Agiou Pavlou Monastery
Agiou Pavlou Monastery
The Holy Monastery of Saint Paul, the southernmost monastery on the west coast of the peninsula, is located on a small rock plateau, between two streams, at the western foothills of Mount Athos, between Nea Skitis and the Dionysios Monastery, at an altitude of 140 m.
It occupies the fourteenth place in the hierarchy of the twenty monasteries of Mount Athos.
History
Tradition places its foundation in the middle of the 9th century, confusing as founders two different persons, the holy Paul, said to be the son of the emperor Michael Ragaves (811–812), who perhaps became a monk in a hermitage in the area, and Paul of Xiropotamenos, contemporary of Athanasios the Athonite. The founder seems to be Pavlos the Xiropotaminos, who initially founded the monastery of Xiropotamos near the port of Daphne. He himself, shortly before the end of his life, erected a new monastery, today's Agios Pavlos, in its current location, but with the name "Xiropotamou". Initially, it was not important, which is why it is not mentioned in the Second Standard of 1046. The first time it appears officially with its current name is in a document of 1071, where someone signs as a representative of the monastery "... Michael the monk ἐκ τοῦ Saint Paul's Monastery", which is however dedicated to Saint George. The name of the monastery as Agios Pavlos was finally imposed in 1108.
In 1259 it appears on a gold bullion of the emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos, with which its estates are recognized. It is now dedicated to Christ the Savior and occupies the position of a small monastery in the hierarchy of Mount Athos.
At the beginning of the 14th century it was destroyed after the Catalan raids (1303–1309). It was demoted to Kelli, i.e. an accessory, and was patronized by the monastery of Xiropotamos, which was a sister monastery from the time of their foundation. It was reaffirmed as a sovereign monastery in 1365. Many emperors of Byzantium, rulers of the Danube regions and, later, tsars of Russia contributed to its reconstruction. After the middle of the 14th century, it was bought by two Serbian lords and then monks, Gerasimos Radonia, a member of the Vragovic family, and Antonios Pagasis. With hard personal work, they rebuilt it and emerged as its new builders. They were helped by Antony's brother, Nikolaos Pagasis Balduinos, by Radoslav Sabia (1405), by John VII Paleologos, despot of Thessaloniki (1406), by John VIII Paleologos (1437) and by the Serbian rulers George Vragovic Smenderovac (1416) and his son Lazarus (1429). The new builders Gerasimos and Antonios managed to recognize it as a monastery: it is mentioned in the Third Standard of Manuel II (1394) and occupies the eighteenth place among 25 monasteries. The demarcation issues of its area, which arose at the end of the 14th century, after the foundation of the neighboring Dionysiou monastery, were settled in 1401.
As independent from the Xiropotamou monastery, it appears for the first time in a document of the patriarch Matthaios in 1404. The signatures of the abbot are in Serbian script. Later, a bilingual seal was used, which was maintained for many years. In 1813 Greek was the only language left.
Among the Serbian lords, the ruler Georgios Vragovic (1428–1456) stands out, who together with his sons Stefanos and Grigorios financed the construction of a larger cathedral in honor of Saint George, named after its founder. In particular, Bragovic's daughter Mara, wife of Sultan Murat II (1421–1451) and stepmother of Muhammad II the Conqueror, with her rich donations in sums of money and also in estates, ensured that the monastery flourished once again . After the death of Murat II (1451), Mara first returned to the despotate and then, from 1457, she settled in her estate in Jezevo, in the area west of the Strymons river, which she had inherited from Mohammed II. From there, for three whole decades, she took special care of her favorite monasteries, Chilandariou and Agios Pavlos, considering herself a builder.
After all, Mara decided to deliver the "Gifts of the Magi", which had fallen into the hands of the Ottomans after the fall of Constantinople, to the monastery of Saint Paul. She disembarked on the shore and midway she heard a voice commanding her to turn back. To this day, a chapel is preserved at this point, which reminds of the memorable visit of a woman to Mount Athos. Archimandrite Antoninos Kapustin (1817–1894) described the visit in detail.
Stephen the Great, ruler of Moldavia (1457–1504) also belongs to the great benefactors of the monastery. The prosperity of the monastery of Saint Paul continued in the 16th century with the financial support and influence of the descendants of the Serbian Bragovic dynasty. The voivode Neagos Vasaravas (1512–1521) and his son Theodosios († 1522) financed in 1522 the fortified tower at the top of the monastery complex, next to the walls.
The positive attitude of the Serbs goes back to the 17th century. Their help, constantly decreasing, finally stopped in 1710, when the majority, now Greek, took over the administration. During the period 1666–1671 the monks numbered 200.
Years of great economic crisis followed, mainly due to the tax of the Turkish conquerors. Thanks to the constant efforts of the custodian Gregory and the fundraisers he organized in the 18th century in Eastern Europe, respectable sums of money were collected. At the end of the same century, however, he found himself again in a difficult financial position due to debts. At the beginning of the 19th century, another monk, Anthimos Komnenos from Silyvria, a friend of the ecumenical patriarch Gregory V, supported the renovation of the monastery with land donations. In 1815 the catholicon was founded, while in 1820 the building complex was expanded with new wings.
The monastery passed a great test during the years of the Greek Revolution. It was completely destroyed and deserted due to repeated Turkish raids. It was rebuilt thanks to the donations of Tsars Alexander I and Nicholas I. But the monks who married her were almost exclusively Greek.
In 1844, with the care and assistance of Sofronios Kalligas, the catholicon was completed. The following year, building renovations began, while the northwest and west wings were then built.
Everything that was built in the following years was destroyed at the beginning of the 20th century, when the monastery suffered three huge disasters. In 1902 a fire destroyed half of its buildings, in 1905 it suffered serious damage from an earthquake, and in 1911 a great flood completed the destruction. The reconstruction of the buildings was done this time with modern technological means and building materials for the time. It is the only monastery that was built with cement and has railings and decorative elements made of cast iron.
The walls of the catholicon, which is dedicated to the Intercession of the Lord, are not frescoed, but covered with marble. The iconostasis of the church (1900) is also made of marble, which is why it withstood the fire of 1902.
Only a small part of the original frescoes, dating back to the year 1447, is preserved from the old Bragovic Catholicos, which was demolished in 1839. In the library, a remnant of a fresco with the face of Saint Athanasios is kept.
The monastery of Agios Pavlos reopened as a synovium from 1839 with the seal of the ecumenical patriarch Gregory VI and with Archimandrite Stefanos Dionysiatis as the first abbot of the synovium. Today, 35 monks reside in it and 60 in its accessories. The abbot is Archimandrite Parthenios.
The monastery of Agios Pavlos has two hermitages, the Sheki of the Entrance of the Virgin (Nea Skiti) and the Sheki of Agios Dimitrios (Lakkoskiti). The historic cave of Agios Pavlos also belongs to it. Among its surrounding buildings is the "Pilgrim of Maros", which is connected with the visit of the daughter of the Serbian ruler Bragovic to Mount Oros in order to deliver the "Gifts of the Magi" to the monastery.
Museum-Sacristy
Of the relics kept in the Vault of the Agios Pavlos monastery, the most memorable are:
a) The glass delta with a miniature representation of Deesis. In the center is Christ as Pantocrator, holding in his left hand the globe of the Earth. On either side of the central figure are the Virgin and John the Forerunner. In the upper part of the performance, the archangels Michael and Gabriel are depicted. In the frame that surrounds the central representation, small cavities are opened, where the images of the wider group of apostles were pasted. Today only five survive.
b) The diptych, in which cavities are opened in its two wooden panels where a total of 26 miniatures are placed with representations of the Twelve, the symbols of the Evangelists and other holy figures. The frames of the miniatures are decorated with pearls.
c) The cross of the 13th century. In the center and on its antennae are placed miniatures painted on membrane. On its metal base, which does not belong to the original cross, it bears two rows of Quranic sayings in the Arabic language.
Library-Archives
The Archive of the monastery of Agios Pavlos shows large gaps in its assumptions.
No original document has survived from the time of its foundation, which directly concerns the monastery. For the period up to 1383/1384, when it was rebuilt by the two Serbs, Antonios Pagasis and Gerasimos Radonias, only four documents survive, and in fact copies. However, from the end of the 14th century and the following 100 years, thirty documents have survived, most of them originals.
Alongside the Greek ones, seventeen Serbian documents from the 15th century, and two from the 16th and 17th, one for each century, are currently preserved in the Archive. From the 16th century, several Turkish ones have been preserved. From the 18th century, about fifty documents have been preserved, but they concern the second half of the century.
Several times there are reports of loss of documents, which today is not known if and where they are saved. A typical case is the chrysobulus of John VIII Palaiologos for the Metochi of Lemnos, issued in 1436. Its contents are known from a 17th century copy published in 1893 by Zacharias von Lingenthal (see Bibliography ). In the newest archive of the monastery there is a modern typed and certified copy dated 10.2.1943, which is however not known on the basis of which document it was drawn up. The Bavarian Academy of Sciences has a photo from the photographic archive of Porphyry Uspensky, who had seen the document during his visit to the monastery in the second half of the 19th century.
The absence of old codices and the large gaps in the archive are interpreted on the assumption that the material was destroyed in the fire of 1902. Then the monk David lost his life trying to save most of the library.
The "Codex", the book where the acts of the monastery or the oldest documents are registered, is also not preserved. The non-functional codices preserved today in the monastery archive (71, 193, 157) are not older than the end of the 18th century.
Information on classifications is also lacking. An attempt at classification should have been made at the beginning of the 19th century, a time that coincides with the great renovation effort of Archimandrite Anthimos Komnenos, who is considered one of the builders.
In the 1920s, due to the expropriation of estates in favor of refugees, the then librarian Vissarios made a first classification of the newer archive (18th–19th centuries). The documents were classified according to the shares of the monastery and separated into Greek, Romanian and Slavic, in the original or in their translations.
The second major classification was done in the 1950s by the librarian Theodosios. His work formed the basis for the creation of the current Byzantine archive of the monastery, which is the second largest section after the newest one.
The third classification was made by the scientific mission of the Byzantine Research Center of the National Research Foundation in 1980.
56 official Wallachian documents were included in the archive, while a separate archive unit with 12 official documents from the 18th century is included in the post-Byzantine section. The Romanian archive contains 994 documents and has been published in the form of short summaries by Florin Marinescu (see Bibliography). At the beginning of the 20th century the Serbian philologist and politician Ljubomir Stojanović (1860–1930), relying on photographs by the Russian researcher Petro Sevastianov (1811–1867) who had worked in the 19th century in the libraries of Mount Athos, published a first body of Slavic documents. The Turkish archive was classified in the 1980s by Vassilis Dimitriadis and includes 25 files, divided by shares.
Today the Archive includes a) the Byzantine documents up to the 16th century, b) the post-Byzantine ones, arranged mainly by shares and c) the voluminous newer archive.
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In 2017 it was renovated together with the Sacristy and the Iconostasis.
Manuscripts-Codices
For centuries, the Library of the monastery of Agios Pavlos was (together with Chilandariou) one of the most important Serbian and Slavic libraries of Athos. Gradually and until the 18th century, the number of manuscript codices and printed books increased significantly thanks to the donations and copying activities of its monks.
The oldest collection of manuscript codices of the monastery was formed at the same time as its renovation, around 1385. The two Serbian monks Gerasimos Radonia and Antonios Pagasis, who rebuilt the monastery around 1383–1384, donated at the same time many books and sacred utensils for "decency and the decoration of the temple". Antonios Pagasis, its first abbot after the reconstruction, a man of great education, who even translated various works from Greek to Slavonic, significantly increased the contents of the library.
Two Cells within the boundaries of the monastery, Saint Michael and Saint Anne, also contributed to its enrichment. In these, any agricultural work was prohibited so that the monks could devote their time to copying and binding books, making wood carvings or embroidery, etc. Many manuscripts found in the monastery of Saint Paul and in the new Hermitage bear notes of scribes from these two Cells .
At the end of the 15th or the beginning of the 16th century, it was transferred to the monastery of Agios Pavlos from Chilandari for burial, as evidenced by the seals and the inscription on the cover, the Gospel of Miroslav, which was written at the end of the 12th century and is one of the oldest documents that survived in the Slavonic language. This fact confirms that there was a developed bookbinding activity there.
During the 15th century, the monastery of Agios Pavlos had the help of the Serbian rulers. The despot and great writer Stefanos Lazarevic, patron of the arts and culture, was interested in the monastery's library, since a series of books were written by his order.
Archimandrite Leonidas Cavelin believes that the content of the library of Saint Paul increased significantly during the middle of the 15th century from the books of the Resava monastery. Due to the Turkish conquest, some of its monks, who among other things carried with them a large number of manuscripts, sought refuge in the most important Serbian monasteries of Mount Athos, Hilandario and Agios Pavlos.
The wealth and importance of Saint Paul's library is demonstrated by the fact that Arsenios Sukhanov, when he traveled to Mount Athos to collect important liturgical manuscripts at the behest of the Russian patriarch Nikon (1652–1660), took most of them from the library she - the then head of the monastery Akakios was even generously rewarded for the service she offered.
At the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century, the number of Slavic monks began to decrease in relation to the Greeks. In 1717, the fraternity of the monastery, unable to pay the heavy duties, pawned various silver objects, a miter and a padded Gospel. In 1725, when Barski visited it for the first time, he found the monastery poor and the language Serbian. Twenty years later, in 1744, during his second visit, he finds only Greek monks and mentions that on his first visit to Mount Athos, the reading and hymnody and all authority were in Bulgarian. And he observes that "today none of them survives, except for the Slavonic library, where there are many and various books, printed and manuscripts". During this period, a large number of mainly Slavic manuscripts and forms must have been removed from the monastery. As Barski himself informs us about the manuscripts, "the monks who abandoned there began to distribute and sell them in order to eradicate the old Bulgarian glory and memory".
During the years of the Greek Revolution, the library faced the most difficult period of its almost half a millennium of existence. The monks, not having sufficient knowledge of the value and importance of the manuscripts, allowed visitors of various intentions and motives to take the most valuable ones with them.
After 1830, the European parts of Turkey, including Mount Athos, became of interest to many explorers and travelers, both Western European and Russian. The numerous visitors of the period appropriated a large number of books. The manuscripts they removed are unique and can be found in various libraries today. Based on notes in the margin of the codices, many of them, which were older than the 14th century renovation, come from the library of the monastery of Theotokos Mesonisiotissa in Edessa, which was part of the monastery of Saint Paul since 1385.
One of the first travelers of the period, who left written observations about his stay on Mount Athos in 1831, was the English travel writer Robert Curzon, who described the library of Saint Paul as follows:
The library was housed in a small bright arch. The books were clean and lined up on new shelves. There was only one Greek manuscript, a copy of the Gospels, from the 12th or 13th century. The Serbian and Bulgarian manuscripts numbered about 250: of these three were noteworthy.
The first was a manuscript Tetrahedron, in quarter form, written in capitals, 19.5mm high, stump.
The second was also a Gospel, in folio form, with capital letters, with wonderful representations at the beginning of each Gospel, and with a large and magnificent portrait of a patriarch at the end. All stops in the text were marked in gold. Some letters were also written in gold.
The third was also a folio-shaped Gospel, in the Old Bulgarian language. Like the two previous ones and this one in capital letters. This manuscript was filled with miniatures from beginning to end. I have never seen such a book in the East. I almost fell off the steps I had climbed upon discovering such a rare volume.
I saw that these books were taken care of, so I didn't even want to ask if the monks would part with them. In particular, because the community was apparently prosperous and had no need to sell any of its goods. After walking through the monastery with the monks, as I was leaving, the abbot said he would like to give me something as a souvenir of my visit to St. Paul's monastery. A lively conversation of mutual compliments ensued and I said I would like to get a book. "Oh, of course!" he said, "we don't use the old books, and it would be our pleasure if you would accept one."
We went back to the library, and the abbot picked one at random, as if picking a brick or stone from a pile, and showed it to me. Then I said to him, "If you don't care what the book is, and you are so willing to give me one, then let me show you one that I particularly like." And with that said, I downloaded an illustrated Bulgarian gospel in folio format. I couldn't believe I was awake when the abbot put it in my hands. Perhaps the height of my audacity was when I asked if I could buy another one. But he insisted on giving me the other as well. So I got two more copies of the Gospels mentioned above, all three as willing gifts. I felt almost ashamed to accept these last two books, but who could resist, knowing that these books were utterly useless to the monks, and might end up in the markets of Constantinople, Smyrna, Thessalonica, or some neighboring city? However, before I left the monastery, I left some money to calm my conscience.
After Curzon's death, his collection ended up in the British Museum, where it remains today. Among others, there are also two Tetraevangels, one in Bulgarian Slavic, a gift of the Bulgarian Tsar John III Alexander, and one in Serbian Slavic, a gift of the Serbian Metropolitan Jacob, which were written in the monastery of Saint Paul by Kallistos in 1355.
The Slavic historian Viktor Grigorovich (1815–1876) was the first to begin systematic work in the archives and libraries of the monasteries of Mount Athos. In the period 1844–1847 he traveled in the Ottoman Empire, especially in the lands of the Slavic countries, which were still part of it. On these trips he also visited Mount Athos. He stayed at St. Paul's from 1 to 7 November 1844. Compiling a short catalog of the monastery's Slavic books (along with the publication of his two larger works on the archives), he was the first to point out its treasures to the scientific public. Among the 60 or so Slavic manuscripts he collected from his travels, his collection also includes codices from the library of St. Paul's monastery. After his death, part of the collection was given to the Imperial Public Library (founded in 1795 by Catherine the Great) and part to the Russian State Library in Moscow.
Porphyry Ouspensky (1804–1885) visited Mount Athos twice: in 1845/1846 and 1859. On his first trip, he stayed in Saint Paul from 8 to 24 October 1845. There he located the famous Gospel of Radoslav, took 12 cards, which he judged to be the most valuable, and took them with others. These leaves from the Gospel of Radoslav ended up in the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg. The rest of the code was nowhere to be found.
.The National Library of Russia was called the Imperial Public Library from 1795 to 1917, the Russian Public Library from 1917 to 1925, and the State Public Library from 1925 to 1992 (Leningrad State Public Library 1925 to 1932 and Salz State Public Library tikof- Stsedrin then).
Archimandrite Antoninus (Andrei Ivanovich) Kapustin (1817–1894) was in the monastery on August 25, 1859 and left a very interesting testimony, which he published in a journal of the Kiev Theological Academy (see Bibliography). In addition to the description of the monastery complex, the numerous testimonies and historical data he recorded, he was the first to inform the wider scientific public in detail about the contents of the monastery library. After reviewing and summarizing the entire collection, he selected the most important and beautiful books and emphasized them. It is important to emphasize that, as he says, he "examined, moved and even arranged all the Slavic books in the library", while emphasizing that the "Greek half of them", i.e. the remaining manuscripts, is particularly poor. The fact that he stayed in the monastery for only one day certainly largely determined the scope of his work.
In almost the same period, Archimandrite Leonidas Cavelin (1822–1891) visited Athos and made the most complete description of the biblical collection of Saint Paul. He first published his work in Russia in 1875 and then, in a Serbian translation, in 1877 in Serbia (see Bibliography). Cavelin identified a list of Slavic books, compiled by a "hard-working Russian", whose name he does not mention. The catalog contained 180 manuscripts and 45 forms. Of the 180 manuscripts, 11 were written on parchment and 169 on paper.
At the end of the 19th century, Alexei Afanasyevich Dmitriyevsky, a Russian Byzantine scholar and professor at the Kiev Theological Academy (1856–1929), visited Athos. He also passed through the monastery of Saint Paul, and so in his collection, which now belongs to the National Library of Russia, there are also books from this monastery.
In 1902, a great fire completely destroyed one of the most important Slavic libraries on Mount Athos. Today there is no Slavic manuscript in the monastery. Manuscripts or smaller parts of them, which once belonged to the monastery, have of course been saved, but they remain scattered in the libraries of Moscow, St. Petersburg, London, Paris, Vienna and Berlin.
The monk of the monastery, Kosmas Vlachos, reported in 1903 that its library contained 94 Greek manuscripts, of which the five parchments dated from the 9th to the 13th century, while the remaining parchments, from the 14th to the 18th century, information that fits with the count of Spyridon Lambros.
The Library, which includes 494 manuscripts, is currently housed on a floor of the southwest wing of the monastery and is considered very well organized, since its equipment was completely renovated in 2017. Its meticulous organization is the work of the learned monk Theodosios Agiopavlitis, author of the work The Lost Treasure, where the importance of frequent divine Metalipse is emphasized.
It is worth noting that the monastery's collection of musical manuscripts is one of the largest on Mount Athos with 117 manuscripts and that in the Greek manuscript collection no work or text by a classical author or author of late antiquity can be found.
The most important of the manuscripts of the monastery is the parchment Codex 2. It is dated to the 10th or 11th century. In its extant part it contains the Acts of the Apostles with side-page commentaries.
Also worth mentioning is Code 456, the only manuscript of the monastery written in the Cyrillic alphabet. It is a Gospel with 304 cardboard leaves decorated with elaborate titles and protograms, as well as three surviving full-page miniatures of the Evangelists Matthew, Mark and Luke.
Of the musical manuscripts, Codex 146 stands out. It is dated 1758 and contains the Akathistos Hymn and Kratmatarius. It is the work of the scribe Theodosios of Chios, hierodeacon and cantor of Smyrna.
Printed Books
Thomas Papadopoulos in the Libraries of Mount Athos (p. 3) mentions that the first Greek edition he found in the monastery of Agios Pavlos dates back to 1488. It is the Grammar of Manuel Chrysoloras Questions. Into how many are divided the twenty-four letters, which are also called elements, printed in Venice per Peregrinum Bononiensem (cf. also Pantokratoros monastery). The most chronologically next publication in the collection is a Monthly for the month of September, printed in Venice in 1555 by Cristoforo Zanetti. The printed works of the collection printed until the end of the 16th century are exclusively liturgical: 1557 (February Month), 1558 (June Masses, July Masses), 1559 (Triod), 1565 (Triod), 1588 (Gospel), 1592 (Month June and July), 1595 (Month of September and December), 1599 (Month of February and Gospel). Also, the production in the first half of the 17th century is represented in the monastery library exclusively with liturgical books. An exception is a copy from 1639 that contains the Synaxarium of Nikiforos Kallistos Xanthopoulos, edited by Matthaios Kigalas and printed by Ioannis Iulianos.
Today the collection of printed books of the monastery of Agios Pavlos includes approximately 20,000 copies, mostly publications after 1900.
Source https://www.aboutlibraries.gr/libraries/handle/20.500.12777/lib_114
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english monk
I read there is an English monk at Agiou Pavlou monastery. Anyone know how can I reach him>
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Evdokimos
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