Skete of Prophet Elias

Skete of Prophet Elias

The Skete of Prophet Elias (Σκήτη Προφήτη Ηλία) is located on an amphitheater and sloping slope, to the west of Pantokratoros monastery, of which it is a part, and at a distance of half an hour from it on foot.

History

In 1757 or 1761 an old and deserted cell, dating back to the 15th century, was granted by the sovereign Pantokrator Monastery to the Ukrainian ascetic Paisios Velikovsky (1722–1794), following his request to the superiors of the monastery and the Patriarch of Constantinople, Seraphim II ΄, who was abandoning her.

As early as 1746, Paisios was an ascetic in the settlement of Kapsala, in a hut known as Kapari. The famous ascetic Basilios, abbot of the Poiana Marouloui monastery in Wallachia, had a significant influence on his ascetic ideology. The latter was the author of detailed introductions to the writings of Gregory Sinaitos, Philotheus Sinaitos and Hesychius Prebyteros in the Slavonic ecclesiastical literature, as well as a treatise on mental prayer. Vasilios visited Paisios in Kapsala in 1750 and introduced him to the Greek ascetic and mystical patristic writings. Thus, when Paisios settled in Prophet Elias, he started, for the first time in history, a program of translating Greek ascetic writers into the Russian language. Paisios had learned Greek from the very first years of his stay in Athos. His teacher was the Moldavian monk Makarios, who had been a student of Alexandros Tournavitis at the Greek school in Bucharest.

In the Prophet Elias, Paisios soon gathered around him several ascetics, initially 15 and then more, mainly Moldavians and Russians. The main source of the financial resources for the operation of the new cell were the contributions of their distant compatriots. The ascetics themselves engaged in prayer, study, and spiritual attainments. The large number of monks led to the expansion of the facilities, which was done in such a way that the buildings were a single monastic complex and not independent huts. Around the temple were built the bank, the kitchen, the guest house and the cells, 16 at first, more later. Thus the old cell was turned into a hermitage, which maintained a common bank, that is, it functioned as a communal house. Common church services were held in Romanian and Slavonic. For the first time, the type of communal hermitage is thus introduced to Mount Athos, informally and implicitly.

Because the number of monks at one point exceeded 50, Paisios was forced to look for another place, abandoning his hermitage. The Community granted him the deserted and bankrupt monastery of Simonopetra, from where he left very quickly, within three months, because he was unable to face his debts, and returned again to the Prophet Elias. He finally made the decision to leave Mount Athos for good. In 1764 he left for Wallachia, taking with him 64 monks from the hermitage.

Back, in the Skete of the Prophet Helios, several monks settled later (1775), including Russians, with the elder Varlaam, a former sailor, who maintained it until the next century. With the Russians, the quiet and humble spirit of Paisius was reduced or disappeared, and the greater part of the monks of the hermitage were drawn into the chariot of Pan-Slavism. In 1835 the monk Anikitos (Prince Sergius Shirinsky-Sigmatov) came to her from Kapsala accompanied by 15 monks. Due to the gathering of many Russians, the Pantokratoros monastery reacted to its manning. Anikitos then headed towards the Russian monastery of Agios Panteleimonos. After a while, however, he returned to the hermitage again, apparently at the urging of some coordinator of the Russian movements on Mount Athos. After long negotiations and with the mediation of personalities who came from Thessaloniki, namely Konstantinos Spandonis, and Petroseski, the interpreter of the Russian consulate, an agreement was reached in 1839, which was ratified by the Community. The institution was recognized as a hermitage, and in fact synovial, but it was forbidden to renovate or expand the building facilities without the permission of the monastery. Initially, the number of her ascetics was set at 25, for whom the hermitage would pay the monastery 1,500 grosci per year. Also, the Pantokratoros monastery gave the hermitage the right to a larger number of monks, as long as two Dutch florins were paid to it for each additional person, without realizing that this would necessarily lead to an expansion of the buildings. Indeed, the buildings proved to be insufficient, even after the additions made by the righteous Tobias, without the permission of the monastery.

In the context of the pan-Slavic movement on Mount Athos, in 1845, Grand Duke Konstantinos, second son of Tsar Nicholas I, visited the hermitage, where he spent the night. Also, in 1881 Vice-Admiral Dimitrios Zakharovich Galovatsov illegally laid the foundation stone of a new Sunday skete, without a high priest, by order of Grand Duchess Alexandra Petrovna, wife of Grand Duke Nikolaus Nikolaevich, as the founder. Permission was subsequently requested, but while the monastery granted a building permit to the plans of the old Sunday, the righteous man insisted that a much larger church be built. By appealing to the Turkish courts, the righteous Tobias managed to force the patriarchate to issue a seal in 1892, which limited the number of the brothers of the hermitage to 130 monks and 20 cadets, allowed the expansion of the facilities, the construction of a new hospital and the replacement of the old Sunday with a new one. The parish was founded in 1894 by admiral Virilov, with the master of ceremonies this time being the exiled patriarch Joachim III the Magnificent. In 1907 the new mansion, designed by architect Leon Prokopovich from Odessa, was completed, grand and luxurious. It was inaugurated in 1914 and is dedicated to the prophet Elias, Saint Alexandra (Petrovna) and the apostle Andrew.

The First World War, the Russian Revolution and the Second World War dealt a heavy blow to the Russian monasticism of Mount Athos. The hermitage of the prophet Elias, with 500 monks at the beginning of the century, began to decline, until it was dissolved.

In 1973, Pantokratoros Monastery invited Hieromonk Seraphim Popovich, who came from America and was installed as the new deacon of the hermitage. However, he did not manage to restore the Prophet Elias. Thus, in 1982 there were only three monks left in the hermitage.

In 1992, with the intervention of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the skete was manned by an escort of Greek monks, who came from the skete of the Annunciation of the Theotokos of the Xenophontos monastery, with Elder Joakim Karachristos (d. 2021) as the first deacon. During Joachim's administration, the semi-ruined hermitage was completely renovated. Today, 9 monks live there, with Elder Philemons as the rightful one.

Library

In the library of the hermitage of Prophet Ilias, which is co-located with its museum, no manuscript or printed book from the period of Paisius Velikovsky is preserved.

Paisios systematically studied the writings of the ascetic fathers. He visited the Slavic monasteries of Hilandariou and Zografou, whose libraries already existed in the 14th century. they had been enriched with many Slavonic manuscripts of ascetic and mystical works. At the time of Paisios, i.e. the 18th century, the Bulgarians of Chilandario, simple and uneducated, did not pay much attention to manuscripts. The monks of the two monasteries willingly lent or even donated manuscripts, which Paisios took to his cell and engaged in copying or studying them. The indifference to manuscripts was such that when Paisios was absent from his cell "he did not close the doors, because inside there were only books, which were received from the Bulgarian monasteries".

The knowledge of the Greek language allowed Paisios to study the paternal works from the original. The ignorance of the monks as to the content of the manuscripts led him to a personal search in the libraries of the monasteries of Hilandari and Zografou, where he found writings by Hesychios Presbyteros, Philotheus Sinaitos, Theodoros Edessis and Isaac of Syros. In addition, he also turned to the libraries of the Greek monasteries. Initially he went to the hermitages of Agia Anna, Kavsokalybion and Agios Dimitrios (Vatopedini), because he thought that the ascetics there would definitely study ascetic works. He was surprised to find their ignorance there, as in the Greek monasteries, not only about the works, but even about the names of the fathers.

He discovered ascetic works by chance. On the way from the Great Lavra to Agia Anna, he passed by the cell of Agios Vasilios, where monks from Caesarea of Cappadocia lived. There Paisios discovered in a room a manuscript with works by Petros Damascenes. To his question if there were other ascetic writings, the monks replied that they had already copied many works, such as those of Antony the Great, successor of Photike, Simeon the New Theologian, Nikitas Stithatos, and many others. Paisios immediately ordered the copying of many of his father's writings, and, as he writes, "more than two years before our departure from Athos, that calligrapher began to copy, as God guided his hand. And he copied for me a part of those who desired those books, which, receiving as a gift what God had sent from heaven, we departed from Mount Athos". Thus, when Paisios left Mount Athos, he took with him the rich collection of these paternal works. These works formed the core of the particularly rich library, which was later created by Paisios in the Neamtsou monastery in Moldavia. The Library of this monastery today includes a total of 276 Slavic manuscripts, which come from the school of Paisius Velikovsky, many of which are his autographs. A considerable number of manuscripts of his school were also saved in the library of the monastery of Saint Simon in Moscow.

Spyridon Lambros at the end of the 19th century, in the hermitage of Prophet Ilias, found only one handwritten codex, which he describes in the 2nd volume of his Catalogue. It is a Psalter, from the 13th century, written on parchment, which is decorated with titles and some images of "idiosyncratic art".

Today the library of the monastery has about 30 manuscripts and 5,000 printed books, of which very few are old. It also has several manuscripts of church music in Russian.

Among the manuscripts, in addition to the one described by Lambros, another Psalter, from the 14th century, written on paper, as well as a Divine Liturgy of John Chrysostom, from 1635, with luxurious titles, initials and miniatures, are important.

Source https://www.aboutlibraries.gr/libraries/handle/20.500.12777/lib_4538