Pantokratoros monastery

Pantokratoros Monastery

The Monastery of Pantokratoros is located on the northwest side of the Athonian peninsula, on a rocky site near the sea, between the Vatopedi Monastery and the future Stavronikita Monastery, and occupies the seventh place in the hierarchy of the twenty monasteries of Mount Athos.

In documents, it is called "the school of God the Almighty Savior Christ", and "royal and patriarchal monastery of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ the Almighty", names that refer to the monastery of the same name in Constantinople.

Establishment and development. Tradition links the foundation of Pantokratoros Monastery with the emperor Alexios I Komnenos. According to the sources, it was founded after the middle of the 14th century by the brothers Alexios and Ioannis, grand marshal and grand marshal respectively.

In 1357, in a chrysobulus of John II Palaiologos, where both are mentioned together with their titles, the emperor granted them the castles of Chrysoupoli and Anaktoroupoli, together with the island of Thassos, with a parallel hereditary right. Alexios probably died in 1368 and his brother Ioannis in 1384 retired to Pantokratoros Monastery, where he died between 1386–1387 as a monk Ioannikios.

It is not known when the two brothers started the reconstruction of the Monastery, probably a little before 1357, since in that year there is already a constituted brotherhood. However, it was inaugurated in 1362/63 and established (apparently Catholic) under the patriarchate of Kallistos I, who declared it patriarchal, while a few years later, in 1367, it was classified as basilica.

Shortly before the end of 1392, the Monastery was tested by a great fire, where, among other things, most of the documents kept in the Archives were burned. Then the monks started an effort to reissue the various validating documents in order to secure the possessions of the Monastery. In addition to the Holy Synod of Mount Athos, the emperors John V and Manuel II the Paleologos, as well as the patriarch Antonios IV, contributed to its consolidation and strengthening. Several monasteries of that time, such as those of Ravdouchos, Falakros, Agios Dimitrios and Auxentios, were attached to the then newly founded Pantokratoros Monastery.

From 1424 onwards, the taxation and arbitrariness of the Ottomans led Mount Athos to an economic crisis. Pantokratoros Monastery faced this situation with help from the rulers of the Danubian regions, the Phanariotes, Catherine II of Russia and from the offerings of various believers.

In 1489 the Monastery had 40 monks, while in 1520 91 were recorded and in 1560 215 were abandoned. In 1569 only 55 monks were mentioned, while in 1583 they reached 150. These numbers should not be far from reality.

In the 16th century, the monastery must have become peculiar, as can be seen from the contents of the seal of 1537 issued for the monastery by the patriarch Jeremias I.

In 1568, after the confiscation of its estates by Sultan Selim II and the large expenditure for their acquisition, the Monastery once again fell into a financial crisis. In 1586, he owed Turkish and Jewish lenders 1,600 gold coins, while he had also pledged a large number of sacred vessels to them. For this reason, monks resorted to exercising the quest.

During the 17th century, the Monastery is in a relatively stable situation and begins to acquire various shares in the Danubian hegemonies. In the same period there are also various operations, expansion and decoration, in the Catholic Church. The numerical strength is at the level of 150–200 monks.

During the 18th century the Monastery recovered and flourished. The shares increase and become more productive, numerous plots of land and olive groves are dedicated to her, her vineyards are expanded in various locations, she is justified by the Ottoman authorities for the pastures of Lemnos, she owns many urban properties in Thessaloniki, etc. The financial fluency leads to substantial renovations and interventions in the Monastery, especially after 1740. For more than forty years the monastery had been turned into a construction site and its sacristy was enriched with elaborate relics and sacred vessels. However, the execution of these works ultimately led the Monastery, in the last decade of the century, to great debts.

From the beginning of the 19th century the number of monks began to decrease. In 1801 there were only 40 monks in it.

It is not known the extent of the economic consequences and the loss of people during the revolution of 1821. But at least for five years, until 1827, the collection of income from the various shares of the Monastery stopped. During these years, no construction work is carried out. Many of the monks, with the holy relics, fled to Thassos and then to Skopelos. The relics were later found in the Monastery of the Great Cave, and Ioannis Kapodistrias saw to it that they were returned safely back to the Monastery of Pantokratoros.

With the departure of the Turks from Mount Athos, in 1830, a period of limited reconstruction of the Monastery begins, with interest initially focused on the Catholic, followed by the Trapeza, some chapels and the arsan.

After the middle of the 19th century, the big problems with the land ownership of the Monastery begin. In 1863, the Romanian government confiscated all the shares of the Greek monasteries in Moldova, including the Pantokrator Monastery. The Monastery does not seem to recover after the liberation of Mount Athos and its incorporation into the Greek state. In fact, the financial problems worsened after 1922, when her estates were expropriated and given to refugees.

The long-term idiosyncrasy, the dramatic economic contraction, the sufferings of the Second World War and the great fire of 1948 that incinerated the eastern wing of the Monastery, created strong phenomena of dissolution and decline, which were stopped with the conversion of the Monastery into a convent in 1991 with a seal of Patriarch Dimitrios (1914–1991). The Monastery was manned by monks of the Xenophon Monastery, with Hieromonk Bessarion (1954–2001) as abbot. Today the abbot of Pantokratoros Monastery is Archimandrite Gabriel.

The accessories include the kinovian hermitage of Prophet Ilias, 2 Seats, 11 Cells, of which 5 are in Karyes, and 40 huts - of which 38 are in the area of Kapsala.

Library

Although it is not attested in writing, the builders of Pantokratoros Monastery, brothers Alexios and Ioannis, certainly created a library with the necessary manuscripts of services and spiritual edification, as the builders of monasteries did as a rule. However, we know that with personal copying work, monks of the Monastery, until 1382, copied at least 18 manuscripts, basically liturgical, apparently for their immediate use in the services.

In the following years the original collection of manuscripts was obviously enriched. It is testified that the fire of 1392 did not destroy codices, only documents of the Archive.

The library of the Monastery at the beginning of the 15th century attracted the interest of an envoy of the Vatican, Lunanus Xama. Nine codices of the Vatican Library bear his handwritten note, stating their origin from the Pantokratoros Monastery and their acquisition by purchase. In the same period, in November 1444, the abbot Nikandros gave a tour of the library to Kyriakos Agkonitis, who believes that it deserves the title "library", apparently because of its material.

From time to time various and not small losses of manuscripts are found.

In the mid-17th century (1643–1649) the Catholic priest Athanasius the Orator obtained for financial consideration a large quantity of codices from various monasteries on behalf of the French cardinal Julius Mazarin and chancellor Pierre Seguier. A manuscript of the National Library of France from the Mazarin collection bears a note of its earlier dedication to the Monastery. A little later (1653–1655) the Russian monk Arseniy Shukhanov removed about 32 manuscript codices (along with a form), from a total of 447 of the other Athenian monasteries, which together formed part of the collection of the Moscow Synod Library (today the Historical Museum). In 1727, the library of the Monastery will exchange with the University of Oxford about six of its manuscripts, for the provision of financial support, following an appeal by Abbot Dositheos.

In 1837 the British traveler Robert Curzon, who visited the Monastery of Pantokratoros, found about 100 codices mixed with the fallen materials from the collapse of the tower walls and almost destroyed by the humidity and rains.

In 1841, Konstantinos Minadis or Minas Minoidis (1788–1859), visited the pan-imperial library as part of his mission on behalf of the French government to acquire manuscripts. From his diary we learn that the library was housed in the tower, which was half-destroyed by the Turks as early as 1822. A monk went down to the ruins and presented him with eight codices and parchment leaves, which he took to Paris. We do not know how many of the codices of the National Library of France come from the Pantokrator Monastery. At the same time, Porfirios Ouspensky also visited the library. Its condition had not changed, but Ouspensky believes that the placing of the books in the deepest part of the tower is due to the monks' attempt to save them from the Turks. He estimates that the manuscripts that were saved were no more than 200.

Three more codices of the Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Center Collection in Washington come from the Pantokratoros Monastery. These are two historic codes and a Law Code. However, in order to have a better historical picture of the volume of the library, we must add the approximately 124 manuscripts found in various collections in Greece and abroad.

In the middle of the 20th century, all the material of the library of Pantokratoros Monastery was moved from the ruined tower, located in the northwest corner of its precinct, to a ground-floor space, on the initiative of the antiquities commissioner Myron Michaelidis. They returned again to the now renovated tower (1997) at the beginning of our century, on the second floor, in areas with specially designed storage conditions. Today the library counts about 478 manuscript codices, 675 titles of publications up to 1863 and more than 10,000 newer printed books.

Library-Archive

The Archive of the Monastery consists of 670 Greek documents, 480 Ottoman and only one Romanian. These do not include documents of a financial nature from the period of the Ottoman conquest and thereafter.

Despite the adventures experienced by the Monastery, such as the fire of 1392 and the difficult conditions during the period of the Ottoman conquest, the Archives of the Monastery continued to be enriched. During the last centuries of the Ottoman occupation, the founding documents of the Monastery from the 14th century were translated. From the middle of the 18th century, the Archive included a large number of documents, mainly of an economic nature (debt bonds, contracts, etc.), as well as official correspondence.

From the 16th century onwards, the efforts to organize the Archive did not stop. However, an important effort to classify the documents was carried out at the beginning of the 20th century by a three-member committee of monks of the Monastery (Ioacheim, Alexios and Athanasios). The work of classification was completed in July 1926, with the recording of the documents that referred to the "liberty of the monastery and the occupation, jurisdiction and general history" of its shares until 1926. This list consists of 24 sections based on geographical distribution of the shares and was registered in Code 4 labeled "Archive Code".

Documents from the archive have been published from time to time by Manuel Gideon (1889 and 1899), Louis Petit (1903) and Vassiliki Kravaris (1991). Sixteen of the published documents from the Byzantine period are originals, with the oldest dating back to 1107, while three are chrysobulas of the emperor Manuel II Palaiologos. Another thirteen documents are old copies of originals, with the oldest being a document from 1039 concerning the Monastery of Falakros.

In 1998, Antonio Pardos published the first part with the document summaries of the Archive from 1039 to 1801. The publication of the second part, as well as the Ottoman documents dating from the 15th century, is expected.

Library-Manuscript Codices

The Monastery of Pantokratoros has quite a few Byzantine and post-Byzantine manuscripts of exceptional art and importance, amounting to approximately 478. 68 are parchments, 3 are scrolls of the 14th century, and 4 are cottonwood. Also preserved are 9 manuscripts in Arabic and some musical codices in Romanian.

From the manuscripts we note the following:

a) a palimpsested parchment Psalter (no. 61), one of the world's few illustrated Psalters of the iconoclastic period (first half of the 9th century), with 97 side-page miniatures of themes from the Old and New Testaments.

b) the Gospel of John Kalyvitos, a parchment codex (no. 234), from the middle of the 11th century. This is an excellent quality illustrated manuscript with representations of the Evangelists and various saints. Xiropotaminos monk Kaisarios Dapontes refers to this codex in his work Kipos Harito (1880, p. 182):

Now the Monastery belongs to Pantokrator

is the Gospel there for the time,

That famous one, where he lived

of John it is said: with us his wish.

The English traveler Robert Curzon also refers to this code in 1837. It was stolen in 1898, but was located a little later in Athens and returned to the Monastery.

c) the code 251 of the 14th century, with works by Iosif Kalotethos.

d) the code 127 of the mid-15th century, autograph of Gennadios Scholarios.

e) the Synaxarist of Saint Theophilos (1538).

Most of the library's manuscript material has been described either by Spyridon Lambros, at the end of the 19th century, or by Linos Politis and Manousos Manousaka in the mid-20th century.

Library-Print Books. In 1979

Michael Kordossis, under the supervision of Nikolaos Panagiotakis, researched the library's publications, which were then located, together with the manuscripts, on the ground floor of the then newly built wing. Today, the collection of old publications of the Monastery is kept in the renovated tower and numbers about 675 titles, with publication years from 1481 to 1863. If the multiple copies are included, we arrive at a total of about a thousand volumes. The total number of printed books exceeds 10,000.

Thomas Papadopoulos in the Libraries of Mount Athos (p. 3), mentions that the first Greek edition he has found in Pantokratoros Monastery dates back to 1481 and it is the Questions of Chrysoloras (Into how many are the twenty-four letters divided), printed in Parma by an anonymous printer, probably Hieronymus.

The edition of 1523, from where Michael Kordosis begins his list, is not included in Thomas Papadopoulos. This is the Dictionary of Favorinos, edited by Zacharias Kalliergis.

The bibliographic laboratory. In Pantokratoros Monastery, there is evidence of the operation of a bibliographic laboratory from the first years of its foundation. From this period, the monastery has several scribes among its monks. These are the calligraphers Theolepto, Gerasimos, Dionysios and Ignatios, who have been active since 1361/62 and manned the bibliographic workshop, producing mainly liturgical manuscripts. In the same workshop in the following century, in 1433, David Raidestinos, codifier of musical manuscripts, will copy the Papadiki. A well-known scribe of this period is Callistos.

The most famous copyist of Mount Athos manuscripts during the first half of the 16th century, Saint Theophilos was also associated with the Pantokrator Monastery. He was settled in the cell of Agios Basilios, part of the Monastery, where he systematically practiced the work of copying manuscripts until his death in 1548.

In addition to the presence of Theophilos on the borders of the Monastery, the bibliographic tradition continues in the monastery itself. During the 16th century we have Nilos, Savvas, Paphnutios and Michael who usually copy texts for the liturgical and spiritual needs of the Monastery.

During the period of the Ottoman conquest, the operation of the scriptorium was not systematic. From this period, we know the names of the metropolitan of Timisoara Joseph of Mercury, Joasaf, Agathon, etc.

Source https://www.aboutlibraries.gr/libraries/handle/20.500.12777/lib_111

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

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