The Forms of Monastic Life

Athos shelters the whole range of the ascetic life, from the fully communal to the utterly solitary. The first file treats the two great forms of the monastery itself — the coenobitic (fully common) and the idiorrhythmic (a relaxation in which monks kept their own property and arrangements) — and the twentieth-century return of every ruling house to the coenobitic life. The second treats the dependent settlements — the sketes, kellia, and kalyves — and the “desert” of Athos, the wild south-eastern tip where the strictest hermits live at Karoulia and Katounakia.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Athonite)

This section treats the forms of the life rather than the institutions that house it. The first file, coenobitic-and-idiorrhythmic.md, sets out the two ways of monastic organisation and the significance of the modern return to the coenobium. The second file, sketes-kellia-and-the-desert-of-athos.md, maps the graded dependent settlements — from the village-like sketes down to the solitary hut — and the eremitic “desert” that preserves the oldest Athonite way of all.

Contents

File	Description
coenobitic-and-idiorrhythmic.md	The two ways of monastic organisation; the rise of the idiorrhythmic form and the 20th-c. return of all twenty houses to the coenobitic life
sketes-kellia-and-the-desert-of-athos.md	The dependent settlements — sketes, kellia, kalyves — and the “desert” of Athos (Karoulia, Katounakia) and its hermits

See Also

• Mount Athos (master README)
• The Ruling Monasteries — the houses within which these forms are lived
• Hesychasm and the Holy Mountain — the prayer the eremitic life serves
• The Desert Fathers — the Egyptian ancestry of the eremitic, cenobitic, and semi-eremitic ways