Black Angels of Athos

By Michael Choukas

PRESERVED against vital change by the salt of ancient religious tradition, there exist within the modern world various communities which still live the authentic life of dead centuries. Of such none has been more remarkable, more continuous, and more rich in sociological interest than the celibate medieval community of Mt. Athos. Its millennial resistance to the forces of changing civilizations has led various writers to give an account of it, but no study has heretofore been made which attempts a sociological analysis of its organization and of the forces at work within it. Mr. Choukas has essayed this task. He possessed the initial combination of qualities prerequisite for the undertaking. Greek by origin and competent in the language, sympathetic in approach, discerning, sociologically trained, he equipped himself for the task by residence on the Holy Mountain. We may be grateful that before the now manifest forces of disintegration have undermined this most stubborn stronghold of an ancient order we can look on the picture he presents to us of its daily manner of life, of the relation between ideal and practice, of the problems of its celibate segregation, of the forces and schisms within it, of the impacts from without, and of the spirit in which it responds.

What is perhaps most significant to the sociologist in the whole picture is the manner in which this monastic society is organized to maintain its solidarity and its tradition in face of all the impulses of human beings which were against it. ...As we read Mr. Choukas’ account we pass from the external scene of peaceful retreats on austere heights to the more intimate view of an obdurate and dubious struggle waged within themselves by men of simple childlike minds, oblivious, it may be, of the real issues of this age-old fight which they think of as that between “the flesh” and “the spirit,”...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barakaldo Books
• Release date: Jun 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781839748356

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS 1

DEDICATION 5

FOREWORD 6

PREFACE 7

ILLUSTRATIONS 12

Part One—INTRODUCTION 13

I—PROLOGUE 13

II—THE FIRST 1000 YEARS 19

HERMITS 19

CENOBITES 23

REBELS 32

Part Two—DESCRIPTION 40

III—THE MONKS 40

RECRUITS 40

DIVORCED FROM THE WORLD 53

BROTHERS DIVIDED 57

RITES AND RIGHTS 61

IV—SERVANTS OF GOD: CARE OF THE SOUL 64

LISTEN TO THE LAMBS.... 64

FASTING AND FEASTING 68

RELICS 71

V—THEOCRACY 79

CENTRAL ADMINISTRATION 79

LOCAL ADMINISTRATION 88

VI—WORK AND WEALTH: THE CARE OF THE BODY 96

FOOD, CLOTHING, AND SHELTER 96

WAYS AND MEANS 101

WORK AND REWARD 106

HEALTH 115

Part Three—INTERPRETATION 120

VII—THE FOUNT OF ATHONITE IDEALISM 120

MONASTIC IDEAS AMONG PRE-CHRISTIAN PEOPLES 120

MONASTICISM AND THE CHRISTIANS 125

THE MONASTIC IDEAL 129

VIII—THE POWER OF TRADITION 134

CONDUCT OF A MONK 134

DEVICES SUPPORTING UNIFORMITY 141

CONDITIONS FAVORING UNIFORMITY 147

THE PRODUCTS 151

IX—THE BREAKDOWN OF TRADITION 159

ATHOS AND THE OUTSIDE WORLD 159

THE IMPACT 164

THE TREND OF ATHONITE LIFE 171

X—A WORLD GROWN OLD—AND LESS WISE 176

REACHING FOR HEAVEN 176

BY-PRODUCTS 179

XI—EPILOGUE 186

THE COMING CATACLYSM 186

APPENDIX—BIBLIOGRAPHY 197

LIST OF WORKS CONSULTED 197

VITA 200

BLACK ANGELS OF ATHOS

BY

MICHAEL CHOUKAS

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DEDICATION

To the Memory of

LIEUTENANT FRED DEMERRITTE BARKER, A.R.C.

killed at Fleuville, France

October 14, 1918

FOREWORD

PRESERVED against vital change by the salt of ancient religious tradition, there exist within the modern world various communities which still live the authentic life of dead centuries. Of such none has been more remarkable, more continuous, and more rich in sociological interest than the celibate medieval community of Mt. Athos. Its millennial resistance to the forces of changing civilizations has led various writers to give an account of it, but no study has heretofore been made which attempts a sociological analysis of its organization and of the forces at work within it. Mr. Choukas has essayed this task. He possessed the initial combination of qualities prerequisite for the undertaking. Greek by origin and competent in the language, sympathetic in approach, discerning, sociologically trained, he equipped himself for the task by residence on the Holy Mountain. We may be grateful that before the now manifest forces of disintegration have undermined this most stubborn stronghold of an ancient order we can look on the picture he presents to us of its daily manner of life, of the relation between ideal and practice, of the problems of its celibate segregation, of the forces and schisms within it, of the impacts from without, and of the spirit in which it responds.

What is perhaps most significant to the sociologist in the whole picture is the manner in which this monastic society is organized to maintain its solidarity and its tradition in face of all the impulses of human beings which were against it. The thousand years of Athos have been a thousand years of conflict between human nature and monastic ideal. The conflict has been complicated by the opposing conceptions of the kind of institutional order best adapted to further the avowed ideal. On Mt. Athos a simple ascetic religious faith has sought embodiment simultaneously in the communistic way of life, that of the cenobites, and in a more individualistic way, that of the idiorrhythmic houses, with the little hermit huts representing the extreme end of the scale. Extreme simplicity of objective on the one hand, conflict-breeding diversity of means on the other. As we read Mr. Choukas’ account we pass from the external scene of peaceful retreats on austere heights to the more intimate view of an obdurate and dubious struggle waged within themselves by men of simple childlike minds, oblivious, it may be, of the real issues of this age-old fight which they think of as that between the flesh and the spirit, but witnessing by a thousand years of endurance to the fact of that eternal dichotomy which men forever feel but never understand.

R. M. MACIVER.

PREFACE

THIS book does not attempt to trace the long and fascinating history of the monastic community of Mount Athos. Nor does it purport to be an exhaustive treatise on the valuable treasures of both art and religion found in the Athonite libraries and churches. The present volume is a sociological study of the Holy Mountain (as Athos is commonly known throughout the Near East) and has resulted out of my conviction that such a study is not only desirable but imperative at the present time.

It is desirable because of the pathetic lack of understanding evinced by notable writers and scholars of the West in their treatment of Eastern monasticism in general and the Athonite monks in particular. No less an authority on monasticism than Montalembert{1} tells us that While the monks of the West under the vivifying influence of the Roman See, strove victoriously against the corruption of the ancient world, converted and civilized barbarous nations, transformed and purified the new elements, preserved the treasures of ancient literature, and maintained the traditions of all the secret and profane sciences, the monks of the East sank gradually into nothingness.....They could neither renovate the society which surrounded them, nor take possession of the pagan nations which snatched away every day some new fragment of the empire.....They have saved nothing, regenerated nothing, elevated nothing.....They ended, like all the clergy of the East, by becoming slaves of Islamism and accomplices of schism. According to Harnack{2}Greek monasticism has seldom succeeded in giving itself up to purposed toil in the service of the Church or of humanity. The Greek monks—of course with venerable exceptions—today as a thousand years ago, live ‘in silent contemplation and blissful ignorance,’ and while monasticism in the West "had a real history....and made history that in the East maintained its independence at the cost of stagnation. Fortescue{3} agrees fully with Harnack, for he believes that an Orthodox monastery today is the most perfect relic of the 4th century left in the world. As for the monks of Athos, they seem to spend a good deal of time rowing boats! Even Workman,{4} who is well aware of the danger of mistaking extremists for representative men, and who avers rather justifyingly that writers not a few have considered Eastern monasticism as if it were wholly made up of fanatics or irregulars with a sprinkling of more ordered communities, falls into that very same trap by comparing a St. Gregory or a St. Bernard with one of the most fanatical men Eastern monasticism ever produced, Symeon Stylites, whose claim to glory was, in Workman’s own words, that he lived for nearly half a century on a lofty column, and died without the sin of descending. No less mystifying is Workman’s use of the term schismatical" with reference to the settlements on Mount Athos. How valid—or invalid—are these and other similar beliefs, will appear in the pages to come, though only incidentally. For, my chief aim in making this investigation was not to expose error so much as to discover truth.

The study is imperative for a different reason. Mount Athos has been studied voluminously. The general features of its history have been recorded in several languages by a number of scholars—though much disagreement exists chiefly because of the nationalistic leanings of the various writers. Its paintings and architecture have been subjected to a scholarly scrutiny. No attempt, however, has ever been made before to consider this theocratic community from a sociological point of view. And the opportunity to do so may not remain with us for long. For, as we shall see in later pages, the disintegrating forces that play upon the Athonite community are getting stronger and stronger, and the medieval aspects that it has been able to preserve up till the present may not survive for long.

That the loss will be irreparable is beyond doubt. The monks of Athos have preserved for us a living sample of medieval civilization. Not perfect, of course, but sufficiently representative of its prototype in its essential and larger aspects to lead us to a better understanding of human life in that period. More specifically, a study of this monastic community, where all the various forms of expression that monasticism assumed survive today, may throw further light on the motives and social forces that caused men to desert normal social life for the more sheltered one of the cave and cloister. And finally, Athos as it stands today, a miniature, independent, compact world, offers itself as an ideal unit of study to sociology. Its more or less simple social structure, its limited and interrelated life activities; its single and well-defined philosophy of life; in short, its general character, are more easily submitted to sociological investigation and scrutiny than similar aspects of the much broader, more incoherent, more variegated outside world. It is a commonplace among social scientists to bewail the lack of social laboratories. The monks of Athos have unwittingly been building one for the last thousand years.

As a sociological study this book’s chief aim is to bring out into full relief the significant features of the community, and through their correlation to present a clear picture of the entire community functioning as a living, systematic entity. Emphasis thus will be laid on the present rather than the past, or future. And topics such as, the reasons that force men in the twentieth century to submit themselves to a living death, as one of the monks put it; the activities that these men participate in once they have been accepted by the community as bona fide members; the ideals underlying the structure of the community; the forces that tend to preserve the established ways of life; the forces that introduce new ways and are responsible for change; the present position of the community in relation to the world outside; these will be given ample treatment.

To present this general picture of the community, the book has been divided into three parts. A chapter on the historical background of Mount Athos has been included in the first, the introductory part. The purpose of this chapter is to give the reader a general idea of the history of the community, and more particularly, an understanding of the gradual rise within the community of the various form of monastic life found on Athos today. This evolutionary development of Athonite life has been lamentably neglected by writers in the past. Unless, however, it is fully grasped and appreciated, contemporary conditions on the mountain become almost unintelligible. To show, then, how the eremitical type of life gave way to the cenobitic, and was finally absorbed by it administratively; how the cenobitic in turn was unable to prevent the idiorrhythmic form from rising and for a time threatening to submerge the other forms; and to bring into sharp relief the social conditions that made possible this development is the chief purpose of this chapter. The inevitable conclusion derived from it is, that social life, even in a small, exclusive, theocratic society, does not remain static, but keeps on evolving.

The second part of the book is mainly descriptive. In Chapter III the motives and social forces that send men to this community today are dealt with in detail; also the composition of the monastic population and its distribution within the community. The former enables one to understand the reasons for the great deviation observed today on Athos from the traditional way of monastic life; the latter sheds some light on the contemporary conflicts and disturbances on the mountain. Chapters IV, V, and VI are devoted entirely to the three main activities of the monks: the religious, political, and economic respectively. In all three emphasis is laid on description of present-day conditions, and only minor excursions into history, or projections into the future are attempted for the purpose of a fuller understanding. These activities are treated in the order mentioned in accordance with the monastic scheme of values which place activities related to the spiritual world—the religious—at the highest point; those related to the physical—the economic—at the lowest; and those of a purely social nature—the administrative, between. (This distinction is dealt with in Chapter VIII.) The second part then is chiefly of a descriptive nature, aiming to give the general outline of the outer aspect of the social structure.

Getting at the inner quality or spirit{5} of the community, is the aim of part three. Chapter VII is devoted to the origin and nature of the ideals that have controlled monastic life in the community from the time of its inception. Without knowledge of these ideals and principles, the behavior of the monks is meaningless. Pursuing this inner quality, Chapter VIII considers the forces that throughout the ages have held the social structure together, and have crystallized themselves into the tradition of the mountain. These forces derive their power from the ideals dealt with in the previous chapter, and aim at the production of the ideal monk. The cenobite comes closer to this ideal type. They are further responsible for the conservative spirit and stability of the community. Chapter IX, on the other hand, is an attempt to discover and describe the forces that tend to the opposite direction, namely, deviation from the ideal and traditional type of behavior. They are responsible for the instability of the social system, and to that extent provide the impetus for change and evolution. The idiorrhythmic monk may be considered a product of such tendencies.

Finally in Chapter X, the particular distinctions between monks and their activities and attitudes are pushed into the background and instead attention is focused on the community as a whole once more. The validity of the monastic ideal is considered in terms of contemporary standards and principles. Also an attempt is made to locate the position of this community in relation to the outside world and determine its contributions. Finally, this evaluation, in conjunction with the description and analysis attempted in previous chapters, serve as the basis upon which a prediction as to the future of this community is attempted.

In fine, I hope with modest expectations that the book will serve the following purposes: first, to establish the following sociological principles:

That Man’s struggle both for survival and the expression of his inherent potentialities consists of an attempt to establish relations with three actual or assumed realities; the material world, the social world, and the supernatural.

That culture has originally sprung out of this attempt and today serves as a means of adaptation to this threefold world of reality. As such, when analyzed and studied, it must fall into three general categories, the material, the social, and the supernatural. (Part II, Chapters IV, V and VI illustrate this principle.)

That Man’s chief problems have been the result of his inability to adjust himself evenly to these three phases of life. (In fact, no society we know of has ever been able to arrive at the proper balance. Instead, what characterizes the civilizations of the past is the emphasis laid upon one or another of these three phases. In the case of the Mount Athos monks, the supernatural has by far overshadowed the other two. Today in our society adaptation to the material world has greatly outdistanced that to the other two, with the supernatural apparently neglected more and more.)

That Man’s failure to arrive at a properly balanced social order and culture is responsible for the dynamic aspect of all social life, for the breakdown of old systems as well as the building up of new ones.

Second, to show by a recourse to facts that even a monastic community, though to a large extent a negation of normal social intercourse, is nevertheless subject to those forces that spring from human interaction.

Third, to help us redefine the field of sociological method, which in my mind should not be restricted to relations between individuals belonging to the same group—family, neighborhood, church, even nation—and their conflicts, maladjustments and readjustments, in which field other sciences may enter and claim priority, or at least participation; but instead should be enlarged to include human mass movements; whole cultures and civilizations, if manageable; and the relations of these various social units. Comparisons and contrasts between such groups and social systems may ultimately lead us to a scientific understanding of human Society. This is very closely related to the last, and fourth, which is:

To illustrate that a community study should not be limited to a mere survey of the external aspects which in themselves have no meaning; but in addition should aim to reach its inner spirit, its meaning which alone makes the former intelligible. I am in full sympathy with the point of view expressed by Professor MacIver when he states: I hold that any science which makes the life of man its province must use the tools of the artist as well as those generally regarded as proper to the scientists.{6} The present volume is constructed on that proposition. To what extent it has succeeded in satisfying the requirements arising from it is left for the reader to judge.

My task of bringing this difficult venture to completion was greatly lightened by the invaluable assistance and counsel of numerous persons both here and abroad. To all these I am deeply indebted. More particularly, however, I wish to extend my grateful thanks to Professors Robert M. MacIver, Frank A. Ross, Alvin A. Tenney, and William L. Westermann of Columbia University for their constructive criticism and suggestions; to my colleagues in the Department of Sociology at Dartmouth College, and especially Professor McQuilkin DeGrange, for their sympathy, interest, and valuable advice; to the Baker Library of Dartmouth College for the generous use of its facilities; to Professor Charles D. Adams, the Archbishop Athenagoras, Dr. Demetrius Callimachus, General Stylianos Gonatas, and Mr. Alec Fassel for their kind assistance; to Messrs. Francis Horn, Ford Sayre, and George Sayre for the use of pictures taken by them during their stay on Athos; to Mr. and Mrs. John Hooper, and Miss Ruth Hard, for their careful reading and editing of the manuscript; and to my wife Gertrude who typed the entire manuscript and in general labored with me over it.

M. C.

Hanover, N. H.,

October, 1934.

ILLUSTRATIONS

END OF A DAY’S SHOPPING

DIONYSIOU

THEY RULE AT KARAKALLOU

THE COMMON MEAL AT THE CENOBIUM

FRESCO ON WALL OF REFECTORY

COURTYARD AT THE OLD LAVRA

GREGORIOU

Part One—INTRODUCTION

I—PROLOGUE

ON the eve of my departure for Athos, Nicholas Kliris, my host in Athens, urged me at the dinner table to laugh as heartily as I could for the rest of the evening, because you’re going to visit a place where a batch of humanity has lost its sense of humor for the last thousand years.

This was not the strongest indictment against Athos that I had heard or read before my arrival. While, on the other hand, I had been familiar with equally extravagant laudations coming chiefly from authors who had donned the monastic garb, or foreign travellers who had been fascinated by alluring appearances. And what struck me as most significant was the fact that both criticism and praise were characterized by severity and poignancy. Laudations reached the sky; condemnations went the other way, and just as far.

This peculiar phenomenon is clear to me now—after a summer’s stay on the mountain. It reflects the very nature of Athos, a world of extremes. For in this community, man has not only lost his sense of humor, but also his balance and sense of proportion. To a man from our world (women are not permitted to set foot on the Athonite land, nor female animals their hoofs) Athos is full of surprises and the unusual. The exotic prevails, and what we may consider normal is either totally absent or tabooed. The rational has blended with the irrational; the old with the new. And the product is baffling at first, though fascinating.

Sitting on the verandas and kiosks in the evening, I listened to old monks narrate as incontestable facts to younger monks the legends and miracles of long ago; also explain the workings of modern science in terms of devils and spirits. I talked with policemen who had been starved intellectually and were forced for the lack of other reading to peruse Ecclesiastical histories. And in the small hotel at Karyes, I drank with drunken workmen who gave vent to their feelings by singing hymns because no popular airs are permitted to pollute the atmosphere of the place.

Before long, I was convinced that the world of myth and legend is not dead. That though it has been shrinking more and more as the universe expanded in the minds of man, and science proved to be a better tool than magic, even in this twentieth century, and in the midst of our modern, civilized communities are still to be found replicas of prescientific cultures that have come down to us almost unimpaired and untouched by our material and nonmaterial advances. Strong and vigorous, apparently immortal, they stand today as challengers of our modern ways of thought and action, and incidentally present themselves as mirrors of a past that easily incites sympathy and wonder, sometimes contempt, and frequently fear lest mankind revert to such unenlightened conditions once again.

From the Chalcidike region in Greece, on the northern shores of the Aegean Sea, three arms stretch southward, the easternmost being Mount Athos, a monastic community with more than a thousand years of turbulent life behind it, yet stubbornly resisting all change; proudly proclaiming to the world that it desires to remain strictly medieval in all respects. On this promontory thirty miles long, which begins at the isthmus of Xerxes,{7} and rising in undulations, ends abruptly after it reaches the height of 6,000 feet, approximately five thousand monks today live, work and worship, and seemingly aspire to the same goal as their brethren of former times. Here the monks have built their twenty monasteries on precipitous rocks by the blue Aegean Sea, or on commanding heights in the interior; they have studded the woody declivities of the promontory with their cottages (kellia), and groups of such cottages (sketae); and some of them, great imitators of the ascetics of yore, have declined such luxurious habitation for the reclusive and most inaccessible caves in the precipitous rocks of the shore and the mountain peaks.

The natural beauty of the Holy Mountain, as the promontory has been known since the tenth century, has attracted the effusive praises of its visitors. H. F. Tozer, for instance, considers the mountain itself from its height and solitary position, its conical form and delicate colour, a most impressive mountain. It rises several thousand feet above the region of firs in a steep mass of white marble, which, from exposure to the atmosphere, assumes a faint, tender tint of grey, of the strange beauty of which some idea may be formed by those who have seen the dolomite peaks of the Tyrol.{8} And he relates that he has seen its pyramidal outline from the plains of Troy, nearly a hundred miles away. A. Riley had some ecstatic moments while describing the ....pretty little glens and valleys and hill slopes, all covered with arbutus and olives and vines and forest trees, enlivened by the charming little monastic retreats dotted over the smiling landscape, white and trim, with their picturesque verandas and tiny chapels with domes of rough-hewn stones.{9} R. Curzon had an eye for colour: Our road lay through some of the most beautiful scenery imaginable. The dark blue sea was on my right at about two miles distance; the rocky path over which I passed was of white alabaster with brown and yellow veins; odoriferous evergreen shrubs were all around me; and on my left were the lofty hills covered with a dense forest of gigantic trees which extended to the base of the great white marble peak of the mountain.{10} No visitor can remain immune to the natural charm of this monastic promontory. Extending for approximately thirty miles, in no place wider than five, and in some only two, surrounded by the clear blue Aegean and its peak pointing directly to the Mediterranean sky, it leaves an indelible impression on the memory. Nor is the whole more impressive and attractive than its individual parts. Small verdant valleys are enclosed by woody hills, cultivated slopes of vine and olive decorate its sides; and abysmal ravines run from the top down to the sea-beaten shores. Murmuring springs make their way through thick vegetation emptying themselves into small, tame creeks in the summer, and formidable cataracts in the winter. Even the white serpentine paths that join one monastery with another seem to have a higher aesthetic value than practical, as the whiteness of their cobblestones blends with the green of the abundant vegetation that surrounds them, and the red or yellow tops of the monasteries and cottages. Game abounds; and troops of nightingales, swallows, and blackbirds add their liquid tones to the charm of the place, ignorant of the fact that they have been violating one of the oldest laws of the community, that forbidding entrance to the female species!

Such in brief is the natural environment of Mount Athos, and into this beauty of nature monastic life has injected a charm of its own. The charm of simplicity, of faith, of irrationality. A charm that might become a nightmare to an individual from our civilization if he had to submit himself to it for a longer period of time than a temporary visit. For the human atmosphere on Mount Athos has remained to this day largely medieval in its fundamental aspects. The saints and great hermits of the past control a substantial part of the monks’ daily activities; while Satan with his innumerable host is still actively indulging in his perennial game of temptation. Nor is religion the only bond that ties present-day Athos to the past. The names of Byzantine Emperors still resound in the churches, some of which the Emperors themselves had built. Their chrysobulls (decrees) may be seen in the files of the library of each monastery. Their grants of land and money are still a source of profit to the monasteries. The present Constitution is founded on the principles emanating from the typika (charters) of Emperors, the firmans (decrees) of Sultans, and the sigillia (edicts) of Patriarchs. The buildings themselves still bear in their general structural outline signs of gigantic and destructive struggles of a turbulent past. Arab pirates, Crusaders, Franks, and Catalans have all stopped here and fought, attracted by the precious treasures of the monasteries.

In surviving, Mount Athos has preserved to the world a living sample of an old civilization, even older than the medieval. For on those precipitous, barren rocks that serve as the base of the great peak, life today is depicted by the few hundred hermits as in the time of Anthony and the other originators of monasticism. Nitria and the Egyptian desert are reproduced, not to a full extent perhaps, but sufficiently close to give modern man an idea of the perversity of the human mind; the strength of human character; and the marvellous resistance of the human body to the various forces of nature.

And yet, this monastic community, in spite of its strong conservatism and its tenacity to the past, mainly perhaps because of the constant attacks from the outside and more or less frequent disturbances within, moved on. Life could not remain static, even on the Holy Mountain. And at the present time Mount Athos shelters all the various forms of monastic life that history has developed. Beginning with the eremitical, sometime in the 9th century, monastic life on Athos soon reached the cenobitic form, which was supreme until the appearance in the 15th century of an entirely new type exclusively developed on Mount Athos—the