Rambles and Studies in Greece Part 16

_Velificatus Athos_ is an expression which has a meaning even now, though a very different one from that implied by Juvenal. The satirist would not believe that Xerxes turned it into an island, though the remains of the ca.n.a.l are plainly visible to the present day. But now the incompetence of the Turkish Government has turned Athos, for English travellers, into an island, for it may only be approached by sea. If you attempt to ride there from Salonica or Cavalla, you are at once warned that you do so at your own risk; that the tariff now fixed by a joint commission of Turks, dragomans, and bandits for the release of an English captive is 15,000; that you will have to pay that sum yourself, etc. etc. This is enough to drive any respectable and responsible person from the enterprise of the land journey, and so he must wait for the rare and irregular chances of boat or steamer traffic. It was my good fortune to find one of H. M.'s ships going that way from Salonica, and with a captain gracious enough to drop me on the headland, or rather to throw me up on it, for we landed in a heavy sea, with considerable risk and danger, and the _t?????a_, as they cla.s.sically call it, lasted all day, and raged around the Holy Mountain. Yet this adventurous way of landing under the great western cliffs of the promontory, with the monasteries of S. Paul, Gregory, and Dionysius, each on their several peaks, looking down upon us from a dizzy height through the stormy mists, was doubtless far the most picturesque introduction we could have had to the long-promised land.

For this had been many years my desire, not only to see the strangest and most perfect relic now extant of mediaeval superst.i.tion, but to find, if possible, in the early MSS. which throng the libraries of that famous retreat some cousin, if not some uncle or aunt of the great illuminated MSS. which are the glory of the early Irish Church. The other travellers who have reached this place have done so by arriving at some legitimate port on the tamer eastern side; the latest, Mr. Riley,(186) by landing at the gentlest and most humane spot of all, the bay of Vatopedi. We, on the contrary, crept into a little boat-harbor under the strictest, the most primitive, and far the most beautiful of the western eagles' nests, whither English pickles, tinned lobster, and caviare have not yet penetrated. We were doing a very informal and unceremonious thing, for we were invading the outlying settlements, to demand shelter and hospitality, whereas we should have first of all proceeded to the capital, Karyes, to present pompous letters of introduction from Papas, Prime Ministers, Patriarchs, and to receive equally elaborate missives from the central committee, asking the several monasteries to entertain us.

But we took the place by storm, not by regular siege. We showed our letters, when we climbed up to Dionysiu, as they call it, and prayed them to forestall the hospitality which they would doubtless show us, if we returned with official sanction. The good monks were equal to the occasion; they waived ceremony, though ceremony lords it in these conservative establishments, and every violation of it is called a _p??s???_, probably the greatest sin that a monk can commit. At every step of our route this obstacle stood before us, and had we attempted to force our way past it, no doubt our dumb mules would have spoken, and reproved our madness. Yet when they had before them all the missives which were to be read at Karyes next day, to be followed up by a letter addressed to themselves, they actually antedated their hospitality and made us feel at home and happy.

Nowhere have I seen more perfect and graceful hospitality in spirit, nowhere a more genuine attempt to feed the hungry and shelter the outcast, even though the means and materials of doing so were often very inadequate to Western notions. But let me first notice the extant comforts. We always had ample room in special strangers' apartments, which occupy the highest and most picturesque place in every monastery. We always had clean beds to sleep in, nor were we disturbed by any unbidden bedfellows, these creatures having (as we were told) made it a rule of etiquette never to appear or molest any one till after Pascha, the Feast of the Resurrection.

The feast was peculiarly late this year, and the weather perfect summer; still the insects carefully avoided any such _p??s???_ toward us as to violate their Lenten fast. In addition to undisturbed nights-a great boon to weary travellers-we had always good black bread, and fresh every day; we had also excellent Turkish coffee, and fortunately most wholesome, for the ceremony of the place requires you to drink it whenever you enter, and whenever you leave, any domicile whatever. Seven or eight times a day did we partake of this luxury and without damage to digestion or nerves. There was also sound red wine, and plenty of it, varying according to the makers, but mostly good, and only in one case slightly resinated. There were also excellent hazel-nuts, often served hot, roast in a pan, and very palatable.

What else was there good? There was jam of many kinds, all good, though unfortunately served neat, and to be eaten in spoonfuls, without any bread, till at last we committed the _prosvole_ of asking to have it brought back when there was bread on the table. There were also eggs in abundance, just imported to be ready for Easter, and therefore fresh, and served _au plat_. Nor had we anywhere to make the complaint so pathetic in Mr. Riley's book, that the oil or b.u.t.ter used in cooking was rancid. This is the advantage of going in spring, or rather one of the many advantages, that both oil and b.u.t.ter (the latter is of course rare) were quite un.o.bjectionable.

When I say that b.u.t.ter was rare and eggs imported, I a.s.sume that the reader knows of the singularity of Athos, which consists in the absence of the greatest feature of human life-woman, and all inferior imitations of her in the animal world. Not a cow, not a goat, not a hen, not a cat, of that s.e.x! And this for centuries! Three thousand monks, kept up by importation, three thousand laborers or servants, imported likewise, but no home production of animals-that is considered odious and impious. And when, in this remote nook of extreme conservatism, this one refuge from the snares and wiles of Eve, a Russian monk seriously proposed to us the propriety of admitting the other s.e.x, we felt a shock as of an earthquake, and began to understand the current feeling that the Russians were pushing their influence at Athos, in order to transform the Holy Mountain into a den of political thieves.

Nothing is more curious than to study the effects, upon a large society, of the total exclusion of the female s.e.x. It is commonly thought that men by themselves must grow rude and savage; that it is to women we owe all the graces and refinements of social intercourse. Nothing can be further from the truth. I venture to say that in all the world there is not so perfectly polite and orderly a society as that of Athos. As regards hospitality and gracious manners, the monks and their servants put to shame the most polished Western people. Disorder, tumult, confusion, seem impossible in this land of peace. If they have differences, and squabble about rights of property, these things are referred to law courts, and determined by argument of advocates, not by disputing and high words among the claimants. While life and property is still unsafe on the mainland, and on the sister peninsulas of Ca.s.sandra and Longos, Athos has been for centuries as secure as any county in England. So far, then, all the evidence is in favor of the restriction. Many of the monks, being carried to the peninsula in early youth, have completely forgotten what a woman is like, except for the brown smoky pictures of the _Panagia_ with her infant in all the churches, which the strict iconography of the orthodox Church has made as unlovely and non-human as it is possible for a picture to be.

So far, so well.

But if the monks imagined they could simply expunge the other s.e.x from their life without any but the obvious consequences, they were mistaken.

What strikes the traveller is not the rudeness, the untidyness, the discomfort of a purely male society, it is rather its dulness and depression. Some of the older monks were indeed jolly enough; they drank their wine, and cracked their jokes freely. But the novices who attended at table, the men and boys who had come from the mainland to work as servants, muleteers, laborers, seemed all suffering under a permanent silence and sadness. The town of Karyes is the most sombre and gloomy place I ever saw. There are no laughing groups, no singing, no games among the boys. Every one looked serious, solemn, listless, vacant, as the case might be, but devoid of keenness and interest in life. At first one might suspect that the monks were hard taskmasters, ruling their servants as slaves; but this is not the real solution. It is that the main source of interest and cause of quarrel in all these animals, human and other, does not exist. For the dulness was not confined to the young monks or the laity; it had invaded even the lower animals. The tom-cats, which were there in crowds, pa.s.sed one another in moody silence along the roofs. They seemed permanently dumb. And if the c.o.c.ks had not lost their voice, and crowed frequently in the small hours of the morning, their note seemed to me a wail, not a challenge-the clear though unconscious expression of a great want in their lives.

How different were the notes of the nightingales, the pigeons, the jays, whose wings emanc.i.p.ate them from monkish restrictions; and whose music fills with life all the enchanting glens, brakes, and forests in this earthly Paradise!

For if an exquisite situation in the midst of historic splendor, a marvellous variety of outline and climate, and a vegetation rich and undisturbed beyond comparison, can make a modern Eden possible, it is here. Nature might be imagined gradually improving in her work when she framed the three peninsulas of the Chalcidice. The westernmost, the old Pallene, once the site of the historic Olynthus, is broad and flat, with no recommendation but its fertility; the second, Sithonia, makes some attempt at being picturesque, having an outline of gently serrated hills, which rise, perhaps, to one thousand feet, and are dotted with woods.

Anywhere else, Sithonia may take some rank, but within sight of the mighty Olympus, and beside the giant Athos, it remains obscure and without a history. Athos runs out into the aegean, with its outermost cone standing six thousand five hundred feet out of the sea, and as such is (I believe) far the most striking headland in Europe. You may see higher Alps, but from a height, and with intervening heights to lessen the effect; you may see higher Carpathians, but from the dull plain of land in Hungary. Here you can enjoy the full splendor of the peak from the sea, from the fringe of white breakers round the base up to the pale-gray, snow-streaked dome, which reaches beyond torrent and forest into heaven. Within two or three hours you can ascend from gardens of oranges and lemons, figs and olives, through woods of arbutus, myrtle, cytisus, heath, and carpets of forget-me-not, anemone, iris, orchid, to the climate of primroses and violets, and to the stunted birch and gnarled fir which skirt the regions of perpetual snow. Moreover, the gradually-increasing ridge which forms the backbone of the peninsula is seamed on both sides with constant glens and ravines, in each of which tumbling water gives movement to the view, and life to the vegetation which, even where it hides in its rich luxuriance the course of the stream, cannot hush the sounding voice. Here the nightingale sings all the day long, and the fair shrubs grow, unmolested by those herds of wandering goats, which are the real locusts of the wild lands of southern Europe.

Each side of the main ridge has its peculiarities of vegetation, that facing north-east being gentler in aspect, and showing brakes of Mediterranean heath ten or fifteen feet high, through which mule paths are cut as through a forest. The coast facing south-west is far sterner, wilder, and more precipitous, but enjoys a temperature almost tropical; for there the plants and fruits of southern Greece flourish without stint.

The site of the western monasteries is generally on a precipitous rock at the mouth of one of the ravines, and commands a view up the glen to the great summit of the mountain. To pa.s.s from any one of these monasteries to the next, you must either clamber down a precipice to the sea, and pa.s.s round in a boat commanded by a skipper-monk, or you must mount the mules provided, and ride round the folds and seams of the precipices, on paths incredibly dangerous of aspect, and yet incredibly free from any real disasters. When you come to a torrent you must descend by zigzag winding till you reach a practicable ford near the sea-level, and cross it at the foot of some sounding fall. But the next projecting shoulder stands straight out of the sea, and you must climb again a similar break-neck ascent, till you reach a path along the edge of the dizzy cliff, where you pa.s.s with one foot in the air, over the sea one thousand feet beneath, while the other is nudged now and then by the wall of the rock within, so that the cautious mule chooses the outer ledge of the road, since a loss of balance means strictly a loss of life. It was a constant regret to us that none of the party could sketch the beautiful scenes which were perpetually before us, or even photograph them. But the efforts of photographers. .h.i.therto have been very disappointing. There are indeed pictures of most of the monasteries, taken at the instigation of the Russians, but all so wretchedly inadequate, so carefully taken from the wrong point, that we deliberately avoided accepting them, or carrying them home. Mr. Riley too, a man of taste and feeling, had essayed the thing with leisure and experience in his art, and yet the cuts taken from the photographs, which are published in his book, are also hopelessly inadequate. When, for example, approaching from the north, we suddenly came in view of Simopetra-standing close to us, across a yawning chasm, with the sea roaring one thousand feet beneath, high in the air on its huge, lonely crag, holding on to the land by a mere viaduct, and behind it the great rocks and gorges and forests framed by the snowy dome of Athos in the far background-we felt that the world can produce no finer scene, and that the most riotous artistic imagination, such as Gustave Dore's, would be tamed in its presence by the inability of human pencil to exceed it.(187) The plan of this monastery and its smaller brothers (I was going to call them sisters!) is that of a strong, square keep, rising straight from the sheer cliffs, with but a single bridge of rock leading landward, and when the wall has been carried to a height far more than sufficient against any attack save modern artillery, they begin to throw round it stories of balconies, stayed out from the wall by very light wooden beams, each balcony sheltered by that above, till a deep-pitched roof overhangs the whole. The topmost and outermost corner of these balconies is always the guest-chamber or chambers, and from this lofty nook you not only look out upon the sea and land, but between the c.h.i.n.ks of the floor of boards you see into air under your feet, and reflect that if a storm swept round the cliff your frail tenement might be crushed like a house of cards, and wander into the sea far beneath. To me, at least, it was impossible to walk round these balconies without an occasional shudder, and yet we could not hear that the slender supports had ever given way, or that any of the monks had ever been launched into the air. On the divans running round these aerial guest-chambers are beautiful rugs from Smyrna and Bulgaria, the ancient gifts of pilgrims and of peasants, which were thrust aside in the rich and vulgar Russian establishments for the gaudy products of modern Constantinople and Athens, while the older and simpler monasteries were content with their soft and mellow colors. The wealth of Athos in these rugs is very great. There were constantly on the mules under us saddle-cloths which would be the glory of an aesthetic drawing-room.

But it is high time for us to take a closer view of the inside of these curious castles, some of which, Vatopedi, Iviron, Lavra, are almost towns surrounded by great fortifications, and which possess not only large properties, outlying farms, dependencies, but within them a whole population of monks and their retainers. Let us first speak of the treasures acc.u.mulated within them, relics of ancient art and industry in the way of books, pictures, and work in precious metals. The reader will doubtless appreciate that the estimate of some of these things depends largely on the taste and education of the visitor. Mr. Riley thinks it of importance, in his excellent work, to enumerate the exact number of chapels contained in, or attached to, each monastery, whereas to me the exact number, and the name of the patron saint, seems about the last detail with which I should trouble my readers. So also some sentimental travellers enumerate with care the alleged relics, and Mr. Riley lets it be seen plainly not only that he is disposed to believe in their genuineness, but that, if proven, it is of the highest religious importance. Seeing the gross ignorance of the monks on all really important matters of history on the real date and foundation of their several monasteries, the ascription of a relic to some companion of our Lord, or some worthy of the first four centuries, seems to me ridiculous.

With this preamble I turn first to the books. Every convent we visited had a library containing MSS. The larger had in addition many printed books; in one, for example, which was not rich (Esphigmenu), we found a fine bound set of Migne's "Fathers." The library room was generally a mere closet with very little light, and there was no sign that anybody ever read there. The contents indeed consisted of ecclesiastical books, prayer-books, lesson-books, rituals noted for chanting, of which they had working copies in their churches. Still they are so careless concerning the teachings of their old service books that they have completely lost the meaning of the old musical notation, which appears in dots and commas (generally red) over their older texts, and they now follow a new tradition with a new notation. When one has seen some hundreds of these Gospels, and extracts from the Gospels, ranging over several centuries, some written in gold characters on the t.i.tle-page, with conventional pictures of the Evangelists on gold ground, one begins to wonder what could have possessed the good monks to occupy themselves with doing over and over again what had been done hundreds of times, and lay before them in mult.i.tudes of adequate copies. I suppose the nature of their religious worship suggests the true answer. As they count it religion to repeat over and over again prayers and lessons all through their nights of vigil and their days of somnolence, so they must have thought it acceptable to G.o.d, and a meritorious work, to keep copying out, in a fair hand, Gospels that n.o.body would read and that n.o.body would disturb for centuries on dusty shelves.

In the twelve libraries I examined I did not find more than half a dozen secular books, and these of late date, and copies of well-known texts.

There may of course be some stray treasures still concealed in nooks and corners, though a good scholar, Mr. Lambros of Athens, has spent much labor in cla.s.sifying and cataloguing these MSS. But I saw chests here and there in out-of-the-way lumber rooms, with a few books lying in them, and believe that in this way something valuable may still be concealed. In general the monks were friendly and ready to show their books, or at least their perfect manners made them appear so; but in one monastery (Stavronikita) they were clearly anxious that none of these treasures should be studied. They had not only tossed together all their MSS. which had been recently set in order by Mr. Lambros, but had torn off the labels with which he had numbered them, without any attempt, or I believe intention, of replacing them with new ones.

As I am not now addressing learned readers, I need not go into details about the particular books which interested me. My main object had been to find, if possible, at Mount Athos some a.n.a.logy, some parallel, to the splendid school of ornamentation which has left us the _Book of Kells_, the _Lindisfarne Gospels_, _St. Chad's Gospel_ at Lichfield, and other such masterpieces of Irish illumination. I have always thought it likely that some early Byzantine missionary found his way to Ireland, and gave the first impulse to a local school of art. That there is a family likeness between early Irish and Byzantine work seems to me undeniable. I can hardly say whether I was disappointed or not to find that, as far as Athos went, the Irish school was perfectly independent, and there was no early book which even remotely suggested the marvellous designs of the _Book of Kells_. The emblems of the Evangelists seemed unknown there before the eleventh century. There was ample use of gilding, and a good knowledge of colors. In one or two we found a dozen kinds of birds adequately portrayed in colors-the peac.o.c.k, pheasant, red-legged partridge, stork, etc., being at once recognizable. But all the capitals were upon the same design, all the bands of ornament were little more than blue diaper on gold ground. There were a good many books in slanting uncials, probably seventh to ninth century; an occasional page or fragment of earlier date, but nothing that we could see of value for solving the difficulties of a Scripture text. Careful and beautiful handwritings on splendid vellum of the succeeding centuries were there in countless abundance. They are valuable as specimens of handwriting and as nothing else. In many of the libraries the monk in charge was quite intelligent about the dates of the MSS., and was able to read the often perplexing colophon in which the century and _indiction_ were recorded. But the number of dated MSS. was, alas! very small.

I now turn to the _?e????a_ or treasures in precious metals and gems, which have often been described and belauded by travellers. Each visitor sees something to admire which the rest pa.s.s over in silence, or else he is shown something not noticed by the rest. So the reader must consult first, Curzon, then Mr. Tozer, then Didron, then Mr. Riley, and even after that there remain many things to be noted by fresh observers. The fact is that the majority of these reliquaries, pictures, and ornaments of the screen are tawdry and vulgar, either made or renewed lately, and in bad taste. It is only here and there that a splendid old piece of work strikes one with its strange contrast. Far the most interesting of all the ill.u.s.trations given by Mr. Riley is that of the nave of one of the Churches, which are all (except the old Church of Karyes) built on exactly the same plan, with small variations as to the lighting, or the outer narthex, or the dimensions. An architect would find these variations highly interesting; to the amateur there seems in them a great sameness.

But among the uniform, or nearly uniform, features is a huge candelabrum, not the central one hung from the middle of the dome, but one which encircles it, hung by bra.s.s chains from the inner edges of the dome, consisting of twelve (sometimes only ten) straight bands of open-worked bra.s.s, of excellent design, joined with hinges, which are set in double eagles (the Byzantine emblem), so that they form large decagons or duodecagons, in the upper edge of which candles are set all round. The design and work of these candelabra appeared to me old. But the monks affirmed that they were now made in Karyes. This I did not believe, and in any case my suspicions as to the antiquity of the design were confirmed by one I found in St. Paul's (Agio Pavlo), which bears on one of the double eagles an inscription that the Hegoumenos had restored and beautified the church in 1850. But this eagle joined bra.s.s bands on which was a clear German inscription stating that they were made in Dresden in the year 1660.

By far the finest embroideries in silk were at the rich convent of Iviron, and indeed the main church there has many features worthy of note. The floor is of elaborate old mosaic, with an inscription of George the Founder, which the monks refer to the tenth century. There are quaint Rhodian plaques, both set in the outer wall, and also laid like carpets, with a border of fine design on the walls of the transept domes. Beside them are remarkable old Byzantine capitals designed of rams' heads. But the great piece of embroidery is a _p?d?a_ (or ap.r.o.n of the Panagia). The ground is gold and green silk, on which portraits of the three imperial founders are worked, their crowns of pearls, their dresses of white silk, their beards of brown silk, and their faces painted most delicately in colors upon silk. Never in my life have I seen any embroidery so perfect and so precious. There were also occasional old crosses of great excellence, but to describe them here would be tedious and useless, unless it be to stimulate the reader to go out and see them for himself; nor can I recommend this, if he be not a well-introduced traveller, ready to rough it and to meet with good temper many obstacles. Travelling in Turkey, where time has no value, and where restrictions upon liberty are both arbitrary and unjustly applied, is a matter of great patience.

What shall we say of the services which go on most of the day and night in these monastic churches, and which seemed to Messrs. Riley and Owen so interesting and so in harmony with the Church of England, that they were never tired of regretting the separation of Anglican from Greek Christianity, and hoping for a union or reunion between them? Mr. Owen went so far as to celebrate the Eucharist after the Anglican ritual in one or two of these churches before a crowd of monks, who could not understand his words, far less the spirit with which our Church approaches the Holy Table.

Yet here are large companies of men, who have given up the world to live on hard fare and strict rule, spending days and nights in the service of G.o.d, and resigning the ordinary pleasures and distractions of the world.

Surely here there must be some strong impulse, some living faith which sways so many lives. And yet after long and anxious searching for some spiritual life, after hours spent in watching the prayers and austerities of the monks, we could not but come to the conclusion that here was no real religion; that it was a mountain, if not a valley, "full of dry bones, and, behold, they were very dry."

It is of course very hazardous for a stranger to a.s.sert a negative; there may be, even in this cold and barren ritual, some real breath of spiritual life, and some examples of men who serve G.o.d in spirit and in truth. But the general impression, as compared with that of any Western religion-Roman Catholic, Protestant, Unitarian-is not favorable. Very possibly no Western man will ever be in real sympathy with Orientals in spiritual matters, and Orientals these monks are in the strictest sense.

They put a stress upon orthodoxy as such, which to most of us is incomprehensible. They regard idleness as not inconsistent with the highest and holiest life. They consider the particular kind of food which they eat of far more religious importance than to avoid excess in eating and drinking. How can we judge such people by our standards? To them it seems to be religion to sit in a stall all night, perhaps keeping their eyes open, but in a vague trance, thinking of nothing, and not following one word that is said, while they ignore teaching, preaching, active charity, education of the young, as not worthy of the anchorite and the recluse. To us the _????p??a_ which we attended seemed the most absolute misconception of the service of G.o.d; to the monks this was the very acme of piety.

I have spoken unreservedly of these things, as I learned that these gentle and hospitable souls were impossible to please in one respect-they think all criticism of their life most rude and unjust. They complained to me bitterly of Mr. Riley's book, which they had learned to know from extracts published in Greek papers, and yet could there be a more generous and sympathetic account than his? If, then, I must in any case (though I deeply regret it) incur their resentment, it is better to do so for a candid judgment, than to endeavor to escape it by writing a mere panegyric, which would mislead the reader without satisfying the monks.

Indeed, in one point I could not even satisfy myself. No panegyric could adequately describe their courteous and unstinted hospitality.