Mount Athos

ATHOS, MONTE

PLATE XXV

Top: MENOLOGION No. 5 from the monastery of Dochiariu (12th century). Notices for 14 November.
Bottom: NEW TESTAMENT No. 8 from the monastery of Dionysiu. Beginning of St. Matthew (1133).

Cape Sigeum. The city adorned itself with monuments and works of public utility; artists and poets flocked there from every quarter. Dionysus, until then the god of the rustic plebs, acquired the right of citizenship with the institution of the Great Dionysia: from his cult tragedy and comedy arose. In 513 Hipparchus was killed by Harmodius and Aristogeiton: three years later the Alcmaeonidae and other nobles returned to the city, with the help of the Spartans, and drove out Hippias. The Pisistratids had respected Solon's constitution; their fall, far from leading to an aristocratic restoration, marked the triumph of democracy. The reform was carried out by the Alcmaeonid Cleisthenes, who, in order to break definitively the power of the gentilician groups, divided the whole of Attica into demes or communes with autonomous administration, and distributed the population into 10 tribes, each comprising 3 trittyes or groups of demes territorially dispersed. The organs of the State remained the same, except that Solon's Boulé of 400 was raised to 500, chosen by lot in the number of 50 for each from the 10 tribes, which exercised the prytany in turn. In defense of the institutions the people were given the power to banish dangerous citizens (ostracism), which was for the parties a terrible instrument of struggle against their adversaries. It was with this constitution that A. withstood the Persian onslaught, securing in two memorable battles (Marathon 490, Salamis 480) the freedom of Greece, and, having acquired the hegemony of the sea, came to stand at the head of a maritime league, which in a few years it transformed into an empire. The 5th century was the period of its greatest power and its greatest flowering: it became the center not only economic and political, but also spiritual, of Greece: letters and the arts reached heights that have remained unsurpassed, and as the "school of Hellas" (Thucydides) it maintained its primacy until the following century. Democracy developed in an even more radical direction: the limitation of the powers of the Areopagus in favor of the Council of 500 and of the Heliaea, which, little by little, ended by absorbing almost the whole of civil and criminal jurisdiction, the selection of magistracies by lot, except for the military and financial ones, the extension of the archonship, first, to the knights (487) and, then, to the zeugitae (457), that is, practically to all citizens, and finally the institution of payments to the heliasts and then to the Ecclesia, made the government a truly popular thing. This brought as a consequence the formation of a class of politicians, the greatest of whom was Pericles, nephew of Cleisthenes, who for thirty years was the arbiter of the destinies of A. He resumed the policy of expansion and power of Pisistratus and Themistocles, but, whether because of his excessive boldness or because of the insuperable difficulties of circumstances, he barely succeeded in maintaining the positions previously attained and in preparing A. for the inevitable clash with Sparta. The Peloponnesian War (431-421; 415-404), which, under the leadership of the two rival cities, the one representing democracy and the other oligarchy, set almost the whole Greek world face to face, ended with the defeat of A. and put an end to its empire. The walls were torn down, democracy declared fallen and, under the government of the Thirty installed by the Spartans, A. knew the oppression of one of the most extortionate tyrannies. The reaction was not long in coming, and in 403 the exiles returned under the leadership of Thrasybulus and with the help of Thebes, and re-established democracy. In the course of the 4th century, taking advantage of the struggles between Sparta and Thebes and using alternately Persian help with them, A. succeeded in regaining a part of the lost positions, and in reconstituting on federative and less imperialistic bases than the first time a second Delian League (377). But by now a new power was appearing on the stage of history, Macedonia. The struggle sustained by A. against Philip amid general corruption and itself corroded by the extreme form to which democracy had come, in which everything was at the mercy of the Assembly and therefore of the orators who dominated it, is one of the most dramatic pages of the history of Greece, which had in Demosthenes the last champion of its freedom. With the battle of Chaeronea (338) the hegemony passed to Philip: an attempt at recovery after the death of Alexander (Lamian War) failed miserably at Crannon (322). What A. had been in the field of arts and letters in the 5th century, it was in the 4th century in the field of philosophy, which, having opened with the death of Socrates (399), saw successively the founding of Plato's Academy, of Aristotle's Lyceum, true universities organized for the purposes of scientific research, and the rise of the two schools that would dominate the Alexandrian and Roman age, the Stoic and the Epicurean. In the 3rd century, during the struggles of the Diadochi, and of the kingdoms born from the division of Alexander's empire, A., which, while preserving autonomy in name, was permanently under the surveillance of Macedonian garrisons, followed the turbulent vicissitudes of the age: three times it attempted to regain independence and three times it was broken. In 267 it joined Egypt and Sparta against Antigonus Gonatas, but, encircled by siege, it was forced to capitulate (261). From then on all its political function was at an end. In 197 at Cynoscephalae Philip V of Macedonia was defeated by T. Q. Flamininus and Greece fell under Roman influence. During the first Mithridatic war A. followed the revolt of the other Greek cities, but, besieged by Sulla, it was taken in 86 and treated as a rebel. Both in the republican and in the imperial age A. preserved its institutions, but it was nothing but a quiet city of studies, laden with memories and monuments. In this respect it still had a function of the first order that lasted until the age of Justinian, who in 529 A.D. closed its centuries-old University, which had remained pagan, and dispersed its teachers.

Carlo Diano

II. A IN THE BIBLE

Around 163 B.C., A. is remembered as a free city (2 Macc. 9:15).

(phot. Alinari)

St. Paul visited it on his second missionary journey, probably in 51 (Acts 17:15-34; 1 Thess. 3:1). Alone, he awaits the arrival of Silas and Timothy from Berea. He groans at the sight of the noble city, so religiously decadent: A. was in fact open to all cults and strewn with images (Petronius, Satyricon, 1, 17; Livy, Hist., XLV, 27). He begins his preaching to the Jews and proselytes in the synagogue, and to the pagans in the square or agora of the Ceramicus, at the foot of the Areopagus (v.). Some Epicureans and Stoics lead him to the Areopagus (according to many moderns, the royal portico situated at the foot of the hill of the Areopagus). The Apostle, taking as his starting point the inscription in honor of "an unknown god" (Pausanias, Descriptio Graeciae, I, 1, 4; V, 14, 8; Philostratus, Vita Apollonii Tyanaei, VI, 3, 5) proclaims to them the true God and the resurrection of Christ. The freshness of the local color is a guarantee of the historicity of the account.

Gaetano M. Perrella

III. CHRISTIANITY IN MOUNT ATHOS

Among the first converts in A. was St. Dionysius the Areopagite, who became the first bishop of that city according to the testimony of St. Dionysius of Corinth and of Hegesippus, and was martyred like his successor Publius. The bishop Quadratus addressed an Apology to the emperor Hadrian in 123-124 or in 129 in defense of Christianity; the philosopher Aristides of A. presented another to the same emperor; and the philosopher Athenagoras, a native of A., presented a plea for the Christians to Marcus Aurelius and to his son Commodus, defending the Christians against pagan accusations. Under the emperor Decius the bishop Leonides died for the faith. Still in the 4th century, when

St. Basil and St. Gregory Nazianzen were studying in that city, paganism was predominant there. Theodosius II began to give A. a Christian imprint, ordering crosses to be raised above the pagan temples. Justinian I closed its school, a center of pagan influence. Alongside the ancient monuments transformed into churches, such as the Parthenon, the Erechtheion and the Propylaea, new churches arose, such as the great basilica on the site of the martyrdom of St. Leonides. The first monastery of Daphni near A. was probably built in the first half of the 5th century.

The bishopric of A. depended at first on Corinth and, like it, belonged to the Eastern Illyricum directly subject to the Pope. The measure of Theodosius II which annexed this ecclesiastical province to the patriarchate of Constantinople in 421 was soon revoked following the protests of Pope Boniface and the admonitions of Theodosius's uncle, that is, the emperor Honorius. But Leo the Isaurian detached the Eastern Illyricum from the competent authority of the Pope (732), and the protests of the Popes in the following centuries could not change that unjust situation. Thus A. had to follow the historical fate of Constantinople, also in the fundamental question of religious unity with the Catholic Church; and not even the Latin dominion (1204-1458) succeeded in stably creating the bond of union with Rome. For two centuries the Greek metropolitan see was vacant; nevertheless certain monasteries persisted, protected by the Holy See, and the clergy and even the faithful remained. The metropolitan Michael Choniates (1182-1204, d. in 1217 on the island of Ceos), a man of high culture, knew how to preserve the his own in the opposition against the Roman Church through his correspondence from exile. In the Turkish period (1458-1830), owing to the lack of schools, the Greek Church was in intellectual decline; it received intellectual and moral help from Catholic missionaries in the Greek islands, which had schools and who were invited by the Greek bishops to preach in their churches. At A. the Capuchins settled in 1665.

Among the Greek bishops of the Turkish era, several of whom were deposed by the Turkish government or even by the Synod of Constantinople, few stand out for special merits, e.g., Sophronius (1565-70), notable for his practical sense, Neophytus II (1596-1602), who became patriarch of Constantinople twice, Anthimus III, who signed the decree of the Synod of Jerusalem (1672) against Calvinism, James I, who handed over to Morosini the submission of the city of A. and the request for protection against the Turks; the head of the Venetian expedition entered the city on 29 Sept. 1687, but remained there only a short time. In the times of Turkish rule several Greek monasteries were able to be founded; yet there was no lack of harassment and even killings of monks, due however to pirates. The foundress of the convent of St. Andrew, Venizelos, who herself also became a nun, was beaten by Muslims because she had saved four young women who were being driven by threats to embrace Islam; having died in 1589, she was canonized by a synodal sentence ten years later.

The independence of Greece, followed by ecclesiastical independence (27 July 1833), the proclamation of A. as capital city of the new Hellenic kingdom (1834), the immigration of many, especially of the refugees from Asia Minor, gave an eminent place, at least of honor (president of the synod), to the Greek metropolitan of A. At present there are more than 80 parishes in the two cities of A. and Piraeus, and there are found more than two thirds of the population subject to the metropolitan.

lita. Seven monasteries depend on him. The first dissident metropolitan of the new Greece was Neophytus Metaxas (d. 1861), recognized also by the patriarch of Constantinople after a refusal of 17 years. His successor Misael Apostolides (1861-62) had been entrusted with negotiating the autocephaly of the Greek Church with the patriarch, before becoming bishop of Patras in 1852. Theophilus Vlachopapadopoulos (1862-71) had very great difficulties with the monks and with the laity in the questions of the catechetical instruction of the people and of the material improvement of the secular priests.

Procopius Georgiades (1874-89) was very zealous, but much opposed by the government. Procopius Economides (1896-1901) enjoyed royal favor instead, but he dragged into his disgrace also Queen Olga, who had favored him in the question of the version of Sacred Scripture into the vernacular, considered at that time by some as a crime against the spirit of pure Hellenism. Theoclitus had various vicissitudes in the civil struggles between 1902 and 1922; he had pronounced the anathema against Venizelos in Dec. 1916, and the latter, having become head of the nation, had Meletius Metaxakis (the future patriarch) elected metropolitan; however, under King Constantine, Theoclitus was able to return, only to be overthrown with him in 1922. Chrysostom Papadopoulos (1923-38), writer of many articles and historical books, acquired merits in promoting the sciences (he is the founder of the journal Θεολογία), the catechetical instruction of the people, but he showed himself several times a violent adversary of the Catholic Church. For the intellectual life of A. in modern times the predominant role was held by the faculty of theology of the local University founded in 1837, whose professors were trained abroad and were influenced by it also for their work in their homeland, not always to the benefit of orthodoxy. The initiative of the first congress of Orthodox theology at A. from 29 Nov. to 4 Dec. 1936 was taken by the professor of canon law at the University of A., Hamilcar Alivisatos.

Giorgio Hofmann

IV. CHURCHES AND MONASTERIES OF MOUNT ATHOS

Gregory of Nazianzus, who frequented A. with St. Basil, tells us that there were various churches there in the 4th century. Many Christian epigraphs from this period have been found, some of them quite remarkable. By a law of Nov. 14, 439, the emperor Theodosius II decreed that the pagan temples of the city should be replaced by Christian sanctuaries. Perhaps from this time the transformation of the pagan temples into buildings of Christian worship began slowly, while there are some entirely Christian constructions also from the 5th century, such as the domed basilica discovered in 1916 near the Ilissus and dedicated to St. Leonidas. Near the Areopagus the remains of an ancient church dedicated to St. Dionysius were discovered. In the 6th century the temple of Athena on the Acropolis (Parthenon) became the Haghia Sophia (later dedicated to the Theotókos); a church decorated later with paintings of which traces were still visible in 1848. The fragments of an inscription belonging to the phiale originally existing there have been reassembled and studied by D. I. Pallas (Ἡ φάλη τοῦ φαστλανῶς παρβενῶνος, in Byzantinische Neugriechische Zeitschrift, 16 [1933], pp. 185-98). Chapels were installed in the Propylaea of the Acropolis and in the temple of Nike Apteros; the Theseion was dedicated to St. George and the Olympieion to St. John the Baptist; a cave in the theater of Dionysus became the Panaghia Speliotissa; the choragic monument of Thrasyllus the Panaghia Krysospeliotissa; the library of Hadrian the church of the Great Panaghia; the church and convent of Daphni (v.) were erected in the area of the temple of Apollo, and so on.

To the Justinianic period belong some churches and monasteries, such as the old cathedral or Catholicón, the churches of the Asómatoi or incorporeal ones (the Angels), of the Apostles (domed), built on the site where the sanctuary of the Twelve Gods stood; the church of Sts. Theodore, rebuilt in 1049 (domed with three apses), the best preserved of the ancient churches of A. Between the end of the 9th century and the beginning of the 13th other Christian buildings arose, such as, for example, the churches of the Haghia Triada, of the Most Holy Savior today Nicodemus, of the Panaghia Kandeli on the Tripod street, of St. John the Forerunner, of St. Nicodemus or Panaghia Lykodemon with an octagonal plan, earlier than 1044, of the Panaghia of the Great Monastery (Monastiráki), of St. John Manuti (a. 871), of the Little Metropolis or rather ancient private chapel of the bishops, also called Panaghia Gorgopikoos, with a 9th-century dome, today St. Eleutherius, with decorative panels on the exterior, of the Sts. Anárgyroi (Cosmas and Damian), today Methokikon of the Holy Sepulchre, of the Kapnikarea, dating to the 12th century, later reworked; two churches dedicated to St. Athanasius, one in the Payré district, and the other called St. Athanasius Chalkouri to the northwest of A., the churches of St. Demetrius Lombardaris near the Pnyx, of Sts. Simon and George (Anaphiotica), of St. Cyriacus (on the Athena street), of St. Elias (on the street of the Eponymoi), the churches today destroyed of St. Parasceve and of St. Nicholas.

The church of the Parthenon was enriched with gifts in 1019 by Basil II after the victory won against the Bulgarians (Cedrenus, Hist. compend.: PG 122, 208; Zonaras, Annal., 17,9; PG 135, 168), and later by Michael III Acominatos Choniates (1182-1220) who established his residence nearby and where at the beginning of the 13th century the archbishop Berard took up residence, while the Latin clergy officiated the church of the Virgin in the Parthenon. This sanctuary had become in the Middle Ages the goal of ceaseless pilgrimages, so much so that pope Nicholas IV in 1291 enriched it with copious indulgences. At the end of the 14th century Neri Acciaiuoli arranged in his testament that the doors of this church be covered with silver and that all the treasures taken away be restored.

To this period also belongs the largely ruined chapel called Hypapantou or of the Presentation built at the foot of the Acropolis on the site of the temple of the Magna Mater.

The travelers who visited A. during the Turkish domination still reported in A. from 300 to 130 Christian churches, a number that diminished ever more following the demolitions or the archaeological exploration works, reducing the number to ca. 50. The modern Latin Catholic cathedral located near the Academy is dedicated to St. Dionysius the Areopagite; the Catholics of the Greek rite have their church near a monastery.

The great Metropolis or new Cathedral of the dissidents is a modern building constructed in the mid-19th century with the remains of many demolished churches and chapels.

Among the ancient monasteries the most famous is the one that stood at Daphni (v.), 10 km. from A. toward Salamis. Worthy of mention are the monasteries of St. John on Hymettus, that of the Beautiful Church near Patissia, and that of Kaisariané with the small church annexed to it from the 10th century (J. Arnott Hamilton, The Church of Kaisariané, Aberdeen 1916).

A hall of the central museum has been assigned to the few Christian sculptures, among which the statuette of the Good Shepherd called of Patissia; the other antiquities are collected in the church of Daphni restored and turned into a museum. In 1892 the meritorious Christian Archaeological Society was founded in A.

V. THE ARCHDIOCESE OF MOUNT ATHOS

Under Latin rule (1204-1458), Latin archbishops resided at A. The first was Berard, confirmed by Pope Innocent III on 27 Nov. 1206. Above all important is the pontifical letter of 13 Feb. 1209, by which the constitution of the Latin Church of A. was established; in it, besides confirming the ecclesiastical donations, the Pope extends the archbishop's jurisdiction over eleven bishoprics that had belonged to the Greek metropolis. In the monastery of Daphni the Cistercians were installed around 1207, to whose abbots the Popes gave various commissions. When in 1387 the Greek metropolitan returned to A., the dominant position of the Latin Church did not change much, even though it counted, as indeed before, few Catholic faithful. The Latin archbishops were for the most part members of the religious Orders. The last, Niccolò Protimus, withdrew to Euboea; on 4 Aug. 1461 the church of Lepanto (Naupactus) was united with that of A. After the death of Protimus (1484) the Latin see of A. became titular and remained so until the year 1875, when Pius IX re-established the Latin archbishop, associating with it also the Apostolic Delegation of Greece, already instituted by Gregory XVI in 1834 and entrusted to the bishop of Syros. The new archbishopric developed with the help of the Orders, which founded secondary schools and charitable institutes in A. and in Piraeus; the statistics of the Congregation of Propaganda indicated for the year 1934 the number of Catholics as 25-26,000 of the Latin rite; 3,000 of the Armenian rite; 1,000 of the Greek rite, subject to their respective prelates. The Latin archbishop, since 1929, is at the same time apostolic administrator of Salonica. An international fame among scholars was acquired by Archbishop Ludovico Petit (1912-26, d. 1927), an Assumptionist.

Giorgio Hofmann

VI. THE ORDINARIATE OF MOUNT ATHOS

Residential see in Greece. The origin of the Catholic ordinariate of the Byzantine rite in Greece is due to the immigration of Catholics of the Greek rite from Turkey into Greece and to the Greek government's esteem for the charitable work carried out on behalf of Greek refugees by the Catholic bishop of the Greek rite Giorgio Calavassy, who was able to settle in A., while nevertheless remaining still ordinary of the Greek-Catholic community of Constantinople. The Holy See extended his jurisdiction to all of Greece on 21 Dec. 1925. Under him there are, after the creation of a new Catholic ordinariate of the Greek rite in Constantinople, about 1000 faithful with various works, e.g. a seminary and a women's convent of a new congregation founded by the bishop, that is, of the Sisters of the Pammakaristos; the ordinariate encountered some storms stirred up against it by currents of intolerance and fanaticism. A special merit of it in favor of the Catholic cause in Greece is the weekly review Κεθολική.

Giorgio Hofmann

PONTIFICAL URBAN ATHENAEUM "DE PROPAGANDA FIDE". - The A. U. d. P. F. owes its origin to the Collegio Urbano de Propaganda Fide (v.). Pope Urban VIII (Barberini) in fact, erecting with the bull Immortalis Dei Filius of 1 Aug. 1627 the College, which perpetuates his memory also in its name, wished to grant it its own schools with all the privileges and immunities of the "Archigymnasium Romanum" (University of the Sapienza) and with the faculty for the Rector "pro tempore" to confer on its students the doctorate in Philosophy and in Sacred Theology.

The schoolrooms, in which chairs of importance flourished - that of Controversies was famous, which was later instituted in all the pontifical Athenaeums of the City - were situated, together with the premises of the College, in the Palazzo Ferratini (Piazza di Spagna), later enlarged through the work of Bernini and Borromini and which also became the seat of the S. Congregation of Propaganda. In 1772 Clement XIV confirmed to these schools the right to confer "lauream magistralem seu doctoratum, iuxta consuetudinem et cum privilegia in Archigymnasio imperitiri solitis", specifying that the conferral of it with the relative insignia was to be done by the Secretary of the S. Congregation of Propaganda Fide.

After having passed stormy days because of the sad political events of the times of Napoleon I, the A. took on new life and the students of the Irish, Greek, Maronite, Armenian, North American, Canadian, Bohemian and other Institutes were admitted to attend it. Leo XIII endowed it with larger and more convenient halls, transferring its seat to the Palazzo Mignanelli on the piazza of the same name. In 1928 it was transferred to the Janiculum Hill, where, through the merit of Card. G. van Rossum (v.), a magnificent building was constructed which, on 24 Apr. 1931, received the visit of Pius XI, who had gone to inaugurate the new building of the Collegio Urbano.

To the faculties of Philosophy and Theology there was added, by decree of the S. Congregation of Seminaries and Universities of Studies, dated 1 Sept. 1933, the "Institutum missionale scientificum", which grants a degree in missiology and gives young men the opportunity to follow special courses in ethnology, medicine, philology, and missionary history and geography. This institute is the logical development of the chair of missiology, erected in the theological course from 1919. Finally in 1943, by rescript of the same S. Congregation, a juridical section was incorporated into the missionary Institute with the power to grant, to those who attend it, a doctoral degree in law "in locis missionum".

In the three centuries and more of its life the A. U. was illustrated by valiant professors and saw pass within its walls students of every color and every race, who rendered distinguished services to the missionary cause in the world.

Pompeo Borgna