The Garden of the Theotokos

Mount Athos is the easternmost of the three promontories of the Chalkidiki peninsula in northern Greece, a narrow finger of land some fifty kilometres long culminating in the marble pyramid of the mountain itself, which rises to 2,033 metres straight out of the Aegean. In Orthodox tradition the whole peninsula is Perivoli tis Panagias, “the Garden of the Mother of God,” dedicated to the Theotokos as its patron and honoured as her earthly portion, with the Virgin herself regarded as its true abbess. This file describes the place and pins the dedication-tradition to its sources.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Athonite)

The Peninsula and the Mountain

Mount Athos occupies the easternmost of the three peninsulas — Kassandra, Sithonia, and Athos (or Akte) — that reach south-east from Chalkidiki into the northern Aegean. The Athos peninsula is roughly fifty kilometres long and between seven and twelve kilometres wide, and it terminates in the mountain from which it takes its name: a steep pyramid of grey-white marble and limestone that rises abruptly to 2,033 metres at its summit, so that from the sea the peak appears to spring directly out of the water (Speake, Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise, Yale, 2002, ch. 1, on the geography; Bryer and Cunningham, eds., Mount Athos and Byzantine Monasticism, Ashgate, 1996, on the setting). The isthmus at the peninsula’s north-western neck — near modern Ouranoupolis — is the point across which, according to Herodotus, the Persian king Xerxes cut a canal to bring his fleet through in 480 BC, a work whose traces survive and which fixes Athos in classical as well as Christian memory (Herodotus, Histories 7.22–24).

The terrain is mountainous, forested, and difficult, seamed with ravines and largely without roads for most of its history; travel was by mule-track and by sea, and the monasteries cling to the coast and the lower slopes. The climate and isolation together made the peninsula a natural place for withdrawal from the world, and it is this geographical seclusion — a place at once accessible by sea and yet cut off, wild, and self-contained — that the tradition reads as providentially fitted for the monastic life (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, ch. 1; Gothóni, Paradise Within Reach, Helsinki, 1993, on the landscape and its meaning to pilgrims). The single land approach is closed and controlled; entry is by boat, and only with the permission that the monastic authorities and the Greek state jointly regulate.

“The Garden of the Mother of God”

The governing image of the whole Mountain in Orthodox devotion is that it is the Perivoli tis Panagias — the Garden, or orchard, of the All-Holy One, the Theotokos. On this understanding Athos belongs to the Mother of God: it is her portion, her earthly inheritance, given to her by her Son, and she is its patron, its protectress, and — in a title used on the Mountain — its true abbess, so that the human abbots govern their houses under her (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, ch. 1, on the dedication and the title; Ware, The Orthodox Church, Penguin, 2015, on Athos as the Garden of the Theotokos). Every monastery on the Mountain keeps a feast of the Mother of God, and the great majority of its churches, chapels, and wonderworking icons are dedicated to her; the Marian character of Athonite piety is total and pervasive (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, on the Marian dedication of the houses).

The story that grounds this dedication is a foundation legend, and it is honest to name it as such. In its developed form the tradition holds that the Theotokos, sailing (in some versions with the Apostle John) to visit Lazarus in Cyprus, was blown off course by a storm and brought to the shore of Athos, where — the pagan idols of the mountain crying out to announce her — she came ashore, blessed the place, asked her Son that it be given to her, and received the answer that the Mountain should be her garden and paradise, a refuge for those who seek salvation. [Apocryphal: this account of the Theotokos’ voyage to Athos is a pious tradition, not a historically attested event; it is not found in the New Testament or in any early source and reaches its familiar form only in later Athonite hagiographical and devotional literature. It is reported here as what the tradition holds, per METHODOLOGY §3.5, and not asserted as documented history (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, ch. 1, treating the legend as legend; cf. the discussion of Athonite foundation traditions in Bryer and Cunningham, eds., Mount Athos and Byzantine Monasticism, 1996).] What is historically certain is far more modest and comes later: organised monasticism on Athos is documented from the ninth century, and the great institutional foundation dates to 963 (see The Early Hermits and Saint Athanasius).

The value of the legend does not depend on its historicity. It expresses, in narrative form, the settled theological self-understanding of the Mountain: that Athos is not primarily a human institution but a place set apart for and under the protection of the Mother of God, and that its monks live there as her servants and guests. This self-understanding is not decorative but juridical and practical — it is the traditional ground of the avaton, the rule that no woman may enter the Mountain, since (on the tradition) the Theotokos alone is its woman and its lady (see The Avaton and the Monastic Republic in Brief).

The Theotokos as Abbess and Protectress

The dedication is expressed above all through the Mountain’s icons of the Mother of God, several of which are among the most venerated in the Orthodox world and are treated by the monks as active protectresses of their houses. The Panagia Portaitissa (“the Keeper of the Gate,” the Iveron icon) is regarded as the guardian of the Iviron monastery; the Axion Estin (“It Is Truly Meet”) at the Protaton in Karyes is honoured as the Mountain’s own icon; the Tricherousa (“Three-handed”) presides at Hilandar (see Relics and Wonderworking Icons). These icons are not merely honoured images but, in Athonite understanding, the concrete points at which the Mother of God’s abbacy over the Mountain is exercised and experienced; the accounts of their arrivals, wanderings, and interventions are reported in this guide with attestation-pinning, as the tradition attests them (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, on the wonderworking icons; see Relics and Wonderworking Icons).

The Marian dedication also shapes the daily and yearly life of the Mountain. The monastic offices are saturated with hymns to the Theotokos; the Akathist Hymn and the paraklesis (supplicatory canon) to the Mother of God are constant; and the tradition of chanting the Axion Estin — the very hymn that, in the Athonite account, an angel taught to a monk at a kellion near Karyes — belongs to the Mountain’s sense of itself as her household (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, on the Axion Estin tradition; on the hymn itself see Relics and Wonderworking Icons). The Mountain thus understands itself, from top to bottom, as a place where the Mother of God is present and at work — a garden she keeps, a household she governs, a refuge she protects.

A Place Set Apart

The result is a peninsula that is, in intention and in law, wholly given over to a single purpose: the monastic pursuit of God. There are no lay villages, no families, no ordinary secular life; the only settlement of any size, Karyes, is the administrative seat of the monastic republic, not a town in the ordinary sense (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, chs. 1 and 12; see The Holy Community and Karyes). The whole territory is organised around the twenty ruling monasteries and their dependencies (see The Ruling Monasteries), and access to it is restricted and regulated. This exclusivity of purpose — a whole self-governing territory reserved for prayer and asceticism, under the patronage of the Theotokos — is what makes Athos unique in the Christian world and what its defenders regard as most worth preserving (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, ch. 12; see The Meaning of the Mountain).

See Also

References

  • Speake, Graham. Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002. (Ch. 1 on the geography, the dedication to the Theotokos, the “Garden of the Mother of God,” and the foundation legend treated as legend.)
  • Bryer, Anthony, and Mary Cunningham, eds. Mount Athos and Byzantine Monasticism. Aldershot: Variorum/Ashgate, 1996. (The setting and the Byzantine monastic context; the treatment of Athonite foundation traditions.)
  • Ware, Kallistos (Bishop of Diokleia). The Orthodox Church. New ed. London: Penguin, 2015. (Athos as the Garden of the Theotokos; its place in Orthodox monasticism.)
  • Gothóni, René. Paradise Within Reach: Monasticism and Pilgrimage on Mt Athos. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1993. (The landscape and its meaning to pilgrims.)
  • Herodotus. Histories 7.22–24 (the canal of Xerxes across the Athos isthmus, 480 BC).