Published in R. Gothóni and G. Speake (eds.), The Monastic

Magnet. Roads to and From Mount Athos (Peter Lang, Bern, 2008,

www.peterlang.com), 21-40.

Where did the early Athonite monks come from?

_________

Rosemary Morris

Simple questions, as we all know, are often the most difficult

to answer and that of the origins of the earliest monks on

Mount Athos is no exception. But the question of origins was

one of fundamental importance to the Byzantine monastic way of

looking at the past; personal origins formed the basis of

foundation and the bedrock of tradition. In considering the

identity of the first monks of Athos, we can begin to

establish one of the threads of the tangled skein of

identities (both real and imaginary) which eventually made up

that corporate Athonite identity which is still evident today.

The fascinating history of the legendary founders of the

Athonite monasteries - the Virgin herself, Constantine the

Great and Clement of Jerusalem among them - still, of course,

demands further study as part of a wider issue of the role of

forgeries and fabrications of all kinds in the creation of the

Athonite foundation narratives. But just as puzzling in many

ways are accounts, found in a variety of sources

(hagiographies, testaments and official documents) of the

early monastic inhabitants of Athos whom we can place somewhat

more confidently in the realms of reality.1

It is customary to divide the early history of Athos into two

periods: pre-and post-Athanasios of the Lavra. As Bishop

Kallistos of Diokleia has pertinently pointed out, the

foundation of the Great Lavra in 963-4 was followed by an

influx of monastic recruits and, more significantly, marked

the moment that imperial patronage became extended to

specific foundations, rather than to the monastic inhabitants

of the mountain as a whole.2 This makes it all the more

interesting, then, to consider the monastic personnel of the

mountain in two roughly corresponding periods; from the ninth

century to 963-4 and from the coming of Athanasios to the

1 1 For a discussion of the legendary histories of Athos, see D. Papachryssanthou (ed.), Actes du Prôtaton (Archives de l’Athos, VII, Paris, 1975 = Prôtaton), Introduction, p. 7. In an earlier study, (R. Morris, ‘The Origins of Athos’, in A. Bryer and M. Cunningham (eds.),Mount Athos and Byzantine Monasticism (Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies Publications, 4, Aldershot, 1996), 37-46) I was more concerned with with the types of monasticism practised on Athos in the early period, rather than with the practitioners. It is now time to think more about them!2 2 Kallistos Ware (Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia), ‘St Athanasios the Athonite: Traditionalist or Innovator?’, in Bryer and Cunningham (eds.), Mount Athos and Byzantine monasticism, 3-16, see pp. 3-5.

granting of the detailed Typikon for Athos issued by the the

Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos in 1045.3 Can we see any

changes in the recruitment patterns to Athos after the time of

Athanasios? Were monks coming from further away? Were they

novices or more experienced practitioners of the spiritual

life? In what ways were changes in monastic orientation and

practice reflected in the monastic demography of the ninth to

eleventh centuries?

At the outset, it should be pointed out that the vast majority

of the monastic inhabitants of Athos were anonymous males. We

shall never know the true demographical statistics for each

monastery or metochion; let alone those for the mountain as a

whole. The monks who ‘appear’ (in hagiography, in documents as

protagonists, scribes or witnesses, in wills, in donor lists

and even in pictorial representations) are all there for a

reason: they were in some way influential or important to the

houses concerned. So the important question of where the

anonymous rank-and-file of the Athonite houses came from

cannot ever adequately be answered. The most one can hope for

3 3 Tragos, Text = Prôtaton, no. 7, Eng. trans. = Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents, ed. J. Thomas and A. Constantinides Hero, trans. R.Allison et al., 5 vols. (Dumbarton Oaks Studies, XXXV, Washington DC, 2000, = BMFD) vol. 1, no. 12; Typikon of Constantine Monomachos, Text = Prôtaton, no. 8; trans. BMFD, vol. 1, no. 15.

is to identify in the texts statements which might indicate

the recruitment of individuals and groups, either at a given

chronological moment, or from a given geographical area.4

It is also not at all clear, at any given moment, what

proportion of Athonite monks had made their profession on the

mountain and what proportion were so-called xenokouritai, those

who had received the tonsure (and, at least, the lesser

schema) at a monastery outside Athos, and who had later found

their way there. This group is, in fact, one of the most

interesting, containing as it does many of the ‘great names’

of Athonite monasticism in this period: Euthymios the Younger,

Blasios of Amorion, Athanasios of the Great Lavra himself and

the important Georgian founders, John and Euthymios, all of

whom had made their monastic profession elsewhere. Conciliar

strictures against wandering monks seem to have been largely

4 4 Prosopographical issues will certainly be somewhat clarified when Part II of the Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire (British Academy Project based at King's College London) which will cover the late 9thto 11th centuries is complete, but the problems of monastic prosopography, which has to contend both with a change of name from secular to monastic and the identification of monks solely by reference to their monasteries, are particularly intractable. Although the formal ban on all things female on Athos was not promulgated until the late middle ages, it is clear that the region was seen from an early period as one exclusively devoted to male monasticism, in all its forms. The traditions of devotion to the Virgin alone, and thus the lack of any possible human female temptation doubtless added to its attraction for many devout Byzantine men.

ignored and Athanasios himself made every effort to make

xenokouritai welcome.5 In his Typikon for the Great Lavra (973-5)

he declared that no distinction was to be made between monks

who had received the schema in the monastery and ‘those who

were late-comers’. They were to be just as welcome, Athanasios

decreed; ‘Even these are sons and heirs and the children of my

heart.’6 He spoke out firmly against those who denigrated

‘foreign monks’; if they persisted, they were to be excluded

from the common monastic table for three months, they were to

be deprived of oil and wine and were to make their proskyneseis

in services with their hands over their mouths. Persistent

offenders were to be expelled from the monastery.7 Athanasios

even went so far as to envisage circumstances in which a

‘foreign’ monk might become hegoumenos of the Great Lavra; he

would have to have been resident in the monastery for at least

one year.8

5 5 See E. Herman, ‘La “stabilitas loci” nel monachismo bizantino’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 21 (1955), 115-42 and D. M. Nicol, ‘Instabilitas loci: the Wanderlust of Late Byzantine Monks’, Studies in Church History, 22 (1985), 193-202.6 6 Typikon of Athanasios, text in P. Meyer, Die Haupturkunden für die Geschichte der Athosklöster (Leipzig, 1894), trans. BMFD, vol. 1, no. 13, see p. 256.7 7 Typikon of Athanasios, text, p.110; trans. p. 256.8 8 The Typikon shows some ambivalence on this subject. Athanasios first insists that any monk who has been in the Lavra for two to three years should not be considered a ‘stranger’; later in the same passage he declares that one who has only been in the house for a year could be designated as hegoumenos by his dying predecessor. We are perhaps dealing with an ‘edited’ text indicating changed circumstances in the Lavra. See Typikon of Athanasios, text, p. 110; Eng.

It is more than likely that Athanasios was responding to

problems caused by an influx of ‘foreign’ monks to Athos;

suffice it to say here that the principle of accepting those

who had been tonsured elsewhere was well established on Athos,

as it was in all other Byzantine monasteries.9 Although monks

were not supposed to leave their ‘home’ monasteries without

‘good cause’ and Athanasios himself commented that ‘the Holy

Fathers have judged that secretly leaving the monastery is

utterly alien’,10 it is interesting to note that ‘good cause’

could, in his eyes at least, be provided by the

incompatability of a monk with his existing spiritual father

as well as by such obvious mis-treatment as frequent beatings.

Athanasios was clear about what should happen if such a

circumstance arose in the Lavra:

‘If a person finds his soul is not at ease in our

Lavra, let him inform the superior of the reason. If

this man appears to have good cause to seek a

change, then the superior should transfer him to

another spiritual director or make some other

trans., p. 256.9 9 See the useful list of references to this subject in BMFD, vol. 1, p. 22, n. 8.0 10 Hypotyposis of Athanasios, ed. Meyer, Haupturkunden, 130-40, trans. BMFD, vol. 1, no. 11, see p. 228.

arrangements for his welfare. In this way, his

departure from the monastery will be accompanied by

prayer and blessing, and will not be the sort that

was forbidden, cursed and condemned by the holy

fathers.’11

In other words, leaving one’s original monastery for one in

which the regime was more spiritually attractive (or could be

maintained to be so) or in which it could be argued that the

quality of spiritual direction was higher, was a perfectly

legitimate reason for migration. But we cannot know how many

Athonite monks had taken this path, nor, indeed, how many who

were tonsured on the mountain subsequently left.

But the interesting admission by Athanasios that monks could

justifiably leave their original monasteries to attach

themselves to a ‘better’ spiritual guide, gives a strong

indication that monks were attracted to Athos both by the

spiritual reputation of individual monks already there and,

increasingly, that of the whole peninsula as a region of

particular holiness. Some or all of these motives are evident

when the careers of those who came to Athos in the late ninth

century are examined. This was not, however, a straightforward

1 11 Hypotyposis of Athanasios, trans. p. 228..

process of increasing attraction and recruitment; the fortunes

of monasticism on Athos were directly linked to the level of

peace enjoyed by the peninsula and its hinterland. This varied

dramatically during the ninth and tenth centuries: Muslim,

Slav, Bulgar and Magyar attacks on the Chalcidice and on Athos

itself surely deterred monastic recruits just as much as they

disrupted the vocations of the monks already there.12 But the

fact that a steady stream of hagiographical evidence indicates

migration to Athos throughout this period must also suggest

that physical danger was no ultimate deterrent to the truly

determined; stalwartness in the face of ‘pagan’ attacks and,

indeed, the acceptance of possible death at their hands are

both common hagiographical topoi.

Three hagiographies are of particular interest when examining

the question of where Athonite monks came from in the ninth

century, when the fame of the mountain as a place of hesychia

was beginning to spread: those of St Peter the Athonite (d.

890), St Blasios of Amorion (d. 912) and St Euthymios the

Younger (d. 898). These three saints all lived the eremitic

life on Athos at one time or another and their hagiographers

2 12 For conditions in the region in the period see Prôtaton, Introduction pp. 34-44 and R. Morris, Monks and Laymen in Byzantium (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 27-8..

were concerned to emphasise the importance of this tradition.

Peter the Athonite supposedly lived as a hermit in a grotto on

Athos for 53 years in the mid-ninth century. He was first

commemorated in a Canon written between 883 and 886 by St

Joseph the Hymnographer; the oldest Life of St Peter the Athonite was

composed by the Athonite monk, Nicholas, between 970 and 980.13

Blasios of Amorion, having become a monk in Rome, later lived

in the Monastery of Stoudios in Constantinople before leaving

for Athos where he stayed from c. 900- c. 912.14 St Euthymios

the Younger, the founder of the Monastery of St Andrew at

Peristerai, near Thessalonica in 870 (a house which later

came into the hands of the Great Lavra), also spent four

periods in the second half of the ninth century living on

Athos.15 The biographers of these three saints were quite

3 13 See Prôtaton, Introduction, p. 20, for the Canon (edited by D.Papachryssanthou in Analecta Bollandiana, 88, (1970), 27-41), and D. Papachryssanthou, ‘La vie ancienne de saint Pierre l’Athonite. Date, composition et valeur historique’, Analecta Bollandiana, 92 (1974), 19-61 for a discussion of the oldest Life of Peter the Athonite. The Life was editedby K. Lake in The Early Days of Monasticism on Mount Athos (Oxford, 1909), pp. 18-39, but cf. also the textual amendments and corrections in Papachryssanthou, ‘Vie ancienne de saint Pierre l’Athonite’, pp. 22-3, n.1.4 14 Life of St Blasios of Amorion, in AASS, Nov., V, 657-69. The chronology of the anonymous life of the saint, written c. 930-940 (essentially accepted by Papachryssanthou in Prôtaton, Introduction, p.50) was established in H. Grégoire, ‘La vie de Saint Blaise d’Amorion’, Byzantion, 5 (1929-30), 391-414. See also, for a useful summary, E. Malamut, Sur la route des saints byzantins (Paris, 1993), pp. 258-60.5 15 Life of Euthymios the Younger: L. Petit, ‘Vie et Office de Saint Euthyme le Jeune’, Revue de l’Orient Chrétien, 8 (1903), 55-205, see pp. 168-205. The life was written by the monk Basil, one of the

clear about their motives in coming to the mountain: it was to

find both seclusion (sometimes from over-enthusiastic

followers) and tranquillity. This, above all, was what the

area was celebrated for in the years before the coming of

Athanasios; the opportunity for individual askesis, not the

attraction of the communal life, was the draw. In all three

cases, the saints concerned had made their profession

elsewhere: both Peter the Athonite and Blasios of Amorion in

Rome and Euthymios the Younger on Mount Olympos. So their

arrival on Athos was certainly not in order to enter the

monastic life there, but rather to continue it in a more

propitious atmosphere.

But when these three biographies are examined more closely,

some other motives for migration to Athos immediately become

apparent despite the discretion of the hagiographers and

provide some further hints as to how Athos was viewed in this

early period of its development. Euthymios the Younger, for

example, had become a monk on Mount Olympos in Bithynia in c.

Saint’s disciples. See Prôtaton, pp. 23-8, and for fuller discussion, D. Papachryssanthou, ‘La vie de Saint Euthyme le Jeune et la métropole de Thessalonique à la fin du IXe siècle et au début du Xe siècle’, Revue des Etudes Byzantines, 32 (1974), 225-45. Short summary of Euthymios’ movements in Malamut, Sur la route des saints byzantins, pp. 254-6. He spent time on Athos between the years 859-63; 863-4; 865-6 and inthe early months of 898.

842; he was to remain there until 859. Suddenly, or so it

appears, he left Olympos for Athos, where he remained until c.

862 before returning, briefly, to Olympos. After this, he

spent his time mainly moving from place to place within the

region of Thessalonica and the Chalcidice, overseeing his

newly founded (or refounded) houses centred on the Monastery

of St Andrew at Peristerai and in undertaking what were

clearly periods of spiritual refreshment and askesis on Athos

itself.16 The quasi-peripatetic life in Northern Greece

accords with a quite familiar pattern of personal spiritual

development; what is of more interest here is the reason for

Euthymios’ abandonment of his monastic ‘home’ on Olympos. The

date at which he left is, surely, of some significance, for it

immediately followed the forced resignation of the Patriarch

Ignatios (d. 878) and the appointment of Photios (d.886). We

know that this affair and its sequels rumbled on for a

considerable time.17 It certainly caused schism in at the

6 16 See Prôtaton, pp. 23-8 and Malamut, Sur la route des saints byzantins, p. 170. 7 17 Ignatios was forced to resign by the Caesar Bardas in Octoberof 858; he was restored to the Patriarchate in November 867 and died in office in October, 877. Photios, who replaced him in 858, held the patriarchate until 867 and then again from 877 until his owndismissal in 886. The ferocity of the feud between the ecclesiasticalfollowers of both parties is clearly evidenced in such works as the virulently anti-Photian Life of Ignatios by Niketas David Paphlago, see VitaS. Ignatii, PG, 105, cols. 487-574. For other anti-Photian polemic, see S.Tougher, The reign of Leo VI (886-912); politics and people (Leiden/New York/Cologne, 1997), c.3.

Monastery of Pissadinoi, Euthymios’ monastic home on Olympos,

for, according to Euthymios biographer, the hegoumenos,

Nicholas and many of the leading monks decided to leave the

monastery and remain in communion with Ignatios. Euthymios did

not go with them, but did leave shortly afterwards, perhaps

because the house now contained a majority of Photian

supporters with whom he had little sympathy.18

A similar motive, concerned more with ecclesiastical politics

than with spiritual development, also lay behind Blasios of

Amorion’s abandonment of his career as a cleric in

Constantinople and his subsequent journey to Rome, where he

became a monk. Significantly, he had been ordained deacon by

Patriarch Ignatios himself and this, in itself, must explain

why he left the capital in 877-8.19 For this was the period of

Photios’ second patriarchate; obvious partisans of his

predecessor could certainly not have hoped for advancement and

would probably have been wise to make themselves scarce.

Blasios’ story, though, is rather more complicated than that

8 18 For the Monastery of Pissadinoi on Mt. Olympos, see R. Janin, Les églises et les monastères des grands centres byzantins (Paris, 1975), pp. 172-4. Our earliest record of the existence of the house is, in fact,in the Life of St. Euthymios the Younger. It was probably the death of his spiritual father, John, after the departure of the hegoumenos Nicholasthat finally decided Euthymios to move on.9 19 Grégoire, ‘Vie de Saint Blaise’, p. 399.

of Euthymios, for his move to Athos did not follow until

after he had returned to Constantinople (after an absence of

eighteen years, almost exactly coinciding with Photios’ second

patriarchate). From c.896-c.900, Blasios was a monk at

Stoudios, and, we are told, was presented by Anatolios, the

hegoumenos of Stoudios to both the Patriarch Anthony II Kauleas

(a man deeply hostile to Photios) and, indeed, to the Emperor

Leo VI himself. Though it is difficult to make the chronology

fit, it is tempting to associate Blasios’ departure from

Stoudios with the death of Anthony Kauleas, probably in 901

and the subsequent accession of Nicholas Mystikos - a follower

of Photios - to the patriarchate.20 Be that as it may, the

presence of a ‘Photian’ at the head of the church probably

influenced his decision to leave for Athos, where he remained

until c. 912.21

0 20 See Grégoire, ‘Vie de Saint Blaise’, p. 393 for Blasios’ reception by Anthony Kauleas and Leo VI. Grégoire believed that Anthony Kauleas died in 898 and that Blasios went to Athos in 899. Papachryssanthou cautiously suggests c.900 (Prôtaton, p. 50). However, other scholars suggest that Kauleas died in Feb. 901, see Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (New York/Oxford, 1991= ODB), vol. 1, p. 125 and Tougher, Reign of Leo VI, pp. 17-18.1 21 Nicholas Mystikos was Patriarch from after the death of Antony Kauleas until Feb. 907. He was then replaced by Euthymios, almost certainly because of his opposition to the fourth marriage of Leo VI. When he was restored to the patriarchate is not altogether certain; it may have been before Leo VI’s death in May, 912 (see ODB,vol. 2, p. 1467). Blasios’ return to Constantinople may well have been before Nicholas’ restoration, when the Patriarchate was still held by Euthymios. Interestingly, the Life of St. Blasios reports that he was hostilely received in some monastic quarters on Athos (‘he was persecuted by those who considered themselves masters of the land’);

The biographers of both Euthymios and Blasios were writing in

the first half of the tenth century, when the church had

certainly not yet recovered from the wounding events of the

Photios-Ignatios and Nicholas Mystikos-Euthymios conflicts.

Each had his hero coming to Athos either explicitly or

implicity as a result of leaving behind ‘schismatics’ who

were not to his way of thinking. But why Athos, rather than

other, possibly nearer, havens of political and monastic

tranquility? Maybe because Athos, still in the very early

stages of its ‘federal’ development, presented a monastic

‘region’ where the power of the patriarch to exert his

jurisdiction and thus require ‘obedience’ was slight. Indeed,

since evidence for the very existence of the Protos, through

whom later patriarchs attempted to exert their authority over

the whole body of Athonite monks, not just over those in

individual monasteries, is not found until c.908 (and some

would argue somewhat later), it is difficult to see by what

means he could have done so at the end of the ninth century.22

Papachryssanthou has persuasively suggested that this was because of his association with the Palace at the time of the fourth marriage scandal, a matter which might well have outraged opinion on Mount Athos. Certainly, he was associated with those prepared to take a more ‘lenient’ line with the Emperor. 2 22 See Morris, Monks and Laymen, pp. 162-3 for a discussion of theevidence. In my view, Papachryssanthou was right to see the protos hesychastes Andrew, mentioned in Prôtaton, no. 2 (908), who went to

A powerful motive for removal to Athos was thus to escape from

regions where the vagaries of patriachal politics had created

turmoil in hitherto peaceful monastic settings. In some cases,

however, it is not so clear that matters of high politics were

at the root of migration. We do not really know, for instance,

why Athanasios himself left the monastery on Mount Kyminas in

Bithynia, where he had lived for some six years (c.952-8). In

his Typikon for the Lavra, Athanasios himself gives no reason

(‘Not long after I had departed from Mount Kyminas and had

crossed over to that of Athos’)23 though he later states, in

the context of a conversation with the future Emperor,

Nikephoros Phokas, that ‘I stoutly affirmed that I was to return

to Mount Kyminas proper’.24 Both the extant lives of

Athanasios declare that the saint left Kyminas because he was

fearful that he would be appointed to the hegoumenate of the

monastery founded by Michael Maleïnos and already frequently

visited by the latter’s nephews, Leo and Nikephoros Phokas and

fled to Athos where he could live the life of anonymous

Constantinople to complain about the incursions of the monks of the Monastery of John Kolobos (just to the north of the peninsula of Athos), as the representative of the monks of the mountain, contra the entry in ODB, vol. 3, pp. 1746-7, which suggests that the earliest reliable references to the Protos date from the mid-tenth century.3 23 Typikon of Athanasios, , c. 4., p. 251.4 24 Typikon of Athanasiost., c. 5, p. 251.

solitude that he craved.25 This, of course, is a

hagiographical topos, centring on the modesty of the saint and

his reluctance to accept the admiration and attentions of the

laity. If, as he maintained, Athanasios had, indeed, initially

planned to return to Mount Kyminas, then we cannot postulate a

deep-seated unhappiness with the monastic situation there as a

motive or his departure. His journey to Athos may well have

been, initially, to undertake a period of solitary askesis

there, much in the manner of Euthymios the Younger. But his

destination illustrates the point that Athos, by this time,

was well-known to the monastic communities of western Asia

Minor as a place where the eremitic life could be followed.

It is this kind of monastic life which is celebrated in the Life

of St. Peter the Athonite, which, as Denise Papachryssanthou was the

first to point out, has far more to do with the evolving

monastic life of Mount Athos at the end of the tenth century -

and the conflicts which had arisen amongst the monastic

communities after the foundation of the Lavra - than with the

mountain and its communities in the mid-ninth century, which

it ostensibly describes. Its author, Nicholas, was alarmed by

5 25 See the two extant lives of Athanasios, Vitae duae antiquae sancti Athanasii athonitae, ed. J. Noret (Corpus Christianorum, Ser. Graec., IX, Louvain, 1982), Vita A, cc. 28-30, p. 15, Vita B, c. 11, p. 136-8 (visitsof the Phokas brothers).

the spread of quasi-cenobitic monasticism and, especially, by

the spectacle of increased concern with land acquisition and

the establishment and preservation of property rights. He

describes an episode in Peter’s life, when the saint was

tempted to leave his grotto and enter an ‘urban monastery'

(never identified) in terms of diabolic intervention and

clearly states that his purpose in emphasising Peter’s

solitary asceticism was ‘so that those who abandon the world

after [me] and who settle on this mountain may know how they

should behave and how they should live’.26

By the mid-tenth century, the sphere of Athonite spiritual

influence thus extended northwards, certainly as far as

Thessalonica, if not beyond, and eastwards to Constantinople

and the monasteries of the Bithynian coastline. It was not

just a question of individual migration to the mountain; some

of the crowds who assembled to see Euthymios the Younger

during his period as a stylite in Thessalonica in c. 864-5

were surely inspired by his example to enter the monastic life

6 26 See Papachryssanthou, ‘Vie ancienne de Saint Pierre l’Athonite’, p. 51. The debate about monastic property was certainlya ‘live’ one at the end of the 10th century, cf. the Novel of Nikephoros Phokas (964), which inveighed against the ‘avarice’ (as he saw it) of many cenobitic houses (discussed in Morris, Monks and Laymen, pp. 166-90).

in groups and may have followed him to Athos in c. 865-6.27

Though evidence of this kind of mass enthusiasm is rare

(hardly surprisingly, since those living the solitary eremitic

life feared and avoided crowds, though sometimes, as their

spiritual reputations spread, had to put up with them), that

concerning the movement of individuals following the saints to

Athos is a little more frequent.

The ties of spiritual relationship forged in monastic houses

were often so strong that they survived the initial migration

of one of the parties. Thus Euthymios the Younger preserved to

a degree the spiritual circle that he had known on Olympos

after he travelled to Athos. He himself returned to collect

his own spiritual father, Theodore, when old, and brought him

back with him. His early companion, Theosteriktos, travelled

with him from Olympos to Athos, then having returned to

Olympos, came to Athos yet again to ask Euthymios to return to

his old monastery.28 Similar monastic ‘family ties’ are evident

in Athanasios’ concern for the welfare of ‘the monk Antony

from Mount Kyminas’ whom he specifically mentioned in his

Testament, though we do not know at what point Andrew had come

7 27 See Prôtaton, p. 26; Papachryssanthou, ‘Vie de Saint Euthyme leJeune’, p. 241.8 28 Prôtaton, p.28.

to the Lavra.29 Other associations were forged en route. Another

‘friend’ of Euthymios the Younger, Joseph the Armenian, who

had clearly travelled far from his home land when he met the

saint on Athos, later joined him in the Monastery of St Andrew

at Peristerai. In 865-66, Euthymios’ ‘companions’ are named as

John Kolobos, a man ‘already advanced in spirituality’ (and

himself the founder of a monastery near the town of Hierissos,

immediately to the north of Athos); the monk Symeon, who is

later reported leading another group of monks to the theme of

Hellas and the monk George. All these men had a claim to be

described as ‘Athonites’, albeit sometimes only for a short

while.30

The recruitment of monks to Athos after the coming of

Athanasios and the transformation of the spiritual life on the

mountain by the foundation firstly of the Lavra and then of

Iviron, both enjoying considerable imperial patronage, clearly9 29 Testament of Athanasios, ed. Meyer, Haupturkunden, pp. 123-30, Eng. trans., BMFD, vol. 1, no. 14, pp. 271-80, see c. 18, p. 278.0 30 See Prôtaton, pp. 28-30 for a discussion of these individuals. No Life of John Kolobos has survived; surely there once was some sort of commemoration of this spiritually admirable and successful monastic founder. It may be that the subsequent conflicts over boundaries thaterupted between the Monastery of John Kolobos and the Athonites at the beginning of the tenth century and the eventual granting of the house to the Georgians in 979-80 both served to help ‘eradicate’ the memory of the original founder, an important element in the construction of the independent identity of the house. But it would be gratifying to be proved wrong if a text of a Life of John Kolobos were eventually to be discovered!

accelerated. The process had, however, begun by the end of the

ninth century: the author of the Life of Euthymios the Younger

declared that the number of monks on the mountain had so

augmented, that the area was ‘like a town’.31 But it does

appear that there was a ‘quantum leap’ in Athonite recruitment

after about 963, though this was very unequally spread. The

Lavra, for instance, reportedly harboured some 180 persons (if

we include those living in its metochia as well as in the main

house) by the time Athanasios drew up its Typikon, 500 by 978

and 700 in 104532 Iviron seems to have been even larger at the

end of the tenth century: the Life of SS. John and Euthymios reports

that Euthymios, who was hegoumenos between 1005-1019 had

responsibility for ‘some 300 souls’.33 But these were

undoubtedly the exceptions; in the mid-eleventh century there

still existed many much smaller cenobitic monasteries on the

mountain, as well as small groups of hermits and perhaps even

some solitaries.34

1 31 See Prôtaton, p.27.2 32 The figures probably include monastic servants and must, of course, be taken as merely indicative. See Typikon of Athanasios, ed. Meyer, p. 114, BMFD, vol. 1, p. 260; Chrysobull of Basil II and Constantine VIII (978), Lavra, I, no. 7; Typikon of Constantine Monomachos, Prôtaton, no. 8 (1045), Eng. trans, BMFD, vol. 1, no. 15, pp. 281-93.3 33 See B. Martin-Hisard, ‘La Vie de Jean et Euthyme et le statut du Monastère des Ibères sur l’Athos’, Revue des Etudes Byzantines, 49 (1991), 67-142 (Fr. trans. of Life, pp. 84-134), p. 108. (All Eng. trans. from this work are mine).4 34 For a discussion of some of the smaller houses, see Morris, ‘The Origins of Athos’, p.40. The monk Sabas, famous for his

At first glance, it might appear that the arrival of Georgians

and Italians on Athos (evident by the end of the tenth

century) marked a major expansion of the geographical extent

of the spiritual magnetism of the mountain. In fact, however,

many of the newcomers passed through regions where Athonite

monasticism was already well known. Mount Olympos, where

Georgian monasticism had long been established, was the most

important. John the Iberian, the re-founder of the Monastery

of Clement, the house on Athos that was the precursor of

Iviron, left his first monastic home, the Lavra of the Four

Churches in T’ao K’larjeti in about 960, not for Athos, but

actually for Olympos. He then made a visit to Constantinople,

in the course of which he was re-united with his son,

Euthymios, who had been held there for some time as a hostage.

Both of them then returned to Olympos.35 His motive for leaving

(with his son) for Athos (c. 970), is described in the

traditional way by his biographer, George the Hagiorite,

writing soon after 1041:

asceticism, led the solitary life at Chaldou in the south of Athos atthe end of the tenth century, see W. Regel, E. Kurtz, B. Korablev (eds.), Actes de Philothée, (Actes de l’ Athos, VI), Vizantijskij Vremmennik, 20 (1913), Supplement 1, Doc. 1 (August, 1087), pp. 1-2. 5 35 ‘La Vie de Jean et Euthyme’, pp. 87-88.

‘At the end of a certain time, he was agitated by

the fact that he could not cope with the fact that

the Greeks and the Iberians treated him with honour

because his name was well-known. That is why he left

again towards the unknown with his son and some

disciples. He reached the Lavra of the great

Athanasios on the Holy Mountain and he was received

there. He remained incognito...’36

The same pattern was repeated a little later, when the ex-

general, John Tornik, a cousin (and possibly also a brother-

in-law) of John the Iberian, became a monk in Georgia, then

left to seek his illustrious relative. Significantly, he first

headed for Mount Olympos (not Athos) where he was not able to

locate him. According to the Life of John and Euthymios, John then

‘asked around secretly and learned that he was to be found on

Mount Athos’.37 Again, the familiar topos of flight from fame

into a dangerous ‘unknown’ and a wish to become anonymous was

presented by the hagiographer. Clearly, however, there is a

certain incongruity in Tornik having to ask ‘secretly’ on

Olympos for news of John the Iberian’s whereabouts, but

nonetheless finding it. In reality, Athos was hardly ‘unknown 6 36 ‘La Vie de Jean et Euthyme’, p. 88.7 37 ‘La Vie de Jean et Euthyme’, p. 88.

territory’ to monks on Olympos by this time; Olympos and its

monasteries was an important staging post in the spiritual

journey that ultimately took some monks on to Athos.

Another such was clearly Constantinople. Contacts between the

houses on Mount Athos and the capital were well-established by

the mid-tenth century; Athanasios himself visited the city

after the foundation of the Lavra, possibly staying in the

Stoudios Monastery. By the mid-eleventh century, many Athonite

houses had metochia in Constantinople in which monks from the

main houses stayed when in the city.38 The volume of business

which took monks to and from Athos and Constantinople, as

witnessed in the contemporary archival documets, certainly

increased after the foundation of the Lavra and the

incorporation of the mountain into the sphere of direct

imperial interest.39 The affairs of Athos were matters of

discussion in court and monastic circles. Distinguished monks

from the capital were involved in drawing up two of the most

important documents in the early history of the mountain. The

8 38 See R. Morris, ‘Divine Diplomacy in the Late Eleventh Century’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 16 (1992), 146-58, p.150 for examples of the metochia of provincial monasteries in Constantinople.9 39 As witness the documents collected in the Archives de l’Athos. Great monasteries, such as the Lavra, Iviron, Vatopedi and Xeropotamou were in frequent contact with every ruler from the mid-tenth century onwards, particularly in order to obtain or renew theirchrysobulls and privileges.

hegoumenos of Stoudios, Euthymios, was sent in c. 970, by the

Emperor John Tzimiskes to regulate the quarrels that had

arisen between the newly-founded Lavra and the older-

established monasteries on Mount Athos and was responsible

for drafting the document known as the Tragos (970-2); Kosmas

Tzintziloukes, possibly the hegoumenos of the Monastery of the

Anargyroi in Constantinople was similarly despatched as an

arbitrator by Constantine IX Monomachos and drew up the Typikon

of Constantine Monomachos (1045) on the emperor’s behalf.40 Thus

the affairs of Athos and news of its monasteries and their

leaders had ample opportunity to circulate in Constantinople

and new recruits surely came in considerable numbers from

there.

It may, in fact, have been via the capital that the first

Amalfitan monks came to Athos. Whilst there is some sparse

evidence of the existence of houses on Athos manned by Greek

monks of Italian origin - signatures of the hegoumenoi of the

Monastery ‘of the Sicilians’ and of the Monastery ‘of the

Calabrians’ are found in the late tenth and eleventh centuries

- we can only assume that the monks had originally come to the

0 40 For editions and Eng. trans. of the Tragos and the Typikon of Constantine Monomachos, see n. 3, above. The identification of the monastery to which Kosmas Tzintziloukes belonged is suggested in BMFD, vol.1, no. 15, p. 283, n. 2.

mountain directly from Southern Italy.41 The founder of the

Benedictine house on Athos, the so-called Monastery of the

Amalfitans, was, in fact, probably not from Amalfi itself, if

he can be identified with Leo of Benevento, the brother of

Pandulf II, Duke of Benevento.42 He came to Athos in c. 980

with six disciples and, after spending some time living with

the Georgians already established there, built a monastery

sometime between 985 and 990. The fact that the monastery was

dedicated to St. Mary of the Latins, just as the Amalfitan

Church in Constantinople was, further strengthens the links

with the Amalfitan colony in the city, which was certainly

well established by the end of the tenth century.43 By the mid-

eleventh century, there is clear evidence that the Amalfitan

monastery on Athos was being supported by fellow-countrymen in

Constantinople. The Life of St. John and Euthymios, relating the very

interesting early history of the ‘Amalfitans’ on Mount Athos

1 41 See A. Pertusi, ‘Rapporti tra il monachesimo italo-greco ed il monachesimo bizantino nell’alto medio evo’, in La chiesa greca in Italia dall’ VIII al XVI secolo (Atti del convegno storico interecclesiale, Bari, 1969), pub. as Italia Sacra, 20 (1972-3), 473-520, pp. 497-8.2 42 See M. Balard, ‘Amalfi et Byzance (Xe-XIIe siècles), Travaux et Mémoires, 6 (1976), 85-95, p. 91, for the suggestion that Leo of Benevento came to Athos from Constantinople. For the identity of the founder, see A. Pertusi, ‘Nuovi documenti sui Benedettini Amalfitanidell’Athos’, Aevum, 27 (1953), 1-30.3 43 See Balard, ‘Amalfi et Byzance’, pp. 86-7 for the early history of the Amalfitan colony in Constantinople. The Church of St. Mary of the Latins ‘of the Amalfitani’ was referred to by the westernmonk and theologian, Peter Damian in the mid-eleventh century.

and, in particular, how Leo and his disciples had been

received and sheltered at Iviron before they established their

own house, reports that the ‘Romans in the Queen of Cities’

soon heard tell of them and that ‘a numerous crowd gathered

and requested that he [Leo] admit them to the monastic life’.44

Since this work was written on Mount Athos c. 1041, it

reflects the increasing numbers of the ‘Amalfitans’ on the

mountain by that time, but clearly indicates that they were

Amalfitans from Constantinople, not Italy. The links with

their compatriots in the capital were further strenghthened in

the Typikon of Constantine Monomachos of 1045, which allowed the

Amalfitan Monastery, as a ‘compromise’, to own a large boat,

not so that the monks could indulge in commerce, but so that

they could ‘travel to the Queen of Cities if they wanted to

import anything they needed for their monastery or to be

supplied from those who love Christ.’45 It is, therefore,

rather risky to maintain that large numbers of monks were

drawn from the far distant parts of the Empire to Athos as a

direct consequence of the fame of Athanasios and his

contemporaries, since there is clear evidence that, in many

4 44 ‘La Vie de Jean et Euthyme’, c. 27, p. 109. 5 45 See Prôtaton, no. 8 and Eng. trans. BMFD, vol. 1, Doc. 15, p. 287. Philochristoi (‘those who love Christ’) is a word commonly used to describe pious lay people, who gave donations in cash or kind to monasteries.

case, Athos was not the first spiritual destination. Athonite

hagiography was nothing if not deterministic, however, and

works such as the Lives of Athanasios and the Life of John and Euthymios

presented their heroes as being almost inexorably drawn to the

the mountain which was to see their greatest spiritual

achievement.

There is no doubt, however that some monks did travel immense

distances directly to the mountain. The most obvious case in

point is that of the Georgians and there were two periods when

this was particularly the case: firstly, at the end of the

tenth century, when the ex-general Tornik left Iviron to lead

a successful force of his compatriots against the rebel,

Bardas Skleros in 979 and, secondly, during the so-called

‘time of troubles’ in the first half of the eleventh century,

when Greeks and Georgians struggled for dominance in the

monastery. Tornik’s return to Athos, loaded with booty and the

chrysobulls of the grateful Emperors Basil II (d. 1025) and

Constantine VIII (d. 1028) was also accompanied by many

monastic recruits. According to the Life of John and Euthymios,

Tornik himself organised the coming of ‘many wearing the habit

and a not inconsiderable number of famous monks, for he had

wanted the only inhabitants [of Iviron] to be Iberians’.46

Here we have clear evidence of monks being brought directly

from the East, and not only novices, but experienced and

learned spiritual practitioners. The names of John Grdzelisdze

and the ex-Bishop Arsenios of Ninoc’mida, who had both been at

the Lavra of the Four Churches are particularly mentioned. The

two men had left their original house ‘because the hegoumenoi

and the brethren of the monastery disturbed them’47 and, after

taking refuge in an un-named monastery in the Pontos, were

located and summoned by letter to join the Georgians on Athos.

This was probably a consequence of Tornik’s activities in the

eastern themes, but it also again presents a situation where

ostensible ‘flight’ and ‘disappearance’ were by no means as

complete as the hagiographers would have us believe.48 The

lament placed in the mouth of Tornik by George the Hagiorite,

that it had not been possible to recruit only Georgians and

that it had been necessary ‘to allow Greeks…. servants and

people who knew the ways of the sea’,49 indicates both that

John and Euthymios were willing to welcome a wide range of

postulants (and especially those who could ensure their

6 46 ‘La Vie de Jean et Euthyme’, pp. 92-3.7 47 ‘La Vie de Jean et Euthyme’, pp. 97-8.8 48 The geographical context of the network of Georgian connections in the Byzantine Empire in the tenth and eleventh centuries deserves a study of its own.9 49 ‘La Vie de Jean et Euthyme’, p. 93.

contact with the outside world across the Aegean) to build and

people their new monastery and that many of them must have

come from much nearer at hand than Georgia.

The emphasis that George the Hagiorite placed on the

recruitment of Georgians only reflects the aftermath of a

period of internal strife in Iviron between Greek and Georgian

monks which centred in a battle for control of the liturgy to

be performed in the main church of the monastery, the Church

of the Virgin. Bernadette Martin-Hisard has shed light on the

strategies used by the Georgians to increase their influence:

one was to recruit as many Georgians as possible; another was

to encourage the cream of the Georgian monastic intelligentsia

to come to Athos to support Euthymios of Iviron in his work of

translation form Greek to Georgian. Thus the Iberian colophon

H 2251 notes how the kouropalates David, the ruler of Georgia,

sent one Jordanes to help re-copy Euthymios’ translations, and

the Life of John and Euthymios itself mentions the copyist Hilarion

coming from Georgia.50 In the case of the Monastery of Iviron,

then, recruitment had a quasi-political aspect; the balance

between Greek and Georgian was finally resolved in favour of

the latter. This should serve to remind us that the Athonite

0 50 ‘La Vie de Jean et Euthyme’, p. 102, n.84; p. 118.

monasteries, like their counterparts elsewhere in the Empire,

were by no means ‘open houses’. Selection of suitable monks

clearly went on.

It is, however, somewhat ironic that the best explanation of

why Georgian monks were sometimes not ideal members of

monastic houses should be given by a Georgian: the hegoumenos

George I of Iviron (1019-29), much decried in the Life of John and

Euthymios for his pro-Greek stance, who is given the following

words:

‘You all know this, that we [the Georgian monks] are all

too ready to move on and greatly given to travel hither

and yon. This is the cause of damage to ourselves and our

lands.’51

Here, perhaps inadvertently, George the Hagiorite pinpointed a

trait of monastic behaviour, common in all the orthodox

traditions of his time and which he, clearly, did not find a

matter for extreme criticism. Nor, if we remember Athanasios’

insistence on the welcoming of ‘foreign’ monks, did he. This

element of monastic ‘pilgrimage’ and movement was certainly

1 51 ‘La Vie de Jean et Euthyme’, p. 127.

one of the most important reasons for men to come to Athos,

but not, it must be stressed, necessarily to remain there. If

only we knew more about the internal politics of the

monasteries in Asia Minor in the late ninth century and in

Georgia and, perhaps also in Southern Italy in the tenth and

eleventh centuries, then we might be able to associate the ebb

and flow of migrations from them to Athos with the changing

regimes, hegoumenates and local political alliances of these

houses.52 Suffice it to say that Athos, by the end of the

tenth century, clearly attracted both new vocations and,

indeed, acted as a magnet for many monks who had taken their

earliest vows elsewhere. The process was self-perpetuating:

the early monastic founders such as Athanasios, John the

Iberian and Leo of Benevento had need of considerable

monastic manpower both to build and maintain their new houses,

thus lay recruits and ‘foreign’ monks were made more than

welcome. The perceived success of these new houses then

attracted more vocations. It is in examining the early history

of Athos that the flexibility and fluidity of Byzantine

monasticism becomes particularly apparent.

2 52 See B. Martin-Hisard, ‘Du T’ao-Klardzheti l’Athos: moines géorgiens et réalités sociopolitiques (IX-XIe siècles)’, Bedi Kartlisa, 41 (1983), 34-46, for an interesting discussion on these lines.

What comparisons might we then make between recruitment in the

pre- and post-Athanasian periods on Mount Athos? There seems

little doubt that numbers increased from the late tenth

century onwards and that monastic populations in a few

favoured monasteries on Athos were flourishing by the mid-

eleventh century. The routes that were covered in order to

reach the mountain were extended (a reflection of the

increased security in the Empire at this time) but in many

cases still included the traditional monastic ‘stopping off’

points that had been in existence since the the ninth century.

Much though the biographers of the celebrated Athonites of the

period might have wished to portray the fame of their houses

spreading throughout the Empire so that men were inexoraby and

directly drawn to this magnet of spirituality, this in itself

was part of the evolution of the Athonite ‘Creation Myth’.