FRIENDS OF MOUNT ATHOS BOOK REVIEWS
© 1994
Paradise within Reach: Monasticism and Pilgrimage on Mt Athos. By Rene Gothoni. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1993. 183 pages. Price h/b US$ 30.00. ISBN 951-570-158-9.
Life on Athos has not changed for a thousand years, or so some of us
who know and love the Holy Mountain like to claim. But is it true?
This book does not ask the question; but it does provide some of the
information on which we may base an answer.
The author is Senior Lecturer in Comparative Religion at the University
of Helsinki. Describing himself as both a cultural anthropologist and a
theologian, he uses what he calls the 'comparative approach' and examines
monasticism 'from a mythological perspective'. He has earlier studied Buddhist
monasticism in Sri Lanka, but no comparisons are in fact drawn with that culture,
except to say that he found the Athonites more difficult. He is interested in
Athos from the point of view of both the monks and the pilgrims. He therefore
asks such questions as 'What does it mean to be a monk?' and 'Why do laymen
come to Athos?' The field research for the book was done in the course of five
visits made to the Mountain between 1984 and 1988.
Gothoni covers a lot of ground within quite a short space: there are
occasions where one would have appreciated more considered analysis of the
facts presented. After a thumbnail sketch of the history of the Mountain,
he briefly considers its population which today he puts at about 1300
monks and 1500 lay workers. In a book published in 1993 it is frustrating
to be given no statistics more recent than 1984. But it is interesting to
note that the revival begun in 1972 represented an increase of only 121
monks in its first 13 years from a low of 1145. Thirteen years earlier,
in 1959, there had been 1641. What the statistics (and Gothoni) fail to
emphasize is the dramatic lowering of the average age of monks over the
last two decades. He remarks that most of the new monks are highly educated
and drawn from an urban background. He omits to mention the corollary: that
many of the old peasant skills are now lost; that monks are no longer farmers
and fishermen by nature; that knowledge of forestry and of the medicinal
plants is fast disappearing. Elsewhere he provides statistics of vehicular
movements into and out of Daphne, the port of Athos: between 1984 and 1990
arrivals (of lorries, cars, tractors, etc.) rose from 352 to 1185. He registers
surprise at the increase, but makes no comment on its effect on the environment
of the Mountain, the proliferation of roads, the pollution, the loss of peace.
Athos is paying a price for its 'revival'.
Gothoni is at his best when conducting interviews. He takes a representative
cross-section of monks - the 80-year-old icon painter who has exhibited in
Germany and England, the 50-year-old gun-crazy sportsman who is there for the
hunting, the 32-year-old former medical student who is now more concerned with
healing the soul than the body, the 30-year-old gardener from Australia, the
31-year-old librarian with a degree in theology - and asks what has brought
these men to Athos. He identifies two common features - that of being marginalized
in the world, and the attraction of an inner harmony. For these men 'a monastic or
“angelic” career is preferable to one in society.' But later he warns that those who
have failed as members of society are also likely to fail as members of a cenobitic
community.
The rhythm of the monastic life has no more changed than have the motives for monks becoming monks. The daily offices, each described in some detail by Gothoni (though he seems not to know Hugh Wybrew on The Orthodox Liturgy (London, 1989)), have pre-Athonite origins, as have the (Julian) calendar and clock (starting each new day at sunset) still in use on the Mountain. The list of duties allocated by the abbot (steward, treasurer, cellarer, storekeeper, cook, porter, guest-master, librarian, epistemonarch (who ensures that no one sleeps or talks during services), taxiarch, etc.) reads like a charter of the tenth century. And every activity, from private meditation to peeling the potatoes, is shot through with the Jesus Prayer, 'first said aloud with words, then with the mind, and finally with the heart'. As Fr Joachim, the gardener, explains, there are many cycles in Orthodox monastic life (p.117):
There is the liturgical cycle (from vespers to the morning
service), the weekly cycle, the yearly cycle, the agricultural and seasonal
cycle, a cycle of Adam's fall and the monks' aim at reunion with God... and
finally a cycle in spiritual striving ... until the passions eventually settle.
The spiritual fruits ripen slowly. Monastic life is a lifetime's retreat, a
continuous striving until the last breath is drawn.
Because the Athonite routine leaves so little time for leisure, many of the interviews with
pilgrims were in fact conducted in Ouranopolis. Those on the outward journey are mostly hoping
for some sort of supranatural experience and full of eager expectation. One man jokes, we are
told (twice actually), that he feels as if he is going to the moon. Many are said to have reached
a 'threshold' in their life cycle. There are the young Greek students who find adult life confusing,
the more serious foreign students of architecture, archaeology, or Byzantine art, the romantic
converts to Orthodoxy, the middle-aged teachers, priests, and lawyers 'in their mid-life crisis'
wanting to get away from the world for a while, the mountaineers, the simply curious, the foreigners
on their second, third, or eleventh visit coming to see a particular father, and finally the
middle-aged religious Greeks often with their sons. Many readers (like me) will recognize themselves
in this list. Those on their return journey often experience a sense of relief and claim to see the
world through fresh eyes.
And are these visitors tourists or pilgrims? Sherrard, writing in Eastern Churches Review (1977),
thinks that 'at least ninety per cent' of them are tourists, 'however much they may like to think
they are not'. Gothoni disagrees. His research suggests that while many on their outward journey
admit that they are just taking a look, when they return most of them realize and state that they
have made a pilgrimage. The sheer evidence of numbers is suggestive: between 1984 and 1990 arrivals
at Daphne rose from 19,688 to 33,519; in the first six months of 1992 more than 30,000 permits were
issued. More and more men are leaving the world in search of a direction in life. For them the Mountain
is performing 'an important social function'(p.135). It is not the Mountain that is changing so much
as the world.
It is inevitable that a book written largely in the 1980s and not published until the 1990s will
not be up-to-date in all respects. Thus Gothoni (p.16) describes the idiorrhythmic way of life as
still practised in two monasteries (Iviron and Vatopedi), though both abandoned it in 1990.
Pantokratoros (which Gothoni describes as cenobitic) was the last remaining idiorrhythmic house,
until it too finally became a coenobium in May 1992. Gothoni also tells us (p.122) that Greeks
have unrestricted access to the Mountain, but this is no longer true. In 1993 a new quota system
was introduced by which a maximum of 120 Orthodox pilgrims are admitted each day and 20 non-Orthodox
(10 through Thessaloniki and 10 through Athens). This was done to protect the seclusion of the
monasteries whose spiritual and material resources were being overstretched by the numbers of visitors.
Infelicities in the English are pleasingly few: 'non-fast food on Wednesdays' (p.21) brought a
smile after a second's pause (he later uses 'fast food' in the other sense on p.155); so did 'the
covered Holy Gifts and the whole church are incensed' (p.99). Slips like 'thou are' (p.79),
'the greating plate' (p.87), 'loosing thy virginity' (p.94), 'renunciates' (p.138), etc. might
have been picked up by a reader. And the English for 'the Blessed sayings' (p.100) is the Beatitudes.
These are minor blemishes which do not detract seriously from the value of a book which will strike
a chord with many readers who have travelled either in reality or in their dreams to this foretaste
of paradise.
GRAHAM SPEAKE
Oxford