MOUNT ATHOS | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 12, 1892

MOUNT ATHOS.

When Xerxes invaded Greece with his army of a million men, he paused at Mount Athos. Dreading the damage which might be wrought if he attempted to sail around the stormy promontory, he had a canal cut through the narrowest part of the isthmus which connects Mount Athos with the mainland. This is familiar to all schoolboys and readers of ancient history. Traces of that canal have been found in recent times.

There were in the times of Greek glory some villages on the peninsula of which Mount Athos is the lofty termination, but they make no figure in history.

Mount Athos is of pure white marble, about seven thousand feet high. The whole peninsula abounds in most romantic and picturesque scenery. Waterfalls leap down the verdant sides of the mountains, groves of odoriferous trees perfume the air, lovely valleys invite to repose, and every prospect is more beautiful than the last. Over all is the blue sky that poets in every age have delighted to praise, and the Ægean is in view from every side.

On this peninsula there are said to be nearly a thousand churches, chapels, and oratories, and between two and three thousand monks and hermits. In the monasteries, which are built on the sides of the mountain range running the length of the peninsula, are libraries of great value, especially rich in illuminated manuscripts. But the monks seem not to know much of the contents of the books and rolls which they preserve so carefully. The earliest reference to these monasteries is 885 A.D., when a decree was passed forbidding any molestation of the "holy hermits" residing in them. During the Middle Ages many new monasteries were built; some of them have fallen into decay, and none of them seem to contain the numbers they are large enough to accommodate.

The monks cultivate the soil in the valleys and in the gardens of such of the monasteries as have gardens.

There is not a woman allowed on the peninsula, and many of the monks know the face of women only from the paintings in their churches of the Virgin Mary, and some woman patron of the monastery whose face is in their illuminated books.—Selected.