St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1895-03-04
PARADISE WITHOUT EVE.
Inhabited by Mount AthOs Monks
Their Treasures and Strange
IiVaS

Lives.
Fifty miles to the southeast of Sa-
lon1ca the long, narrow promontory of
Mount Athos, the most easterly of
three similar headlands, projects far
into the Aegean sea, says the New York
Sun. With an average breadth of four
miles, it is forty miles long, ending in
steep peak of white marble nearly
1000 feet high-the Hagion Oros Monte
Santo or Holy Mount. The mountain
ridge runs right down to the shore and
is covered with green forests and vege-
tation of great variety; the climate is
healthy and pleasant, while the seem
cry is very beautiful. The only in
habitants of this paradise now, as for
ages back, are some thousands of Ba-
s1llan monks of the Greek Orthodox
church.
The monasteries existed in the ninth
century and are probably much older.
There are twenty of them scattered
over the peninsula; each owns estates
on Athos and in many countries of the
Greek faith; each governs itself and
has share in the common government
of the district. Subordinate to them are
other religious houses, without indie
pendent corporate existence, called AS
ceteria, each governed by an officer
appointed by the monastery to which
it is subject. Besides these there are
countless cells and hermitages, either
grouped around the larger establish
ments or standing alone in almost ev-
cry part of the mountain. The Holy
Mount is second only to Jerusalem in
the Veneration of pilgrims of the Greek
faith. It's isolated position, made al
most inaccessible by the canal which
Xerxes cut across the neck of the
peninsula five centuries before our era,
has saved in great part from invasion
and plundering, so that it is perfect
treasure house of Byzantine art and
antiquities. Some of it's buildings are
the oldest specimens of domestic archi-
lecture to be found in Europe outside
of Pompeii. The shrines are adorned
with goldsmith's work of great an
tiquity. The libraries are rich in il
Illuminated manuscripts; they have
charters and title deeds of early Byzan-
tine emperors with the golden seals
still attached; but they seem to have
no chronicles, and their stores of lit
erary material have never been care
fully investigated. The monks keep
up the traditions of the Byzantine
school of painting; they manufacture
the metal objects used by the Greek
church-crosseS, censerS, lamps, chal-
ices, reliQuaries-and carve and inlay
wood
No woman is allowed to set foot on
the mountain. The exclusion of the
sex is extended even to animals, so
that milk and eggs are not to be had
on the peninsula unless they are i'm
ported AS the sea surrounds the
mountain, provision is made for the
contingency that a woman is ship
wrecked. Then the oldest monks must
take charge of her, and shelter her in
lonely part of the mountin, apart
from other limitations, and as soon as
is humanely possible send her by sea
to the nearest port. Nevertheless, the
mountain itself is dedicated to the
blessed virgin, one of the monasteries
has for its patron Saint Anne, another
Saint Laura, and other woman saints
are worshiped in the thousand
churches and chapels that the monks
maintain.
practiced by the monks, who are near
and grown weary of it, The novitiate
lasts for three years, then the lesser
habit is taken, with vows of chastity.
temperance, piety and obedience. Ex-
cept in rare cases the greater habit is
only given at the hour of death, when
the monk solemnly renounces the
world and the things that are therein.
Besides the usual fasts, they observe
1{c-S' IN,
specified days they eat absolutely
nothing: on 159 days in the year they
have only one meal, consisting of veg
etables and bread STEPPED in water,
as eggs, milk. cheese wine, fish and
oil are then forbidden; on no day do
they have more than two meals, and
they never eat flesh. The usual con-
diment is oil; the common food is dried
vegetables, salt fish, olives and black
bread. They can drink wine and two
liquors which they make-raki, a kind
of anisette, and mastic. The monks
never sleep more than five or six
hours; they go to bed at or and are
up for prayers at 2 in the morning The
Offices occupy eight or ten hours on
common days, and sometimes sixteen
or seventeen hours. In the mortuary
CIldpelS pray never cease, the
monks relieving one another at inter-
walls of two hours. BY far the greater
number is employed in manual labor;
some are busted with the administra-
ton, the hospitals, the libraries; few
are scholars or artists. There is
nothing monkish in their dress which
is the Albanian costume-a shirt and
kilt of closely plated white cloth, Il
dark Jacket covered with gold braid,
CATERS with gilt buttons, and a gray
sash, in which are stuck many small
weapons.
The community governs itself in
consideration of a yearly tribute to
the Turkish government. Russians,
Servians, Bulgarians and Roumanians
have foundations among the monas-
teries and contribute their support, as
do orthodox Greeks all over the world
The governing body, the Probation, is
republican in form. being a commit
tee of one representative from each of
the twenty monasteries elected for four
years.