Greek Foreign Minister Orders Monks Evicted From the Capital of Mount Athos

BREAKING NEWS -DECEMBER 22, 2006 We have just been informed that the Greek Foreign Minister, Ms. Bakoyianni has given the order to empty the Konaki of Esphigmenou Monastery at Karyes, the Capital of Mount Athos by Sunday.

The government is trampling on the civil rights of the monks and this brotherhood that have lived there continuously for over 1500 years.

The monks simply want to be left alone to live out their commitment to a peaceful monastic life of prayer and the government wants to throw over 100 monks out of their only home and on to the street in the days before Christmas.

The government seeks to hand the monastery to another group of 5 men who have repeatedly engaged in violent attacks on Esphigmenou over the last year, including a particularly violent one last week when these men attacked the Esphigmenou monks in the early dawn hours while they were still asleep.

Abbot Methodios and the fathers have sworn that they will not give up an inch of any of the Monastery or its possessions on Mount Athos but will fight to the death along with hundreds of layman who are arriving to assist the fathers. Please call Bakoyiannis office in Greece, to protest this immediately, pick up the telephone and call right now. On Friday, their offices close early, so call now.

During the ceremony, a celebration of Vespers in all but name, seven antiphons were sung. Two were dedicated to Peter and Paul, patron saints of the Church of Rome and the Church of Saint Andrew. The fifth was composed for Pope Paul VI’s visit and expressed the joy of the Church of Constantinople in receiving the one who sits in the Seat of Peter.

Though praying with non-orthodox is strictly forbidden by the Holy and Sacred Canons of the church, Patriarch Bartholomew has once again demonstrated that things like the Canons of the church don't matter - he is a man above the law. To sin is to transgress God's law; to commit heresy is to change God's law. He'll decide what's lawful and what's not. Starving monks - yup, that's OK. Praying with non-orthodox, that's OK too.

Mount Athos

Mount Athos is a mountain and a peninsula in Macedonia, northern Greece, called ???? ???? (Ayio Oros or "Holy Mountain") in Modern Greek, or ????? ???? (Hagion Oros) in Classical Greek. It is home to 20 Orthodox monasteries and forms an autonomous state under Greek sovereignty. Only monks are allowed to live on Athos and the current population numbers around 1,400. The peninsula, the easternmost "leg" of the larger Chalkidiki peninsula, protrudes into the Aegean Sea for some 60 km at a width between 7 to 12 km and covers an area of about 390 km², with the actual mountain and its steep, densely forested slopes reaching up to 2,033 m.
The seas around the end of the peninsula can be dangerous. Xerxes I had a channel excavated across the isthmus to allow the passage of his invasion fleet in 483 BC.

Monastics from Mount Athos are often referred to as Athonites or Hagiorites.

http://orthodoxwiki.org/Mount_Athos

Esphigmenou Monastery (Athos) (From orthodox wiki)

Holy Monastery of Esphigmenou

The Esphigmenou Monastery is located on the northeastern coast of the Athos Peninsula in northern Greece close to the Monastery of Chilandari. It is ranked eighteenth in the hierarchical order of the twenty monasteries located on the peninsula. As is case of the other institutions on Mount Athos, life at Esphigmenou is coenobitic.

History

Esphigmenou monastery has existed since the tenth century, although Athonite tradition attributes its founding to Empress Pulcheria, the sister of Emperor Theodosius II, in the fifth century. The origin of the name for the monastery is uncertain. The name of the monastery came from a founding monk who wore a tight belt or from the name of the site upon which the monastery was built. The monastery is built near the sea as at the time it was built the sea was safe from foreign attackers. Manuscripts, however, record serious raids in 1047 and 1534. The 1534 raid was the most severe and was preceded by a fire in 1491.

In between the raids and fire Esphigmenou was favored by the emperors in Constantinople as imperial chrysobulls record the acquisition of property for Esphigmenou in Prolakas, Sloutarass, Krosouvo, Vrasta, Thessaloniki, and Constantinople. Also, Esphigmenou is noted as being the home, in 1310, of St. Athanasius who was Patriarch of Constantinople and of Gregory Palamas, in 1335, who was Archbishop of Thessalonki.

In the seventeenth century, Esphigmenou entered into a period of decline due to serious financial difficulties. The monastery began a recovery during the following century. This recovery was aided by Grigorios, Metropolitan of Meleniko who made payment of the monastery's debts his main project.
In early part of the nineteenth century, Theodoritos of the Lavra, as the abbot of Esphigmenou, reorganized the monastery as a coenobium and began the construction of a new katholikon in 1806 on the site of an earlier church built in 1010. He built other new buildings such as a new refectory as well. Between 1821 and 1832 Esphigmenou ceased to exist as a monastery as the Ottoman Turkish army commandeered and used the monastery buildings as barracks during the Greek war for independence. With the departure of the Turkish forces, the monastery was restored by Agathangelos Ayiannanitis. The rebuilding effort continued until 1870 and resulted in the construction of the monastery's modern buildings. These included the addition of a exonarthex on the katholikon, construction of the bell tower and a number of chapels and the southern gateway.

The katholikon is dedicated to the Ascension of Our Lord. There are eight chapels in the katholikon and seven outside of it.

While Esphigmenou is ranked eighteenth among the twenty monasteries on Mount Athos, it withdrew its representative from the Holy Community in 1974 and does not take part in the assemblies of the Community. The withdrawal by the monks was precipitated by a break with the Ecumenical Patriarch for violations of the doctrines of the Church in regards Patriarchate relations with non-Orthodox, particularly the Roman Catholic Church. The abbot, Methodius, stated that the monks of Esphigmenou Monastery do not want some fifteen million euros that was offered by the European Union to the monastery, noting that offers of such large amounts of money surely are made in the expectation of receiving something in exchange.
On December 20, 2006, a group of Esphigmenou monks clashed violently with another group of monks outside the monastery. When the outside monks attempted to gain access to the monastery's representative offices in Karyes, they were attacked by Esphigmenou monks using crowbars and fire extinguishers. The monks have refused an eviction order by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I and in October 2006, a Thessaloniki court issued two-year suspended sentences against nine monks and former monastery members for illegally occupying Esphigmenou's offices.[1]

Treasury

The monastery library contains 372 manuscripts and over 8,000 printed books. Among the treasures held by the monastery, Esphigmenou's most treasured possession is the icon of Our Lady Eleousa. In addition to relics of saints, the monastery possesses the so-called cross of Pulcheria and a large part of the tent used by Napoleon. The tent remnant is used as the curtain for the sanctuary door in the katholikon on the feast day of the Holy Ascension.

When I refer on my ocassional posts on the subject to Orthodox "traditionalists" and "integrists" (this latter term not to be understood as derogatory) I have expressions such as the above in mind, and the ones who uttered them.

There's argument, a powerful one methinks, that the command to agape takes precedence over any fundamentalistic reading of the canons. This is particularly true in the present age where confrontation between the Eastern and the Western Churches undermines the preaching of the Gospel, the administration of the sacraments, and therefore, the salvation of the world. There's a Greater Law than the canons--many of which are no longer enforced--to which the canons must yield.

It appears to me that the monks in question are in a state of disobedience to legitimate canonical authority and when monks become disobedient, they lose any claims to their patrimony as a consequence. A sad truth they're going to learn the hard way.

-Theo

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