Athos and its Legends
Trz recent years the monks and monasteries of Athos have been the subject of printed comment varying from the scholarly to the sensational. There was Mr. Choukas with his Black Angels, Mr. Brewster with his Holy Beards and excellent photographs, there was a Greek book called The Saints Unmasked, and the French lady who made so bold as to assert that -a couple of drastic amputations had enabled her to pass herself off on Athos as a male. She cuts no ice with Professor Dawkins, who found that on his first visit to Athos " the only observable -females-were a few cats ' .and:" no one," it was said, " notices cats " : he admits; however, that hens " seem now to be slipping in." By such pleasant touches he has lent buoyancy to a work of wide and detailed erudition. His original purpose was " to do no more than bring together a collection of the legends of Athos," but he soon found it necessary to give some account of the development and present state of the monastic life on Athos, and as be has been there on four occasions, inquiring; energetic and observant, and has much to say about what he has himself seen and heard, his - book should succeed both in gratifying the specialist and entertaining the general reader. Considerable powers of endifrance are evidentlY needed by a traveller who is to see as much of Athos as possible. Professdr Dawkins tells how he stood for six hours in church at Xeropotamou in order to watch the ceremonial swinging of the great corona, or chande- lier, of which the moving • lights are " a figure of- the happy dance of the angels and saints," and it is not everyone who could do that on a diet consisting 'largely of snails, ink-fish, and octopus. He tells also of a moment of vertigo on the edge of a precipice, caused. by " great heat, a tiring walk, ten days on very low diet, and an early start with no breakfast."
There are certainly many people who regard Athos, like religion itself, as an anachronism, .but one cannot help won- dering whether their own -institutions will-have virtue enough to endure as the Holy Mountain has done, " preserved throughout all the ages, by the piety of monks and her- mits and of -their noble protectors, against all enemies ; against iconoclasts and heretics, against. Saracen and Turks from the east, against pirates and Catalan raiders from the west, and against the dreaded, and detested Latins . . . who would throw• upon ortho- doxy the shadoW of the Pope, and bring with them the innovations of the western church. In these last days also have not the powers above protected Athos from the terrors and devastations of the Great War 1" The very landscape of Athos, with its woods and crags and hermitages, seems to have that air of unworldliness, of being in touch with the infinite and the eternal, that is con- veyed by Chinese paintings. "The wreaths of mist," says Professor Dawkins, 'describing a view from a high point, • "'blew here and-there. •At one moment everything was clear ; then there would be nothing but the- cloudy vapour. Sometimes the ridges showed -one above- another like silhouettes . . . with the upper edges sharp, and -below melting away into beds of white obscurity. Just for one moment nothing at all could be seen but the sharp black peak, a clear-cut outline rising out of a gulf of mist."
What background could be more suitable for a place where young men may go to satisfy a longing for an ascetic life, and old ones to "seek a refuge from the troubles of the world, and a quiet place of retreat in which they may ' make their souls ? It is a place which has provided " an atmosphere in which religious legends spring up easily and spread with marvellous fertility," and Professor Dawkins is an expert guide through these " mazes of tradition and pious fancy." It is curious how many of the legends are associated with ikons, which are in fact believed to " behave as actually existent things," and " seem real persons." This curious animism, and the strange splendour (and, be it admitted, tedium) of the Byzantine rite, help us to understand the " great simplicity of mind " and " constant feeling of the presence of the unseen world " among the Athonite monks, who have "a way of looking at the world which has- come down to- us straight from the Byzantine age." It is that way of looking at the world which this book sets forth, happily blending the historical and the actual, and making a personal discovery of the unique peninsula which for over a thousand years has honoured the poetic_ mysteries of the Christian faith with piety, frugality, and ritual.
WIT SI A la PLOMEU.
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