08 — Athos and Russia
The saint’s special bond with Russian monasticism and with the practice of medicine: the great Russian monastery of St Panteleimon on Mount Athos — the Rossikon — and Panteleimon as patron of Russian Athonite monasticism, especially in its nineteenth-century revival; and his patronage of physicians and the sick, and the bearing of the unmercenary ideal on Orthodox medical ethics.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Great Martyr; Unmercenary Healer)
This section follows two of the most consequential lines of the cult. The first file is the Rossikon: the monastery of St Panteleimon on the south-western coast of Athos, its medieval origins and its dramatic nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century efflorescence as the centre of a vast Russian Athonite presence, the saint as the patron under whose name Russian monks gathered on the Holy Mountain, and the relic of the head it preserves. The second file treats Panteleimon as the patron of physicians and the sick across the Orthodox world, and draws out the way the unmercenary ideal — healing freely, the body’s health subordinate to the soul’s — informs Orthodox reflection on medicine, the vocation of the physician, and contemporary bioethics.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Rossikon on Mount Athos | The Russian monastery of St Panteleimon — the Rossikon — its history and its nineteenth-century Russian revival; the saint as patron of Russian Athonite monasticism; the relic of the head. |
| Patron of Physicians and the Sick | Panteleimon as patron of physicians and the sick; the unmercenary ideal in Orthodox medical ethics; the physician’s vocation and the Christian care of the body. |
See Also
- The Relics and Their Dispersal — the head preserved at the Rossikon
- Healing Without Payment — the unmercenary practice this patronage rests on
- The Unmercenaries as a Type — the theology of free healing
- Monasticism — the monastic tradition of the Holy Mountain
- Bioethics and Contemporary Questions — Orthodox medical ethics
References
- Speake, Graham. Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
- Gerd, Lora. Russian Policy in the Orthodox East: The Patriarchate of Constantinople (1878–1914). Warsaw/Berlin: De Gruyter Open, 2014. (For the Russian Athonite presence.)
- Crislip, Andrew T. From Monastery to Hospital: Christian Monasticism and the Transformation of Health Care in Late Antiquity. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005.
- Engelhardt, H. Tristram, Jr. The Foundations of Christian Bioethics. Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger, 2000.