From The Holy Mountain Read Free Page A

it came to the ears of the Byzantine Emperor that the monks were in the habit of debauching the daughters of the shepherds who came to the mountain to sell milk and wool. Thereafter it was decreed that nothing female - no woman, no cow, no mare, no bitch - could step within its limits.
    Today this rule is relaxed only for cats, and in the Middle Ages even a pair of Byzantine Empresses were said to have been turned away from the Holy Mountain by the Mother of God herself. But 140 years ago, in 1857, the Virgin was sufficiently flexible to allow one of my Victorian great-aunts, Virginia Somers, to spend two months in a tent on Mount Athos, along with her husband and the louche Pre-Raphaelite artist Coutts Lindsay. A letter Virginia wrote on her visit still survives, in which she describes how the monks had taken her over the monastery gardens and insisted on giving her fruit from every tree as they passed; she said she tasted pomegranate, citron and peach. It is the only recorded instance of a woman being allowed onto the mountain in the millennium-long history of Athos, and is certainly the only record of what appears to have been a most unholy Athonite menage-a-trois.
    This unique lapse apart, the Holy Mountain is still a self-governing monastic republic dedicated to prayer, chastity and pure, untarnished Orthodoxy. At the Council of Florence in 1439 it was Athonite monks who refused to let the Catholic and Orthodox Churches unite in return for Western military help against the Turk; as a result Constantinople fell to the Ottomans within two decades, but Orthodoxy survived doctrinally intact. That deep pride in Orthodoxy combined with a profound suspicion of all other creeds remains the defining ideology of Athos today.
    I disembarked at Daphne, caught the old bus to the monastic capital at Karyes, then walked slowly down the ancient foot-polished cobbles, through knee-high sage and clouds of yellow butterflies, to the lavra* of Iviron.
    The monks had just finished vespers. As it was a lovely balmy
     
    * Explanations of all ecclesiastical and technical terms can be found in the glossary.
    evening, many were standing around the courtyard enjoying the shade of the cypresses next to the katholikon. Fr. Yacovos, the guestmaster, was sitting on the steps of the domed Ottoman fountain, listening to the water dripping from the spout into the bowl. He stood up when he saw me enter the courtyard.
'Welcome,' he said. 'We've been expecting you.'
    Yacovos was a garrulous, thick-set, low-slung monk, bearded like a brigand. On his head, tilted at a jaunty angle, sat a knitted black bonnet. He took my bags and led me to the guest room, where he poured a glass of ouzo and offered me a bowl full of rose-scented loukoumi. As he did so, he chattered happily about his life in the merchant navy. He had visited Aberdeen on a Cypriot ship in the winter of 1959, he said, and had never forgotten the fog and the bitter cold. I asked where I could find the librarian, Fr. Christophoros. It had been Fr. Christophoros's letter - surmounted by the great Imperial crest, the double-headed eagle of Byzantium - that had originally lured me to Athos. The manuscript I was looking for was in Iviron's monastic library, he had said. Yes, it had survived, and he would try to get the Abbot's permission for me to see it.
    'Christophoros will be down at the Arsenal at this time,' said Fr. Yacovos, looking at his fob watch, 'feeding his cats.'
    I found the old man standing on the jetty, holding a bucket full of fishtails. A pair of enormous black spectacles perched precariously on his nose. Around him swirled two dozen cats.
    'Come, Justinian,' called Fr. Christophoros. 'Come now, Chrysostom, wisswisswisswiss ... Come on, my darlings, ela, come ...'
I walked up and introduced myself.
    'We thought you were coming last week,' replied the monk, a little gruffly.
    'I'm sorry,' I said. ‘I had trouble getting a permit in Thessaloniki.'
    The cats continued to swirl