Visits to Monasteries in the Levant

by Robert Curzon

After walking about the monastery with the monks, as I was going away the agoumenos said he wished he had anything which he could present to me as a memorial of my visit to the convent of St Paul. On this a brisk fire of reciprocal compliments ensued, and I observed that I should like to take a book. "Oh! by all means!" he said; "we make no use of the old books, and should be glad if you would accept one." We returned to the library; and the agoumenos took out one at a hazard, as you might take a brick or a stone out of a pile, and presented it to me. Quoth I, "If you don't care what book it is that you are so good as to give me, let me take one which pleases me;" and, so saying, I took down the illuminated folio of the Bulgarian Gospels, and I could hardly believe I was awake when the agoumenos gave it into my hands. Perhaps the greatest piece of impertinence of which I was ever guilty, was when I asked to buy another; but that they insisted upon giving me also; so I took the other two copies of the Gospels mentioned above, all three as free-will gifts. I felt almost ashamed at accepting these two last books; but who could resist it, knowing that they were utterly valueless to the monks, and were not saleable in the bazaar at Constantinople, Smyrna, Salonica, or any neighbouring city? However, before I went away, as a salve to my conscience I gave some money to the church. The authorities accompanied me beyond the outer gate, and by the kindness of the agoumenos mules were provided to take us down to the sea-shore, where we found our clerical mariners ready for us. One of the monks, who wished for a passage to Xeropotamo, accompanied us; and, turning our boat's head again to the north-west, we arrived before long a second time below the lofty rock of

SIMOPETRA.

This monastery was founded by St. Simon the Anchorite, of whose history I was unable to learn anything. The buildings are connected with the side of the mountain by a fine aqueduct, which has a grand effect, perched as it is at so great a height above the sea, and consisting of two rows of eleven arches, one above the other, with one lofty arch across a chasm immediately under the walls of the monastery, which, as seen from this side, resembles an immense square tower, with several rows of wooden balconies or galleries projecting from the walls at a prodigious height from the ground. It was no slight effort of gymnastics to get up to the door, where I was received with many grotesque bows by an ancient porter. I was ushered into the presence of the agoumenos, who sat in a hall, surrounded by a reverend conclave of his bearded and long-haired monks; and after partaking of sweetmeats and water, and a cup of coffee, according to custom, but no pipes—for the divines of Mount Athos do not indulge in smoking—they took me to the church and to the library.

In the latter I found a hundred and fifty manuscripts, of which fifty were on vellum, all works of divinity, and not above ten or twelve of them fine books. I asked permission to purchase three, to which they acceded. These were the 'Life and Works of St. John Climax, Agoumenos of Mount Sinai,' a quarto of the eleventh century; the 'Acts and Epistles,' a noble folio written in large letters, in double columns: a very fine manuscript, the letters upright and not much joined together: at the end is an inscription in red letters, which may contain the date, but it is so faint that I could not make it out. The third was a quarto of the four Gospels, with a picture of an evangelist at the beginning of each Gospel. Whilst I was arranging the payment for these manuscripts, a monk, opening the copy of the Gospels, found at the end a horrible anathema and malediction written by the donor, a prince or king, he said, against any one who should sell or part with this book. This was very unlucky, and produced a great effect upon the monks; but as no anathema was found in either of the two other volumes, I was allowed to take them, and so went on my way rejoicing. They rang the bells at my departure, and I heard them at intervals jingling in the air above me as I scrambled down the rocky mountain. Except Dionisiou, this was the only monastery where the agoumenos kissed the letter of the patriarch and laid it upon his forehead: the sign of reverence and obedience which is, or ought to be, observed with the firmans of the Sultan and other oriental potentates.

From a Sketch by R. Curzon.

VIEW OF THE MONASTERY AND AQUEDUCT OF SIMOPETRA, ON MOUNT ATHOS, TAKEN FROM THE SEA SHORE.

The same evening I got back to my comfortable room at Xeropotamo, and did ample justice to a good meagre dinner after the heat and fatigues of the day. A monk had arrived from one of the outlying farms who could speak a little Italian; he was deputed to do the honours of the house, and accordingly dined with me. He was a magnificent-looking man of thirty or thirty-five years of age, with large eyes and long black hair and beard. As we sat together in the evening in the ancient room, by the light of one dim brazen lamp, with deep shades thrown across his face and figure, I thought he would have made an admirable study for Titian or Sebastian del Piombo. In the course of conversation I found that he had learnt Italian from another monk, having never been out of the peninsula of Mount Athos. His parents and most of the other inhabitants of the village where he was born, somewhere in Roumelia—but its name or exact position he did not know—had been massacred during some revolt or disturbance. So he had been told, but he remembered nothing about it; he had been educated in a school in this or one of the other monasteries, and his whole life had been passed upon the Holy Mountain; and this, he said, was the case with very many other monks. He did not remember his mother, and did not seem quite sure that he ever had one; he had never seen a woman, nor had he any idea what sort of things women were, or what they looked like. He asked me whether they resembled the pictures of the Panagia, the Holy Virgin, which hang in every church. Now, those who are conversant with the peculiar conventional representations of the Blessed Virgin in the pictures of the Greek church, which are all exactly alike, stiff, hard, and dry, without any appearance of life or emotion, will agree with me that they do not afford a very favourable idea of the grace or beauty of the fair sex; and that there was a difference of appearance between black women, Circassians, and those of other nations, which was, however, difficult to describe to one who had never seen a lady of any race. He listened with great interest while I told him that all women were not exactly like the pictures he had seen, but I did not think it charitable to carry on the conversation farther, although the poor monk seemed to have a strong inclination to know more of that interesting race of beings from whose society he had been so entirely debarred. I often thought afterwards of the singular lot of this manly and noble-looking monk: whether he is still a recluse, either in the monastery or in his mountain-farm, with its little moss-grown chapel as ancient as the days of Constantine; or whether he has gone out into the world and mingled in its pleasures and its cares.

I arranged with the captain of a small vessel which was lying off Xeropotamo taking in a cargo of wood, that he should give me a passage in two or three days, when he said he should be ready to sail; and in the mean time I purposed to explore the metropolis of Mount Athos, the town of Cariez; and then to go to Caracalla, and remain there till the vessel was ready.