Gasman wrote:Female animals are NOT allowed near monasteries.
I get the horrible feeling you are NOT joking?
Good grief!
Female Donkeys, known as 'Jennies' in some parts of the UK.
Alternative headlines to these notes, made on a cruise parallel to the shoreline of Mount Athos, the state-within-the-Greek-state, included "holy water" and "sailing to Byzantium".
Then there are the other scribbles, one from early in the voyage, about the sheer rock, slightly eroded, that gives a real sense of the place being cloistered as much by geography as by the rules that govern its status; and another note, towards the end of the cruise, about the imposing mystical majesty of the mount itself, clouds descending in wispy torrents backlit by the spring sun, that radiates a palpable sense of holiness.
But to sound that last note so soon is to rush ahead, and this is no place to be proceeding in inordinate haste. Mount Athos remains unmoving in the face of passing time, its status as a place of monasticism spanning from the Byzantine Empire to the European Union.
I wonder if any of the monks pay any heed to the cruise boats such as ours, the 300-seater Captain Potis, or are we merely a fly buzzing in a placid vineyard, to be ignored stoically?
Garden without Eve
Dimly I recall hearing as a child what most people best know Athos for, that no women (or girls, or female animals) are permitted in its confines.
Our vessel, which has women on board, is allowed no closer than 500m to the shore. The ban on women originated some time between the 10th and 12th centuries, with historians telling us that it was the Byzantine emperor Alexius Comnenus who banned the female of all species.
Like all monastic orders, whether Orthodox Christian or Roman Catholic, a form of celibacy that extends to one’s surroundings is based on the notion of the purity of contemplation and prayer without any sexual distractions. For all that, there is, naturally, a legend.
With some variations in the telling, the executive summary goes like this: Mary, the mother of Jesus, is given Mt Athos as her garden, and delighted with it, decides that no other woman should be allowed there.
The power and the glory
As the powerful boat makes headway into the strong April winds and the mighty swell that leaves only the hardiest and most determined photographers atop the vessel, as the first of the several monasteries comes into view, thoughts turn to the fact that Athos is a treasury not only of spiritual power but also of Orthodox Christian liturgical artifacts and vast collections of parchments and manuscripts.
It is also land worth vast heaps of euro, and there is always the debate about compromise, about taxation, about bending to tourist demand to admit women. On this last point – and I am not Orthodox Christian and tend to have somewhat liberal views on religious matters – it would be a sad day if ever the authorities made concessions about the rule. A reversal now would be a judgment saying that all of those many generations who kept the faith were wrong. On every other day, I am very PC about non-sexism, but those who demand that female feet be allowed ashore are doing something akin to pressing (openly or covertly) non-kosher or non-halaal food on a Jew or a Muslim, or spiking the drink of a teetotaler.
Communion
Speaking of drinks, some of our number are below, in the shelter of the middle deck, indulging in the ouzo that apparently is made by some of the monks on Athos.
There is a little shop amidships, selling refreshments and with a stall offering religious bric-a-brac, including elaborately carved crucifixes, small mounted icons, some of the goods at discount especially because they were made, the sign says, by the monks of Athos. This does not include the few boxes of photographic film on sale, and looking rather dusty in this digital age. My visit is a brief one, and hands firmly on the handrails – as the signs in Greek and English advise – I return atop.
As each of the monasteries visible from the boat passes by, narration (today in Greek, English, German and Bulgarian) earnestly explains the place, but in today’s gusts, all but snatches of what is said is whipped away in the wind.
No matter. I had come away well-equipped with reading material after a prior visit to the Mount Athos Centre in Thessaloniki, which offers books on the topic in every significant language, and serves as the Holy Executive of the Holy Mount Pilgims Bureau – a form of embassy for Mt Athos, if you will.
Not all the monasteries are visible from the sea; among those inland is the Bulgarian one, Zographou. My gaze still enchanted by the passing scene, of forested slopes, gentle thin rocky beaches on which only occasionally a black-clad figure is seen, I fall into conversation with a devout Orthodox Christian who some years ago had spent a week on Athos, keeping to the stoic regimes of early rising, prayer, contemplation and hasty, simple, yet healthy meals. Yes, he says, there is the option of simply being accommodated at a monastery and lying around indolently; yet, if one did not participate in the cycles of the day (which, like in Judaism, starts at sunset, not midnight, as the calendar on Athos is Julian, not Gregorian), what would be the point of going there at all?
Recessional
More than two hours have passed since we left port at Ouranoupolis, and the boat turns hard about, leaving the sun at our stern, yet still with that divine spectacle of that mount looming over all.
We have seen the promised land, or at least the land promised in perpetuity to a group of Orthodox Christian monks, centuries ago. A dwindling band, by the way, not exempt from all changes. Five hundred years ago, Athos was home to 40 monasteries and 400 000 monks, now there are 20 monasteries (17 Greek, one each for Bulgaria, Serbia and Russia) and 2000 monks.
We have stayed outside the 500m limit, although I wonder about the technicalities of the zoom lens that I have employed so much to compensate for the distance, or about the fact that on the boat, binoculars are for hire.
So we have made a nodding acquaintance, this holy place and I, and my memories will endure longer than those few notes that I jotted down; but now comes the point that women readers and I must part, because what is below is information about how to get to stay on Mount Athos, and, well, you know the rules.
She refused to go to Stavrovouni so sat on me and wouldnot get up untill we managed to make her face the direction of the village.
