The Friends of Mount Athos Book Reviews
2005
Florilge du Mont Athos. By Fabian da Costa. Paris: Presses de la Renaissance,
2005. 276 pages. Numerous ills. ISBN 2-7509-0040-9. Price p/b 30 euros.
This book is an unqualified delight. The author is a photographer by
profession; but in fact he is far more than that. He has a degree in Byzantine
art and is a professor of the aesthetics of photography at the Stendhal
University of Grenoble. He is the author of a number of other books in which
his pictures are often accompanied by texts by his wife. But he now supplements
his genius with the camera with impressive literary skills of his own and he
evinces a deep love of the Holy Mountain that can only result from intimate
knowledge of its institutions and their inhabitants. He is also Orthodox.
The
photographs, all of them refreshingly in black and white, are stunning. We are
bombarded by images in colour nowadays, and often our eye is so taken with the
prettiness of the ensemble that the intended focal point of the picture is
missed. Not so in black and white which, at its best, is infinitely more
successful in focusing the attention of the viewer on the main subject. In this
book a few of the photographs, really very few, illustrate the landscape, the
architecture, and the holy places of Athos. But the vast majority illustrate
the Athonites themselves: monks at prayer, monks on the move, monks at work in
the kitchen or garden, monks at a festival or a funeral, monks in church or
refectory, monks just being monks, informal conversation pieces, and
astonishing portraits. My favourites are the desert fathers, whose ageless,
saintly faces remind me of the priests words in the Divine Liturgy offered on
behalf of martyrs, confessors, ascetics, and every righteous spirit made
perfect in faith. This photographer is more than an artist; he is surely an
ascetic himself.
He
is as much an artist with words as with pictures. As Pre Placide writes at the
end of his Prface,
Les grands monastres et les ermitages donnent aujourdhui le spectacle dune vie intense, les communauts tonnent par leur jeunesse. Les textes et les illustrations si vocatrices du prsent ouvrage permettront au lecteur dentrevoir quelque chose de ce renouveau spirituelle qui fconde aujourdhui lEglise orthodoxe.
As with the photographs, the most evocative of the texts, to my mind,
are those that concentrate on the desert fathers and ascetics. The heart of the
book comprises three long sections entitled Grandes figures, Portraits de
moines par un pre de Simonos Petra, and Histores athonites.
The
Grandes figures are St Silouan (1866–1938), Fr Sophrony
(1896–1993), Elder Joseph the Hesychast (1898–1959), Fr Ephrem of
Katounakia (1912–1988), Fr Porphyrios (1906–1991), Fr Passios
(1924–1994), and Elder Aimilianos (1934–). In most cases the author
cannot have known the subject, but the life of each elder is described and
illuminated by the evidence of other monks. Extended spiritual biographies of
many of these elders have been published in recent years and they are well
worth reading.[1] But da
Costas brief lives are the most readable and most arresting of any summaries
that have come my way. A few textbites will perhaps convey something of the
flavour. Fr Charalambos on Elder Joseph the Hesychast: Les vnements
miraculeux, les hauts faits asctiques que lon raconte sont des choses
admirables et extraordinaires pour les gens du monde. Mais pour nous qui vivons
au mont Athos, elles ont t accomplies par des amis de nos pres spirituels et
nous paraissent naturelles et toutes proches. On Fr Ephrem of Katounakia,
lorsque pre Ephrem clbrait, les anges descendaient du ciel pour clbrer
avec lui. On Fr Porphyrios, Jai parl avec les pierres: elles mont racont
tous les secrets de Kapsokalyvia. Remarkable stories are told of Fr Passios,
but the most graphic description of all is reserved for Elder Aimilianos. Here
da Costa wisely relies on the testimony of Elder Elisaios, Aimilianoss
successor as abbot of Simonopetra. The result, in just a few pages, is the most
fascinating tribute to the charismatic architect of Simonopetras renewal that
I have ever read.
da
Costas allegiance is of course to Simonopetra and in the next chapter,
Portraits de moines par un pre de Simonos Petra, we read about the lives of
some of the less grand figures, humble monks renowned for nothing in particular
and with no sense of ambition or mission, who simply bear witness to the glory
of God and who collectively make up the vast majority of the population of the
Holy Mountain. There are wonderful stories about Fr Gelasios, for example, who
was fond of saying, We are all pilgrims on Mount Athos, because no one is ever
born here. The photograph of this frail old man striking the talanto to summon his brothers so that he could
bid them farewell minutes before his death is one of the most poignant in the
book. This chapter concludes with these words:
Voil le genre dhommes spirituels qui vivaient sur lAthos, mme si dune manire gnrale, cette poque, les grands monastres taient en dclin. On dit que sur la Sainte Montaigne, chacun trouve ce que son coeur cherche. Et ceux qui cherchent des hommes spirituels trouvent des hommes spirituels.
The
chapter entitled Histoires athonites concentrates more on miraculous stories and spiritual happenings than
on individuals, and the monks who feature in them are for the most part
anonymous. An exception is Fr Jacobos of Pantokrator who died in 1973. When
asked what was the secret of his spiritual life after forty-three years in the
same monastery, he replied simply Humility and obedience. The unnamed monk of
Pantokrator goes on, Each monk who remains faithful to the monastic life is a
miracle. For to come here, to lay aside the pleasures of the world, to give up
human vanities, is truly a miracle Here we live another miracle, that of
confession. It is a very great mystery for us who see pilgrims before and after
their confession. Their faces are transformed, they are radiant, joyful,
liberated.
The
book is prefaced by brief sections on the history of the Mountain, the garden
of the Mother of God, and the contemporary renewal, and rounded off by
thumbnail sketches of each of the twenty monasteries. These are somewhat
perfunctory but provide the background that is necessary for the reader who is
being introduced to Athos for the first time. Nor are they without error: the
Persian fleet was wrecked off Athos in 492 BC (not 419 BC); the Holy Community
is made up of elected representatives from each of the twenty monasteries (not
abbots); the military coup that brought the Colonels to power occurred in 1967
(not 1969); and Iviron ceased to be idiorrhythmic in 1990 (not 1981). But these
are blemishes that can easily be corrected in a reprint, of which one hopes
there will be many. I commend this book without reservation to all friends (and
Friends) of Mount Athos.
[1] Among recent publications in English see especially Obedience is Life: Elder Ephraim of Katounakia, by Elder Joseph of Vatopaidi (Mount Athos, 2003), Precious Vessels of the Holy Spirit: The Lives and Counsels of Contemporary Elders of Greece, edited by H. Middleton (Thessaloniki, 2003), and Wounded by Love: The Life and Wisdom of Elder Porphyrios, edited by the Sisters of the Holy Convent of Chrysopigi (Limni, Evia, 2005).