Visits to Monasteries in the Levant

by Robert Curzon

The scenery of Meteora is of a very singular kind. The end of a range of rocky hills seems to have been broken off by some earthquake or washed away by the Deluge, leaving only a series of twenty or thirty tall, thin, smooth, needle-like rocks, many hundred feet in height; some like gigantic tusks, some shaped like sugar-loaves, and some like vast stalagmites. These rocks surround a beautiful grassy plain, on three sides of which there grow groups of detached trees, like those in an English park. Some of the rocks shoot up quite clean and perpendicularly from the smooth green grass; some are in clusters; some stand alone like obelisks: nothing can be more strange and wonderful than this romantic region, which is unlike anything I have ever seen either before or since. In Switzerland, Saxony, the Tyrol, or any other mountainous region where I have been, there is nothing at all to be compared to these extraordinary peaks.

At the foot of many of the rocks which surround this beautiful grassy amphitheatre, there are numerous caves and holes, some of which appear to be natural, but most of them are artificial; for in the dark and wild ages of monastic fanaticism whole flocks of hermits roosted in these pigeon-holes. Some of these caves are so high up the rocks that one wonders how the poor old gentlemen could ever get up to them; whilst others are below the surface; and the anchorites who burrowed in them, like rabbits, frequently afforded excellent sport to parties of roving Saracens; indeed, hermit-hunting seems to have been a fashionable amusement previous to the twelfth century. In early Greek frescos, and in small, stiff pictures with gold backgrounds, we see many frightful representations of men on horseback in Roman armour, with long spears, who are torturing and slaying Christian devotees. In these pictures the monks and hermits are represented in gowns made of a kind of coarse matting, and they have long beards, and some of them are covered with hair; these I take it were the ones most to be admired, as in the Greek church sanctity is always in the inverse ratio of beauty. All Greek saints are painfully ugly, but the hermits are much uglier, dirtier, and older than the rest; they must have been very fusty people besides, eating roots, and living in holes like rats and mice. It is difficult to understand by what process of reasoning they could have persuaded themselves that, by living in this useless, inactive way, they were leading holy lives. They wore out the rocks with their knees in prayer; the cliffs resounded with their groans; sometimes they banged their breasts with a big stone, for a change; and some wore chains and iron girdles round their emaciated forms; but they did nothing whatever to benefit their kind. Still there is something grand in the strength and constancy of their faith. They left their homes and riches and the pleasures of this world, to retire to these dens and caves of the earth, to be subjected to cold and hunger, pain and death, that they might do honour to their God, after their own fashion, and trusting that, by mortifying the body in this world, they should gain happiness for the soul in the world to come; and therefore peace be with their memory!

On the tops of these rocks in different directions there remain seven monasteries out of twenty-four which once crowned their airy heights. How anything except a bird was to arrive at one which we saw in the distance on a pinnacle of rock was more than we could divine; but the mystery was soon solved. Winding our way upwards, among a labyrinth of smaller rocks and cliffs, by a romantic path which, afforded us from time to time beautiful views of the green vale below us, we at length found ourselves on an elevated platform of rock, which I may compare to the flat roof of a church; while the monastery of Barlaam stood perpendicularly, above us, on the top of a much higher rock, like the tower of this church. Here we fired off a gun, which was intended to answer the same purpose as knocking at the door in more civilized places; and we all strained our necks in looking up at the monastery to see whether any answer would be made to our call. Presently we were hailed by some one in the sky, whose voice came down to us like the cry of a bird; and we saw the face and grey beard of an old monk some hundred feet above us peering out of a kind of window or door. He asked us who we were, and what we wanted, and so forth; to which we replied, that we were travellers, harmless people, who wished to be admitted into the monastery to stay the night; that we had come all the way from Corfu to see the wonders of Meteora, and, as it was now getting late, we appealed to his feelings of hospitality and Christian benevolence.

"Who are those with you?" said he.

"Oh! most respectable people," we answered; "gentlemen of our acquaintance, who have come with us across the mountains from Mezzovo."

The appearance of our escort did not please the monk, and we feared that he would not admit us into the monastery; but at length he let down a thin cord, to which I attached a letter of introduction which I had brought from Corfu; and after some delay a much larger rope was seen descending with a hook at the end to which a strong net was attached. On its reaching the rock on which we stood the net was spread open: my two servants sat down upon it; and the four corners being attached to the hook, a signal was made, and they began slowly ascending into the air, twisting round and round like a leg of mutton hanging to a bottle-jack. The rope was old and mended, and the height from the ground to the door above was, we afterwards learned, 37 fathoms, or 222 feet. When they reached the top I saw two stout monks reach their arms out of the door and pull in the two servants by main force, as there was no contrivance like a turning-crane for bringing them nearer to the landing-place. The whole process appeared so dangerous, that I determined to go up by climbing a series of ladders which were suspended by large wooden pegs on the face of the precipice, and which reached the top of the rock in another direction, round a corner to the right. The lowest ladder was approached by a pathway leading to a rickety wooden platform which overhung a deep gorge. From this point the ladders hung perpendicularly upon the bare rock, and I climbed up three or four of them very soon; but coming to one, the lower end of which had swung away from the top of the one below, I had some difficulty in stretching across from the one to the other; and here unluckily I looked down, and found that I had turned a sort of angle in the precipice, and that I was not over the rocky platform where I had left the horses, but that the precipice went sheer down to so tremendous a depth, that my head turned when I surveyed the distant valley over which I was hanging in the air like a fly on a wall. The monks in the monastery saw me hesitate, and called out to me to take courage and hold on; and, making an effort, I overcame my dizziness, and clambered up to a small iron door, through which I crept into a court of the monastery, where I was welcomed by the monks and the two servants who had been hauled up by the rope. The rest of my party were not admitted; but they bivouacked at the foot of the rocks in a sheltered place, and were perfectly contented with the coffee and provisions which we lowered down to them.

My servants, in high glee at having been hoisted up safe and sound, were busy in arranging my baggage in the room which had been allotted to us, and in making it comfortable: one went to get ready some warm water for a bath, or at any rate for a good splash in the largest tub that could be found; the other made me a snug corner on the divan, and covered it with a piece of silk, and spread my carpet before it; he put my books in a little heap, got ready the things for tea, and hung my arms and cloak, and everything he could lay his hands on, upon the pegs projecting from the wall under the shelf which was fixed all round the room. My European clothes were soon pitched into the most ignominious corner of the divan, and I speedily arrayed myself in the long, loose robes of Egypt, so much more comfortable and easy than the tight cases in which we cramp up our limbs. In short, I forthwith made myself at home, and took a stroll among the courts and gardens of the monastery while dinner or supper, whichever it might be called, was getting ready. I soon stumbled upon the Agoumenos (the lord abbot) of this aërial monastery, and we prowled about together, peeping into rooms, visiting the church, and poking about until it began to get dark; and then I asked him to dinner in his own room; but he could eat no meat, so I ate the more myself, and he made up for it by other savoury messes, cooked partly by my servants and partly by the monks. He was an oldish man. He did not dislike sherry, though he preferred rosoglio, of which I always carried a few bottles with me in my monastic excursions.

The abbot and I, and another holy father, fraternised, and slapped each other on the back, and had another glass or two, or rather cup, for coffee-cups of thin, old porcelain, called fingians, served us for wine-glasses. Then we had some tea, and they filled up their cups with sugar, and ate seaman's biscuits, and little cakes from Yanina, and rahatlokoom, and jelly of dried-grape juice, till it was time to go to bed; when the two venerable monks gave me their blessing and stumbled out of the room; and in a marvellously short space of time I was sound asleep.

November 9th.—The monastery of Barlaam stands on the summit of an isolated rock, on a flat or nearly flat space of perhaps an acre and a half, of which about one-half is occupied by the church and a smaller chapel, the refectory, the kitchen, the tower of the windlass, where you are pulled up, and a number of separate buildings containing offices and the habitations of the monks, of whom there were at this time only fourteen. These various structures surround one tolerably large, irregularly-shaped court, the chief part of which is paved; and there are several other small open spaces. All Greek monasteries are built in this irregular way, and the confused mass of disjointed edifices is usually encircled by a high bare wall; but in this monastery there is no such enclosing wall, as its position effectually prevents the approach of an enemy. On a portion of the flat space which is not occupied by buildings they have a small garden, but it is not cultivated, and there is nothing like a parapet-wall in any direction to prevent your falling over. The place wears an aspect of poverty and neglect; its best days have long gone by; for here, as everywhere else, the spirit of asceticism is on the wane.