Esphigmenou Monastery: The doctrinaire monks of Mt Athos
The Esphigmenou Monastery has frequently been in the news since last November in the form of scenes of violence at the Mount Athos port of Karyes, intervention by police, prison sentences for monks, expulsions from the Holy Mountain, riot squads on hand for a visit by the ecumenical patriarch and the appointment of a special investigator to examine the monastery’s property assets. The monastery was founded 1,502 years ago on the eastern side of the Mt Athos peninsula by Saint Poulheria, the sister of Emperor Theodosius II, and is dedicated to the Ascension of Christ. Over the centuries, it was often attacked and raided because of its service to national liberation struggles. During the War of Independence of 1821, the monks refused to surrender the chieftain Emmanouil Pappas, who had taken refuge at Esphigmenou, to the Turkish governor of Mt Athos, despite calls to do so from the other 19 monasteries which were cooperating with the Turkish ruler. Once again, the other 19 monasteries are at odds with the 105 monks at Esphigmenou – for two main reasons: The zealot monks of Esphigmenou refuse to name the ecumenical patriarch in their prayers because he has held services and prayed in the company of the pope, something they claim is forbidden by the Holy Apostolic Rules. Secondly, they refuse to accept billions of euros in European Union aid – so as not to be beholden to the EU in future. Differences over issues of faith have led to violence, excommunications and criminal trials, exclusions and expulsions and the deprivation of fundamental human rights. Monks who have died have been buried without any death certificate being issued by a doctor, as the law requires, because the monks are no longer allowed to call in a doctor from Karyes. Prospective visitors applying to the Mt Athos Holy Supervision, the community’s executive body, asking for permission to stay at Esphigmenou are told that «the monastery does not accept guests.» In fact, it can accommodate up to 400 pilgrims. As a result, visitors have to apply for a general visitor’s permit for a tour of the other monasteries. The boat from Ouranoupolis, run by Conaki Travel and Athos Tours, makes its first port of call at Yiovanitsa. We drive up to the Serbian Monastery of Hilandarion, a journey that would take an hour and a half on foot. From there we descended to Esphigmenou, on the coast. Shortly before we arrived, we encountered Methodios, the monastery’s abbot, who welcomed us and suggested we visit him in his cell after dinner. Below us was the monastery, a veritable fortress right on the sea. We knocked on the heavy outer door. It was the hour of vespers. Above us loomed the cells, with the church right in the middle, filled with monks and pilgrims. Both groups consist mostly of people from low-income families, former farmers, laborers, emigrants back in Greece after years working abroad, the unemployed. It is the poorest of all the monasteries on Mt Athos. At the other monasteries, renovated with funds from the European Union, there are monks who were formerly intellectuals, university professors, bank executives, fashion designers; their guests are often people seen in the social pages of glossy magazines. In Ouranoupolis, for example, we saw the lawyer Sakis Kehayioglou, who was implicated in a recent judiciary scandal, driving around in his top-of-the-line off-road vehicle with a group of young friends. At Esphigmenou, the atmosphere is peaceful. There is no showing off. The pilgrims are mostly young, some of them unemployed. There is a group of young friends from Aghia Varvara, in Athens’s western suburbs. For us it is afternoon, but here the clock is on Byzantine time, so it is the dinner hour. In the refectory hall are three rows of tables and wooden benches. Dinner is cauliflower and strapatsada (fried egg and tomato), bread and red wine. Throughout the meal, a monk reads aloud a lesson on abstinence. The cell in which we are to sleep is heated by a wooden stove, its windows overlook the church. We make our beds as we are instructed, with a blanket underneath the sheets, then two blankets on top. The photographer prepares his equipment and we go upstairs. From the window to the left of the endless corridor is the sea under a cloudy sky. A breakwater has been built as a gift from construction mogul Prodromos Emfietzoglou. At the end of the corridor, in cell No 2, is Abbot Methodios, who came to Esphigmenou in 1970 at the age of 19. He was elected abbot in 1999, on the death of Abbot Evthymios. The problems at the monastery began in 1965, when the Catholic-Orthodox Joint Declaration was signed between Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras «lifting the rupture of ecclesiastical communion and the 11th century anathemas.» The rapprochement between the two churches frightened most of the monks on Mt Athos because until then the Catholics were seen as heretics. In 1972, the Esphigmenou monks stopped naming the ecumenical patriarch in their prayers, declaring him a traitor to Orthodoxy. By a decision of the Holy Assembly, which exercises legislative authority at Mt Athos, each monastery was deemed free to decide upon the issue according to its own conscience. However, after intervention by then Ecumenical Patriarch Demetrios, the Holy Assembly expelled the representative of Esphigmenou. The first boycott of Esphigmenou occurred in 1974, when postal and communications services were stopped. The Holy Assembly dethroned the then abbot, Athanassios, and asked the monks to leave Mt Athos. The entire brotherhood opposed the move, however, and the order was temporarily frozen. In 1975, Athanassios died and was succeeded by Evthymios, who in turn was dethroned. He lived until 1979, when Methodios took his place. «For us, it is a question of faith. When someone violates the Holy Rules of the Church, they are heretics and we have every right to break communion.» The monks believe that «joint prayer» and holding joint services is a violation of the 15th rule of the Ecumenical Synod under the Patriarchate of Photios the Great. Since 1999, attacks against the Esphigmenou monks have intensified. «They accused us of being schismatics, they summoned us before the Holy Synod with a lawsuit. We recognize the Ecumenical Patriarchate, but not the line followed by the patriarchs. And the Holy Assembly is going along with them.» The monks were then given an ultimatum to hand over the monastery’s seal, relics and all other possessions, including their own personal documents, and to leave the monastery by January 28, 2003. The monks rejected the ultimatum and took recourse to the country’s highest administrative court, the Council of State, which, two years later, claimed it had no authority to rule on the issue.
