The fourth category comprises the recluses known as Κελλιώται. Their pretty houses are sometimes sufficiently spacious and kept in good order. Each contains from four to five rooms and a chapel, besides possessing large extents of garden planted with vines, and olive and nut trees. These dwellings are tenanted by five or six recluses, and belong to convents that sell them to the monks. But the right of possession is not complete, as the purchasers are subjected to the payment of a small rent, and are not allowed to transfer their purchase to other persons without the consent of the monastery. The buyer, being the chief of those who live with him, considers them his servants or subordinates, and they can acquire no privileges without long years of service. The Superior may inscribe the names of two other persons on the title-deeds, who succeed according to their order in the hierarchy. Such property is never made over to persons of different religions, the law on this point being very strict. A new regulation is, that no Greek monastery should be granted to foreigners, such as Russians, Bulgarians, Servians, or Wallachians; as they, being richer than the Greeks, might easily make themselves masters of the whole.
The recluses live on the produce of their lands and seldom by the labor of their hands. Many among them have amassed a little fortune by the sale of their oil, wine, and nuts. Their mode of living and their food and clothing are the same as in the other monasteries; their ritual is also similar, with the exception that their devotions are performed with more brevity.
Take away their solitary life and their continual prayers, and they then might be considered as industrial companies belonging to the world.
The fifth category comprises the anchorites, whose rules are the most sublime and severe. These holy men do not work, but pass their time in prayer, the hard earth serves for their bed, and a stone for their pillow; their raiment consists only of a few rags.
Never quitting their grottoes, they pass their days and nights in prayer; their food is always dry bread, with fresh water once a week. If the abode of the anchorite be situated in an inaccessible spot, he lets down a basket, into which the passers-by throw the bread which is his sole nourishment. Others have friends in some distant monastery, who alone know the secret of their retreat and bring them provisions. These solitary beings shun the sight and sound of man, their life having for its sole object the mortification of the flesh, meditation, and prayer. The population of Mount Athos is estimated at between six and seven thousand souls, two-thirds of whom are Greeks from different parts of the Ottoman empire, and the other third Russians, Bulgarians, and Servians. Their government is a representative assembly in which deputies from the twenty monasteries take part, except the σκητή and the κελλιώται, who are dependants of the others. The twenty monasteries are divided into four parts, which are again subdivided into five. Each year a representative from each division is called upon to take part in the government of the peninsula. Their duties consist principally in superintending the police and the administration of justice. These four governors are called nazarides, a Turkish word which signifies inspectors.
Twice a year regularly, and each time a serious case occurs, a kind of parliament is called, consisting of the twenty deputies, who, with the four nazarides, occupy themselves with current affairs and common wants. Each monastery acts independently of the others in the administration of its affairs. The chief inspector, judge, and spiritual chief, who decides all disputes that arise in the monasteries is the Patriarch of Constantinople. The authority of the Turkish government is represented by a Kaimakam, who acts as intermediary between the parliament and the Porte; he fulfils rather the duties of a superintendent than that of a governor. There is also a custom-house officer to watch over the importations and exportations of “The Holy Mountain.”
Some of the monasteries contain fine libraries and rich church ornaments, which are the only wealth they possess. Each convent is under the protection of a patron saint, who is generally represented by some λείψανα, or relics. The anniversaries of these patron saints are held in great veneration by the Greeks, crowds resorting to the convents to celebrate them. Caravans may be seen wending their way along the mountain paths leading to the convent, some mounted on horses or mules, some on foot, while dozens of small heads may be seen peeping above the brims of large panniers carried by horses. On entering the church attached to the edifice the pilgrims light tapers, which they deposit before the shrine of the tutelar saint, cross themselves repeatedly, and then join the rest of the company in dedicating the evening to feasting and merry-making. These gatherings, though blamable perhaps as being occasioned by superstitious rites, are otherwise harmless, and even beneficial to the masses; to the townspeople in the break in their sedentary habits, and to the country-people in introducing among them more enlightened and liberal ideas, and in facilitating social intercourse between them in these Arcadian gatherings under the shade of spreading plane-trees, and stimulated by the circulation of the wine-cup. I have often visited these Panaghias and experienced real pleasure in witnessing the happy gambols of the children and the gay dances and songs executed by the young people, and in listening to the conversation or those of more mature years. At meal times all the assembled company unite in an immense picnic, feasting to their hearts’ content on the good fare with which they come provided, and to the special profit of the numerous hawkers of “scimitiers,” “petas,” parched peas, popped corn, stale sugar-plums, gum mastic, fruits, flowers, little looking-glasses, rouge, etc.; the last two articles for the benefit of the young beauties, who may be found adding to their charms hidden behind the trunk of a tree. The merriment is kept up to a late hour, and at dawn the slumberers are awakened by the sound of the monastery bell calling them to mass. This is generally read by the Egumenos, or Prior, except when the bishop of the diocese is invited to celebrate it, in which case the ceremony is naturally more imposing and the expenses incurred by the community increased to a slight extent. Money, however, is not extorted from the worshippers, each individual giving to the monastery according to his means and his feelings of devotion. Kind and open hospitality is afforded to all by the good monks, whose retired and simple mode of life receives no variety but from these gatherings.
Women and animals of the feminine gender are not allowed to enter the precincts of the “Holy Mountain.” This prohibition seems to be in some way connected with the curiosity of Lot’s wife, whose punishment is expected to befall the adventurous daughter of Eve who should thus transgress. This superstition has, however, lost much of its force since Lady Stratford’s visit to the monasteries during the Crimean War, when some of the monks tremblingly watched for the transformation, till they had the satisfaction of seeing her Ladyship quit the dangerous precincts in the full possession of the graces that characterized her.
It is difficult to say whether the adoption of the Orthodox Creed by the Bulgarians has been a blessing or a curse to them; for the friendly union that sprang up from the assimilation of faith between the two rival nations was not of long duration. Their amicable relations were often disturbed by jealousies, in the settlement of which Christianity was often used as a cloak to cover many ugly sins on both sides, and its true spirit was seldom allowed free scope for its sublime mission of peace, light, and charity. Religion was the subject that occupied, after the Crimean War, the minds of the small enlightened class of the modern Bulgarians, spread over all parts of Bulgaria, but existing in greater numbers in the eyalet of Philippopolis, where the honest, wealthy, and educated men who had in foreign lands imbibed the progressive ideas of the day, raised their voices against the then subjected condition of their church to that of Constantinople, and put forward a just claim for its separation or independence. As already mentioned, the religious ties existing between the Greeks and Bulgarians do not appear at any time to have formed a bond of union between the two nations, or promoted social or friendly feelings among them. After the Turkish conquest, Bulgarians and Greeks, crushed by the same blow, ceased their animosity; but bore in mind that one was to serve in promoting Panslavistic interests, and the other those of Panhellenism. The proximity of these two distinct elements, and the mixture of the one people with the other by their geographical position, render the two extremely diffident of each other and jealously careful of their own interests, although direct and open action on either side has not been prominent.
The Bulgarians, during the 13th century, had separated themselves from the Church of Constantinople. This was a serious measure which the mother church naturally resented and used every means in her power to abolish. In this she finally succeeded in 1767, when the Bulgarian Church was once more placed under the immediate spiritual jurisdiction of the See of Constantinople. The Bulgarian bishops were dismissed and their dioceses transferred to Greeks, the monasteries seized and their revenues applied to the Greek Church. This was doubtless an unjust blow which the nation never forgot, nor did they cease to reproach the Greeks with the injury done to them. The latter had, no doubt, a double interest in the act, and the first and less worthy was the material profit the clergy and Greek communities obtained by the appropriation of the Bulgarian Church revenues. The second was a strong political motive; for the right of possessing an independent Bulgarian Church and cultivating the Bulgarian language meant nothing less than raising and developing the future organ of Panslavism in districts the Greeks consider they have a hereditary right to; their national interests were, in fact, at stake. The men to whom was intrusted the duty of protecting these interests were unscrupulous as to the means they used in the fulfilment of their task, and a perpetual struggle ensued, resulting in persecution and other crimes besides the unjust dealing with which the Bulgarians charge their rivals. Both parties, from their own point of view, are right; and there is nothing for them but to keep up the conflict till some decisive victory, or perhaps arbitration, settles the dispute.