Holy Men of Mount Athos

774 Pages·2016·7.775 MB·English

by  Alice-Mary Talbot (editor), Alexander Alexakis (editor)

^DUMBARTON OAKS
MEDIEVAL CQBRARY
Jan M. Ziolkowski, General Editor
H O LY M EN OF M O U NT A T H OS
DOML 40
DUMBARTON OAKS MEDIEVAL LIBRARY
Jan M. Ziolkowski, General Editor
Alice-Mary Talbot, Byzantine Greek Editor
Byzantine Greek Editorial Board
Alexander Alexakis
Charles Barber
John Duffy
Niels Gaul
Richard Greenfield
Anthony Kaldellis
Derek Krueger
Eustratios Papaioannou
Claudia Rapp
Byzantine Greek Advisory Board
Albrecht Berger Antony Littlewood
Wolfram Brandes Margaret Mullett
Elizabeth Fisher Jan Olof Rosenqvist
Clive Foss Jonathan Shepard
John Haldon Denis Sullivan
Robert Jordan John Wortley
Holy Men of
Mount Athos
Edited and Translated by
RICHARD P. H. G R E E N F I E LD
and
ALICE-MARY TALBOT
^ Du m b a r t on oaks
Me d i e v al o^brary
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
LONDON, ENGLAND
2 0l6
Copyright © 2016 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Greenfield, Richard P. H., editor, translator. I Talbot, Alice-Mary
Maffry, editor, translator.
Title: Holy men of Mount Athos / edited and translated by Richard P. H.
Greenfield, Alice-Mary Talbot.
Other titles: Dumbarton Oaks medieval library; 40.
Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press,
2016.1
Series: Dumbarton Oaks medieval library; 40 I English translations on
rectos with Greek originals on versos. I Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 20150373131 ISBN 9780674088764 (alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Christian saints—Greece—Athos —Biography. I
Orthodox Eastern monasteries —Greece—Athos. I Byzantine Empire—
Church history.
Classification: LCC BX393 .H64 2016 IDDC 271/.81949565—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.l0c.g0v/2015037313
Contents
Introduction vii
LIFE OF EUTHYMIOS THE YOUNGER I
Edited by Alexander Alexakis
Translated by Alice-Mary Talbot
LIFE OF ATHANASIOS OF ATHOS, 127
VERSION Β
Translated by Alice-Mary Talbot
LIFE OF MAXIMOS THE HUTBURNER
BY NIPHON 369
Translated by Richard P. H. Greenfield
LIFE OF MAXIMOS THE HUTBURNER
BYTHEOPHANES 441
Translated by Richard P. H. Greenfield and
Alice-Mary Talbot
LIFE OF NIPHON OF ATHOS 569
Translated by Richard P. H. Greenfield
CONTENTS
LIFE OF PHILOTHEOS OF ATHOS 613
Translated by Stamatina McGrath
Abbreviations 641
Note on the Texts 645
Notes to the Texts 649
Notes to the Translations 659
Bibliography
Index 733
Introduction
This volume presents selected Lives of holy men who lived
on Mount Athos, the most famous Byzantine center of mo-
nasticism; it was often termed simply Hagion Oros, or the
Holy Mountain. These vitae provide insights into both the
history of monastic development on Athos between the
ninth and fifteenth centuries and the varieties of monastic
life practiced communally in large monasteries as well as
individually in huts and caves. We have chosen six vitae of
five different saints—Euthymios the Younger, Athanasios of
Athos, Maximos the Hutburner, Niphon, and Philotheos of
Athos—who were celebrated for their ascetic practices, the
gifts of foresight and clairvoyance, and, in most cases, the
ability to perform miracles. Euthymios and Athanasios were
also famed as founders of monasteries. We offer two ver-
sions of the Life of Maximos the Hutburner, to demonstrate
how hagiographic accounts of the same saint could vary,
even when composed very close in time. It should be noted
that, with the exception of Athanasios of Athos, the cult of
these saints was essentially limited to the Holy Mountain, as
can be seen by the manuscript tradition; almost all the sur-
viving manuscripts of these Lives were copied on Athos.
Mount Athos is the northernmost promontory of the
Chalkidike peninsula, which juts out into the northern Ae-
vii
INTRODUCTION
gean Sea like a hand with three fingers. The promontory is
twenty-eight miles long, and quite narrow, with a width
of three to six miles. It is connected to the mainland by a
narrow isthmus just over a mile wide. Almost completely
surrounded by the sea, it is the most isolated of all the Byz-
antine holy mountains, and the furthest from a major popu-
lation center, being located about sixty miles east of Thessa-
lonike.1 The peninsula is dominated by the six thousand foot
peak of Athos and its foothills, which break up the land-
scape into a series of deep gorges. In many places along the
coast, the rocky cliffs plunge right into the sea, and there are
few natural harbors. The craggy landscape, with little flat
land, combined with the lack of good ports, is not inviting
for human habitation, and as a consequence the Athonite
promontory was only very lightly populated in classical an-
tiquity, with perhaps five or six small towns. These set-
tlements were abandoned by the third century of the Chris-
tian era.2
Athonite tradition traces the Christian character of the
Holy Mountain back to the first century CE when the Vir-
gin Mary, en route to Cyprus, was diverted by a storm to
Athos and converted its local inhabitants. At the same time
she supposedly prayed to her son to grant her the peninsula
as her special place, and ever after it has been called the "gar-
den of the Panagia."3 Local legend places the origins of mo-
nasticism on the Holy Mountain in the early fourth century,
attributing to Constantine I the foundation of the earliest
Athonite monasteries.4
In reality, however, for six hundred years, between the
third and eighth centuries, Athos seems to have been essen-
tially uninhabited, frequented only by the occasional Greek
viii
INTRODUCTION
or Slav shepherd and his flocks.5 This lengthy period of iso-
lation from human activity permitted the Athonite forests
to become dense and lush. The earliest documented hermits
appear in the ninth century.6 The tenth-century historian
Genesios relates that in 843, on the occasion of the celebra-
tion of the restoration of icon veneration, the monks of
Athos sent delegates to Constantinople to join in the fest-
ivities, so it seems quite possible that the occasional her-
mit had made his way to Athos before the year 800, with-
out leaving any trace in the historical record. According
to Athonite tradition, one of the first to settle on the Holy
Mountain was a certain Peter, whose vita was written in the
late tenth or early eleventh century by Nicholas, himself an
Athonite monk.7 We have not included his vita (BHG 1505)
in this collection because it is a pastiche based on a variety
of hagiographic sources, and Peter appears to have been a
semilegendary figure.8 Nonetheless, he is greatly hallowed
in Athonite tradition, as one of the pioneers of eremitic life
on the peninsula.
LIFE OF EUTHYMIOS THE YOUNGER
We are on much firmer ground with Saint Euthymios the
Younger, who became a hermit on Athos in the mid-ninth
century His vita (BHG 655) was written by his disciple Basil,
who later became bishop of a town or city near Thessalo-
nike. Basil received his tonsure from the hands of Euthy-
mios, his spiritual father, and witnessed many of the events
of the final quarter century of Euthymios's life, including a
number of miracles and episodes illustrating his gift of clair-
voyance. Basil's text contains a number of accurate chrono-
ix