The Slavs on Athos
The Slavs on Athos
The naive researcher is stunned by the enormity of Slavic contribution in the shaping and survival of Athos.
Equally stunned, the researcher will discover the viciousness by which the West has been fighting for the destruction of Athonite Orthodoxy. The Latins and now America and other shady organizations. I marvel the power of a handful of illiterate monks living in caves in the desert of Mt. Athos!
Of the twenty monasteries of Mt Athos today three are Slavic.
Saint Panteleimon, Russian
Hillandary, Serbian
Zografou, Bulgarian.
. At the end of the 15th century, the Russian pilgrim Isaiah relates that the monks support themselves with various kinds of work including the cultivation of their vineyards....He also tells us that nearly half the monasteries are Slav or Albanian. As Serbian he instances Docheiariou, Grigoriou, Ayiou Pavlou, a monastery near Ayiou Pavlou and dedicated to St. John the Theologian (he no doubt means the monastery of Ayiou Dionysiou), and Chilandariou. Panteleïmon is Russian, Simonopetra is Bulgarian, and Karakallou and Philotheou are Albanian. Zographou, Kastamonitou (see fig. 58), Xeropotamou, Koutloumousiou, Xenophontos, Iveron and Protaton he mentions without any designation; while Lavra, Vatopedi (see fig. 59), Pantokratoros, and Stavronikita (which had been recently founded by the patriarch Jeremiah I) he names specifically as being Greek (see map 6).
(A. E. Bakalopulos (1973). History of MaRcedonia, 1354-1833. [By] A.E. Vacalopoulos. p. 166)
The first Slavic monastery on Athos was the Monastery of Zelianos (middle of 11th century).
PAVLIKIANOV, C. (1997). The Monastery of Zelianos, the First Slavic Monastic Institution on Mount Athos. Byzantina Symmeikta, 11, 37–48. https://doi.org/10.12681/byzsym.822
Slavs on Athos-Links for further study
https://www.kyrillos-methodios.gr/wp-content/uploads/pdf/1synedrio.pdf
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