The Early Hermits and Saint Athanasius

Organised monasticism on Athos is documented from the ninth century, when hermits and small ascetic communities occupied the peninsula and a rudimentary common administration formed at Karyes. The decisive turn came in 963, when St. Athanasius the Athonite — with the patronage of his friend the Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas — founded the Great Lavra, the first large coenobitic monastery, and set Athos on the institutional course it has followed ever since. This file covers the first hermits and, in full, St. Athanasius, who has no separate collection in this repository (and who is not St. Athanasius of Alexandria).

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Athonite)

The First Hermits

Christian ascetics are found on Athos from at least the eighth and ninth centuries, drawn to the empty, mountainous peninsula as earlier monks had been drawn to the Egyptian and Palestinian deserts. The earliest figures are known chiefly through later hagiography, and their historicity and dating must be handled with care. Tradition venerates St. Peter the Athonite as the first and archetypal hermit of the Mountain, a solitary said to have lived for decades in a cave; but his Life is late and legendary, and no contemporary source fixes his dates. [Apocryphal: the Life of St. Peter the Athonite is a hagiographical composition of uncertain date and its account cannot be treated as documented history; St. Peter is honoured as the paradigmatic early hermit of Athos, but his existence and dates are not securely attested by contemporary sources (Speake, Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise, Yale, 2002, ch. 2, on the early hermits and the legendary character of the earliest Lives).] More securely, St. Euthymios the Younger (Euthymios of Thessalonica, ninth century) is documented as an ascetic active in the region of Athos, and by the mid-ninth century there is evidence of monastic settlement on the peninsula (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, ch. 2; Bryer and Cunningham, eds., Mount Athos and Byzantine Monasticism, Ashgate, 1996, on the pre-Lavra period).

By the later ninth and earlier tenth centuries the hermits had acquired a measure of imperial recognition and a common life centred on Karyes, where a protos (“first,” a presiding elder) oversaw the loose federation of solitaries and small groups (Morris, Monks and Laymen in Byzantium, 843–1118, Cambridge, 1995, on the early Athonite organisation; Papachryssanthou, Actes du Prôtaton, Paris, 1975, on the Protaton and the office of the protos). An imperial act of the emperor Basil I is traditionally associated with the recognition of the Athonite hermits’ rights against the encroachment of neighbouring landholders, and by the reign of Leo VI (886–912) and after, the Mountain’s status as a monastic reserve was increasingly formalised (Papachryssanthou, Actes du Prôtaton, 1975; Morris, Monks and Laymen in Byzantium, 1995). This is the world — a peninsula of hermits and small lavrai under a presiding protos, jealous of their solitude — into which St. Athanasius came in the mid-tenth century.

Saint Athanasius the Athonite

St. Athanasius the Athonite (born Abraham, at Trebizond, c. 920s; died c. 1000) is the father of coenobitic monasticism on the Holy Mountain and the founder of its senior house. [Disputed: the exact dates of St. Athanasius’ birth and death are not certain; he is generally placed as born in the 920s or early 930s and as dying around the year 1000 (perhaps c. 1001), the death traditionally following the collapse of a vault under construction at the Lavra (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, ch. 2; the Vitae of Athanasius edited by J. Noret, Vitae duae antiquae Sancti Athanasii Athonitae, CCSG 9, Turnhout: Brepols, 1982).] Educated at Constantinople, he became a monk and, seeking greater solitude, came to Athos, where he lived for a time as a hermit under the name Athanasius. His decisive relationship was with the general Nikephoros Phokas, whom he had known and who, on becoming Emperor Nikephoros II in 963, gave Athanasius the resources and the imperial backing to found a great monastery (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, ch. 2, on Athanasius and Nikephoros; the Vitae, ed. Noret, CCSG 9, 1982; Morris, Monks and Laymen in Byzantium, 1995, on the imperial patronage).

The Great Lavra (Megiste Lavra) was founded in 963. It was, by the standards of the Mountain, a revolution: a large, walled, fully organised coenobium — a community living in common, under an abbot, with a shared rule, common meals, common worship, and common property — on the model of the great coenobitic monasteries of the Christian East, rather than the loose eremitic federation the older Athonites knew (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, ch. 2, on the founding and character of the Lavra; the Vitae, ed. Noret, CCSG 9, 1982). Athanasius drew on the coenobitic tradition of St. Basil the Great and of the Stoudios monastery of Constantinople for his rule, and he equipped the Lavra with the infrastructure of a permanent institution — church, refectory, cells, workshops, an aqueduct, harbours (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002; on the Basilian and Studite inheritance see Orthodoxy: Monasticism). The imperial endowment made the Lavra wealthy and secure, and its example was quickly followed: within a few decades other great houses were founded — Vatopedi and Iviron among them — so that the coenobitic monastery became the dominant Athonite form (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, ch. 2; see The Ruling Monasteries).

The Conflict of the Hermits and the Coenobium

The founding of so large and wealthy a coenobium did not pass without conflict. The older hermits of the Mountain saw in Athanasius’ great walled monastery — with its buildings, its endowments, its imperial connections, and its crowds of monks — a betrayal of the eremitic ideal of poverty and solitude for which they had come to Athos, and they complained to the emperor (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, ch. 2, on the opposition of the hermits; Morris, Monks and Laymen in Byzantium, 1995, on the dispute). The dispute was serious enough to require imperial and ecclesiastical intervention, and its resolution produced the first great constitutional document of the Mountain.

That document is the Tragos — so called because it is written on a goat-skin (tragos, “he-goat”) — the First Typikon of Athos, issued in 972 under the Emperor John I Tzimiskes, who succeeded Nikephoros II (the Typikon of John Tzimiskes, 972, ed. in Papachryssanthou, Actes du Prôtaton, Paris, 1975, no. 7). The Tragos, which survives in the archive of the Protaton and is the oldest surviving Athonite charter, adjudicated between the hermits and the coenobites: it confirmed the legitimacy of Athanasius’ coenobitic foundation while safeguarding the rights and way of life of the solitaries, and it regulated the common administration of the Mountain under the protos at Karyes (Papachryssanthou, Actes du Prôtaton, 1975, on the Tragos; Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, ch. 2; Morris, Monks and Laymen in Byzantium, 1995). The settlement it embodied — a Mountain in which the great coenobia and the hermits coexist under a common law, neither driving out the other — has proved remarkably durable and is still, in essence, the constitution of Athos a thousand years later (see The Holy Community and Karyes).

The Coenobitic Charter and Athanasius’ Legacy

For his own Lavra, Athanasius left a typikon and a hypotyposis (a rule of internal life), setting out the coenobitic discipline the house was to keep: the common life under the abbot, the round of the offices, the ascetic regimen, and the arrangements for governance and succession (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, ch. 2, on Athanasius’ rule; the Vitae, ed. Noret, CCSG 9, 1982). His achievement was double. Institutionally, he gave Athos the coenobitic monastery as its central form and, through the Tragos, a workable settlement between community and solitude; the Mountain’s subsequent history is in large part the working-out of that inheritance. Spiritually, he stood in and transmitted the great tradition of Eastern ascetic monasticism — the desert reworked for a Byzantine mountain — and he is venerated as a saint, the founder-saint of the Holy Mountain, commemorated on 5 July (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002; on the desert roots see The Desert Fathers).

It bears repeating that this Athanasius — Athanasius the Athonite, the tenth-century founder of the Great Lavra — is a distinct person from St. Athanasius the Great of Alexandria, the fourth-century champion of Nicaea. They share only a name; the confusion is common and is worth guarding against. Athanasius the Athonite has no separate collection in this repository precisely because his significance is inseparable from the Mountain he founded, and so he is treated here, within the history of Athos itself.

See Also

References

  • Speake, Graham. Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002. (Ch. 2 on the early hermits, St. Peter the Athonite as legend, St. Athanasius and Nikephoros Phokas, the founding of the Great Lavra in 963, the conflict of the hermits and the coenobium, and the Tragos.)
  • Vitae duae antiquae Sancti Athanasii Athonitae. Ed. J. Noret. Corpus Christianorum, Series Graeca 9. Turnhout: Brepols, 1982. (The two early Lives of St. Athanasius the Athonite.)
  • Papachryssanthou, Dionysia. Actes du Prôtaton. Archives de l’Athos 7. Paris: Lethielleux, 1975. (The critical edition of the Protaton archive, including the Tragos / First Typikon of 972 and the documents of the early common administration.)
  • Morris, Rosemary. Monks and Laymen in Byzantium, 843–1118. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. (The early Athonite organisation, the imperial patronage, and the dispute over the Lavra.)
  • Bryer, Anthony, and Mary Cunningham, eds. Mount Athos and Byzantine Monasticism. Aldershot: Variorum/Ashgate, 1996. (The pre-Lavra period and the Byzantine monastic context.)