Iviron Monastery

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Monastery of Iveron

The Monastery of Iveron, Iberon or Iviron (Georgian: ქართველთა მონასტერი, romanized: kartvelta monast'eri; Greek: Μονή Ιβήρων) is located on the north-eastern coast of the Athonian peninsula, built on a small cove at the mouth of a large stream and relatively close to the monasteries of Karakallos and Filotheou.

The monastery ranks third in the hierarchy of the twenty monasteries of Mount Athos.

History

The Iberians were the first foreigners to organize a monastic institution on Mount Athos. They first appeared on Athos during the reign of Nikephoros Phokas (963–969) and were initially settled in the Lavra of Athanasios the Athonite. A little later a group, led by Ioannis the Ibera, toparch of Meschia (province of north-western Georgia) and titlucho of Byzantium (kuropalatis), settled in neighboring Kelli, at a distance of a thousand paces from the monastery. According to the Iberian Life of Euthymius, a member of the brotherhood was John Tornicius, brother-in-law of John of Iberia and a former general, who, although he had retired from the world first to a monastery in Macedonia, then to Olympus in Bithynia and finally to Athos, agreed to enlisted for the suppression of the rebellion of Vardas Skleros. After the successful outcome of the military encounter in the valley of Pagalea (between Ephesus and Colophon), the emperor Basil II the Bulgarian Slayer provided him with rich gifts and a chrysobulus (979/980), with which, among other things, he granted him the 8th century Klimentos monastery, which was dedicated to Timios Prodromos. In this monastery, which was located in the area of ancient Kleona and on the site of the present-day Ibera monastery, it seems that the Iberian brotherhood was first established, keeping the original name at least until 1015, when it received its current name, in honor of its founders (there is and the opinion that John the Iberian and John Tornicius are the same person), and her catholicon was dedicated to the Dormition of the Virgin. Ioannis was the first abbot, while the new brotherhood was declared fully independent with the chrysobulus of the mother of the Bulgarian Slayer Theophanos.

After John's death, his son Euthymios took over the abbotship. He resigned the post of abbot in 1012 to devote himself undividedly to his translation and writing work. He translated a total of 60 works into Georgian (leaving many half-finished), first of all the New Testament, which he sent to David Kouropalatis in Iberia. At the same time he was engaged in correcting the liturgical texts. He died in Constantinople in 1028.

During the 10th and 11th centuries, many monasteries were attached to the monastery of Iberon, such as those of Kolovos, Prophet Helios, Sisikos, and Pteleots.

From 1052 to 1066 the abbot was George III. In addition to the translations into Georgian, he founded a school, in the place where today is the Celli Agios Theologos, in which the students were taught ancient Greek and Byzantine writing. Its first monks came from Georgia in 1065 and numbered 80. The school contributed for a century and a half to the flourishing of letters in Georgia.

The 11th c. they abandoned about 300 monks in Iberon. Since the middle of the same century, there have been two communities in the monastery, Iberians and Greeks, who follow a separate liturgical formality and hold services in different buildings, the Georgians in the catholicon of Theotokos and the Greeks in the old catholicon of the Klimentos monastery, in the temple of Prodromos.

During the 12th century, major works were carried out, mainly during the abbotship of Paul (1170–1183/1184), such as interventions in the church of Portaitissa, repairs and decoration of the catholicon, reinforcement of the fortifications, construction of a hospital, etc.

The Iberon monastery was repeatedly destroyed by pirates and mainly by the Franks, who turned "the apparent monastery into a desolate and inhuman place or a place of mourning and a field of destruction" and seized "everything in holy relics and offerings", even the utensils, "which They were at the service of the monks." For this reason, in the same year (1259), Michael VIII Palaiologos reaffirmed with a golden bull its possessions and rights and exempted it from taxation.

Before it was even fully on its feet, the Catalans destroyed it again (1307–1308). Andronikos II Paleologos, successor of Michael VIII, also showed special interest in this period. However, the complete renovation of the damaged parts of the complex took place in the 15th century with the assistance of the ruler of Iberia Gorgoranis and his successors.

In the 13th century the arrivals of Georgian monks decreased significantly and the relations with Iberia were diluted.

In the middle of the 14th century, with the patriarchal seal of Callisto II (1355–1356), the monastery came under the control of the Patriarchate of Constantinople on the one hand, and on the other hand, the performance of services in the Catholic church in Greek was established and the appointment of a Greek abbot, due to numerical superiority " of the Roman monks ... present ... and in every spiritual work". The Iberians, "numerous beings", could no longer hold their services in the catholicon, but in the smaller church of the "Theomitoros tis Portaitissa" monastery, while the services would have to be distributed to both ethnicities. This measure was not aimed at the interruption of the Iberian tradition, but at the reaction against the policy of the Serbian ruler Stefanos Dusan, who attempted to alter the character of the monasteries of Mount Athos.

During the Turkish rule, the monastery found itself in a complete financial impasse. Isaias Chilandarinos in the Odiporikon of 1489 mentions only 50 monks. It was supported with subscriptions by rulers of Iberia (Gorgorani, Kaichosrois, etc. in the 15th century, Alexander s' in the 16th century, etc.), rulers of the Danubian countries (Neagos Vassaravas in the 16th century), as well as patriarchs like Dionysios IV Muselimis in the 17th century. In the 17th century, the monastery of Agios Nikolaos in Moscow was granted to the monastery of Iberon by Tsar Alexios, while similar moves were made by the Ecumenical Patriarchate: the patriarch Cyril II confirmed with a seal the rights of the monastery of Iberon over the monastery of Vlatadon in Thessaloniki , while in 1675 the patriarch Parthenios named the monastery patriarchal and stauropigian.

The recovery therefore started from the first decades of the 16th century and was very fast. In 1520 the Ottoman census increases the number of monks to 151, in 1560 250 and in 1583 193 monks are mentioned. The walls and the catholicon were repaired, a tower was built and equipped with a cannon, the icon of Portaitissa was invested with a heavy cover, etc. In the 17th and 18th centuries the monks will exceed 300 (1648: 365, 1677: 400, 1761: 337) . In the same period, many properties and monasteries were dedicated to her, such as the monastery of Vlatadon (1633) in Thessaloniki, the monasteries in Kornofolea Didymoteicho (1747), in Meleniko (1760), in Vevekio Bosphorus (1796), in Trygi Limnos (1797), etc. .a. In the northern countries it owns, as has been said, the monastery of Agios Nikolaos (1669) in the center of Moscow (here, among others, the Zosimades brothers also settled), of the Holy Trinity (1613) in Wallachia, of the Annunciation in Moldavia, of "Radocanou" in Baku .

However, in 1740 a fire destroyed part of the monastery and the event adversely affected it for the following years. That is why in 1784, when he was asked to pay taxes of "two hundred and ten pougesi", he declared his inability to pay them.

In the 1808 census, its monks totaled 250, of which 158 were within the walls.

The Iberon monastery offered a lot to the national liberation struggle of 1821. It donated all its treasures to the Revolution. Letters from Ioannis Kapodistrias are preserved in its archive, in which he informs the monastery that he has received the valuable objects and expresses his gratitude for the great donation. But also during the pre-revolutionary period, the secretary Nikiforos Ibiritis, representative of the monastery in Wallachia for its affairs there, had been initiated into the Philiki Etaireia and even collaborated with the patriarch Gregory V, who was in exile in the monastery of Iberon (1800–1806, 1809–1819), as well as with Emmanuel Papas.

In the years after liberation, much of the monastery was destroyed by fires (1845, 1865) but was rebuilt with the proceeds of its many shares. The designs of the neoclassical buildings of the reconstruction were by Kostis Kalfas, Greek architect of the High Gate. The confiscation of its estates by the Romanian government in 1863 and by the Russian government in the 1880s, together with the expropriations that took place in Greece in the 20th century, led the monastery to financial withering. Also, the earthquake of 1905 created large cracks in its buildings.
At the beginning of the 20th century its monks numbered 200. In 1990, it was manned by a group of monks from the Stavronikita monastery and in the same year, with the seal of the Patriarch of Constantinople Dimitrios I, it was converted into a convent. Archimandrite Vassilios Stavronikitianos was appointed the first abbot. After his resignation, Hieromonk Nathanael of Koos took over.

The catholicon of the monastery of Iberon, dedicated to the Dormition of the Virgin, began to be built in 984, was completed after 1019 and was reconstructed at the beginning of the 16th century. The marble floor (first half of the 11th century) with various geometric shapes and an inscription of the Georgian builder Georgios, its third abbot, is preserved from the oldest catholicon. The double capitals, in second use, that crown the columns of the main church and the old chests with the Christogram are also noteworthy here. The frescoes of the catholicon belong to different periods, from the 16th to the 19th century, when they were also painted. Of interest are the post-Byzantine wood-carved iconostasis, with its rich plant-like decoration, and the silver and ebony gate, with decorative designs of the finest art, leading from the exonarthex to the apse.

The fresco decoration of the chapel of Panagia Portaitissa is also interesting, because among the figures of the saints that make up the pictorial program of the narthex, the figures of men from ancient Greece, Solon, Sophocles, Plutarch and Thucydides, Plato and Aristotle, Alexander the Great and, surprisingly, Darius.

Scholars

During the 10th and 11th centuries the monastery operated a library for the production of manuscripts in Georgian. It is not known whether a workshop for copying Greek manuscripts also operated during the Byzantine period, as only one scribe, Theophanis (beginning of the 11th century), is known to have been active at that time. A great flourishing of the library is observed from the beginning of the 16th to the end of the 19th century, with a particularly rich production of Greek manuscripts. Among the great calligraphers of the monastery is the notary of the Great Church, Saint Theophilos the Myroblytes the Pantokratorinos (1511–1523). Before 1535 and for several years, the scholar Pachomios Rousanos of Zakynthos lived in the monastery. Before 1540, a member of the brotherhood was Thomas (Theofanis) Eleavoulkos, who bequeathed his books to the monastery. During the second half of the 16th century we have the scholar and teacher in Constantinople Simeon Kavasilas.

Among the scholars that the monastery of Iberon promoted, let us also mention Hierotheos the Peloponnesian (1686–1745), a profound connoisseur of philosophy, Greek and Latin literature and a teacher at the school of Skopelos, Meletios, a student of Hierotheos and librarian of the monastery, with with whom Evgenios Voulgaris, Theokleitos Polyidis (1698–1759), Christoforos Prodromitis (1822–1916) from Arta, student of Evgenios Voulgaris and author of many mainly hymnological works, etc., maintained correspondence.

Dionysios the Iberian is a great personality. In 1650, while he was in Wallachia, he accepted an invitation from Moscow Patriarch Nikon (at that time archimandrite of the Novospasky Monastery) to go to Russia. He responded after five years. In Moscow he was engaged for a long time in the correction of liturgical books and then took over the direction of the state printing office. Among his other works is the History of the Beginning of the Ῥoḍos, which he compiled based on Russian sources in 1668. He is also the translator into Russian of the Chronography of Pseudo-Dorotheus. Dionysius died in Wallachia, a few months after his appointment as metropolitan of Hungarian Wallachia

Musem-Sacristy

The Vault of the Monastery of Iberon, one of the most valuable of Mount Athos, is now housed in the newly built south wing of the monastery. Priceless treasures are kept there, gold-embroidered vestments, church utensils, crosses, chalices, chalices, wombs, the high-priestly uniform of the patriarch Dionysios IV the Muslim, the mantle of Gregory the V, the imperial sack of John Tsimiskis, which is decorated with decorations designs and representations of ten lions and four biceps. Here is also kept the great Gospel, a gift from Peter the Great (1649), with a silver-gold lining decorated with precious stones, weighing 40 kilograms, as well as a seven-light lamp in the shape of a lemon, a gift "... for the souls of the citizens of Moscow.. . 1818" to the representative of the monastery Archimandrite Kyrillos, carrying 30 lemons and 7 gilded candlesticks. The sacristy of the monastery of Iberon was "accessible to all, not even the fathers excepted".

Icons

The new, two-story building that was recently built on the southern and uncovered side of the monastery, due to an old fire, houses the Iconophylakio. More than 1,600 post-Byzantine and newer icons are kept in the monastery.

In a special chapel inside the monastery, built in 1682 at its entrance, there is her Ephesian icon, the so-called Portaitissa, which belongs to the Odigetria type. It is surrounded by many traditions and legends. It goes back to pre-iconoclastic times. It has two linings and on the silver-gilt exterior there is the inscription "Moscow 1819". The icon was found in the 980s by the Iberian ascetic Gabriel and received the name "Portaitissa" due to its insistence on going "above the gate of the monastery, into the wall of the castle". In the jaw of the Virgin can be seen to this day the wound that was opened by the sword of an Arab pirate, who converted to Christianity and lived as a monk in the monastery until the end of his life, as he saw blood flowing from his blow. He is Saint Barbaros. A copy of the Portaitissa was sent in 1651 to Russia and placed in the Saint Nicholas Monastery in Moscow, located on Red Square, between the Kremlin and the Academy. Today this copy is kept in the Holy Trinity in Moscow.

Library

The Library of the Iberon monastery is well organized and rich in content. From 1721 it was housed in the spaces above the narthex of the catholicon. In 1800 it was moved from the "inside" to the "external catechisms", i.e. in the western part of the church. It survived the fire of 1860, which destroyed most of the monastery. In 1967, for fire safety reasons, it was moved to the radically renovated old magipēῖon (bakery), a free-from-all-sides ground-floor building next to the Trapeza. In the newly built two-story building of the south wing of the monastery, which was erected on the site of a building destroyed by the 1905 earthquake, where the Iconophylakio is housed, a special space was created for the Library.

The library in the monastery of Iberon has been in operation since its foundation. The basic books in Georgian were copied in 977 and 978 at the monastery of Oski in Georgia by order of Ioannis Iberas (Tornicius?), and transferred to the monastery of Clement. Also, the library, founded by John the Iberian in the monastery, produced a large number of manuscript codices. Its enrichment continued during the following centuries, either with donations or with the copying of Greek and translated into Georgian codices.

At the beginning of the 16th century, the contribution of the predecessor Dionysios was great, he took care of filling in the gaps, while he himself inscribed at least 13 manuscripts. The most famous of the scribes that Dionysius attracted was Theodosius, a former notary of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, known as Theophilus the Myroblytes. He came to the monastery in 1511 and by the time he left in 1523 he had engraved 31 codices, while completing several others. At the same time, until his death he did not stop dedicating manuscripts to Portaitissa.

In the middle of the 16th century, Thomas (Theophanis) Eleavoulkos Notaras, who served as a preacher of the Great Church and was a professor at the Patriarchal School, bequeathed his books to the monastery of Iberon, which was his penance, i.e. where he became a monk.

Maximos Margounios also donated his books to Iviron. In his will it is noted: "... the nine boxes, the books of many scholars, where I sent to the upper monastery for my soul". Among them many manuscripts, of which 39 have been identified to date (but only 14 are in the monastery).

By order of Tsar Alexios and Patriarch Nikon, Arsenios Sukhanov was sent to Mount Athos with the purpose of receiving from there liturgical codes for revision of the old Russian translations. Exceeding the order, or following another secret order, Sukhanov collected a number of great codices between the years 1653–1655. Finally he transported to Moscow 498 codices, which were deposited in the then patriarchal library. Of these, numerically, the first place is occupied by the codices of the Iberian monastery: the Iberians, wanting to express their gratitude for the donation of the stock of Saint Nicholas to Moscow, were generous in sending manuscripts. Dionysius Iberitis provided considerable assistance to Arsenius in the selection of books, a total of 158 manuscripts and 5 forms. Among them was almost the entire library of Maximos Margounios. Also, in 1660, Dionysios had also brought 14 books with him to Moscow, including 5 manuscripts, which he did not part with and were used for his work at the printing office.

In 1678, the patriarch Dionysios IV Mouselimis donated to the monastery, among other things, his rich library, which included numerous publications, as well as a sufficient number of manuscripts (28 were found in the library of the monastery). Dionysius had compiled a list of his books that is still missing today.

The reconstruction and enrichment of the monastery's library is due to the venerable former Metropolitan of Artis and Nafpaktos Neophytos Mavrommatis, who left his throne and stayed on Mount Athos for about 30 years. In 1721 he collected all the books of the monastery, added his own and housed them in the space he created in the catechisms, above the narthex of the catholicon. Ioannis Komnenos, in the Pilgrim of 1745, characterizes the library as "ancient and rich, and has now been increased in our own times and renovated, for the protection and expenses of ... Neophytos Mavromatos", while in the first edition of the work (1701 ) mentions that "it has the monastery ... and a library in three wealthy places, with many valuable and useful books, old and new". From 1729, Neophytos lived in Lavra, contributing to the rebuilding of the monastery, where he took many of his books with him. Despite this, a large part of his library, together with 18 manuscripts, is today in the monastery of Iberon. Neophytos was the first Greek who thought of publishing books in Greek with a parallel Turkish text written with Greek elements for the Turkish-speaking Greeks of Asia Minor and he wrote the first Karamanlid book, Apanthisma tis Christianikis Pisteos (Kiulzari Imani Mesihi) in 1718.

The losses of manuscripts and forms did not stop after the mid-17th century and Sukhanov. In 1726, the monastery donated 15 manuscripts to envoys of Pope Benedict XIII. Evgenios Voulgaris, headmaster at the Athoniada School in the years 1753–1759, procured from her many books necessary for the operation of the school, which were never returned there. During the transfer from the eastern to the western part of the Vault, in 1800, many of the manuscripts were removed and deposited in the exonarthex, their further fate being unknown.

The traveler Robert Curzon visited the monastery in 1837. He considers its Library perhaps the most valuable of Mount Athos. He notes that the space is well equipped and the books are in excellent condition. He estimated that around 2,000 papyrus and 1,000 parchment manuscripts were kept there. Of the parchments, about 100 were in Georgian. Searching for works by classical authors, he found no parchment manuscripts with such content, but only parchments. He was impressed by a Coptic Psalter in Arabic translation. He estimates the printed books at 5,000. He failed to procure any code, though he employed his eloquence and many arguments. Finally, as a consolation, the secretary of the monastery gave him a manuscript of his own, which contained in Greek the history of the monastery from its foundation to those days.

In 1844, Minas Minoidis, a diplomat of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, visited the monastery, compiled a list of its manuscripts and removed an unknown number of them.

In 1869, Ioannis M. Raptarchis visited the monastery. Its library, as he writes, is "much neglected", but "the most excellent and richest of those on Mount Athos", as it contains "two thousand manuscripts ... including a hundred in the Iberian language, and some in Coptic".

After the death of Dimitrios Kalabakidis (or Kalampakidis) († 1878), writer, printer and educator from Meleniko, his rich library, together with six codices of his own writings, was bequeathed to the monastery of Iberon, perhaps because he had lived there for a while .

Archive

Until the 1990s, the Archives of the Iberon monastery were housed in spaces that had been set up in the catechisms of the Catholic Church. There were the Byzantine archive, placed for greater security in the Vault, which was also located in the same area, as well as the post-Byzantine and newer archives. The documents of the newest archive dated to the beginning of the 20th century, while the material was also scattered in other areas of the monastery, mainly in its Secretariat.

During the 19th century, at least a partial classification of the archive took place, along with cataloging and numbering of the documents, often with labels written in pencil and affixed to their backs. Of the travelers and other researchers who gained access to the monastery archive, Vasily Barsky was the first to provide accurate information about surviving documents. It mentions two chrysobulas of John IV Kantakouzenos (1351), one of Stefanos Dusan (1346), one of Michael V Paleologus (1357) and one of Andronikos IX Paleologus (1283).

In 1846 Porfirios Ouspensky copied from the Iberian archive about 30 documents, some partial. In the list of Athonian archives that he published in 1847, 40 documents from Iberon are included. In 1859 Sevastianov's expedition photographed some Byzantine documents. Also, Antonios Sigalas, around 1928 to 1931, members of a Serbian mission from the Serbian Academy in 1935 and then F. Dölger in 1941 also photographed documents from the monastery archive.

Already from the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the space included specially designed showcases. The material was arranged thematically. An important role in this formation and classification was played by the monk Joachim Iberitis during the first three decades of the 20th century. Particular importance was attached to documents related to property titles and shares. These showcases included, in addition to the Greek and Turkish documents with their respective translations, even documents from the middle of the 20th century that were mainly related to the possession or claim of properties.

During the 1950s, this classification began to be disrupted. Finally, the documents were detached from their first specific categories and grouped by language, mainly in Greek and Turkish, but also in other categories, unrelated to the previous classification, such as including e.g. documents from patriarchs or metropolitans etc. in folders, without any other relationship between them. This was the state of the archive until the early 1990s.

The situation changed radically with the construction of the specially designed new wing, which houses the library of manuscripts and antiquities of the monastery. There, a special space was set up to house the entire archive and thus it was decided to transfer it. In addition to the Greek documents, the archive of the Iberon monastery also includes documents in other languages, such as Ottoman, Georgian, Romanian, Russian and other Slavic languages.

Manuscripts

The Library of the Iberon Monastery is one of the richest on Mount Athos. Since its foundation (979/980), the monastery acquired an important collection of Georgian manuscripts, which had been copied in Georgia by order of its founder, the monk John of Iberus (Tornikius?). It is the world's largest collection of Georgian manuscripts outside of Georgia.

The collection of musical manuscripts is also great, which includes many codes of secular music from the Byzantine and post-Byzantine period.

The monastery of Iberon also holds the largest collection of manuscripts on Mount Athos with texts by ancient classical authors, which were copied from the 13th to the 19th century without interruption. About 220 secular works are included, which represent 1/3 of the total treasured in all of the libraries of Agios Georgios, i.e. about 600.

It also has most of the works of authors that appear only in Agioreite codices. Finally, it should be pointed out that it is the only library with works by Latin authors, translated as well as some in the original (a collection of Latin manuscripts also existed in the monastery of the Great Lavra, but today they are in Western libraries).

It exists in the single catalog of 1723, where the books and manuscripts of the library are recorded, perhaps the oldest surviving known record of manuscripts on Mount Athos.

The first researcher of Georgian manuscripts of the Iberon monastery is Timotheus Gasbashvili (1703–1764), traveler, diplomat, cartographer. Gabashvili visited Iberon in the mid-18th century and, among other things, compiled an accurate catalog of its Georgian manuscripts. He also noted that among the manuscripts there were also old Georgian books, such as a translation from the Lemonarion (New Paradise) of Sophronius of Jerusalem and a Gospel decorated with precious stones, a gift of King Bakar of Kartli (1699/1700–1750).

Chrysanthos of Jerusalem also compiled a catalog of manuscripts found in some Athonian monasteries, including Iberon, which was published by Konstantinos Satha in 1872.

Neophytos Iberitis from Ioannina, responsible for performing the services, studied several manuscripts, wrote comments and notes on them, numbered and classified them.

In 1801 the travelers Joseph Dacre Carlyle and Philip Hunt passed through Iberon, who found that the manuscripts were neglected, while the printed books were protected and arranged.

In 1895, Spyridon Lambros compiled a list of the 1,386 Greek manuscripts of the monastery, not including the scattered codices in the catholicon, in the Portaitissa temple, in other chapels or monks' cells.

In 1913 and 1914, the monastery's librarian Hieromonk Athanasios sorted the codices according to size and numbered them accordingly, without making it possible to identify them with approximately 100 manuscripts in the catalog of Sp. Lambros.

In 1925, Sophronios Efstratiadis recorded 39 new Iberian manuscripts and published them in the catalog of the manuscripts of the Great Lavra, while 18 were recorded in the second volume of the Treasures of Mount Athos (Athens Publishing House) in 1975.

During the 1970s, the 289 manuscripts of the Catholicos and 200 others that had been stored with the forms and came from parts of the monastery were partially added to the collection. In 1991, all manuscripts were classified and summarized in a typescript catalog. In 1994, another 35 were incorporated, coming from the temple of Portaitissa.

Today the collection of the Iberon monastery includes 2,537 manuscripts, including 164 parchments (15 liturgical scrolls) and 66 illustrated ones. Of the total number of manuscripts, 2,345 are Greek, 94 Georgian, 80 Slavic, 10 Romanian, 6 Arabic, 1 Coptic and 1 Italian.

Among the oldest manuscripts, the codex created around 950 with the Sermons of Gregory of Nazianzus stands out: it is decorated with four full-page arched jewels, with titles, which are in the form of a ciborium gate, and with protograms of exceptional art. The original titles are not merely decorative, but are relevant to Gregory's discourses. It must be considered certain that they were engraved in the Constantinople workshop. The Evangelistarium of the 11th century, also crafted in Constantinople, is decorated with six full-page renderings of the Dodecaortos and is notable for its rich titles and protograms, but also for the large calligraphic writing of the text. The subject of the illustration draws material from mosaics mainly of the churches of Constantinople. Of particular artistic value is a Tetraevangelo dating from shortly after 1250, the "pearl" of the library of the monastery of Iberi, as it has been called by George Galavaris.

Codex 463 (between the 12th and 13th centuries) contains the adventurous narrative of Barlaam and Joasaph attributed to John of Damascus, adorned with 79 text-related representations of great value, not only from an artistic point of view, but also as testimonies to the way of life, dress and work in his time.

Printed Books

The Library of the Iberon Monastery has approximately 27 archetypes and 14,000 old copies, while the newest forms (after 1900) amount to approximately 20,000.

Thomas Papadopoulos in the Libraries of Mount Athos (p. 3) mentions that the first Greek edition he found in the Iberon monastery is an archetype from 1488. It is an edition of the Homeric epics, printed in Florence "by Demetrius Mediolaneos Cretos".

The oldest printed book of the 16th century is particularly rare among secular and private collections and is in fact treasured in seven libraries of Agios Georgios. This is the Dictionary of Favorinus, published and printed under the editorship of Zacharias Calliergis in Rome in 1523. Another book that has survived in very few copies is the commentaries on the tragedies of Euripides, by Arsenius Apostolis, printed in Venice in 1534 by Loukas Antonios Iudas. Finally, a 1538 Triodium, published in Venice by Heracles Geraldos under the editorship of Demetrius Zenos, is the first of a large collection of liturgical books dating mainly from the early 16th century onwards.

Source https://www.aboutlibraries.gr/libraries/handle/20.500.12777/lib_91

Manuscripts
Library of Congress
https://www.loc.gov/collections/manuscripts-from-the-monasteries-of-moun...

Official website of Iveron Monastery


Official website of Iveron Monastery

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