Zografou Monastery

Zografou Monastery

The Holy Monastery of Zografou (Bulgarian Зографски манастир) is located on the southwest side of the Athonian peninsula, invisible from the sea, on a wooded slope. The towered neorio of the monastery is the first thing anyone who travels from Ouranoupoli to Dafni meets. From here begins the road that runs alongside the stream bed in a green ravine and after an hour the hiker ends up on the wooded slope of Megalos Zygos, where, close to the edge of a deep ravine, stands the imposing monastery.

Zografou Monastery ranks ninth in the hierarchy of the twenty monasteries of Mount Athos.

History

According to tradition, it was built in the 10th century, during the reign of Emperor Leo VI the Wise, and its founders were three fleshly brothers, the monks Moses, Aaron and Ioannis, sons of the king of Achrid Justinian. Due to differences between them about the name of the monastery, they left a wooden slab in the church, on which was formed the image of Saint George, to whom the monastery was dedicated. The handmade icon of the saint is preserved to this day. This narrative is preserved in Greek and Bulgarian. The text describes the history of the monastery from 919 to 1371 and does so in a fictional way, without historical accounts. It brings together persons who lived in different times and countries or who never had a common activity. A typical case is the reference to a "chrysovoulon" "signed" at the same time by four kings who lived from the 10th to the 14th century (e.g. Leo VI the Wise, † 912,John Ouglesis, † 1371).

A firmer basis for the history of the beginnings of the monastery is the indirect mention in the Typiko of Tsimiskis of 972, where "Georgios the Painter" is mentioned among the signatories. It is estimated that the date coincides with its foundation. It is possible that this person, with the quality of the painter he seems to have had, gave the monastery its name and determined its dedication to Saint George, whose name it bore.

Initially, the Zografou monastery was Greek and all its representatives signed in Hellenistic. The first known abbot to sign in Slavic is Simeon, in the year 1169. During the period between 1051, when there is a signature in Greek of the abbot of the monastery Ioannis, and 1169, the monastery was either manned by monks of Bulgarian origin or granted to their brotherhood . However, after Simeon the abbots sign in Slavic.

Until the end of the 12th century, the monastery was a simple monastery that did not particularly stand out. For the first time in 1192, with the beneficence of John Kaliman, the interest of the kings of Bulgaria is manifested, which encourages the arrival of Bulgarian-speaking monks in Athos and the change of the character of the monastery. Its most important patron during this period was Ioannis II Assen (1218–1241), who is remembered to this day as the builder, which means that in his years a radical change took place in its character and its dynamism manifested itself. Among the Byzantines who protect her is Maria Tzousmeni (1142), daughter of the emperor John Komnenos. From the relevant document we learn that in previous years, Alexios I Komnenos (1081–1118) and his brother Manuel had benefited the monastery. Also, the monastery was repeatedly strengthened by the emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos (1259–1282), who issued many documents in its favor (1266, 1267, 1276). However, his name was associated with the advance of the philenotics (uniob of the two Churches) in various monasteries of Mount Athos, including Zografou. In all the monasteries of Athos, the 26 victims of the arson of the Zografou monastery who offered resistance during this raid (1279/1280) are honored as martyrs. In order to repair the damages, the following Palaeologians, Andronikos II (1282–1328), Andronikos III (1328–1341) and John V (1341–1376), significantly strengthened the monastery. So did Michael III Asen (1280–1330) of Bulgaria as well as rulers of Serbia and Moldavia. Among the Serbian kings, Stefanos Dusan (1331–1355) and Ioannis Ouglesis (1350–1371) mainly benefited the monastery.

At the beginning of the Ottoman occupation it received a generous grant from the Danubian rulers. From Stephen the Great of Moldavia (1457–1504), wife of Maria Asanina Palaiologina, who also built the tower of Arsana, and later from Roxandra, wife of the ruler of Moldavia, Alexander IV Lapousneanus (1563–1568). In 1651, the ruler of Moldavia Vasilios Lupos (1634–1653) offered her the share of Domproveti in Moldavia, and a little later Peter the Great granted a license for requests every five years. It also acquired a large stake in Bessarabia, not far from Kiev, and retained its old stakes in Thassos, Kalamaria, Kassandra, and Ormylia. In 1764 she paid a tax of 399 grosci on her farms. In 1808, 132 monks left, of which 94 were within the walls.

In Zografou, brotherhood always prevailed in the relations between the Greeks, the Serbs and the Bulgarians or Bulgarian-speakers, who communicated in the monastery. Until 1845, the monks chanted the services alternately in Greek and Church Slavonic. Since then tribalism prevailed in it as well and thus Slavonic was fully imposed in services and Bulgarian in communication.

During the period from 1862 to 1896, without having been damaged by fires, it was completely rebuilt in order to expand its area. It acquired magnificent buildings in the north, west and south wings, as well as a new pillar, a new bank and new chapels.

The Zografou monastery has been a community since 1850 with the seal of the patriarch Anthimos IV Vambakis. Hilarion was voted the first abbot. This was followed by reinforcements from various Bulgarian commissions and later from the newly established Bulgarian state. The monastery swelled and grew so rich that at the beginning of the 20th century it was the most prosperous financially on Mount Athos after the Russian monastery of Agios Panteleimon. It acquired new, luxurious buildings, mainly in the north and west wings, and became a center of the Bulgarian intellectual movement.

After the liberation of the region from the Turks, a ship landed in Dafni under the captain Papageorgiou, to whom all Turkish forces were unconditionally surrendered. The first episode after the liberation of Mount Athos (2.11.1912) was caused by the Bulgarians, when it was requested to allow a Bulgarian company to visit the Zografou monastery for pilgrimage. But their purpose was permanent settlement. They raised the Bulgarian flag and remained in the monastery until the outbreak of the Greco-Bulgarian war, in the spring of 1913. This Bulgarian military unit, which had meanwhile been reinforced, refused to surrender to a unit of the Greek fleet and sailed to the beach of the monastery, because it had the certainty that the Bulgarian army would win, in which case it would occupy the whole of Mount Athos. After a long siege, morale was broken and the company surrendered and was taken prisoner to Piraeus.

A period of decline followed. The First World War particularly affected the Zografou monastery. Almost all of her assets were confiscated, while the devaluation of the currency wiped out her bank deposits.

Donations from the Bulgarian Tsar Boris III (1918–1943) in the 1930s saved her from destitution. Among other things, Boris offered real estate and plots of land in the center of Sofia and Plovdiv. In 1946, the one-party People's Republic was established in Bulgaria, which eventually confiscated the property of the monastery. At the same time, its human resources began to decrease. In 1915 the monastery numbered 160 monks, in 1933 100, in 1945 about 50, in 1956 about 30 and in 1974 12. Furthermore, in 1976 its southern wing burned down and remained so for more than 20 years.

The monastery was manned by Bulgarian monks during the period 1970–1980, who found there a small brotherhood of elderly and sick monks, the monastery buildings neglected and many in ruins, and there was not even a road to the port. Gradually, with great struggle, the monastery began to recover. During Abbot Efthymios (†1994) many renovations took place (hospital, bakery, west wing, abbot, cemetery church and various accessories). This was followed by the restoration of the old warehouse (1997), the burnt south wing (1999), the guest houses, etc.

Today the abbot is Archimandrite Ambrosios and its strength is 45 monks.

The catholicon of the Zografou monastery is built perpendicular to the axis of the courtyard and divides it into two parts. It was built in 1801, on the ruins of an older 16th century catholicon. It is dedicated to Saint George. In 1817 the temple was historicized with frescoes. Later, in 1840, the glass-walled outer gallery was added. Four marble thrones from 1818 are placed in the pronarthex. The iconostasis and the Holy Altar are carved and gilded.

In the three shrines of the main church there are old icons of Saint George, of historical and religious value. The icon of "Epakoousa" (14th century), which is kept in the Holy Vima, is also of great religious value. Also, "Proagellomeni" or "Akathistos", who notified the monk who was reciting the Akathistos Hymn to her that pirates were approaching and ordered him to inform the monks. The icon went ahead and the monk followed.

Sacristy

The Vault of the Zografou monastery is located on the penultimate floor of the entrance tower, in the north wing of the monastery, below the Library and the chapel of the 26 Martyrs. Various relics, sacred utensils, icons, vestments, as well as wood-carved crosses from different periods are kept there.

Icons

The monastery does not have a special place for the iconostasis. The icons are kept in the chapel of Saints Cyril and Methodius, while the pilgrimage icons are in the Altar of the Catholic.

Scholars

Among the scholars of the monastery we mention Iakovos Blonitsky (1711–1774), a teacher in Moscow, where he worked with others on a new edition of the Slavic Bible. He abandoned his incomplete translation and traveled unannounced to Mount Athos. He lived for ten years in Zografou monastery, continuing his studies in Greek and Slavic letters. Here he compiled dictionaries (Greco-Slavic, Slavic-Greek and Latin-Slavic), as well as grammar manuals.

Library

The Library of the Zografou monastery is housed in the entrance tower, in the north wing, next to the chapel of the 26 Martyrs.

Vasili Barski, when he visited the monastery in 1744, found that "they don't have many books except church ones, because the Bulgarian people are very simple and not at all bookish, although there were manuscripts that were either burned or scattered during the desolation of the monastery."

The traveler Robert Curzon visited it in 1837. He points out that its manuscripts are newer and written in Bulgarian and that there are no codices in Greek.

The Russian professor Viktor Grigorovich visited the monastery twice, in 1844 and 1845. The first time he managed to see only the famous Gospel written in the Glagolitic alphabet and five chrysovoula which the monk Anatolios showed him. The monks even told him that the library had been destroyed by the Turks in the 1830s and what remained of it had been burned by its ignorant monks. On his second visit the library was opened, but he found that indeed there were no books there, but that what there was was in the sacristy, in the west wing of the monastery, in an extremely unclean and damp room. It even seemed paradoxical to him that on the one hand the books were in such condition and on the other hand the monks were complaining about the removal of these treasures by travelers. He could and did study the manuscripts and forms with ease, reducing them to a hundred, and compiled a small catalog of 35 manuscripts, without dating or detailed description. But he was particularly concerned with the Gospel of the 10th century. He left Zografou monastery disappointed, because its library did not meet his expectations.

The publication of the results of his research in 1848 aroused the interest of Slavologists, who turned to the search for Slavic manuscripts on Mount Athos. Thus, in 1852, the Bulgarian I. Dimitriev-Petkovski traveled to Mount Athos and began researching the Athonian libraries to discover and study Slavic manuscripts. He mentions that the Zografou monastery has 200 manuscripts, of which 20 are parchments, and he insists on the Glagolitic Gospel of the 10th century, the Apostle of 1359, an Octoech of the same era, the Liturgical of Euthymios, a Minieon of 1512 and some chrysovoula and other documents.

Also Petros Sevastianov (1811–1867), during one of his travels (1852, 1857–1860) worked at Zografou Monastery. He took with him an unknown number of manuscripts, as well as her most precious relic, the 10th century Glagolitic Gospel, which the monks sent as a gift to Tsar Alexander II.

The manuscripts and printed matter of the Zografou monastery occupied the Russian archimandrite Leonid Kavelin (1822–1891). In 1867 he published a brief description of the monastery and made known some previously unknown information about the Archive and the Library. In the last part of his book he refers to the Library and the invasion during the revolution of 1821 by the Arnautes (Albanians), who destroyed some manuscripts and sold others. Eight years later Leonid dealt with the monastery's library again, this time for the lost Draganov menaia. Draganov Minej (9th–10th century), written in
Glagolitic, which he was looking for.

In 1880, Porfirios Ouspensky (1804–1885) visited the monastery, who mentions the existence of 49 manuscripts, including some in Greek. As was his usual practice, Ouspensky removed leaves from manuscripts that interested him.

The interest in the study of the manuscripts of the Zografou monastery was particularly lively during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As an example, let us mention the Russian philologist and paleographer P. Lavrov (1856–1929), who discovered in the library of the monastery a valuable Old Bulgarian passage of Hori in the width of the Great Vasilii, from the 11th century, or Argyrov (1870–1939), who dealt among others with the Slavo-Bulgarian history of Paisius.

In the summer of 1902, Voulgaros A. Stoilof (1869–1928) worked in Zografou, who counted a total of 257 manuscripts and compiled the first catalog of the monastery's manuscripts, which he later published.

Jordan Ivanov, in 1906, after the research in the library, discovered the old Slavic life of Nahum Ahridos (10th century), recognized as authentic the manuscript of the History of Paisius, discovered the first Slavic translation of the life of Clement Ahridos, identifying Dimitrios Chomatianos as editor, and published many liturgical and hagiological texts.

In 1907, the Russian Slavologist Grigorios Ilinsky (1876–1927) visited the monastery and stayed there for ten days studying its manuscripts. He later published a catalogue, which includes a total of 184 manuscripts from the 13th to the 17th century.

The Slavic manuscripts of the Zografou monastery also occupied other scientists during the interwar period, such as P. Dinekov, Ivan Duychev, M. Kovachev, V. Zakhariev, Patriarch Kirill and others. Also, the Institute of Philology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences showed interest in the cataloging of the manuscripts of the Zografou monastery. This work was assigned to two institutions: the Ecclesiastical Historical Archive of the Bulgarian Patriarchate of Sofia and the Patriarchal Foundation of Patriarchal Studies of Thessaloniki. In the context of this cooperation, in the summer of 1978, collaborators of the two institutions worked on the cataloging and classification of the monastery's Slavic manuscripts.

In 2009 the monastery began a large-scale program of preventive restoration and conservation of manuscripts, old printed books and new editions, as well as its entire archive.

Archive

The Zografou Monastery Archive contains over 200,000 documents from the 10th century to the present day. The documents in the archive before 2009 were located in at least three different rooms, without particular classification.

The Bulgarian scholar Vasil Aprilov printed in Odessa in 1845 a book entitled Болгарские грамоты собранные, переведенные на русский язык и просмотрная [=Collection of Bulgarian documents, translated and annotated into Russian], in which, among other things, two documents from the Zografus Archive (1192 & 1371), together with their Russian translations and accompanying commentaries.

Pavel Safarik (1795–1861), philologist, linguist and poet Slovak philologist, paleographer and ethnologist Ismail Srezhnevski (1812–1880) published several Bulgarian documents from the Zograf and Chilandari archives in the Collection of the Linguistic Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1879.

The Russian philologist Grigor Ilyinsky, who studied in Saint Petersburg, Prague and Vienna, at the beginning of the 20th century visited Mount Athos, spending most of his time in the Zografou monastery. The study Gramoty bolgarskikh tsarei [=Deeds of the Bulgarian Tsars] (Moscow 1911) includes all the (then known) authentic deeds about Athos of the Bulgarian rulers, together with a thorough philological and palaeographical analysis of them.

Meanwhile, in 1907, in the Actes de l'Athos series, 67 Greek and 13 Slavic documents from the monastery archive were published. Also, the historian K. Pavlikianov published in 2018 the Slavic documents from the 15th to the 18th century, where he lists 41 and describes 35.

The monastery maintains an important collection of Ottoman documents (with around 800 documents from the 15th to the beginning of the 20th century), which illuminate different aspects of its history during the years of Turkish rule.

The great variety of Ottoman documents of the monastery testify to the active role of its brotherhood in negotiations with the Ottoman authorities at all levels of the bureaucratic structures. These documents clarify issues concerning the general status of Mount Athos within the Ottoman Empire, the privileges granted to the monastery by the Ottoman sultans, the incorporation of monastic properties into the Ottoman land regime, the taxation of monastic lands, the expansion of monastic holdings by purchase or donation and bequest on behalf of the church and, finally, securing ownership of disputed lands.

In the Archive of the monastery there are also 208 documents related to Wallachia and Moldavia. 49 are in Slavonic, the rest in Romanian. There are also 1 document in Hebrew, 1 in Italian and 3 in Russian. The richness of the collection of Romanian documents in the monastery is mainly due to the strong presence in the life of the monastery of the Moldavian voivode Stephen the Great (1429–1504). ) in 1851 in Prague (posthumously reprinted in 1873). This is a particularly influential collection. It included four Serbian and four Bulgarian documents from Hilandari and Zografou.

Also, the monastery archive has a series of document registers and payment registers from the first half of the 19th century.

Manuscripts-Codices

The collection of manuscripts of the Zografou Monastery includes about 950 manuscripts in total, of which 12 are Greek and the rest in various Balkan languages. Of the Greek codices, 3 are parchments (12th–13th centuries) and the rest are paper. Among the documents there are also 6 (five manuscripts and one form) in Japanese.

Of the 162 Greek, 110 were recorded by Spyridon Lambros and are included in the first volume of his catalog. The remaining 52 are described in a handwritten catalog with the title: "Catalogue of the Greek codices of the Holy Monastery of Zografou 1956". The authors of this catalog were the monk Kallistos Agiannanitis and the old man Panaretos Zografitis. On the first 26 pages, the documentation of the 110 manuscripts of Lambros is copied, followed by (pp. 27–59) the 52 uncatalogued manuscripts. They all date from the 15th to the 20th century, except for one that dates back to the 14th. This catalog was finally published by Sotirios Kadas in 2006 (see Bibliography).

The content of the manuscripts is ecclesiastical and theological. Only in Codex 5 of the 18th century two works by classical authors survive. These are the Epistles of the Council and the first four rhapsodies from Homer's Odyssey. Both plays are written with interspersed colloquial exposition. Finally, Codex 6 of the 18th century includes four works on the interpretation of works of the Synesium, of which two (On kingship and On baldness in praise) belong to Daniel Kerameas of Patmios (†1800) and of the other two, mentioned among the letters of Synesius, one is by Daniel Kerameos and one by Neophytos (Ephitheoriai tines...). In the same codex there is also an Explanation to the "On the Coronation" of the excellent orator Demosthenes. Among the Greek codices 66 contain church music and have been described by Grigoris Stathis.

The first volume of the collection of Slavic manuscripts of the monastery, published in 1985, was prepared by St. Kozuharov, B. Raykov and Christos Kontov. 286 manuscripts are described, not including the music collection (about 30) and several of the newer manuscripts (19th–20th centuries). In 1994, a list was published by St. Kozuharov, B. Raykov and Hans Miklas with the entire collection of Slavic manuscripts now. In 2017, Klementini Ivanova published a catalog of Slavic manuscripts from no. 287 to no. 405 (see Bibliography).

Chronologically, Slavic manuscripts cover the period from the 11th to the 20th century. Until the 14th century they are parchments. From the 19th century there are about 40 musical manuscripts, also Slavic, which are in use in the services of the monastery until today.

Among the Slavic manuscripts, of great religious value are the Liturgy and the Eulogy of St. Euthymius. Of the approximately 45 manuscripts from the 14th century, we highlight the Apostle of Laloe (1359), the collection with the Mountains across the width of the Great Basil (1368) and the Menaion of 1392. Also, approximately 40 manuscripts from the 16th century come from almost the entire Balkan space. Of these, noteworthy are three Gospels that come from the scriptories of Etropole, Rila, Karlovos, etc. Among the manuscripts of the 17th century, the Russian Parrisia of 1639 is noteworthy. There is a large number of manuscripts of the 18th century related to the history of the monastery, such as the manuscript of the "Slavic Bulgarian History" (1762) or the collection of the monk Iakovos which contains the "Narrative of Mount Athos" and the so-called "History of the Painter".

Two 13th-century codices contain remarkable miniatures. It is the Psalter of Radomiros and the Menologio of Dragan. A significant number of leaves have been removed from the Psalter. Also, the 14th century parchment Evangelistario, in uppercase Cyrillic script with Bulgarian spelling, and the 16th century papier-mâché Tetraevangelo, in semi-capital Cyrillic script and spelling of the Tyrnovou region, with a representation of each Evangelist at the beginning of each gospel, stand out.

The Vlach (Romanian) musical manuscripts written in Cyrillic are 6. They come from the end of the 19th century and were written in the scriptorium of the hermitage of Prodromos on Mount Athos by the monk Jacob, probably a student of Nektarios (Vlach) Prodrotis.

The Japanese manuscripts reached the monastery thanks to two of its monks: Hieromonk George (Chundnovsky) and Archimandrite Anatolio (Tihai). Both were born in Russia, became monks in Zografou and then joined the Russian mission in Japan. When George returned to the Zografou monastery, he brought these documents with him from Japan. The first translations of liturgical texts into Japanese were made in the late 1860s and early 1870s by Nikolai Kasatkin. In late 1871 Anatolios Tihai, probably under Nikolai's guidance, compiled a manuscript Russian-Japanese dictionary and transcribed the main liturgical texts into Japanese. George Chudnovsky, who was in Japan from 1884 to 1886, received from Anatolio his dictionary, the four manuscripts of the liturgical texts and a form, which he brought with him to Zografou after his return from Japan. The historical and philological value of these documents is indisputable, since they contain examples of the translation of liturgical texts from the early period of the Russian mission in Japan.

Printed Books

The Library of the Zografou Monastery has about 30,000 old and new editions from 1537 to today and from 1808, and most of them are in the Bulgarian language.

Thomas Papadopoulos in the Libraries of Mount Athos (p. 13) mentions that the first Greek edition he has found in the Zografou monastery is a Sticherarium of the month of June, printed in Venice in 1549 by Andreas Spinello. This is followed by a series of exclusively liturgical forms (a Pentecost of 1552, various Minaia of the years 1557, 1595, 1596, a Gospel of Petros Tzanettos edited by Dionysios Katilianos, of the year 1599, etc.). The first non-functional publication of the monastery, listed by Th. Papadopoulos (p. 47), is the Book called Paradise of Agapios Landos, printed in 1641 in Venice by Ioannis Petros Pinellos.

Official websites of Zografou monastery

α) http://www.sveta-gora-zograph.com/

β) https://zografnasledstvo.com/

Source https://www.aboutlibraries.gr/libraries/handle/20.500.12777/lib_456

Abbot Archimandrite Elder Ambrosius.

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