Kirshopp-Lake, The early days of monasticism on Mount Athos, Oxford 1909.
THE EARLY DAYS OF MONASTICISM ON MOUNT ATHOS BY KIRSOPP LAKE, M.A. .
PROFESSOR OF EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIDEN OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1909 HENRY FROWDE, M.A.
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK TORONTO AND MELBOURNE
PREFACE The following pages are the by-product of various visits to the Monasteries of Mount Athos for the study of Biblical and Patristic MSS. It is impossible for any one to visit these districts without becoming interested in the local history. I trust that Byzantine scholars will pardon my invasion of their provinca It is also probably worth noting that the list of aifheodota "hagiographica could be enormously increased by the con- sistent cataloguing of the lives of Saints in the various libraries other than the Laura ; for the extraordinary wealth of Mount Athos in this respect is obscured by the fiftct that the Cambridge catalogue of Lambros does not as a rule do-more than record the month to which a volume of ^Iol belongs. It is of course a help to know which MSS. have )3ibi, but the really valuable work of cataloguing the contents has still to be done. The pleasant duty is once more laid on me of acknow- ledging my indebtedness to the Trustees of the Revision Surplus, the Hort and the Hibbert Funds. This is the seventh book which I have had published, and of these seven five are entirely the result of grants made to me by some or all of these societies ; it is unnecessary for me to say more to prove that I have reason to be grateful for their help. EiBsopp Lake. Leiden, 1909. INTRODUCTION The history of Greek monasticism seems, in all '] the places in which it flourished, to a£Ebrd examples \ of a development passing through three more or \ less clearly defined periods. 1 There is first of all the hermit period, in which a desolate piece of couniay is selected by hermits as a£Ebrding the necessary solitude for an ascetic life. Secraidlyi^^ere is the period of loose organiza- tion of herm it s in laijira s ; that is to say, a collec- tion of hermits* cells, more or less widely scattered, grows up roimd the common centre provided by the cell of a hermit of remarkable fame, who has attracted, and in some degree become the leader of, the others. Thirdl^ there comes a time^when <he loose ia:ganizaiiQiijtftibfi.te bj.the stricter rule of a monastery with definite buildings and fixed regulations, under the control of an 7iyovii€vos or abbot The passage from the previous stage to this was no doubt frequently hastened by the fact that the Byzantine authorities encoiu'aged monasteries, but were not as a rule favourable to lauras. The present treatise on the early history of Mount Athos is an attempt to collect the few and scattered pieces of evidence which bear on the first two stages — ^the hermit and the laura — on Mount Athos, and to show that no exception is afforded to the general rule of development. Although the evidence is scanty, it is sufficient to prove that there were hermits before there were lauras, and lauras before there were monasteries, on the Holy Mountain. It would therefore have been logical to divide the discussion into the three periods dominated by hermits, laiu'as, and convents; but in practice it has proved impossible to do this, for the same man often began life ^in a monastery, and afterwards became successively a hermit, the centre of a laura, and the founder of a monastery. This is especially the case, natmrally enough, in the middle period, when the mountain was occupied partly by hermits and partly by monks in lauras, whom force of cir- cumstances compelled to adopt an increasingly more developed form of organization. In the following pages I have therefore divided the discussion according to the saints and monas- teries which play the chief part in the story. The /^ first division is dominated by Peter the Athonite, who was a hermit, and nothing else, in the middle of the ninth century ; his life, the text of whicli I append, has never previously been published. The ^ chief personage in the second division is Euthymius of Thessalonica, who was first a hermit, and after- wards the centre of a laura, on Mt. Athos. The y third division is not connected with the name of a monk who lived on Moimt Athos, but with that of INTRODUCTION 7 Johannefi EoloboB, who about 970 founded dose to the mountam a monastery which played a con- siderable part in forcing the hermits and lauras of Mount Athos to adopt a more^ definite organi- zation. The fourth and last division deals with the position of afiBure in tiie tentii century as revealed by various docmnents connected with Athanasius the Athonite, and includes the final decay of the laura system and its replacement by fully organized monasteries, together with the final absorption of the monastery of Eolobou by the monks of the mountain. For the sake of clearness I have as largely as possible kept the discussion free from any very long quotations from original documents, and have collected the evidence afforded by these in a series of pieces juslificatives forming appendices to each chapter. CHAPTER I THE ATHONITE Lff the Acta Samdarmm for June 12 (also in Migne's BOrologiii GroML, x6L 160, eoL 989 £) k printed what daims to be the life of Peter the Atfaonitey as told in the fotirteenth oentniy by Or^;orioB PalamaSy the femous c^iponent of Rariaam in the Hesychast oontroyersy* No <me, however, has ever tried to find in this docmnent any serious history concerning Peter, and it was impossible to say wheUier it was the free composition of Or^ioiy, or based on some earlier tradition firom which he had selected the miracaloas episodes which edified him, while omitting the historical details which would have interested u& Fortunately for history, in the Laura on Mount Athos and in other libraries there are preserved MSS. of an earlier life of Peter which was written (so at least it claims) by a certain Nicolaus, and was imdoubtedly the source used by Gr^ory Palamas. This has never been published and, though not a document of the first rank, is worth studying. Besearch in menologies would probably reveal the existence of a fair nimiber of MSS. At present, however, the only ones with which I am acquainted are as follows : — PETER THE ATHONITE 9 (1) In the Laura on Mount Athos, Cod. A 79 (saec. Xn, 36. 3 X 26. cm. 2 col. 33 IL), a beautifully written MS. containing the lives of the Saints and encomia for April, May, Jime, July, and August. This MS. has been used by M. Louis Petit for his edition of the life of Michael Maleinos ; ^ he there ascribes the MS. to the thirteenth century, but although it is exceedingly difficult to date these large hagiographical hands, I doubt if it can be put so late. Lideed my own opinion is that it was written early rather than late in the twelfth century. The last page of the life of Peter is imfortimately missing, but the text can be supplied from the other MSS. (2) Also in the Laura,. Cod. E 190 (written at the expense of Simeon, proegoumenos of the Laura, cK 7^9 xd^pa^ KapvoTovy and given by him to the library in 1646). This MS. is clearly a copy of A 79, and it was obviously not worth while to collate it : but it is valuable as giving the text of the lost page of A 79. (3) In Eome, Cod. Vat. 1190 (ff. 1003-1012), a MS. written in 1542 for *Georgius episcopus Siti- ensis et Hierapetrensis ' and given by him to Pope PaulV. (4) In Paris, Cod. Coislin. Paris 307 (ff. 398-410), a MS. which formerly belonged to the monastery of Castamonitou on Mount Athos and was obtained from ^ Vie et Office de Michel Maleinos^ &c., par Louis Petit. Fans, Picard et fils, 1903 (in the BibliotMque Hagiographique Orimtale, edit^ i>ar Leon Clugnet). 10 PETER THE ATHONEPE it (it is almost certain) for Siguier, the Chancellor of Louis XrV, by the famous Pere Athanase, whose story is told by M. Henri Omont in his Missions arcMologiques franpaises en Orient^ av»x XVII et XVIII si^les."^ (5) Also in Paris, Cod. Coislin. 109, a MS. of the tenth century, which Siguier most probably also acquired from P^re Athanase, containing on fol. 249^1 a short extract (in a later hand) from the life of Peter. This is important because the MS. itself came from tov evicrripLov rrjs vnepayCas %€ot6kov Kal TOV oaCov irarpos rfii&v TIerpov rov ^Kdon/irov (on f. 266). No doubt further investigations would reveal more MSS., but the text of A 79 is not bad, and it is not probable that the collation of other MSS. would give any results at all proportionate to the labour of collating them. In editing the text I have kept strictly to my copy of the MS. except in the insertion of iota subscript, and the treatment of enclitic accents. Where my copy attests a probably corrupt reading, and supports it by a ^, I have noted the fact with sic cod. Where I fear that I have made a mistake in copying, as the reading is apparently wrong, and is nevertheless not supported by a sic cod. J I have noted the fact by sic without cod. Merely orthographical variations I have printed without comment. ^ Paris, Iw^mem nationdkf 1902. PETER THE ATHONITE 11 The Story of Petev's Life. The story told by Nicolaus is a typical example of the methods followed by the Greek hagiographers. All the emphasis is laid on the visions, miracles, contests with demons, and general asceticism of the saint during his life, and on the history and efficacy of his relics after his death. There is often a tendency to describe all this kind of narrative as unhistorical ; but it would be truer to say that it narrates certain abnormal psychological experiences and combines them with a ' Weltanschauung ' which is entirely foreign to modem ways of thinking. The Ada Sanctorum would, I think, afford magni- ficent material to any one who would treat the psychology of the later saints in somewhat the same way as that made famous by Prof. W. James in his Varieties ofBdigious Experience. At the same time it is certainly true that this side of the narrative has no importance for fixing the historical facts connected with Peter. It is tiberefore probably expedient to tell over again in a few wcmls the few piu^ly historical parts of the story, as these afford the only foundation for any diacnssion of the date of Peter, and of the li^t thrown on the early history of the mountain by his life.
Peter was originally a soldier (a axoXapu^ of the fifth <rxoXi}) who was captured by the Arabs in Syria and imprisoned at Samara — sl misfortane wfaidi he r^jaided as the direct resolt of his n^gleeft 12 PETER THE ATHONITE to fulfil a vow to become a monk. He entreated St. Nicolaus to help him, and promised that if he obtained his liberty he would go to Some, and there take monastic vows. After some difficulty, to over- come which the further intercession of St. Simeon was necessary, the help of the Saints proved effectual, and Peter obtained his liberty. In accor- dance with his vow he went to Some and was ordained monk by the Pope. After a short stay in Some he joined a ship bound for the Levant, but when he was close to Mount Athos the ship was miraculously delayed, and he thus recognized that this was the place in which, as St. Nicolaus had told him, he was to pass the remainder of his days as a hermit. On disembarking he foimd the ^ mountain uninhabited and lived there for fifty years in a cave. Here he was tempted by devils L in danger from mU b«»ts, but uliimaky w<» mtoriouB ofer both. Towards the end of h^ kat year he was accidentally discovered by a himter, to whom he told his story, advising him to follow his example and adopt the ascetic life» His words had so much influence that the himter promised to return after a farewell visit to his family ; but when he came back the following year, bringmg with him his brother and some monks, he found that Peter was already dead. But since according to mediaeval ideas the corpse of a saint is worth even more than his living body, the two brothers proceeded to take away the relics in the boat in which they had come. They rowed and PETER THE ATHONITE 13 sailed along the east coast of the mountain, but when they were opposite the monastery of Clementos (where the present Iveron ^ stands), their boat stood still in spite of a favourable wind which filled their saiL So long were they stationary that the monks of Clementos put out to them, and made them land with the relics, the story of which they told very reluctantly, as they felt that it was improbable that they would be allowed to keep them. Nor were ihey mistaken : the relics were received with many honours and placed in the shrine of the Virgin' 'where they are accustomed to hold the annual cele- brations '. After this the himter and his brother departed, but the monks who had accompanied them were not prepared to abandon the relics, and after diverting suspicion by professing a desire to join the foimdation of Clementos, stole the body of Peter and sailed off at night to their own coimtry. The monk Nicolaus, in whose name the book is written, says that he was an eyewitness of their departure The nionks who had taken the relics successfully escaped to Phocamin in Thrace, but the miraculous power of their burden becoming known, the bishop and clergy of the place forced them to sell it| and the relics remained permanently in that place. In this story there are three points which arrest attention as likely to supply material for dating the life of Peter. These are (1) the imprisonment at Samara, (2) the pilgrimage to Bome, (3) the monastery of Clementos.
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