The Pan-Orthodox Mountain

Athos has never been a purely Greek institution. From its earliest centuries it drew monks from across the Orthodox world, and three of its twenty ruling monasteries are non-Greek foundations — Hilandar (Serbian), Zographou (Bulgarian), and St. Panteleimon or Rossikon (Russian) — while Iviron was founded by Georgians and Romanian and other patrons sustained many houses. This international, pan-Orthodox character makes the Holy Mountain the common spiritual centre of the whole Orthodox world, a “commonwealth” transcending nation and empire. This file treats the non-Greek houses and the Mountain’s pan-Orthodox role.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Athonite)

A Commonwealth, Not a National Church

Although Athos lies within the Greek State and most of its monks and houses are Greek, the Mountain has been from its beginnings a pan-Orthodox institution — a place where Orthodox of every nation come to live the monastic life together, under a common law and the spiritual jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate rather than of any national church (Speake, A History of the Athonite Commonwealth: The Spiritual and Cultural Diaspora of Mount Athos, Cambridge, 2018; on the Constantinopolitan jurisdiction see Sovereignty and the Modern State). Graham Speake has argued that Athos functions as the centre of a spiritual and cultural “commonwealth” that has, over a millennium, radiated Orthodox monasticism, art, learning, and spirituality across the Balkans, the Caucasus, Russia, and Romania and back again — a network of influence that far exceeds the peninsula itself (Speake, A History of the Athonite Commonwealth, 2018). Of the twenty ruling monasteries, three are today the national houses of Serbia, Bulgaria, and Russia, and a fourth, Iviron, is Georgian in origin; alongside them, the sketes and kellia have long sheltered communities of Romanians, Moldavians, and others.

Iviron: the Georgian Foundation

Iviron (from Iviria, the Byzantine name for Georgia) is the third of the twenty in precedence and one of the great early foundations. It was established in the later tenth century by Georgian monks — the general-turned-monk John the Iberian (John Tornikios and John the Iberian in the tradition) and his kinsman and successor Euthymios the Iberian — with the support of Georgian and Byzantine patrons, and it became a major centre of Georgian monastic learning and translation, through which much of Greek patristic literature passed into Georgian (Speake, A History of the Athonite Commonwealth, 2018, on Iviron and the Georgians; Speake, Renewal in Paradise, Yale, 2002, ch. 2). Over the later medieval and modern centuries the Georgian presence declined and the community became Greek, which it remains; but Iviron’s Georgian origins, its Georgian manuscripts, and above all its guardianship of the Portaitissa icon keep the memory of that founding alive (Speake, A History of the Athonite Commonwealth, 2018; on the icon see Relics and Wonderworking Icons).

Hilandar: the Serbian Monastery

Hilandar (Chilandar), fourth in precedence, is the Serbian house and the spiritual heart of medieval Serbian Orthodoxy. It was restored and refounded in 1198 by St. Sava — the founder of the autocephalous Serbian Church — together with his father Stefan Nemanja, the grand župan of Serbia, who had abdicated to become the monk Symeon; the two are venerated as the founders, and Hilandar became the fountainhead of Serbian monasticism, letters, and church art (Speake, A History of the Athonite Commonwealth, 2018, on Hilandar, Sava, and Symeon; Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, ch. 3). Hilandar is the guardian of the Tricherousa (“Three-handed”) icon of the Mother of God, associated in tradition with St. John of Damascus, which presides over the monastery in a special way — in the Athonite account the icon is enthroned as abbess of the house (see Relics and Wonderworking Icons). Through Hilandar the influence of Athos passed directly into the Serbian lands, shaping their monasteries, their liturgical books, and their painting for centuries (Speake, A History of the Athonite Commonwealth, 2018).

Zographou: the Bulgarian Monastery

Zographou, ninth in precedence, is the Bulgarian house, associated with Bulgarian monasticism since the medieval period and sustained by Bulgarian rulers and patrons; its name (Zographos, “the painter”) belongs to a foundation legend concerning a miraculously painted icon of St. George, to whom the monastery is dedicated (Speake, A History of the Athonite Commonwealth, 2018, on Zographou and the Bulgarians; Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002). Zographou, like Hilandar for the Serbs, served as a channel of Athonite monasticism and culture into the Bulgarian world (Speake, A History of the Athonite Commonwealth, 2018).

St. Panteleimon: the Russian Monastery

St. Panteleimon (the Rossikon), nineteenth in precedence, is the Russian monastery, and its modern history is the most dramatic of the non-Greek houses. Russian monks had been present on the Mountain since the medieval period, but in the nineteenth century, funded by the resources of imperial Russia and the piety of Russian pilgrims and patrons, the Rossikon grew enormously, until by the early twentieth century the Russian monastic population on Athos rivalled or exceeded the Greek and provoked anxieties about a “panslavist” or Russian domination of the Mountain (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, ch. 5, on the Russian expansion; Fennell, The Russians on Athos, on the nineteenth-century growth; see Charters, Empires, and Ottoman Centuries). This anxiety was one factor in the 1912 dispute over the Mountain’s status, when Russia favoured an internationalised regime and Greece secured sovereignty (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, ch. 5; see Sovereignty and the Modern State).

The Russian presence then collapsed. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 cut off the funding and the flow of novices, and the Rossikon — vast, half-empty, and impoverished — entered a long decline that reached its nadir in the mid-twentieth century, when only a handful of aged monks remained in buildings raised for thousands (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, chs. 5–6). The general revival of the late twentieth century reached the Russian house too, and with the fall of the Soviet Union and renewed contact with Russia the community was replenished, though the questions of national interest and outside patronage that have always attended the non-Greek houses remain live (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, ch. 6; A History of the Athonite Commonwealth, 2018). It was at St. Panteleimon, in this period of decline, that St. Silouan the Athonite lived and prayed — a reminder that the spiritual fruit of the Mountain has never been confined to its Greek houses (see St. Silouan the Athonite and The Twentieth-Century Revival).

Romanians and Others

Beyond the ruling houses, the Mountain has long sheltered monks of many other nations, above all Romanians and Moldavians, who have populated sketes and kellia (notably the Romanian sketes of Prodromou and Lakkoskiti) rather than any of the twenty (Speake, A History of the Athonite Commonwealth, 2018, on the Romanian presence). It was from the Athonite and Moldavian milieu that St. Paisius Velichkovsky carried the Philokalic revival of hesychast prayer into the Slavic world in the eighteenth century, translating the Philokalia into Slavonic and founding the tradition of eldership (starchestvo) that would flower at Optina — one of the clearest instances of the Mountain’s radiating influence (Speake, A History of the Athonite Commonwealth, 2018; see St. Paisius Velichkovsky and The Home of Hesychasm).

The national character of the several houses has, at times, been a source of tension — over patronage, over the balance of the Mountain, over the interests of outside states — and this guide does not conceal that. But the deeper reality the tradition affirms, and the scholarship confirms, is that Athos has held these nations together in a single monastic commonwealth under a common law and a single spiritual head, and that its pan-Orthodox character is not incidental but constitutive of what the Holy Mountain is (Speake, A History of the Athonite Commonwealth, 2018; see The Meaning of the Mountain).

References

Speake, Graham. A History of the Athonite Commonwealth: The Spiritual and Cultural Diaspora of Mount Athos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. (The pan-Orthodox commonwealth; Iviron and the Georgians; Hilandar, Sava, and Symeon; Zographou and the Bulgarians; the Romanian presence; the radiating influence of Athos.)
Speake, Graham. Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002. (Ch. 2 on Iviron; ch. 3 on Hilandar; ch. 5 on the Russian expansion and the 1912 dispute; ch. 6 on the modern revival of the non-Greek houses.)
Fennell, Nicholas. The Russians on Athos. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2001. (The nineteenth-century Russian growth and its collapse.)
Bryer, Anthony, and Mary Cunningham, eds. Mount Athos and Byzantine Monasticism. Aldershot: Variorum/Ashgate, 1996. (The medieval foundations and their national contexts.)