monasteries and hundreds of cells.
Their quest? To remove all distraction and feel closer
to God. They live simple lives filled with work, prayer, walks, and prayer.
The silence here is almost overwhelming.
But it's broken once every morning around 3 in the morning as a monk
bangs on a wooden board called a semantron calling
the monks to prayer. Prayer services can sometimes go on for six straight hours.
Life on Athos is hard work. Two meals are eaten per day,
in silence . Meat is banned and their diet consists of vegetables,
lentils, and sometimes fish along with water and wine. All produced on their own land.
When not praying or sleeping the monks are working. This can include preparing for visitors,
farming, making wine, cooking, sewing, icon painting, and renovating the monastery.
The monks support themselves through wealthy donors and by selling their products such as
painted icons, olive oil, and essential oils. Some monasteries even have online stores! The
monks also own a large controversial real estate portfolio including hotels and land across Greece.
Mount Athos still feels very mediaeval. Visiting involves literal time travel. The monks never
adopted that fancy smancy 16th-century Gregorian calendar. They still use the
Julian calendar of the Roman Empire, which is 13 days behind ours. And the monks still keep
Byzantine Time. The day begins at sunset, not midnight, so the time zone changes every day.
Most monks live in the stunning monasteries. But some, like Father David here, prefer to live in
caves and huts along the barren cliffs. The wall behind him there, that’s literally the cliff face.
The intense isolation makes these hermits feel closer to God. Many spend 60-70 years
in silence and can only access their cells by hauling themselves up with
ropes and ladders. If the hermit ever needs help they raise a flag.
Some hermits will have food and firewood delivered by basket. If one day the basket
comes back full…well then the monk is a lot closer to god than he was before. When a new
monk takes over the cell he might live alongside the bones of the last monk, kept in a box.
These monasteries have acted like time capsules with a treasure trove
of Byzantine and Ottoman artefacts, thousands of ancient documents, icons, and illuminated
manuscripts which they carefully preserve. Oh and skulls, an unusual amount of skulls!
The monks govern themselves through an elected council of 20 monks,
the Holy Community, and answer only to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople,
kind of like the Orthodox Pope, on spiritual matters.
So why do only monks live here?
Well, Christian hermits started to live on Athos around the 8th century. In 855
the Byzantine Emperor Basil the 1st kicked out all the shepherds living here and gave
the area exclusively to monks and hermits. These early monks lived alone until this
chap Athanasios the Athonite, personal friend of the Byzantine Emperor founded the Monastery
of Great Lavra in 963, which still exists today. He wanted the monks to live, pray,
and work in common. Soon the lonely wooden huts of the hermits were replaced with towering
monasteries of stone, today there are 20 of them. For centuries Byzantine Emperors guaranteed
the independence of Mount Athos and donations made it rich. It attracted
monks from across the Orthodox world such as Russians, Serbs, Romanians and Bulgarians.
Now a bunch of defenseles monks living in monasteries filled with gold attracted
attention. Raids from Pirates, Turks, Franks, Crusaders, and Catalans drove
the monks from the low slopes of the mountain to the safety of the peaks and cliff faces.
One mercenary group called the Catalan company robbed and pillaged the monasteries so badly
in 1305 that Catalans were banned from Mount Athos for the next 700 years. In
the 1990s one Catalan musician was kicked off the peninsula when a monk discovered his nationality.
In 2005 this musician organised for Catalunya to provide over 250,000 Euros in funding for
monastery renovations. This 700 year old apology was accepted and Catalans are once again welcome.
When the Byzantine Empire collapsed and Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in
1453 it made little difference to the monks who had already worked out a deal
with the new Sultan. The Sultan respected the monks and left them to themselves.
When Greeks finally kicked out the Ottomans and Greece took control of the Holy Mountain in 1912
they enshrined the monks' independence in the Greek constitution making it a
self-governing part of the Greek state, the Monastic State of the Holy Mountain.
On the 6th of April 1941 Nazi Germany invaded Greece. The monks wrote a letter to Hitler
offering Hitler the title of “High Protector of the Holy Mountain” if he placed it under
his personal protection. Hitler loving fancy titles, did just that and sent a
Nazi research team to stay with monks for the rest of the war. Several monasteries placed
photos of the Fuhrer on their walls and some monks were even accused of praying for him!
At the same time as Nazi’s walked around the monasteries up in the huts on the
cliffs the monks were hiding British Commonwealth soldiers trying to escape occupied Greece,
one group of Kiwis were smuggled off the peninsula dressed as monks in return for
a promise to send £50 when the war was over. While the images of monks shaking hands with
Nazi will haunt the mountain forever the tactic did work. The German invasion brought unimaginable
brutality and destruction to Greece, Mount Athos came out of the war completely untouched.
When Greece joined the European Union, well actually back then it was called the European
Communities, in 1981 the special status of Mount Athos, its border, and its ban on women
was heavily debated but the EU eventually granted the monks the special status they were used to.
But the Holy Mountain’s ban on women has come up against
the EU’s supposed guarantees on gender equality.
Since about 1046 a law called Avaton has forbidden women from stepping foot on the mountain. They
can’t even be within 500m of it. The monks claim this is to avoid distraction and ensure celibacy.
Oh and that the mountain belongs to the Virgin Mary and she’s the only woman allowed on it.
Even female animals are banned. Except for hens that lay eggs and cats that catch mice
in the monasteries. I am unaware if the cats only kill the female mice.
Women in Greece and the European parliament have protested the ban on women, calling it
misogynistic…because well it’s is. The idea that women are inherently distracting or tempting
is a misogynistic idea, we can appreciate the beautiful monasteries and fascinating
lifestyle while acknowledging that. The women protesting aren’t even asking to be monks;
they just want to visit the site like male pilgrims can. Critics of the policy have
pretty clear reasoning, legally no state in the EU should be able to ban women and yet women that try
to enter Athos risk a 12 year jail sentence. Athos also receives funding from Greece and EU
taxpayers, including women taxpayers. So they’re paying for something that violates
their right to gender equality and their rights to freedom of movement within the EU and so,
in 2003 the European Parliament called for the ban to be lifted. It has not succeeded.
Some women actually managed to get on the Holy Mountain.
In the fourteenth century, the Serbian Empress Helena was sent to
Athos to protect her from the plague. Although she was carried in a litter at all times,
so she technically never sat foot on the mountain.
A French writer called Maryse Choisy dressed as a sailor and sunk in and lived there for a month
in the 1920s, which was the basis of her book Un mois chez les hommes ("A Month with Men")
Many others have probably snuck in over the centuries.
The monks are so sequestered from women that one monk Michalis Tolotos never saw one.
Born some time in 1856 his mother died four hours after his birth. With no other
relatives the baby was dropped off at the steps of a monastery at Mount Athos. The
monks raised him and he never once left the monastery. He died in 1938 at 82,
the only women he had ever known were the ones he read about in the Bible.
The debates about the Holy Mountain’s ban on women isn't even the spiciest drama at Mount Athos.
Listen to this!
I’m sure you’re all aware that the Latin and Orthodox churches had a huge break up in 1054.
Since then they haven’t spoken. Some Christians, Latin and Orthodox have
tried to reconcile the Churches, this is called ecumenism. The monks at Athos hate ecumenism.
So in 1964 when the Patriarch of Constantinople met the Catholic Pope
in Jerusalem to cancel the excommunications the Churches had placed on each other many
of the monks were quite upset but begrudgingly accepted the decision.
Except for one monastery, Esfigmenou, who denounced the Patriarch, barricaded their
monastery, and draped a massive black flag out of their window saying “Orthodoxy or death”.
In 2002 when the Patriarch in Constantinople ordered
the rebel monks evicted from the monastery.
When the bailiffs came to evict the 100 or so maverick monks they answered them
with molotov cocktails. Later monk on monks brawls broke out in the streets of Karyes.
As of 2022, the conflict is ongoing, the monks have been outlawed but still occupy
the monastery, with the slogan Orthodoxia i Thanatos still hanging out the window.
It’s funny how this thin line on a map and a tiny fence essentially separates
two worlds. One secular modern and evolving, the other the last
bastion of the Byzantine world. That’s what I want to explore in this series,
how these imaginary lines on maps alter our world and create peculiar places.
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