Great Monastery of Vatopaidi. Tradition - History

FRIENDS OF MOUNT ATHOS REVIEWS

Great Monastery of Vatopaidi. Tradition - History - Art.

Edited by the Fathers of the Holy and Great Monastery of Vatopaidi. Mount Athos, 1998. Two boxed volumes containing 744 pages, 594 colour plates, over 30 black and white illustrations, bibliography, index.

Price h/b 145. ISBN 960 7735.[i]

Like the shining city on the hill in Lucian of Samosata, made by gods and men, like great Vatopaidi itself, this shining book is difficult to describe. I now understand why, when they came to describing an elephant, authors of medieval bestiaries looked for something their size they could get hold of and began with 'It has a small tail'. So I walk round this great tome, trying not to be impressed. It is not quite an elephant folio but weighs in at 15 lb. and stands on two volumes well over 1 foot high. I look for a small tail, which is the colophon on page 744. This reveals that, like Lucian, it was first published in Greek (5000 copies in 1996, when it was awarded shining prizes) of which this is the English edition (3000 copies in 1998, but still, appropriately, priceless). From printer to patriarch there are over fifty hands here, before including more than fifty editors, being the coenobium of Vatopaidi itself. Interposed between the Greek and English editions are idiorrhythmic translators where, say, Romanian into Greek does not quite get back into Romanian, but translators never get credit and in many languages have here done pretty consistently, which means very well. No one seems to have noticed that the Greek typikon of 1346 in Fig. 10 is still illustrated in reverse, but that does not matter, because it is not of Vatopaidi at all. I just tweak the tail.

There is no getting away from it. This is a colossal achievement, a reflection of Vatopaidi itself: large, dynamic, full of treasures. Sprung straight into prominence from its rather mysterious historical origins in the late tenth century, this single monastery is an epitome of the whole Mountain, and for those who cannot set foot on Athos (like some of its contributors) this volume is virtual reality. Just walk round the expanded isometric plan of the monastery itself and work out its evolution. Inside you can probably see more of its physical appearance in two dimensions than most pilgrims glimpse in three. The meals laid out on the marble tables of the trapeza, such as I have never seen outside a health food advertisement, almost leap off the page (actually the monastery illustrated an identical meal in 1994).

Since the tenth century the Athonite rhythm of monastic foundation and revival around every two centuries produced familiar and consistent figures, starting with the special relationship between a spiritual animator and secular patron¿ - the archetypal formula is of Athanasios the saint and Nikephoros the emperor. Then comes the spiritual reformer and secular refounder, sometimes out of synchrony. The lost communities of Athos which found neither at the right time are sunk into the mountainside, leaving the original and sempiternal eremitic, who does not figure much in these volumes. Other consistent figures include the lay brother, the Zealot, the beggar, the pilgrim¿ - and his guidebook. Some feared that the cycle of revival and renewal would miss a beat, but here it comes, this time with old characters in new guises.

In the current revival the patron is no longer a Moldovlach prince, but a bank. Simonopetra led the way in 1991 with the Hellenic Industrial Bank. The Vatopaidi volume is prefaced by messages from the Patriarch, the Abbot¿ - and the President of the Ionian Bank¿ - in that order. It is to be hoped that there are enough banks to go round all twenty monasteries. Another new figure is the academic adviser. Over a dozen names recur in four recent collaborative works: Simonopetra (1991), the Birmingham Mount Athos Symposium of 1994, the Treasures of Mount Athos exhibition catalogue of 1997, and now Vatopaidi - not to mention Icons of Pantokrator (Mount Athos, 1998) by Kriton Chryssochoïdes. This is in itself a small lay community of mostly Greek historians, architects, archivists, and others which has matched the revival on the Mountain. The result is a new sort of Pilgrim Guide, of which this is the most splendid example to date.

The revival at Vatopaidi dates formally from 1990 when the cenobitic rule was restored under Abbot Ephraim. In 1992 the tomb of the founders of before 985 was restored (and a rather ominous malediction about disturbing them found) and in 1994 an ambitious programme of restoration and publication was announced with an appeal for funds, which has caught the ear notably of the Friends of Mount Athos. This programme is awesome in its scale. In Oxford and Cambridge college terms (with which Athonite monasteries are so often compared) it is the equivalent of restoring and recording a foundation the size of Christ Church, Oxford, or Trinity, Cambridge, along with their libraries, from the oil presses at the bottom to the top of Vatopaidi's unusual clock-tower - which unusually keeps not just secular time, but time.

This volume is part of the programme, which, unusually, seems to be on time. Abbot Ephraim and Elder Joseph write of the spiritual life, but there is less on liturgy, music, and current communal life. Nikolaos Oikonomides (one of the most notable of Athonite academics) and Kriton Chryssochoïdes continue with the history of the monastery, the more valuable because the Acts of Vatopaidi have yet to be edited (but will join the series Archives de l'Athos). Historically the monastery had the usual ups and downs, but Vatopaidi has never been short of connections in high places, with the Byzantine aristocracy, with the Danubian principalities, and as a sort of patriarchal retirement home. During the Turkokratia idiorrhythmy fitted it particularly well. Unlike lesser monasteries, Vatopaidi could actually be a source of stability on the mainland in times of trouble, as a sort of deposit bank, and its adelphata (lay brotherhoods) worth investing in. But it is an unexpected place. Above Vatopaidi stand the forlorn ruins of Evgenios Voulgaris's Athonite Academy, described by Paschalis Kitromilides, in the 1750s Vatopaidi's abortive contribution to the Enlightenment.

The source of the material wealth of the monastery lay in its metochia (outstations) in the Balkans and Anatolia, in Moldovlachia especially, where it was a major and quasi-autonomous element of the Romanian economy. One would have liked a map of its properties and some explanation of why the loss of such lands from the nineteenth century was not so catastrophic. As usual, it is the post-Byzantine period which needs more investigation.

Vatopaidi attracts holy men as well as material wealth. Forty-three saints are listed, including two Sts Savas (of Serbia and the Fool), St Gregory Palamas, and, most intriguingly, St Maximos Trivolis who, as Maksim Grek, first informed the Russians of the discovery of America (they imprisoned him). There are wonder-working icons, the heads of Sts John Chrysostom and Gregory Nazianzen, a large fragment of the True Cross, and, most famously, the Girdle of the Mother of God in a chased box. Among innumerable treasures is the thrilling gold and jasper chalice of Despot Manuel Kantakouzenos Palaiologos with its flying dragon handles.

The list is endless. There are sections on and illustrations of Vatopaidi's icons, embroideries, carvings, even engravings. Particularly important are ten articles on its art and architecture, beginning with Ploutarchos Theocharides on the evolution of the monastic precinct and Stavros Mamaloukos on its ox-blood-red katholikon, exceptional on Athos for its mosaics as well as Byzantine wall-paintings. The opus sectile floor and the marble screen are recorded. Working buildings, wine cellars, oil presses, fish sheds, and the surrounding environment are not omitted - though there is less on domestic quarters. For all these there are long-term plans for restoration and repair.

There are four chapters on the library and four on the archives. The scale of each is staggering. For example, the Romanian archive alone, the most extensive on Athos, is to be published in thirteen volumes. In the library we are offered the plums, such as illustrations from the famous copy of Ptolemy's Geography - and that typikon of 1346 (this time the right way round).

Then there are 125 pages of notes, bibliography, index, for this is no coffee-table book, but a shining scholarly work, worthy of the shining monastery on the Mountain, and I can think of no higher recommendation than that. AXIOS!

ANTHONY BRYER

Birmingham