Friends of Mount Athos

Annual Report

1995

FRIENDS OF MOUNT ATHOS

PRESIDENT

The Hon. Sir Steven Runciman, C.H., F.B.A.

PATRONS

Mr Costa Carras The Very Revd. Professor Sir Henry Chadwick, K.B.E., F.B.A.

Mr Patrick Leigh Fermor, D.S.O., O.B.E. Sir John Lawrence, Bt., O.B.E.

Mr James Lees-Milne Professor Donald M. Nicol, F.B.A.

Sir Dimitri Obolensky, F.B.A.

EXECUfiVE COMMITIEE

Dr Dimitri Conomos Dr Derek Hill

Dr Graham Speake (Hon. Secretary) The Rt. Revd. Dr Kallistos Ware, Bishop of Diokleia (Chairman)

HONORARY MEMBERS

HRH the Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh HRH the Prince of Wales

All correspondence should be addressed to the Hon. Secretary, Dr Graham Speake Ironstone ~armhouse, Mil~on, Banbury OX15 4HH (fax 01295-721445), froO: whor_n d_etails of mem?ers_htp may be obtained. This report is private and not for pubhcatlon. The contributions remain the copyright of the authors and may not be reproduced without their permission.

Printed by Parchment (Oxford) Ltd, Crescent Road, Oxford OX4 2PB

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CONTENTS

The Society's Year by Graham Speake

Report from the Mountain: 1995

Mount Athos and the European Community by Abbot George Kapsanis

Philip Sherrard (1922-1995) by Bishop Kallistos

The Flora and Fauna of the Holy Mountain by Philip Oswald

The Romanian Archive at the Holy Monastery of Vatopedi by Florin Marinescu

SYNDESMOS and Mount Athos: The Second Spiritual Ecology Camp by Dimitri Conomos

The Lochs and the Ouranoupolis Tower by Lewis Wright

A Diplomatic Reception Held by the Greek Association of Friends of the Holy Mountain by Evangelos Perry

BOOK REVIEWS Rene Goth6ni: Tales and Truth: Pilgrimage on Mount Athos

Past and Present. By Graham Speake So That God's Creation Might Live: The Orthodox Church

Responds to the Ecological Crisis. By Martin Palmer

TELEPHONE NUMBERS ON MOUNT ATHOS Corrigenda to A Pilgrim's Guide to Mount Athos

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Fr Arsenios of Chilandar, a sketch by Derek Hill, c.l985.

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THE SOCIETY'S YEAR My Dear Friends,

'So begins the history of holy Athos, which from that time has remained down the years an unshakeable bastion of true piety and virtue, the spiritual and fragrant paradise of the Most Blessed Mother of God, whose special love and care for it continues to be made manifest in practical ways.' These words are quoted from the Introduc­tion to the Life of Fr Joseph the Hesychast by Elder Joseph of Vatopedi in the translation recently made by Elizabeth Theokritoff at· the instigation of the Friends. We dare to hope that one of the 'practical ways' in which the Theotokos' love and care for her garden is made manifest is in the existence of our society, which was created in 1990 and won official recognition in the year under review. I am writing these few paragraphs, fresh from the exhilarating experience of celebrating the great feast of the Nativity on the Holy Mountain in the inspiring company of Elder Joseph, Abbot Ephraim, and the Fathers ofVatopedi. If I judge correctly the esteem in which our society is held by them, this claim may not be quite as audacious as it sounds.

The Vasilopitta party The year began as usual with a Vasilopitta party, once again held in the suitably Byzantinizing precinct of Maria Andipa's icon gallery in Knightsbridge. This has now become a regular event in our calendar (by the time this Report is read, yet another party will have taken place) and we remain deeply grateful to Mrs Andipa and her son Acoris for their repeated hospitality. Indeed they have gone even further this time and promised to donate to the Friends 10 per cent of the price paid for any icons bought by members of the society during 1996. This is a most magnanimous gesture which we hope will be borne in mind by intending purchasers of icons and will be to the benefit of all concerned.

The party itself was most enjoyable, the entertainment being en­hanced by wine generously donated by the Directors of the Greek Wine Bureau, the Greek Embassy, the Greek National Tourist Organization, and our winemaking member Dudley Quirk, and by the gift of a gold flouri as the first prize by Mr Ilias Lalaounis of 5 Sloane Street SWl. Numbers were somewhat depleted this year, with several people (including both Sir Steven Runciman and Bishop Kallistos) kept away

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by illness. But Bishop Aristarchos kindly stepped in at short notice to perform the blessing. And we made a net profit of £587 on the evening, enabling us to give another £500 to SYNDESMOS as a contribution to their educational publications programme. Master of ceremonies again was Ilya Haritakis to whom we are indebted for efficient organization of a very successful party.

Publications in 1995

Later in January we received news of a further deterioration in relations between the Holy Mountain and the Patriarchate occasioned by a split within the brotherhood of the Great Lavra (see below, 'Report from the Mountain: 1995'). The news was accompanied by a specific request from the monks: they wanted us to place an article in The Times newspaper signed by Sir Steven Runciman and giving the background to the whole affair. At the time this seemed to be rather a tall order! But in the end we succeeded, with an illustrated feature article appearing in the designated newspaper on Easter Monday, and a Greek version subsequently published in the Athens daily, Katbimerini. The monks were overjoyed; feathers were ruffled in both Athens and Constantin­ople; the problems were given an airing; but they have not gone away.

In the spring we published a first edition of our long-promised Pilgrim's Guide to Mount Atbos. It is in the nature of such publications that the moment they are produced they become out of date. Within weeks of this little book's appearance the Holy Mountain, where nothing has ever changed for a thousand years, invested in a new telephone system (which actually works!) and all the numbers were changed. For ease of reference we print at the back of this Report a complete list of the new numbers. Many people also informed me that there had been a change of personnel at the Ministry of Macedonia and Thrace and that Mrs Plessa was no longer handling applications to visit Mount Athos. In fact she was suddenly stricken by a serious illness from which happily she has made a complete recovery; and it is ~ pleasure to report that she is now back at her desk in Room 222.

The Vatopedi Appeal

Also in the spring we launched the Vatopedi Appeal. Members will recall that from the start the Friends have described themselves as 'not primarily a fund-raising body'; and that description remains unaltered.

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At the same time members have often asked if they could make some material contribution to one or more of the monasteries. When Vatopedi sent us 250 copies of their magnificently produced 96-page appeal brochure (one for each member of the Friends: they have subsequently sent more), it seemed appropriate that we should respond by acting as agents of the monks and encouraging members to support the work of one of the most dynamic communities on the Mountain today. With a view to our pending application to the Charity Commission for registration as an educational charity, we were careful to stipulate that our contribution to the appeal should be made 'to the old library for the protection and conservation of the manuscripts and archives'. The monastery has narrowed it down even further and decided to devote the whole of our contribution to the Romanian archive. We are delighted to be able to print below a short interim report on the importance of this archive by Dr Florin Marinescu who is in charge of its investigation.

It is immensely gratifying to report that: ( 1) in the nine months since its launch the Vatopedi Appeal has raised the magnificent sum of £5459; (2) the appeal has been officially declared charitable by the Charity Commis­sioners; and (3) His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales has graciously accepted our invitation to become its Patron for as long as the appeal continues. The Abbot and Fathers of the monastery wish to express their sincere thanks to His Royal Highness for his patronage and to the members of the Friends who have given so generously to this cause. Meanwhile the Vatopedi Appeal account remains open and all donations, however small, will be gratefully received. Anyone who would like to make a tax-efficient contribution through the Gift Aid scheme should write to me for the appropriate form.

TbeAGM Our fourth AGM took place in Oxford on 7 June 1995. This time some forethought was given to the seating and the assembled company of about fifty members and guests was accommodated without difficulty. There was some discussion of the wording of our object and of the minor changes to our constitution that the Charity Commissioners required before our application could be successful; these were then formally proposed to the meeting and accepted unanimously. The society's object reads as follows: 'The advancement of education of the

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public in the study and knowledge of the histoxy, culture, arts, architecture, natural histoxy and literature of the Orthodox monasteries of Mount Athos'. From now on, our activities and our expenditure must be directed to that object alone. Notification that the society had been officially entered in the Central Register of Charities as No. 1047287 was received the following week; but registration was deemed to have occurred on the day of the AGM, 7 June.

In his Chairman's Report Bishop Kallistos announced the sad news of Dr Philip Sherrard's death on 30 May 1995. He had been a Patron of this society since its foundation and was author of what many regarded as th~ best modem book about the Mountain. The Secretary was asked to ~ate ~ le~er of condolence to his widow. An obituaxy by Bishop Kallastos as prmted below. Mter the formal business of the AGM was over, Mr Philip Oswald gave an illustrated talk on the subject 'The Flora and Fauna of the Holy Mountain', a version of which is printed below.

The consequences of becoming a Registered Charity Alt?ough the wording of our object was accepted unanimously by those votmg at the AGM, I am conscious of the fact that not all our members ~ere there and som.e . ~ay be concerned about the restrictions thereby ampose~ on our actavataes and on our expenditure. Some may even be wo.n~ermg what our purpose is if we cannot support the restoration of buil~mgs or the conservation of works of art on the Holy Mountain.

Farst I .~ust repeat that the society has never seen itself as primarily a fund-raasmg body. To quote our brochure, 'The assistance to be pro"?ded is more likely to take the form of liaison, expertise, or equapment for which the monks have expressed a need.' Secondly it also has to be pointed out that by and large the monks do not want for money. Most .monasteries are more or less self-supporting; their over?ead~ are laght; and when buildings need to be restored, adequate fundmg as usually available (see below, 'Report from the Mountain· 1995'). .

We like to see ourselves rather as a bridge- a bridge between the Holy Mountain and the world, providing access in both directions. For our members we aim to provide information about the Mountain that is up-to-date and accurate - whether in the form of printed material (such as this Report or the Pilgrim's Guide), or in the form of meetings

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and lectures which are open to all, or in the form of exhibitions and conferences (such as the Birmingham Symposium). To the monks we offer a link with the world - a lifeline when there is a crisis, access to the media when pressure needs to be exerted, access to specialist expertise which may not be available on the Mountain. They may take it or leave it: they know that we will never interfere uninvited. But experience has already shown that there is a good deal of traffic in both directions over our bridge.

As I wrote in the October Newsletter, becoming a Registered Charity is an important development for the Friends for several reasons. Formal recognition gives the society some standing and is a mark of its coming of age. It gives us a number of fmancial advantages, particularly in the ability to recover income tax on covenanted subscriptions and donations. And it is helpful when we come to apply for grants from other bodies. It also imposes a degree of accountability and discipline which it behoves us to regard as healthy.

The limits imposed on our activities and our expenditure will have to be adhered to, but there is no reason why they should cramp our style. We shall, for example, no longer be able to support fmancially such ventures as the SYNDESMOS Spiritual Ecology Camp, but, as I have mentioned above, we can support their publications programme instead. Nor can we raise money for the restoration of buildings or works of art on the Mountain, but we can do so for the conservation of archives and manuscripts which are deemed to have a more directly educational value. Our involvement with translating works of Athonite spirituality will of course continue; and so will our determination to offer the monks a link with the outside world whenever they need it.

Subscription rates The award of charitable status provided us with a suitable opportunity to think about our subscription rates. Since the foundation of the society in 1990 they had remained unchanged at £6 for individuals, £9 for institutions, and £3 for students. Thanks largely to the fact that a good number of members have regularly sent us more than the minimum rates, the fmancial situation has remained healthy. But with an ever-expanding membership (which we welcome), our expenditure has continued to rise. In 1995, for example, our bill for postage alone

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(excluding the mailing of Christmas cards) was very nearly £1000, which works out at more than £3.50 per member; and we spent half as much again on printing (excluding stationery, which is printed by me without charge). At this rate it can readily be seen that we should soon be running at a loss. We hope that the new rates and new concessions (£10 for individuals; £15 for institutions; £5 for students, pensioners, and religious) will commend themselves to our members. We like to think that we give good value for money. We also hope that with more members we shall be able to offer a fuller programme; and we welcome suggestions from members of possible future activities, especially if they come accompanied by offers to help organize them!

We are grateful to one of our American members, Professor Robert Allison, for a suggestion (now put into practice) which we hope will greatly facilitate the payment of dues by overseas members who wish to pay in dollars. Instead of going to the trouble and expense of sending us international money orders in £ sterling, such members may now send cheques in dollars (made payable to the Friends of Mount Athos) to Professor Allison, Department of Philosophy and Religion, Bates College, Lewiston, Maine 04240, USA. Since overseas members receive the society's mailings by airmail, it was thought not unreasonable that their subscription rates in dollars should be slightly higher than their sterling equivalents. They are therefore $20 for individuals, $30 for institutions, and $10 for students, pensioners, and religious. Professor Allison has also kindly opened a page for the Friends on the World Wide Web, so the Pilgrim's Guide can now be accessed through the Internet. It is a pleasure to announce therefore that the Friends are now 'on line'.

The award of charitable status of course also enables us to invite those members who pay tax in the UK to covenant their subscriptions. This means that, without further cost to the member, we can recover the income tax already paid on the amount of the subscription. This system, combined with a banker's order, greatly simplifies the annual chore of collecting subscriptions and at the same time considerably enhances our income. It is a pleasure to acknowledge here the promptness with which many members have already completed bankers' orders and deeds of covenant. Those who have not yet done so we would encourage to send them in as soon as possible. Those who would like another form should write to me and I will gladly supply one.

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'Orthodoxy or Death/' In November the Friends met in London to listen to a most entertaining address given by Archimandrite Ephrem Lash (formerly of the Monastery of Dochiariou) on the subject of 'Orthodoxy or Death! Reflections on the Doctrine of Monastic Infallibility'. Many will recall Fr Ephrem's spirited address to the Birmingham Symposium on 'Athos: A Working Community'. In London he continued where he had left off in Birmingham, and he issued a salutary warning against the tendency among some Athonites to set themselves up as the sole champions and defmers of true Orthodoxy, a warning that fmds an echo in the fmal item in the 'Report from the Mountain: 1995' printed below. As so often in the past, we are grateful to the Rt Revd Richard Chartres, now Bishop of London, for kindly making the Courtroom of St Andrew's, Holborn, available to us for this meeting.

I end, as I began, with the translation of the Life of Fr Joseph the Hesychast by Elder Joseph of Vatopedi. We undertook to co-ordinate this work eighteen months ago and we were delighted to obtain the agreement of Dr Elizabeth Theokritoff to translate it. We successfully applied for a grant to cover the costs of translation from the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius. The work was done with the most meticulous attention to detail, and Bishop Kallistos added a handsome foreword to introduce the genre of Athonite hagiography in general and this example in particular to a Western readership. I proof-read a printout made at the monastery as my diakonima over Christmas. It was in short a collaborative effort and one in which we were delighted to be able to participate on behalf of the Fathers. We eagerly await its publication in 1996.

We have always made clear that we will speak out on matters of public concern in as much as they affect the monks. We have not hesitated to do so in the past. We shall not hesitate to do so again, should the need arise. But we do not wish our name to be synonymous with polemic. Our role, as defmed in our object, is essentially an educational one: to be a source of information and to act as a bridge between two worlds. If we can from time to time make one or two small contributions of this sort to the 'spiritual and fragrant paradise' that is holy Athos, we believe that we shall justify our existence.

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GRAHAM SPEAKE Hon. Secretary

REPORT FROM THE MOUNTAIN: 1995

The. three-cornered conflict between the Fathers, the Ecumenical Patnarchate, and the Greek state over who should control certain aspects of the life of the Holy Mountain, which was a marked feature of last Y.ear's Report, has perhaps not manifested itself so acutely this year; but 1t has, unfortunately, remained largely unresolved and is the background to a number of the events recorded here. Moreover, it has ?een_replaced by another potential source of conflict (see the last item m thts ~eport) with far more damaging long-term implications. Before ell_lbar~ng, ~owever, on this year's 'politics', it might serve to keep thmgs 1~ thetr true perspective to quote a comment to the press from ~anteletmon, Metropolitan of Belgium, reported in the Mountain's JOU~~l Pr~taton: 'On the Holy Mountain .. . it is possible for the maJonty wtth a broader spirit, with more interest in work and the spiritual life than in anachronistic debates of secondary importance ... to be overshadowed [i.e. by current controversy].' While it is necessary to repo~ t?ese co~troversies, the most important fact about the Holy M~untam m 1995 ts not 'newsworthy': that the majority of the Fathers qmetly and undeviatingly continued their work and spiritual life.

****** Last year'~ report tha~, after some initial hesitation, the Holy Community was working harmomously with the civil governor, Professor G. Martse­los, has proved premature. The year opened with a letter of protest from the Holy Community to Professor Martselos, complaining of his interfer­ence in the internal affairs of the Great Lavra Monastery and the decisions of the Holy Community. This was prompted by a 'decision' of the civil governor pronouncing invalid and unlawful certain decisions of the Great Lavra and the Holy Community 'in relation to the normal coenobitic life of monks at t?~t m?nastery', a decision which the Holy Community regards a~ undermmmg tts own t~a~itional self-governing status and as overstep­pmg the clearly de~~ed lmuts of the supervision exercised by the Greek state through the ctvil governor. This was followed up by a second letter along the same lines a little later in the year.

At this point a word of explanation as to why the Great Lavra has featured as such a bone of contention throughout this year may be in order.

As readers may recall from the events of last year, of the nineteen

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monasteries represented by the Holy Community, thirteen are what could be called 'traditionalist' (more precisely, they are zealous for the Holy Mountain's traditional self-governing status and would like to see the Patriarch's spiritual authority over them narrowly defined; in addition they are opposed to the ecumenical activities of recent patriarchs). Under the rules of the Holy Community, the six 'pro­Patriarch' monasteries can block decisions by depriving it of a quorum. If, however, their number were to be reduced to five, this difficulty could be overcome. The Great Lavra has so far been 'pro-Patriarch', but the situation there is unstable. It will thus be readily seen that· the question of the leadership of the Lavra is one of crucial importance to both sides. (The Abbot of Xenophontos is reported to have aspirations to 'take over' the Lavra in the pro-Patriarch interest.)

As things stood early in the year, the actual coenobitic nucleus of the Great Lavra was composed of the 'company' (synodia) which joined the monastery some four years ago from the Skete of St Anne under the leadership of Fr Theoleptos. This synodia is believed to be traditionalist and the drawing of a successor to the present Abbot (Philippos) from its ranks would be a development unwelcome to the Patriarchate. However, the Abbot proved resistant to pressure to expel the offending synodia, with the result that in March the majority of the monastery's council (it is alleged with the encouragement of the Phanar) deposed Abbot Philippos and called an election of a new Abbot at very short notice- illegally in the view of the majority of the Holy Community.

It was against this background that another Patriarchal exarchate (commission) was invited to visit the Holy Mountain to examine, in common with the Holy Community, the problems of the Great Lavra. Three of the members of the exarchate of five bishops had served in this capacity in the 1994 visitation.

Arriving on 22 March, the exarchate was received in Karyes with the usual formalities, but then left for the Great Lavra the same day, without the competent committee of the Holy Community. It remained there for four days, engaged in lengthy 'discussions, consultations, questioning, and meetings'. The outcome of these was that the synodia under Fr Theoleptos was to return to its previous home at the Skete of St Anne and that Abbot Philippos should remain in office. These results were announced in an extraordinary meeting to the Holy Community, which reserved its right not to accept them.

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The late Abbot of the Monastery of Zographou, Archimandrite Efthymios (who~e deat_h was no~ed in last year's Report), has been succeeded by Archnnandnte Veneddctos, a monk of the monastery. Archimandrite Venediktos com~s from Bulgaria and is forty years old. The community of Zographou conststs of twelve monks and two novices.

****** Early in the year the Greek Ministry of Culture made a grant to the Athonite monasteries of the sum of 100 million drachmas for the continuation of restoration work.

****** 0~ 27 January the Greek equivalent of our society- the Association of Fnen~s of the Holy ~ountain- gave an official dinner on board ship at whtch representatives of the country's intellectual and economic life discussed the Mountain's current problems. The occasion was attended b~ Fr Ephraim, Abbot of Vatopedi, and Fr Elissaios, priest-monk of Stmonopetra.

Yet another association called Friends of the Holy Montain has been set up, in this case in the Greek town of Agrinio. Dedicated to St Cosmas the Aetolian, its purpose is the advancement and support of the monasteries of Mount Athos.

****** This yea~ the representatives of the monasteries with the Holy Commumty are as follows: Elder Epiphanios (Great Lavra), Priest­monk Palamas (Vatopedi), Abbot Kallinikos (lviron), Priest-monk St~phanos (Chilandari), Elder Niphon (Dionysiou), Priest-monk Philotheos (Koutloumousiou), Priest-monk Epiphanios (Pantokrator), Elder Chrysostomos (Xeropotamou), Priest-monk Ioannis (Zographou), Deacon-monk loa_keim (Dochiariou), Priest-monk Joseph (Karakalou), El~er ~oukas (Phtlo~heou), Deacon-monk Neilos (Simonopetra), Elder Ntkodnnos (St Pauls), Elder Theodosios (Stavronikita), Elder Silouan (Xenophon~os), Priest-monk Photios (Grigoriou), Priest-monk Kyrion (St Panteletmonos), and Elder Onouphrios (Konstamonitou).

****** ~ fourteen_th-cent.ury manuscript book, stolen, but recently discovered m the National Ltbrary of Warsaw in the hands of a receiver of stolen goods, has been returned to the St Panteleimon Monastery.

******

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Among this year's distinguished visitors to the Holy Mountain was the Greek Defence Minister, Mr Gerasimos Arsenis, who had recently come into greater prominence as a possible successor of Mr Andreas Papandreou as Prime Minister of Greece. Mr Arsenis was accompanied on his visit (in April) by his German opposite-number, Herr Volker­buhe.

The Leader of the Opposition, Mr Miltiades Evert, accompanied by MPs, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Mountain in September.

****** -In April a delegation of the Greek Friends of the Holy Mountain and Athonite Fathers was warmly received by the President of the Hellenic Republic, Mr Costis Stefanopoulos.

****** Mr Thomas Niles, US Ambassador to Greece, paid his third visit to the Holy Mountain in May, to be followed by no fewer than nine ambassadors from European countries in a group accompanied by Greek Foreign Ministry officials.

Mr Niles had wished to include the Serbian Monastery of Chilandari among those which he visited, but was not received by the brotherhood. The US Air Force was at the time engaged in bombing various cities in Bosnia and Serbia.

Mr George Bush, former President of the United States, visited the Holy Mountain in June, where he was accorded the honours due to a head of state by the monasteries of Pantokrator and Stavronikita.

On 15 August the Prince of Wales paid his second visit to the Holy Mountain. His Royal Highness was accompanied by his two sons.

In connection with the visits of VIPs in general, it has been noted that the civil governor and his deputy habitually direct the steps of the distinguished guests to the six 'pro-Patriarch' monasteries. When a visit to a traditionalist monastery is sought, this is rarely allowed to last more than twenty minutes.

****** In early summer a water reservoir with a capacity of 45,000 cubic metres, to supply the irrigation needs of the Vatopedi Monastery, was officially opened by the Minister of Agriculture, Natural Resources, and the Environment of the Republic of Cyprus, Mr Petridis.

******

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It . has been announced that a company of twenty monks, led by Pnest-monk Nektarios Tzimas, has left the Skete of St Demetrius belonging to Vatopedi, for another monastery outside Athos. '

****** The result of an examination of the restoration programme for the Athonite mona~t~ries by a meeting of Greek ministers was the approval of a sum of 8 bdhon drachmas for essential projects. The distribution of this money has, however, been criticized, in so far as, with the exception of two kellia, it completely ignores, yet again, the twelve sketes and 300 other monastic dependencies which are the home"s of half the population of Athos.

Exactly the same criticism was levelled against the subsidies granted by the .E~ropean lnve~t~ent Bank to Iviron (1.1 billion drachmas), Stavromkita (554.9 milhon drachmas), Simonopetra (269.4 million drachmas), and the Nunnery of the Annunciation, Ormylia (528.4 million drachmas).

****** In early summer, on the invitation of the Metropolis of Nea Ionia and Philadelphia, the most important of the relics kept at Vatopedi the Holy Girdle of the Theotokos, was taken to a church in Athens accompanied by the Abbot of Vatopedi, Fr Ephraim, where for foU:. days it was exposed to the veneration of the faithful. Thousands waited, sometimes for hours, their tum to venerate the holy relic. Their numbers are estimated at 300,000.

However, the occasion did not escape adverse comment on a large scale from the Athenian press. This had to do with the acceptance of offerings from the faithful and the fact that the Holy Girdle was taken to a number of favoured private houses, including that of the Prime Minister and his (highly controversial) third wife. ·

The Holy Community subsequently sent a letter of explanation to Seraphim, Archbishop of Athens.

****** In autumn Fr Vasilios, Abbot of lviron, paid a visit to Moscow in order to ~ark the return to Iviron of a dependency (metochi) by the Patnarchate of Moscow. The Abbot took with him a copy of the famous Portaitissa icon which is kept at Iviron. A crowd of some 20,000, all

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holding candles and headed by Patriarch Alexei and a large number of bishops and clergy, waited in the cold to welcome the icon.

****** An album of photographs with brief captions (in Greek) revealing the beauties of life on Mount Athos has recently been published in Athens. It is entitled The Holy Mountain - The Sacred Sites of Macedonia -through the Lens of Stelios Charitopoulos, and further information about this publication can be obtained from: Athanasios Christakis, lppokra­tous 10, Athens 106 79.

****** In view of the fact that the monasteries of the Holy Mountain are soon to receive major fmancial support (for maintenance and restoration work) amounting to billions of drachmas from European Union sources, the Holy Community announced in June that it would accept this money only via the Greek Ministry of the National Economy and not directly through participation in EU financing programmes, in this way clearly seeking to avoid any idea of indebtedness to the EU or the possibility of any quid pro quo being sought. If it is channelled through the Greek state, it can, as the announcement points out, be regarded as the fulfilment of an obligation on the part of the latter, in view of the fact that, if the monasteries had not handed over so much of their land to the state in times of national crisis, they would not now be in need of fmancial support.

Even in the case of the Greek state, the Holy Community warns that these sums are not to be regarded as having to do with the 'development' of the Holy Mountain (exploitation for tourist purposes) or with the enrichment of the monasteries, but as a contribution to the essential conservation of monuments and other treasures.

The announcement of the Holy Community continues:

Furthermore, the Holy Community .. . proclaims to all concerned that it does not accept nor will it in the future accept any moral or legal pressure and commitment from whatever quarter to alter, by reason of the restoration grants in question, the traditional ... way of life of the Holy Mountain and, more particularly, the manner of receiving and affording hospitality to pilgrims, as that has been determined by tradition and delimited by decisions of the Holy Community up to the present.

****** The last item in this year's Report is, unfortunately, rather sombre. In November the Holy Community, that is, the majority of thirteen, sent

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another letter of protest to the Ecumenical Patriarch. This time it did not concern differences over the administration of the Holy Mountain, but was a strongly worded attack upon the Patriarch's ecumenical activities.

It will be recalled that this has been a point of friction between the Athonite Fathers and three successive patriarchs. But now matters seem to be moving towards some sort of crisis as talks and contacts between Constantinople and Rome appear to be making progress and the Fathers fear (perhaps unjustifiably) that some hasty and botched-up 'union' with Rome may be imminent.

The letter to the Patriarch (basically composed by the Abbots of Vatopedi and Grigoriou) reveals just how wide the gap between the two sides on the question of the status of other Christian confessions is. It points out that the Pope's claims to primacy and universal jurisdiction, as well as sundry other errors, remain an insuperable obstacle to reunion, quoting various texts to illustrate that these claims have perhaps been disguised, but not abandoned. On this, many other Christians, including not a few Roman Catholics, would agree. But the Fathers' objection to the Patriarch's ecumenical activities- and indeed to ecumenism in any shape or form- is more radical:

We are obliged by the dictates of our conscience to declare that we do not accept ~e erroneous theory of 'sister churches'. Furthermore, we confess yet again, united wtth the Holy Fathers, that only our Orthodox Church is the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of the Creed, while the other heterodox 'churches' are in heresy and error, and only the sacraments of our Holy Church are valid, saving and sanctifying. '

This in fact merely highlights a divergence in theory and practice which has existed in the Orthodox Church for many years. This can be illustrated by the fact that it is the consistent practice on the Holy Mountain to receive converts by (re)baptism, while in many parts of the Orthodox Church in the world this is not required of those who have been baptized canonically in another Christian confession. Thus the Patriarch's ecumenical activities, which specifically (and the Fathers quote- with disapproval- a number of statements making this clear) build, as does much ecumenism today, on the concept of a common (and, necessarily, valid) baptism shared by all who bear the Name of Christ, are not new. Nor is the practice (again strongly criticized in the Holy Community's letter) of Orthodox prelates sharing in public worship with non-Orthodox (to take just one example, in 1925 the

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Patriarchs of Alexandria and Jerusalem marked the 1600th anniversary of the Nicene Creed by reciting it together with the Archbishop of Canterbury in Westminster Abbey, in just the same way as the Patriarch did in Rome with the Pope in 1995).

What is new is to draw attention to this divergence, up to now usually diplomatically skated over with some reference to 'economy', and to make the conservative view, in effect, a test of true Orthodoxy. This way schism lies (and some Fathers are already using the word in this connection), since the two approaches to 'other Christians' are ultimately irreconcilable. Even if it does not come to this, a hardening of attitudes along these lines could have a number of implications, none of them pleasant, for the future role and authority of the Athonite community and, indeed, for its visitors and friends.

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MOUNT ATHOS AND THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY I

Barbarian raids have long since wiped out the numerous ancient monastic communities of Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, and Constantinople. Only on the Holy Mountain of Athos and in Sinai have the ancie~t monastic tradition and community continued uninterrupt­edly to ex1st for a thousand years and more. It is perfectly understand­able, therefore, that not only Greeks and Orthodox Christians but anyone with the slightest concern for spiritual matters should tak~ an interest in the Athonite monastic state. This conference is the fruit of that interest.

There is much to be said about the history, art, and spiritual life of Mount Athos. Much, too, has been written on these subjects in many languages. But Athonite life is fundamentaUy a Mystery, which defies any description. Our eyes must be opened if we are to behold the Mystery. We must be initiated into the Mystery. Initiation does not spring from rational understanding alone; it is a question of spiritual ascent. As Man ascends and God descends, it is at the point where they meet that the Mystery is celebrated. It is this Mystery which makes Athos not merely a mountain, but a Holy Mountain.

The Mystery is open to anyone, whether Athonite or not, who wishes to approach it. The approach, however, means ascent; ascent requires detac~ment; and detachment demands courage. The way life is organiZed on Athos, the architecture, painting, nature, cobble-stones, bells.. t?e wooden sounding boards striking day and night, the hosp1tahty, ~e. prayers - all of these express something of this Mystery. It IS m them all and at the same time beyond them all. Whatever expresses the Mystery may be described up to a certain point; ~et at the .same time its core remains undescribed. Being undescribed it 1s offered m communion of life.

At this conference I have elected to describe something which ~oun~ Athos shares with every community of peoples and nations, mcludmg the European Community: that is, its communal character.

1 This paper was first delivered at a conference on 'The Holy Mountain in the Era of the European Community' held in Thessaloniki from 17 to 20 May 1984.

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Mount Athos has functioned as a community ever since its foundation. In 963 St Athanasius the Athonite founded his Lavra with the help of the Byzantine Emperor Nicephorus Phocas. Many years before, ascetics had been living in tiny hermitages scattered about the Athos peninsula. But their austere and reclusive way of life also had a certain communal function, for they would come together from time to time to decide on matters which affected them all. Thus, despite their outward isolation, the common spirit was revealed, the common faith which fundamentally united them. The informal and unorganized communal aspect which manifested itself on occasion bore witness to the essential and profound common bond between them.

St Athanasius's Lavra functioned as a coenobium. The monks had everything in common: they ate together, wore the same clothes, had no private possessions, money, or personal property. St Athanasius's coenobium was a continuation of Our Lord's coenobium with his Twelve Disciples and the Apostles' coenobium with the frrst Christians in Jerusalem, as it is described so beautifully in the Acts of the Apostles. It was Basil the Great who drew up the rules and regulations of the Christian monastic coenobia. Allow me to read you his account of the relations between the monks in a coenobium, for it typifies the spirit of genuine love to which the coenobium aspires:

What can compare with this way of life? What is more sublime? What is more true than bonding and unity? What is more gracious than the commingling of characters and souls? Men have set forth from divers races and lands and come together with such precision into one, so that they may be deemed one soul in many bodies, and many bodies may seem as the instruments of one mind. In his body the invalid has many who suffer by good will with him; he who is sick and weak in spirit has many to heal and restore him. Each is the servant of the other, each is the master of the other, and with invincible freedom do they emulate each other to see who shall demonstrate the most precise servitude, which is not occasioned by some compeUing misfortune arousing much disquiet in those whom it possesses, but is joyfully created by freedom of mind; for love subordinates the free to each other, and ensures freedom by the individual choice of each one. Thus did God wish us to be from the start and to this end did He create us. They restore the ancient good, for they cover the sin of our forefather Adam. For division and dissension and war would not have existed amongst men if sin had not divided nature. They, then, closely imitate the Saviour and His incarnate life. Which is to say that He, when He gathered together the group of His disciples, made everything in common for His Apostles, even Himself. So too, obedient to their Superior, do all those who observe the correctness of this life precisely imitate the life of the Apostles and Our Lord. I

I Asketikai Diataxeis 18.2, Greek trans. K. Karakolis, published by E.P.E., vol. 9, pp. 479-81.

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The purpose of the internal functioning and organization of a coenobium is to transcend both individualism and mass aspect of people. But how can we achieve a form of society in which people can live a communal life without being levelled into a faceless mass, and in which people can stand out as separate personalities without falling into egotistic and antisocial individualism? I believe that in an Orthodox coenobium, whose members live all for one and each one for all, as described by Basil the Great, this form of society is achieved.

An Orthodox coenobium is rooted in the Holy Trinity, in Whom the three persons - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit - are · one substance, while at the same time distinct and unconfused persons. The Orthodox conception is of the whole Church as the revelation of the Mystery of the Holy Trinity to the world. This is why, furthermore, its synodical organization is so important to the Orthodox Church.

After the Lavra other monasteries were founded, all of them coenobia. During the time of pirate and barbarian raids and conquests some of the monasteries were compelled to become idiorrhythmic. Today nineteen from the twenty monasteries are cenobitic and only one idiorrhythmic, and it seems likely that this too will eventually change to the cenobitic way of life.l

The whole of the Athonite peninsula is divided between the twenty monasteries. Even those monks who live outside the monasteries in various sketes, cells, and hermitages are under the authority of and dependent on a monastery. The twenty monasteries compose the Holy Community of Mount Athos. Their headquarters is in Karyes, where their representatives meet twice a week to make decisions relating to Mount Athos. There are other bodies too, such as the Biannual Holy Assembly, which is the supreme legislative and judicial body of Mount Athos and convenes twice a year, and the Extraordinary Dual Holy Assembly, which is composed of the twenty regular and twenty irregular representatives and convenes whenever there is a serious matter to be resolved. The Holy Community's executive body is the Holy Epistasia, which is composed of the four epistates. The monasteries assume the Holy Epistasia on a rotational basis, changing every five years.

Each monastery is self-administered. More general issues are settled by the Holy Community, whose decisions the monasteries must accept.

I All Athonite monasteries do indeed now follow the cenobitic way of life [Ed.].

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We have, then, a union of equal-ranking monasteries. As I am sure you know, the monks of Athos are not only Greeks, but come also from other countries with an Orthodox tradition: Russia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania - and at one time there were also monks from Georgia. Some of the monks too are from other European countries, North and South America, Asia, and Australia. They are all united by their common Orthodox faith, which prevails over any national differences or occasional conflicts. All Orthodox peoples regard Mount Athos as their own, as they consider the Holy Land their own too, where the God-man Christ once walked.

On Mount Athos we fmd an exalted form of society of men, with a great variety of distinct endowments, characters, ages, levels of education, social background, and national differences. Both within a single coenobium and throughout the Athonite state, diversity and unity are wonderfully combined. All are united by a deep spiritual bond, and at the same time all are free to express themselves and attain completion in the grace of God.

The monks live their monastic life and their faith personally, but not individualistically. No one is the same as anyone else. There is no stereotyped moral standard. At the same time, no one wishes to live enclosed within himself, autonomously, egocentrically, spiritually iso­lated from his brothers. Each one contributes his particular gifts and the special function assigned to him to the structure of the brotherhood and the whole Church.

Mount Athos is also known as the Garden of the Mother of God. In this garden each plant which is animated by the grace of God and the blessing of the Mother of God is special. They are all in the same garden and all grow by the same uncreated grace of God; it is the diversity of plants which makes the garden interesting and beautiful.

Unity in diversity is the spirit and the ethos of Mount Athos. It is what each monk is struggling to attain. We must not forget that monks are human beings too, who carry within themselves the sickness of human nature- egotism, which is illogical love of self. But each monk's struggle aspires to replace egotism with love of God and humankind; a love which, the more it enters deeply within us, the more self-love and egotism recede.

The tenet of Athonite monasticism is: whosoever comforts his brother comforts his God. The monk lives in order to comfort his God

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and his brother with his love. When he comforts his God, he comforts his brother too; and when he comforts his brother, he comforts his God too. The monk wants to comfort his neighbour, his fellow ascetic, his guest, everyone he meets. Every person is the image of God and therefore deserving of respect and love.

God's embrace is wide enough to include the whole world. The Orthodox representation of the Church is the icon of Pentecost in which the Apostles form an open semicircle, not a closed circle. The Church is open to everyone. So too does Mount Athos receive and welcome everyone, both Christians and non-Christians, Orthodox and non-Orthodox, Greeks and non-Greeks. This is the reason for the hospitality which Mount Athos selflessly extends to all. As far as I know, it is only on Mount Athos that such all-embracing hospitality is offered, despite the difficulties created by the increasing numbers of pilgrims and visitors. Even at the expense of their monastic schedule an? silence, the Fathers strive to keep their traditional hospitality alive. It ts thus that they express their love for humankind; and they express the same love and opening up to the world through their ceaseless prayer for everyone who has need of the grace of God.

!"fount Athos, ~hen, is a community and a unity, but an open unity, whtch does not eXIst for its own sake, but for God and the world. This, I ~hink, is why everyone on Mount Athos feels at ease, feels blessed and JOyful. Though this unity is indeed oecumenical, it is based not on indifference to each faith, but on the common Orthodox faith and theology, which regards everyone as the image of God. Since its centre a~d axis is Jesus Christ, this unity is not merely human, but, like Christ, simultaneously human and divine; the fruit of God's gift and human collaboration.

It is true to say that, like Orthodox theology and the Orthodox life, so too does Mount Athos proceed in an antinomic and paradoxical way. In Orthodox theology God is Trinity and at the same time One. He exists. and at the same time does not exist (because He is beyond all m~anmg, ~ven the meaning of existence). He is approachable (through Hts energtes) and at the same time unapproachable (in His essence).

Christ gives life to the world by being crucified and crushed. The Christian and the monk die in order to live. The monk in particular leaves society in order to fmd society. He chooses 'nothing' in order to gain everything. He mocks the world in order to take it seriously. He

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does not accept women on Mount Athos, because he truly loves women: all women are absent from Mount Athos; yet at the same time they are genuinely present in the person of the Mother of God.

It must be said that worldly logic stumbles against the logic of the Church and of Mount Athos. This is why no one can comprehend the Church or Mount Athos without repentance, that is to say, without a change of mind. The Christian Byzantine state respected this 'logic' of the monks' unconcerned Hesychast spirit. It had the spiritual insight to recognize the value of the monk's death as a precondition for life. It thus legislated for Mount Athos to live its monastic life as it wished, so that the Mystery of the monastic state might be celebrated without obstacle or hindrance. It is a divine blessing that the subsequent conquerors and suzerains of Mount Athos wished to continue the Byzantine emperors' policy and thus struck Athos no fatal blow.

Today Mount Athos continues its Hesychastic life under the spiritual jurisdiction and blessing of the Oecumenical Patriarchate and the discreet protection of the Hellenic state. It is remarkable that the European Community respects the uniqueness of Mount Athos and has acknowledged it in the Joint Declaration Concerning Mount Athos in the Final Act of the Agreement Concerning the Accession of the Hellenic Republic to the European Economic Community (1979).

As an Athonite, I do not feel a stranger to Europe. I feel that the active primitive Christianity of Mount Athos meets the hidden common and primitive Christianity of Europe; the Christianity of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, the Christianity of the catacombs in Rome, the Christianity of St Irenaeus of Lyons, where his martyrdom is, the Christianity of the mosaics of Ravenna, the Christianity of the Orthodox monks of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

I humbly believe that the spiritually homeless present-day European would be able to fmd his own spiritual home on Mount Athos, and that the European Community would be able to find, above and beyond the concurrence of interests, something more profound and more instrinsic in the spiritual heritage of the Holy Community of Mount Athos.

I place these thoughts before you who approach Mount Athos with understanding. Thank you for your kind attention to my humble contribution.

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ABBOT GEORGE KAPSANIS I.M. Grigoriou, Agion Oros

PHILIP SHERRARD (1922-1995) 1

A double vocation: Greece and Orthodoxy Philip Sherrard, one of the Patrons of the Friends of Mount Athos since its foundation, died on 30 May 1995. He will long be remembered for his work in two related fields: as a translator and exponent of modem Greek poetry, and as a creative interpreter of the spiritual tradition of the Orthodox Church. In both spheres his literary and scholarly work was the expression of a deep personal commitment. He not only wrote about Greece but chose to make his home there; he not only studied the Greek Fathers but took the decision to join the Orthodox Church, at a time when such a step was altogether exceptional. His interests and writings, while many-sided, form an integrated whole. Poetry, theology, and life constituted for him a single unity.

The wooden revolver Philip Owen Amould Sherrard was born in Oxford on 23 September 1922. He grew up in a family with Anglo-Irish connections, which was also linked with the London literary scene; his mother knew Rupert Brooke and Virginia Stephen (later Woolf). But, as his friend Patrick Leigh Fermor has pointed out, although Philip inherited strong literary leanings, 'it was neither the Fabians nor Bloomsbury which were to influence his life; in many ways - in his rejection of agnosticism, for instance- he was opposed to them' (Daily Telegraph, 12 June 1995).

He was educated at Dauntsey's School, and then in October 1940 he entered Peterhouse, Cambridge. Here he embarked on the History Tripos, but his studies were cut short after two years when he was called up to fight in the Second World War. During 1942-6 he was an officer in the Royal Artillery. He saw active service in Italy, Austria, and Greece, rising to the rank of captain.

Philip's character, however, was profoundly non-violent and unmili­tary; and this was apparent even in his years of military service. He was appalled when he discovered at the end of the war that Ukrainian and other East European soldiers, who had surrendered to the British, were being systematically handed over to the communists, even though the

1 This tribute Hrst appeared in Sobomost incorporating Eastern Churches Review, 17:2 ( 1995 ), 45-52, and is reprinted here (with revisions) by the editors' kind permission.

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British authorities were well aware of the harsh fate that awaited them. Philip himself refused to take any part in this forced and brutal 'repatriation'.

Juliet du Boulay, who knew Philip well, tells the story of how he was once receiving the surrender of a German officer in Italy. He asked for the German's weapon. The officer refused, saying, 'Would you do this in my place?' Philip responded by taking his own revolver from his holster, and laying it on the table. It was made of wood. He had not wanted to carry a real one. As Dr du Boulay comments, 'This story reveals some of Philip's most endearing characteristics - a willingness to risk himself, a love of peace, an utter lack of pomposity, an ability to be just slightly out of step with more conventional thinking. These qualities endured for much of the rest of his life' (Guardian, 8 June 1995).

The discovery of Greece While in Athens at the end of the war Philip met his future wife, Anna Mirodia, whom he married in 1946. They had two daughters, Selga and Liadain. While in Greece he also encountered the Orthodox Church, which he joined in 1956. He was received through the sacrament of baptism, since he had not been baptized as a child.

He spent the year 1947-8 at King's College London, reading modem Greek literature and commencing work on his doctoral dissertation for London University. This was a study of the Greek poets Solomos, Palamas, Cavafy, Sikelianos, and Seferis, and it eventually became his first published book, The Marble Threshing Floor (1956). What is remarkable about this work is not only the sensitivity with which he discusses these five authors as poets, but also the consistent concern with which he addresses the underlying spiritual issues by which the five were influenced in varying ways. What mattered to Philip, far more than the purely literary or aesthetic merit of a poem, was its 'world-view', the vision of truth which it endeavoured to express. Particularly in the poetry of Solomos, Sikelianos, and Seferis, Philip discerned a spiritual tradition still relatively intact, which he believed to be of crucial importance for the survival of humanity: a tradition in which there was a life-creating and organic connection between man and the natural world. The same organic connection he found affirmed by the Orthodox Church; and it was an interrelationship that remained central to his thinking throughout his later life.

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There is little doubt that, had he wished, Philip could have successfully pursued a conventional university career. He did in fact hold a number of positions in the academic world. During 1951-2 he was Assistant Director of the British School of Archaeology in Athens. He was attached in 1954-7 to the research staff of the Royal Institute of International Mfairs, and in 1957-8 he was a research fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford. During 1958-62 he was back at the British School in Athens as Assistant Director and Librarian. Finally, during 1970-7 he taught in London University as Lecturer in the History of the Orthodox Church, a post attached jointly to King's College and the School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies. But he was too much of a 'free spirit' - his interests were too wide-ranging, and his approach was too unconventional - for him ever to feel totally at home in a university milieu. He preferred the greater liberty - and the greater insecurity - of working in rural Greece as a freelance author and translator.

Between the sea and the pine-forest An important turning point in Philip's life came when around 1958 he was fortunate to fmd a disused magnesite mine for sale near Limni on the island of Evia (Euboea). The Katounia estate- 'half-logger's camp, half-Arcady', as Patrick Leigh Fermor describes it- occupied a remote and little-frequented site between the sea and a steep pine-forest, and comprised several houses (at that time largely in ruins), as well as ample land. Although he feared that it would be far beyond his very limited resources, Philip went to see the estate agent, who promptly named a price. Philip imagined that the figure quoted must be in pounds sterling or in dollars, but was amazed to find it was in drachmas - a small fraction of what he had anticipated. So Katounia became his permanent home.

Here he lived in his later years, translating and writing, building, cultivating the ground, and dispensing generous hospitality to his many friends. He had remarried, following the dissolution of his first marriage. Philip and his second wife, the publisher Denise Harvey, enjoyed a close and happy relationship. Denise's publishing house in Athens reissued several of Philip's books, along with other studies on modern Greece, in what was called the 'Romiosyni Series'. Particularly successful in this series were two volumes of Edward Lear's Greek

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journals, both beautifully illustrated with Lear's own watercolours and sketches- The Cretan Journals (1984) and The Corfu Years (1988) -the second of these with Philip himself as editor.

Philip and Denise lived in their isolated home at Katounia with a simplicity that was almost monastic. They had no telephone and no electricity; heating was provided by the firewood which they carried down from the hillside. Next to their house, in the last years of Philip's life, they constructed a tiny church, largely with their own hands, using building techniques and an architectural style that were strictly traditional. With an approach that was both ascetic and humane, Philip succeeded in reducing his life to the primary essentials, both spiritual and material.

Tall and slim, Philip continued in his early seventies to be physically agile and mentally alert. But around 1993 cancer was diagnosed; and, although he enjoyed a remission in 1994, it returned in the following year in a much more virulent form. He came to London for treatment and here, somewhat suddenly, he died on 30 May. We may be thankful that he was spared a prolonged and painful illness. His body was flown back to Greece, and on 3 June, in a spot chosen by himself, he was buried at Katounia beside the chapel that he had built.

The miraculous cruelty of the summer sun Philip was a prolific writer, and the full list of his works - covering both Greek poetry and Orthodox theology - is lengthy and impressive. As a translator from Greek, he enjoyed a long and productive collaboration with the American scholar Edward Keeley. Together they prepared the Penguin volume Four Greek Poets (1966), an anthology from the works of Cavafy, Seferis, Elytis, and Gatsos. This was followed by joint translations of the collected poems of Seferis ( 1967) and Cavafy (1975), and of selected poems by Sikelianos (1979) and Elytis (1981). What made Philip particularly effective as a translator was the fact that he was himself a gifted poet. The best of his work was published under the title In the Sign of the Rainbow: Selected Poems 1940-1989 (1994).

Philip's evaluation of the historical and cultural context out of which modem Greek poetry arose is admirably conveyed in the collaborative work that he wrote with John Campbell, Modem Greece (1968). Despite the passing of the years this remains, in my view, the fmest available

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introduction to the subject. But the deeper and more personal meaning of Greece in Philip's life is best expressed in the brief but masterly essay which he wrote as an introduction to his anthology The Pursuit of Greece (1964), and which was reissued as the opening chapter in his book The Wound of Greece: Studies in Neo-Hellenism (1978). Here he speaks of

... the living fate of Greece, which is not a doom but a destiny, a process rather in which past and present blend and fuse, in which nature and man and something more than man participate: a process, difficult, baffling, enigmatic, with its element of magic, its element of tragedy, working itself out in a landscape of bare hills and insatiable sea, in the miraculous cruelty of the summer sun, in the long generations of the lives of the Greek people.

The Filioque and the Common Market As for Philip's understanding of Orthodoxy, this is best summed up in the seminal - and controversial - survey of the division of Christendom that he entitled The Greek East and the Latin West (1959). As he states in the second edition of this work (1992), the book was intended as 'a kind of guide for those distressed and perplexed by the state of things around them and searching for some positive orientation within it'. That intention pervades all his many writings on religious topics. He never wrote simply as an academic historian of doctrine, but sought always to emphasize the immediate and urgent relevance of the Orthodox spiritual tradition for a fragmented secular world.

It was typical of his outlook that in The Greek East and the Latin West he saw the Filioque question not as an irritating technicality, but as a crucial issue involving two opposed world-views - one of which (the Latin) had led ultimately to the setting up of such organizations as the United Nations and the Common Market (institutions for which Philip felt little enthusiasm). As he maintained also in his later study in ecclesiology, Church, Papacy and Schism (1978), the division between Orthodoxy and Rome concerns not just a few specific points of doctrine but two profoundly divergent 'frameworks', embracing on each side the total field of theology.

Critics of these two books felt that Philip had overstated his case. Had he allowed sufficiently, they asked, for the influence of non­theological factors? Had he not gravely oversimplified a long and complex historical process? To this Philip answered that, however important the external events of history may be, what matters more are

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the thought-patterns that a religious or cultural tradition adopts. In his words, 'the course of events on a historical plane follows the course of thought'; the outer depends upon the inner, rather than vice versa. If (he c~n~inued) we are to make sense of 'our present state of spiritual dereltctlon and consequent disintegration', and if we are in some measure to escape from it, then, in his view, we need to appreciate the deep roots of the present crisis in the West; and these deep roots are to be traced back to theological and spiritual errors made many centuries ago.

Philip also wrote on numerous other subjects besides the East-West schism. In his short study Christianity and Eros: Essays on the Theme of Sexual Love (1976) he showed how, through sexual love realized in its full sacramental sense, each partner 'offers himself or herself to the sacred being of the other, to the God in the other ... each becomes for the other an icon'. The sexual relationship between man and woman, when brought to its true fulfilment, 'transforms their individual exist~nce into ~ single reality', establishing 'a single heart and a single soul m two bod1es ... a mutual awareness and recognition which is a total act of the soul'. So there takes place a 'birth in beauty' which may be said to 'partake potentially of eternity'. In a 'sexualised sacramental love' the distinction commonly made between eros and agape is 'tr~nscended and eliminated'. Fortunately this little book, long out of pnnt, has now been reissued; it deserves to be more widely known.

Orthodoxy and the ecological crisis During his later years Philip's theological writing focused increasingly upon two main areas. First, he grew more and more concerned about the current ecological crisis. As with his analysis of the schism, so also in this matter he was not content simply to discuss external symptoms, but sought to identify the root cause. If modem Western society has lost an organic and life-giving relationship with its physical environ­ment, this can only be the consequence of some basic flaw or distortion in ~ts world-view or primary thought-pattern. This distortion, so Philip beheved, has to be traced back behind the industrial revolution, the Enlightenment, and the Renaissance to the presuppositions of Aquinas and thirteenth-century Latin scholasticism. The fundamental error of Aquinas and the Scholastics, as Philip saw it, was to posit too sharp a contrast between nature and the supranatural.

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Philip's indictment of the modern scientific world-view was forcefully expressed in such books as The Rape of Man and Nature ( 1987}, The Sacred in Life and Art (1990}, and Human Image: World Image. The Death and Resurrection of Sacred Cosmology ( 1992}. He returned to the same theme in the lecture which he delivered in London on 27 June 1994 to the 'Friends of the Centre', under the title 'Every thing that lives is Holy'. I believe that this was his last public appearance. As Philip told me at the time, he suspected he might not have another opportunity to express his most profound convictions on the ecological question, and so he regarded the lecture as being in some measure his 'last will and testament'.

It was widely felt that in his ecological writings, as in his discussion of the schism, Philip had spoilt, through oversimplification and overstatement, a case which in itself deserves serious consideration. Was he not one-sided and unduly negative, his critics asked, in his assessment of modem science? Indeed, had he not mistaken his target? Often he was attacking, not the basic principles of modem science, but only its misuse; and so his strictures could in fact be accepted, without this necessarily implying a total rejection of modem scientific method as such. Much of his critique, it was argued, applied to 'scientisrn' rather than to science properly understood.

In Philip's defence it should be pointed out that his basic message was afflrrnative rather than negative. While condemning modem science and technology, he sought to proclaim an alternative cosmology that was highly positive - a vision of the world as sacrament, and of man as priest of the creation, as microcosm and mediator. In particular he insisted, in perceptive and persuasive terms, that our notion of the human person is not to be narrowly limited to the reasoning brain, with its powers of discursive argumentation and of mathematical calculation. We should also take fully into account that visionary faculty of intuition, imagination, and higher spiritual insight which the Greek Fathers designate by the word nous.

Philip's deep concern to reafflrrn a sacramental view of the cosmos led him to a fruitful collaboration with the poet Kathleen Raine in the journal Temenos.

The Philokalia translated The other task to which Philip devoted his main energies in his later

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years, and on which he was hard at work until a few weeks before his death, was the English translation of the Pbilokalia of St Makarios of Corinth and St Nikodirnos of the Holy Mountain. He collaborated on this with the late Gerald Palmer (d. 1984}, the initiator of the project, and with myself. Our plans for a complete English version of the Pbilokalia, based on the original Greek, were made initially in 1971. The first volume carne out in 1979, followed by a second in 1981 and a third in 1984. Unfortunately Philip did not live to see the appearance of the fourth volume, published in August 1995, but he had corrected all the proofs before his last illness. Also he had worked through the whole of the material to be included in the fifth and concluding volume; but its fmal revision will have to be undertaken by myself alone.

While the production of the English Pbilokalia has been a genuinely co-operative venture, it is important to recognize the particular contribution that Philip made. It was he who undertook the main revision of the translation in volumes 2, 3, and 4, while the introductory notes preceding the texts from each author, and also the footnotes -apart from those dealing with numerology - were drafted by myself. The glossary was drafted by both of us, with many improvements suggested by Gerald.

I learnt more than I can express from working with Philip on the Pbilokalia. Often we spent hours discussing a single phrase or even a single word. Exhausting though these sessions were, they taught me to appreciate the value of words in a way that I had never done before. Again and again I recognized in Philip a true master-craftsman.

Not a subject but a way Once, when talking with Owen Barfield, C.S. Lewis referred to philosophy as 'a subject'. 'It wasn't a subject to Plato', said Barfield; 'it was a way.' Such was exactly Philip's perspective. He looked on philosophy and theology as 'a way', and this was true pre-eminently of his understanding of the Philokalia. At the beginning of the first volume of our English translation, in the general introduction for which Philip prepared the initial draft, he calls the Pbilokalia 'an active force revealing a spiritual path and inducing man to follow it'. The work, he continues, does not simply communicate 'information' but calls us to 'a radical change of will and heart' . Here, once again, it is evident how Philip saw the doctrinal and spiritual tradition of Orthodoxy not just in

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theoretical and historical terms but as a living reality. The three of us regarded the Pbilokalia not as a voice from the distant past but as a practical guide for today. However, as with many great works -including the Bible - the true value of the Pbilokalia will not be apparent except to those who search.

I am glad that several of our editorial sessions on the translation of the Pbilokalia took place on Athos, at the Serbian Monastery of Chilandar. To share together, even for no more than a few weeks, in the daily prayer of the Holy Mountain enabled the three of us to understand the inner spirit of the Pbilokalia in a way that we could not otherwise have done. But it also helped me to appreciate, far better than before, what Greece and Orthodoxy meant in Philip's own life. Athos had a special place in his heart. He was a frequent visitor there, and his work Atbos the Mountain of Silence (1960) - reissued in a slightly altered form as Atbos the Holy Mountain (1982) -provides an 'inside' picture of the Mountain in a way that no other English book has done. It was during our walks day by day along the deserted Athonite paths, and in our evening dialogues on the balcony at Chilandar, that I began to sense the spiritual values that mattered most to him.

'Every thing that lives is Holy': Blake's phrase, used by Philip as the title of his 1994 lecture, sums up his central and dominant concern. Those who only knew him from his writings, which could at times be passionate and polemical in their tone, may not always have realized how gentle and humble he was as a person, how sensitive to the distress or uncertainty of others, how ready to listen and to respond. He was a highly entertaining companion, a generous and affectionate friend.

BISHOP KALLISTOS OF DIOKLEIA Chairman

34

THE FLORA AND FAUNA OF THE HOLY MOUNTAIN 1

My. first-hand knowledge of the natural history of the Holy Mountain spnngs from four brief visits paid between December 1990 and June 1993 (New Style) on behalf of the World Wide Fund for Nature. The first was to assess the ecological effects of the major forest fire of August 1990; the other three were as a member of the three-man team -Martin Palmer, Dimitri Conomos, and myself- whose work .was described by Martin Palmer on pp. 21-4 of the Annual Report for 1993. Our principal work took the form of discussions with abbots and senior monks of the holy monasteries rather than biological fieldwork, but still I was able to see examples of most of the vegetation types present on the Mount Athos peninsula.

Like other landscapes in Greece and the Mediterranean, that of the Holy Mountain is a cultural rather than a wholly natural one. Unlike other landscapes, however, it is the product of ten centuries of God-centred human activity which, in an area with a rich diversity of vegetation types (biotopes) influenced by a wide range of altitude aspect, microclimate, and other environmental conditions, have created a unique cultural landscape which is of inestimable value to the ?rthodox Church, to Greece, and to the world. Its most striking feature 1s the forest cover, which extends over nearly 95 per cent of the peninsula. Because of a history of limited exploitation of the woods and few grazing animals (largely as a result of the exclusion of female animals), the vegetation approximates more closely to the natural climatic types than in most parts of Greece. Garigue (in Greek phryga~a), the characteristic dwarf-shrub vegetation of many of the uncultivated slopes of the Mediterranean region, and steppe-like grasslands with much bare, rocky ground and often an abundance of asphodel (Aspbodelus aestivus), both of which are widespread in the two neighbouring peninsulas of Sithonia and Kassandra, are rarely found on Athos. These degraded vegetation types are usually the product of a long history of burning and heavy grazing by sheep and goats.

1 Su~m~ry of a talk given to the Friends of Mount Athos at the Annual General Meetmg m Oxford on 7 June 1995, with some additional material.

35

The Holy Mountain also has more varied topography and geology than Kassandra and Sithonia. Sithonia has little land over 500 metres and Kassandra has none, whereas nearly 20 per cent of the Athos peninsula is above this height, rising to 2033 metres at the summit of Mount Athos near its tip; and even the lower areas often show strong relief, with steep slopes rising up from the sea. Tertiary, often acidic formations predominate on the two other peninsulas, but Athos is an extension of the geological landforms of the Rhodope Mountains, with metamorphic rocks including gneiss, mica-schists, and the spectacular marbles (metamorphosed, crystalline limestone) of the peak itself as well as limestones, conglomerates, greenstone, serpentine, and granites. Climatically too the Athos peninsula differs from the other two, where a more typically Mediterranean climate prevails; its climate is affected by the range of height, with a more continental climate with harsher winters inland, and by stronger winds, including the meltemi from the north-east and local winds created by the peak.

The steep slopes of the Athos peninsula support a series of altitudinal vegetation zones - coastal vegetation of rocky and sandy shores; maquis of mixed broadleaved, mainly evergreen shrubs or small trees (eumediterranean vegetation); Aleppo pine (Pinus balepensis) forest, most widespread in the northern part of the peninsula, where it largely replaces the broadleaved maquis; thermophilous deciduous broadleaved forest (submediterranean vegetation), some of it with a greater or lesser admixture of an endemic type of fir (Abies borisii-regis nothomorph pseudocilicica); and subalpine vegetation, including a number of endemic species, on the peak itself.

Among the characteristic evergreen broadleaved species of the maquis (43 per cent of the forests) are strawberry-tree (Arbutus unedo), with drooping clusters of cream-coloured flowers appearing in autumn and striking globular warty red fruits in winter; the related eastern strawberry-tree (A. andracbne); laurel or bay (Laurus nobilis), well known for its culinary use; two evergreen oaks, kermes oak (Quercus coccifera) and holm oak (Q. ilex); wild olive (Olea europaea variety oleaster); and Pbillyrea media. Not all the tree species are evergreen, however: especially on the north-east coast the flowers of Judas-tree (Cercis siliquastrum) make conspicuous rose-purple patches among the deep green leaves in early spring, followed in May by the creamy-white splashes of flowering or manna ash (Fraxinus ornus). Along the streams

36

laurel is commoner, with oriental plane (Platanus orientalis), alder (Alnus glutinosa), white willow (Salix alba), and other species. The declining population of monks from about 1925 and difficulties in obtaining labour from outside the peninsula after about 1970 led to the abandonment of many former olive-groves, vineyards, and vegetable gardens; so secondary vegetation, often closely approximating to more natural maquis but usually with a preponderance of olive and telltale remains of terraces, is found in many of the lower areas.

Aleppo pine once accounted for 8425 hectares (27 per cent of the forest area), concentrated in the northern part of the peninsula, partly perhaps because fires have been more common here. In an ill-advised business venture, the Monastecy of Chilandar leased about 500 hectares of it to Softex, which manufactures lavatory paper. The company bulldozed and tried to reforest the area with other fast­growing pines, which have failed and are now being replaced by self-sown Aleppo pine.

In the deciduous broadleaved forest zone (23.5 per cent) the do~~nant t~ee is now Spanish (or sweet) chestnut (Castanea sativa). Ongmally tt formed mixed forests with deciduous oaks (Quercus pubesce~, Q. dale~bampii, and Q. frainetto), fir, black pine (Pinus nigra subspectes pallastana), and other species, and there are still stands which show this structure, but long management as coppice and selective felling of fir have converted vast areas to almost unmixed chestnut (~9 per cent). In a few of the remoter parts of the upland fore~t, mamly o? ?orth-west-facing slopes, beech (Fagus species) survtves as the prmctpal forest tree or mixed with other species. Other tree~ found in this zone include aspen (Populus tremula), lime (Tilia spectes), hop-hornbeam (Ostrya carpinifolia), and several maples (Acer species). Pure fir forest has been calculated as 1.2 per cent of the total forest a~e~. T?e ende~ic fir is considered by Arne Strid to be 'a product of hybrtdtZatton and mtrogression between Abies cepbalonica and A. alba in spite of the somewhat different leaf anatomy'.

There is a rich herbaceous flora, though this is rarely as colourful as elsewhere in Greece in the garrigue or in cultivated areas that have not suffered weedkillers. A notable exception was the flush of brightly coloured vetches and other flowers which at the end of April 1991 covered some of Simonopetra's land among the burnt stems left by the great fire of August 1990. As elsewhere in the Mediterranean region,

37

some of the most attractive plants are those with bulbs, corms, or tubers, including species of Fritillaria, Ornitbogalum, Galantbus, Crocus, Anemone, Cyclamen, and Orcbidaceae (of which I have seen seven species, including one not included among the 29 orchids in the plant list published by K.A. Ganiatsas in 1963).

Ganiatsas lists 35 plants endemic to the Holy Mountain (25 species, one subspecies, and nine varieties), of which most grow on the peak, 12 of them being mentioned among species characteristic of rock crevices. For comparison, he gives figures of 206 endemics for Crete and 82 for the whole North Aegean region, some of which of course include Athos within their range. Some of the Athos endemics have been named after the Mountain, e.g. Crocus atbous, Viola atbois, and a woad, Isatis atboa; others after monasteries and sketes, e.g. Campanula rupestris subsp. andrewsii var. lavrensis and Centaurea sanctae-annae, a pink, Dianthus cbalcidicus, after Chalcidice (Halkidiki); a milk-vetch, Astragalus mona­cborum, after the monks; while an endemic subspecies of the harebell and a thrift that I have seen myself, in May 1991 on the coast near Iviron, commemorate the sanctity of the Mountain, Campanula rotundifolia subsp. sancta and Armeria sancta.

The wild fauna of the Holy Mountain quite recently included wolves and red deer, but both now seem to be extinct. (I heard accounts of both species being shot, so they may have been exterminated.) However, the carnivores include Asiatic jackal (in one of its most northerly locations), red fox, badger, wild cat, beech and (possibly) pine martens, weasel, and (appropriately) the rare and threatened monk seal; and other mammals include wild boar, roe deer (the last two near their southern limit in Europe), brown hare, red squirrel, hedgehog, and various bats. Most of these species are rarely seen, but I heard jackals howling in the night and found their footprints and droppings near Xeropotamou in December 1990 and we saw the dramatic results of routing by wild boar in the forest below the peak of Mount Athos in June 1993. Probably both Hermann's and Greek tortoises occur. There are also various species of lizards, snakes, and amphibians, of which the most noticeable (mainly audibly!) is the edible frog; the males' croaking was almost continuous at Stavronikita at the beginning of May 1991.

Mr K. Poirazidis has produced a list of 105 species of birds for the southern part of the peninsula, with records for all four seasons shown. The largest number, 55 species, was seen in autumn, and it seems that

38

many species occur only on migration or as winter visitors. Waders are hardly represented, owing to the virtual absence of wetlands. Surpris­ingly, the list suggests only about 15 summer visitors, including only one possible migratory warbler, subalpine warbler (recorded in spring). I have seen few birds of prey or seabirds. Nightingales are numerous in spring, and swifts and four species of hirundines obvious around many of the monasteries.

The invertebrate fauna seems not to have been well studied. On several occasions in June 1993 we walked through douds of butterflies or day-flying moths - an experience we had previously only read about. Most striking were the abundant yellow and orange cleopatra butterflies (Gonepteryx cleopatra) that we encountered on the slopes of Mount Athos itself on 16 June.

I am grateful to Professor Spyros Dafis of the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki for information taken from his report of July 1993, The Forest of Holy Mountain Atbos, which formed an appendix to the report of our team to His All-Holiness Bartholomew I and the World Wide Fund for Nature, and to Dr Stephen Jury of the University of Reading for some additional botanical information.

39

PHILIP OSWALD Cambridge

THE ROMANIAN ARCHIVE AT THE HOLY MONASTERY OF VATOPEDI

The Romanian archive at the Monastery of Vatopedi is the largest archive of any on the Holy Mountain. It comprises 13,000 documents, mostly written in Romanian, Greek, Slavonic, and Russian with a few in French, Turkish, Armenian, Italian, Serbian, Ukrainian, English, and

Hebrew. From a chronological perspective the documents of the archive may

be categorized as follows: 37 date from the fifteenth century; 204 from the sixteenth; 1936 from the seventeenth; 2250 from the eighteenth; 8245 from the nineteenth; and 3 from the twentieth. The earliest document bears the date 1428 and was commissioned by Prince Alexander the Good; the latest, a Greek example, is dated 19 October

1939. With respect to the senders of the documents we may discern the

following categories: Ecumenical Patriarchs; exarchs of the Holy Mountain; representatives of other centres of pilgrimage; fathers of Vatopedi; tsars of Russia (6 in number); princes of Moldavia (67) and Wallachia (18); metropolitans; bishops; local leaders of the principali­ties; and other categories of ordinary folk.

The number of documents that were commissioned by princes is indeed impressive. Among them I may mention Stefan the Great, the first Romanian voivode, who contributed to the monastery by construct­ing its large wharf in 1472. From him there survives at the wharf a bas-relief dating from the end of the fifteenth century. Particularly numerous, in comparison with other monasteries' collections, are the documents commissioned by Basil Loupou and preserved at Vatopedi. Loupou is the exponent par excellence of an aspect of imperial policy that aimed at the re-establishment of the Byzantine empire in the semi-autonomous regions of Moldavia and Wallachia. Evidence of this policy can be recognized by the reader (or by the pilgrim) in Loupou's acts on behalf of Vatopedi. Members of other prominent families, whether of Greek or Romanian origin, in tum strengthened the monastery either by repairing buildings or by offering sums of money or by endowing it with dependencies, many of which had official status. They included members of the Mavrokordatou, Gikas, Rakovitsa, Mourouzi, and Ypsilantou families. Such support continued well into

40

the mid-nineteenth century with the then prince of Moldavia. He was a member of the prominent Stourza family, which over the centuries had maintained close relations with Vatopedi.

~ide from other sorts of benefaction, the monastery became the rectpte~t of monast~ries, churches, and sketes dedicated to it, chiefly in Moldavta, but also m Wallachia. As of today, the recognized number of such d~pendencies i~ sixteen, thirteen of them in various parts of Moldavta and three m Wallachia. I must emphasize that these were ecclesiastical properties, not secular endowments such as forests lakes warehouses, agricultural land, pasture, etc. ' . ' ~at i~ to be gained from examining the 13,000 documents

contamed m the Romanian archive? The history of the monastery will be enriched in the following respects:

[ 1] pre~i~usly unpu?lished details will be revealed of the glory of Vatopedt m these dtstant principalities and of its substantial wealth from the seventeenth century on; [2] details, hitherto unpublished, of the many different ways in which the Romanian p.rin~es supported the monastery - in building works, f~an:e, the dedtcabon of metocbia, and donations of sacred vestments, hturgtcal vessels, and icons; [3] the presence of Vatopedi monks in the Romanian lands, whether as abbots of the metocbia, or as negotiators with Romanian leaders in seeking benefactions for the monastery (here I should mention that the social and philanthropic work of the Vatopedi monks in the territory of present-day Romania was most remarkable); [ 4] the high level of spiritual life among the monks of Vatopedi; [5] the correspondence of the monastery's representatives with the civil judicial, and religious leaders of the principalities, chiefly between 182i and 1863; [6] contacts with the representatives of other principalities in the Orthodox east.

In sum, the archive constitutes a significant body of information worthy of the rich history of the monastery. '

41

FLORIN MARINESCU I.M.M. Vatopediou, Agion Oros

SYNDESMOS AND MOUNT ATHOS THE SECOND SPIRITUAL ECOLOGY CAMP

XEROPOTAMOU MONASTERY: 26 JULY-7 AUGUST 1995

Since 1991 SYNDESMOS, the World Fellowship of Orthodox Youth, has been actively involved in promoting a sensitivity in the Orthodox Church to the ecological crisis. In November of that year an Inter-Orthodox Conference on Environmental Protection was convened in Cretel and an official recommendation was made that SYNDESMOS 'should encourage Orthodox youth organizations to act in these areas, and . . . serve as a coordinating body for the development of Orthodox youth projects around the world'. In 1994 SYNDESMOS convened the First Orthodox Youth and Ecology Seminar at the Neamt Monastery in Romania. This seminar was co-sponsored by WWF International, which has also funded a scientific study of the environment of the Mount Athos peninsula and has sponsored various schemes for environmental protection there.2 In July/August of the same year SYNDESMOS organized the fxrst Spiritual Ecology Camp at the Monastery of Vatopedi.3

The second camp was held at the Holy Monastery of Xeropotamou at the invitation of its abbot, Elder Joseph. Of the nineteen worker­pilgrims who participated, there were eight Romanians, two Belorus­sians from eastern Poland, three Finns, two Greeks, one Bessarabian, one Frenchman, and one Palestinian Arab. I represented Great Britain and led the team.

Most of our working hours were spent in Xeropotamou's forest. On the day of our arrival Abbot Joseph outlined the programme of activities that he himself had devised. It included worship, diakonia (service), spiritual discussion, and pilgrimage. Our timetable roughly followed this pattern:

I Its proceedings, recently published, are reviewed below, pp. 54-5.

2 See the article by Martin Palmer, 'The Theology and Ecology of Mount Athos', in the Annual Report of the Friends of Mount Athas ( 1993 ), pp. 21-4.

3 See my article in the Annual Report of the Friends of Mount Athas (1994), pp. 29-38.

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0400: the morning office followed by the Divine Liturgy.

0700: a 'continental breakfast' on days of fasting (i.e. tea, bread, olives, jam on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays), otherwise a full meal, followed by an hour's rest or free time.

0830-1430: the monastic diakonimata. In our case this meant practical tasks designed to support and protect the natural environment of the Holy Mountain and, in particular, to reinforce efforts to maintain Xeropotamou's eco-management system. Tangential to this was the experience gained of the environmental dimension of traditional Orthodox monastic life and the building of an increased awareness of the spiritual and cultural heritage of Mount Athos. Our work in the monastery's woodland was supervised by Fr Damianos, Xeropotamou's forester. It was gratifying to learn that the jobs done by the team would have otherwise required the services of paid labourers. These jobs included cleaning out wells, collecting refuse, clearing cobbled paths, restoring abandoned shrines and chapels outside the monastery walls, planting trees and shrubs, and gardening. Fr Damianos proved to be a gifted foreman and a marvellous raconteur with an excellent sense of humour. Each day he produced an assortment of sweets, fruit, and snacks for a midday picnic and talk; the talks were usually about contemporary ascetics of the Holy Mountain or about monastic life in general. They prompted a lot of questions and lively discussions.

1430-1700: the hottest part of the day (temperatures were regularly in the mid-30s) and a period set aside for rest and preparation for the evening services - vespers and compline with the evening meal in between. In the late afternoon there was always an opportunity to do some exploring in the vicinity of the monastery, or to have a private conversation with one of the Fathers. On one occasion we had a group talk on the history of Xeropotamou, its foundation, buildings, frescos, and current reconstruction. On another we were shown slides of all the monasteries of the Mountain, as well as some dramatic shots of the catastrophic forest fxre of 1990. Elder Joseph spoke to us on two occasions, and before our departure he presented us with gifts and souvenirs.

43

The group also visited a number of other monasteries: St Pantelei­monos Uust 45 minutes' walk away), Vatopedi (the location of the 19?4 camp), the Skete of Prodromos, and Simonopetra. Our last At~~mte stop was actually off the peninsula. Simonopetra arranged for a mthtary coach belonging to the Greek Army to meet us at Oura~oupolis and take the group to Ormylia for the vigil of the Transfiguratl~n. It wa~ a magnificent service, and the hospitality of the nuns at thts Athomte metochion was most generous. The visit to Ormylia ended a very successfulcamp. .

The third Spiritual Ecology Camp is scheduled to take place m July/August 1996 at Simonopetra. Based on the experienc.e of thes~ environmental activities, SYNDESMOS is currently assembhng maten­als for a publication to be entitled A Pilgrim's Guide to Environmen~al Protection on Mount Athas. SYNDESMOS wishes to express tts gratitude to WWF (Greece) which, for the second time, has provided a grant for the Ecology Camp, and to other interested organizations and individuals for their generosity.

DIMITRI CONOMOS President ofSYNDESMOS

The Monastery of Xeropotamou. Etching from the book by Vasili G. Barsky, St Petersburg, 1887.

44

THE LOCHS AND THE OURANOUPOLIS TOWER

Since the early 1960s many pilgrims and visitors to Mount Athas have departed secular Greece from the town pier at Ouranoupolis. Adjacent to it is a stone Byzantine tower that lends an air of antiquity to the town. The town itself, however, was founded only in 1922. The tower, known as Prosphorion, was probably built in the thirteenth century by Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos and given to the Monastery of Vatopedi. It is said that the emperor's wife stayed there on retreat- as close an approach as she was allowed to Mount Athas. It may incorporate part of an older tower built in the tenth century by Emperor Nikephoros Phokas, or perhaps stones from the ancient town of Dion. The Greek word prosphora means 'offering', an appropriate name for the tower. For much of this century it was home to a remarkable couple, Sydney and Joice Loch.

Sydney Loch, of Scottish ancestry, was born in London in 1889. At seventeen he went to Australia to seek his fortune and worked first as a pearler and then as a jackeroo at sheep stations. He enlisted in the Australian army in World War I and participated in the Gallipoli landing. Contracting malaria, he spent a long convalescent period in Egypt and wrote his first book, Straits Impregnable, based on that campaign. He returned to Australia and there he met Joice Nankivell, the daughter of a farmer, who had been born in 1893. She had published a novel, The Cobweb Ladder, and The Solitary Pedestrian, a collection of bush stories. Sydney returned to London in 1918. Joice, after much difficulty, obtained permission to leave Australia on a troop ship, working as a journalist for the Melbourne Evening Herald. They were married in England in 1919. For the last eighteen months of the Sinn Fein War they lived in Dublin, working as journalists, and collaborated on the book Ireland in Travail.

Though not Quakers, the Lochs enlisted in the Quaker Unit and served in Poland and Russia. Arriving in Greece in 1923, they joined the staff of the American Farm School in Thessaloniki. This had recently been founded to prepare young men to become successful farmers. The Lochs admired the energetic programmes of the Quakers in assistance to poorer countries, but deplored their tactic of attempting to convince Orthodox Christians that theirs was a better way of

45

interpreting Christianity - with a strong emphasis on abstinence from all alcoholic beverages, including wine. Soon after arriving there, Sydney made his first of many visits to Mount Athas. He completed the manuscript for a collection of short stories, Three Predatory Women, that was published in 1925. Joice's The Thirteen Thumbs of StPeter, a novel based on their experiences in Russia, followed in 1927.

Until1922 there was no village at Ouranoupolis. After the secession of northern Greece from the Ottoman empire, and by agreement with the League of Nations, about a million and a half people from Turkey who considered themselves Greek were to return to their mother country. Many of these were skilled craftsmen and tradesmen who suddenly, without possessions or money, were expected to become farmers in northern Greece - a region known for its rocky and poor soil. Among the sites assigned to them was present-day Ouranoupolis. The monastic land outside the ancient stone wall, the official boundary of Mount Athas, was confiscated by the government. The land surrounding the tower had belonged to Vatopedi and was now given to the settlers.

In the summer of 1928 the Lochs moved into a deserted hermitage on one of the Drenia Islands near Amouliani. They viewed with interest the tall stone tower on the distant shore about a mile away. The villagers became equally interested in their presence. Many were still living in tents or simple wooden shacks, and there was a paucity of fresh water. In less than a week the Lochs moved into four rooms in the upper two levels of the tower. The villagers helped them with the construction of simple wooden furniture for their new abode. Probably without intending to do so, the Lochs became patrons and guardians of the community. One of their first acts was to organize the capture of a wild boar that was ruining the small farms. Soon after their arrival, a young fisherman crushed his hand severely in a boating accident. Treated by the Lochs, he made an excellent recovery. Malaria was endemic. The Lochs obtained a supply of atebrine and administered it to those with the disease. They also began breeding gambuzia, a small fish that eats mosquitos in the larval stage, and supplied these to farmers and monasteries that had freshwater ponds or streams. Joice Loch became the local midwife, expert in difficult deliveries. Sydney Loch ventured often on to the Mountain and became friends with abbots, monks, and hermits.

46

Some of the settlers had worked in Turkey as carpet weavers and the Lochs encouraged them to begin work here at Ouranoupolis. Sydney sketched motifs from Mount Athas and Joice encouraged them to use local vegetable dyes instead of the chemical ones they had used in Turkey. Among the designs often used were the phiale at Lavra, the tree of life from a wall painting at Esphigmenou, and animal figures from a fresco at Vatopedi. A few years later one of these rugs was entered in a competition in Thessaloniki and won first prize. The priest in the village, an archimandrite, had come with settlers from Constantinople. The village church occupied a room on the top floor of the tower -adjoining the Lochs' quarters. He had no official salary, but the Lochs were able to provide him with a stipend each month. When he became infirm with advancing age, Sydney Loch made arrangements for his admission to a home for elderly priests in Athens.

In 1932 a major earthquake devastated nearby Ierissos. By chance, only a day before, a visiting British fleet had given large supplies of med~cal goods and drugs to the Lochs for use in their dispensary. They hurnedly packed much of this. The British fleet, hearing of the disaster, turned around and offered their services. So luxurious were the emergency WC facilities built for the town by the British fleet that, according to Joice Loch, local officials and businessmen wanted them as office space.

During World War II and the German occupation of Greece, the Lochs departed and worked in Quaker units in Poland and Romania. The civil war following this made travel in northern Greece unsafe for several more years. Sydney Loch worked during the period 1944-51 for the British Military Liaison and at the American Farm School. In 1951 they returned to live in the tower. Joice's Tales of Christopbilos, published in 1954, won a prize at the Children's Spring Book Festival of the New York Herald Tribune. It related the adventures of a boy from the region and incorporated much of the history and lore of the Mountain. With the prize money she paid for piping water from a nearby hillside spring into the town. She also bought a number of Chiro sheep and gave most of these to local farmers to establish flocks. She related that visiting members of the Oxford Relief Committee, sent to inspect the newly installed water system, became more interested in the sheep. They in turn donated more to the community.

47

Animals, both wild and domestic, were important to the Lochs. They shared the tower with Turkish blue cats and many of the male offspring were sent to monasteries to keep the rodent problem under control. They worried about the decimation of wild life with increasing population and the brutality towards animals by local youths. A baby owl, blinded in one eye by children, became a favourite pet and lived in the tower for twelve years. Many injured animals were nursed back to health and then released beyond the stone wall of the monastic enclave.

While completing the final draft of Athos, the Holy Mountain, Sydney died suddenly in 1954. Joice completed the editing and it was published in 1957. She continued to live in the tower. She was awarded the Polish Gold Cross of Merit and the Greek Red Cross Medal. Another book for children, Again Christophilos, was published in 1959. With the publication of her autobiography, A Fringe of Blue (1968), she used her married name. Her previous books had all been written using her maiden name. Her Collected Poems was issued in 1980.

Until 1959 the highway approaching Mount Athos in northern Greece went only as far as the town of Arnea. A mule trail extended on to Ierissos, and from there a very primitive trail extended through the woods to Tripiti and on to Ouranoupolis. The extension of the highway to Ouranoupolis, begun that year, was done in anticipation of the large numbers of pilgrims coming to Mount Athos for the millennium celebration in 1963. Joice Loch despaired, predicting 'This is the end .. .' for the area and for the Holy Mountain.

Over the years the Lochs welcomed many guests - lay and religious - bound to or from the monasteries - for meals and overnight accommodation. No fee was ever accepted. Infmn in her later years, Joice lived in the tower until her death in 1982. Both Lochs are buried in the town cemetery on a nearby hillside. A large boulder on their graves probably reflects their wishes that their remains should not be disturbed and transferred to a charnel house - a tradition throughout much of rural Greece. Two of her longtime companions live in Ouranoupolis in retirement. Exceptionally fine carpets are still occa­sionally made in the town, using designs suggested by the Lochs. The mention of the name 'Loch' brings smiles to the faces of many villagers -often with the reply that 'Mrs Loch was my godmother.' The spirit of the Lochs remains very much alive to this day.

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LEWIS WRIGHT Midlothian, VA

A DIPLOMATIC RECEPTION HELD BY THE GREEK ASSOCIATION OF

FRIENDS OF THE HOLY MOUNTAIN

Evangelos Perry, who was invited to represent our society at a diplomatic reception in Greece recently, sends us the following report:

On 10 December 1995 I had the honour to attend a reception, principally for members of the diplomatic corps who had visited. the Holy Mountain a month previously, given by the Panhellenic Associa­tion of Friends of the Holy Mountain, which exists to promote the interests of the Holy Mountain in Greece.

The reception, which included a sumptuous lunch, was held aboard the luxury cruiser Ocean Majesty, moored in the Piraeus and made available by her owner, Mr Michaelis Lambros, a member of the Greek Friends.

The Ecumenical Patriarch was represented by Metropolitan Nek­tarios of Leros, Kalymnos, and Astipalea. Fathers present from the Holy Mountain included Archimandrite Alexios, Abbot of Xenophon­tos, and monks from the Monastery of Simonopetra. Other guests included the Ambassadors of Chechnia, China, Croatia, France, Luxemburg, Morocco, Slovakia, Switzerland, and Syria, with repre­sentatives from the diplomatic missions of Armenia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Russia, and Serbia. Also present were the President of the Supreme Court of Greece and several other high-court judges, the Deputy­Speaker of the Greek Parliament, representatives from the EU, media heads, and well-known shipowners. Events were rounded off by a rousing hymn to St Nicholas, patron saint of seafarers.

The impression gained from talking to guests was that the Holy Orthodox Church is taking centre stage in Greek life once again; and that the Holy Mountain is, at least in some monastic brotherhoods, undergoing a sort of glasnost - in which the figure of Patriarch Bartholomew plays a prominent role.

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BOOK REVIEWS

Tales and Truth: Pilgrimage on Mount Atbos Past and Present. By Re.ne Goth6ni. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1994. 221 pages. Pnce

hlb US $33.00. ISBN 951-570-215-1. 1

This book is the sequel to the same author's Paradise within Reach: Monasticism and Pilgrimage on Mount Athas (Helsinki, 1993) which I reviewed in Sobomost, 16:2 (1994), 94-7. 2 In the earlier book Goth6ni asked such questions as 'What does it mean to be a monk?' and 'Why do l~ymen come to Athas?' The answers, based on interviews with a cross-section of monks and a cross-section of pilgrims, enabled him to build up an accurate picture of what life is like on the Holy Mountain today for both its inhabitants and their visitors. In this second book he devotes all but the last forty pages to examining a cross-section of travelle~s· tales from th~ past. Fo~ convenience he divides them into 'Early Accounts (1420-1560), Travellers Tales' (1677-1801), and 'Critical Tales' (1837-1954), bu.t for practic~l purposes there is no real difference between them .. What thts ~o~k lac~ ts the parallel portrait of the monks of the time except 10 so far as tt ts provtded

by the travellers. . Some of the visitors are themselves monks, such as the Florentine

Cristoforo Buondelmonti who visited the Mountain in 1420 and presents a delightful if rather romantic description of this 'palace of angels' .. Very different is the report of Fr Isaiah, a Russian monk who spent some ttme at Chilandari in 1489. By then the Mountain had been under Ottoman rule for nearly sixty years and Fr Isaiah (no doubt at the behest of the. oppressed Athonites) gives precise details of the taxes that both the ~onastenes and the patriarchate were required to pay to the sultan. He also gt~es figures for. the numbers of monks at each of the ruling monasteries at the ttme and menttons which nationality was predominant at each. Of the twenty, onl_Y nine then ?ad a majority of Greek monks; no fewer than five were predom.mantly Ser~tan; and there was one each for Wallachians, Russians, Bulganans, Albamans, Georgians, and Moldavians. But the principal difference ~etween the accounts of westerners such as Buondelmonti and those of Russtan Orthodox

1 This review first appeared in Sobo"!'ost inco~orat!n~ Eastern ~~urcbes Review, 17:1 (1995), 95-8, and is reprinted here wtth the edttors kind permtsston.

2 Thst review was reprinted in the Annual Report of the Friends of Mount Atbos (1994), pp. 60-3.

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monks such as Fr Isaiah is that the latter are able to write from within and give a more or less accurate description of Athonite life at the time.

The first Englishman to write about his experiences on the Mountain was the Revd John Covel, subsequently Master of Christ's College, Cambridge. (We are told on p.47 that 'he died on 19 December 1922', when he would have reached the age of 284!) He visited Athas in 1677 (when he was a mere 39), having spent the past six years as chaplain to the ambassador at Constantinople. He had a serious theological reason for making his visit because he was trying to find out if the Greeks believed in transubstantiation. But his account tells us a great deal besides about the monks at the time and also something about their visitors. The diet of monks at the Lavra does not sound very different from today; but Covel dined with a resident retired patriarch on 'fish, oil, salt, beans, artichokes, beets, cheese, onions, garlic, olives, caviar, rhubarb ... oranges and wine ... twenty or thirty good glasses at a sitting'. At the major festivals (Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, Assumption) there were about five hundred visitors at the Lavra; and the previous Easter there had been two thousand at Koutloumousiou. It seems then that, pace Goth6ni (pp.134, 154), there is nothing exceptional about the numbers visiting the Mountain today. When I stayed at Xeropotamou for Easter in 1994, I was one of no more than thirty pilgrims. There was no caviar.

Many of these early travellers were primarily in search of manuscripts, ever hopeful of turning up some lost classical text. Most (not aU) were disappointed. They remark on the illiteracy of the vast majority of the monks and on the chaotic state of their libraries. Joseph Carlyle was planning a new edition of the New Testament when he visited the Mountain in 1801. As with Richard Bentley's scheme of eighty years earlier (which had resulted in Trinity's acquisition of NT manuscripts from Athas), nothing came of it. But he wrote back to the Bishop of Durham, 'I may venture to say I did not omit examining one MS., which I had an opportunity of looking at on Mount Athas. I believe their number amounted to almost 13,000.' Even today there are well over 20,000 manuscripts still on the Mountain, so why Goth6ni should regard Carlyle's figure as an 'overstatement' (p.86) is obscure.

Perhaps the best known of the Athonite manuscript hunters is Robert Curzon who visited the Mountain in 1837 but did not publish his account of it, Visits to Monasteries in the Levant, until 1849. He was clearly shocked by the state of the libraries and Goth6ni is surely right to point out (p.103) that he and others saved quite a few manuscripts that would otherwise have been destroyed and lost for ever. In addition to those he bought from Karakalou, we may note that he bought others from Simonopetra which are now among the few survivors of a library which was totally consumed by fire in 1891. Along with all the manuscripts collected by Curzon, they may now be read in

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the British Library. And Richard Dawkins reminds us (p.132) that in the 1720s the monastery of Pantokratoros was so short of cash that it appealed to the English universities for assistance. As a result of that appeal six manuscripts were added to Oxford's collection for the price of £50.

The last of Goth6ni's 'critical tales' is that of Sydney Loch who made his home in the tower at Ouranopolis from 1928 until his death in 1954. He writes about a guest master at Xenophontos who could remember a time when the pilgrims at St Panteleimonos 'numbered the hairs on my legs'. Loch's love of the Mountain was shared vicariously by his wife Joice NanKivell who lived on in the tower until her death in 1982. But when Goth6ni (p.136) speaks of her as 'the beloved "Martha" of the village', he is surely confusing her with her companion Martha Handschen who remains a familiar and much-loved figure in Ouranopolis to this day.

As early as the 1950s some monks were bewailing the changes that were taking place on the Mountain: 'the tourist was ousting the pilgrim of the past' (p.149); and they foresaw the need for 'newcomers with gifts of leadership and purpose'. At Chilandari Loch found that the number of monks had halved since his last visit and that there were no novices. The guest master however was philosophical: 'Athos has a long history and long histories go up and down. There've been periods in the past when novices seemed falling off. Numbers always revived again.' A decade later John Julius Norwich (Mount Athos, 1966, p.14) was writing 'Athos is dying- and dying fast ... The disease is incurable. There is no hope.' We now know who was right.

Goth6ni's last three chapters are devoted to the situation on Athos today. 'Field Tales Today' covers much of the ground already familiar to readers of Paradise within Reach. 'Pilgrimage Rediscovered' looks at the nationality of both monks and pilgrims across time and raises the important issue of a possible revitalizing of the pilgrimage movement among the Slavs in the wake of recent political changes in Eastern Europe. In this context it may be relevant to cite the case of a recent spiritual ecology camp organized by SYNDESMOS (The World Fellowship of Orthodox Youth) which took a working party of thirteen to the Mountain for two weeks in the summer of 1994. The party was made up of four Romanians, two Russians, two Estonians, one Bessarabian, one Dutchman, one Frenchman, one Greek, and the team leader from Great Britain. The last chapter, 'Pilgrimage in a Comparative Perspective', with its impenetrable jargon brings the reader back to comparative religion with a jolt and did not contribute much at any rate to my understanding of Athonite pilgrimage. It was originally published as a contribution to another volume and it might have been better if it had stayed that way. More convincing is the Epilogue where Goth6ni concludes (p.198) that 'By listening attentively to what the visitor says and writes in his

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tale, ~e rea~~e t~at. he, Greek and foreigner alike, has been touched by Athomte spmtuahty. As the Archbishop of Kavalla said to the English traveller Athelstan Riley when they were sitting together on the summit of Athos in 1883 (p.115 ), 'We are all hadjis now.'

GRAHAM SPEAKE Oxford

So That God's Creation Might Live: The Orthodox Church Responds to the Ecological Crisis. Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, 1992. 118 pages. Price p/b £10. No ISBN. Copies available from Dr Di~itri Conomos, 4A Northmoor Road, Oxford.

This book of essays represents the proceedings of the historic Inter-Orthodox Confe~ence on Environmental Protection held at the Orthodox Academy of Crete m November 1991. For the first time ever, representatives of all the Orthodox Churches came together to discuss the ways in which Orthodox tradition, both theological and practical, could respond to the environmental crisis .. Addresse~ by HRH the Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, in his capacity as President of the World Wide Fund for Nature International, it also marked the strengthening of ties between the Orthodox Churches especially the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and secular conservation bodies. '

The essays in the book cover two areas, the frrst theological, the second ecological. The conference attracted some of the best thinkers from both disciplines, and their interaction under one cover is what makes this book such a fascinating and stimulating one to read. Two papers in particular stand out for me, not because they are better than the others, but because they demonstrate the dialogue between disciplines and the fruits that emerge from this. The opening keynote lecture by Metropolitan John of Pergamon on 'Orthodoxy and the Problem of the Protection of the Natural Environment' o~fers an ill~inating overview of different perceptions of nature arising from diverse traditions, both Christian and post- or non-Christian. It is an int~llectual tour de force, illustrating the interaction between concept and act10n. Take, for example, the list of spiritual implications of the ecological problem which Metropolitan John gives on pages 22-3. To take just one, he explores the 'eudaemonistic concept of life. The search for individual happiness becomes an "individual right".' He looks at the impact of this on both the use and the abuse of the natural world and at its impact upon spirituality and morality.

The second paper I would highlight is that of Oliver Rackham of the

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University of Cambridge on 'Conservation in the Historical Landscape: The Historical Context and the Story of Crete'. Dr Rackham takes us on a journey in time and in ideas. He shows how human notions of being and relationships with both the Divine and the rest of Creation manifest themselves in the very landscape that lies around us. Although focusing upon Crete, the way of seeing which he outlines opens our eyes to look anew at any landscape and to realize that it can be read almost as easily as a book. The message he sees in this 'Book of Nature' is a dire warning about human stupidity and abuse over against traditions of sustainable use.

The essays range from liturgy to water pollution; from climate change to Byzantine iconography; from Orthodox monastic tradition ('The Monk· and Nature in the Orthodox Tradition' by Fr Makarios of the Monastery of Simonopetra on Mount Athos) to the economics of the environment. It is perhaps a testimony to the implications of such a vast and rich tradition as Orthodoxy becoming involved in environmental issues that a book entitled So That God's Creation Might Li,.e should cover such a range. It is without doubt one of the most useful and thus potentially important resources available for Orthodox reflection upon nature, and for conservationists wishing to understand the role of religion. It deserves a wide readership; but, even more importantly, its insights need to be urgently applied.

MARTIN PALMER Manchester

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TELEPHONE NUMBERS ON MOUNT ATHOS Corrigenda to A Pilgrim's Guide to Mount Atbos

The area code for Athos is 0377

K.aryes

Holy Community and Holy Epistasia 23221 Civil governor 23230 Police 23212 Doctor 23217 Post office 23214

Daphni

Harbour 23300 Post office 23297 Police 23222

Monasteries (in order of precedence)

Great Lavra 22586 Vatopedi 23219 lviron 23248 Chilandari 23797 Dionysiou 23687 Koutloumousiou 23226 Pantokratoros 23253 Xeropotamou 23251 Zographou 23247 Dochiariou 23245

Sketes

Prodromos 23294 St Anne's 23320 Kafsokalyvia 23319 Skete ofVatopedi 23303 Skete of Iviron 23296 Skete of Koutloumousiou 23259

Karakalou 23225 Philotheou 23256 Simonopetra 23254 St Paul's 23250 Stavronikita 23255 Xenophontos 23249 Grigoriou 23218 Esphigmenou 23796 St Panteleimonos 23252 Konstamonitou 23228

Skete of Pantokratoros 23304 New Skete 23351 Lakkoskete 23636 Skete of Xenophontos 23301 St Basil's 23317 Provata 23216

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