Visits to Monasteries in the Levant

by Robert Curzon

"Yes, nuts," said he; "hazel-nuts: nuts are excellent things. Have they a good supply of nuts at Constantinople?"

"Well," said I, "I don't know; but I dare say they have. But why, my Lord, do you ask? Why do you wish to know the price of hazel-nuts at Constantinople?"

"Oh!" said the agoumenos, "they do not eat half nuts enough at Stamboul. Nuts are excellent things. They should be eaten more than they are. People say that nuts are unwholesome; but it is a great mistake." And so saying, he introduced me into a set of upper rooms that I had not previously entered, the entire floors of which were covered two feet deep with nuts. I never saw one-hundredth part so many before. The good agoumenos, it seems, had been speculating in hazel-nuts; and a vessel was to come to the little tower of the scaricatojo down below to be freighted with them: they were to produce a prodigious profit, and defray the expense of finishing the new buildings of Caracalla.

"Take some," said he; "don't be afraid; there are plenty. Take some, and taste them, and then you can tell your friends at Constantinople what a peculiar flavour you found in the famous nuts of Athos; and in all Athos every one knows that there are no nuts like those of Caracalla!"

They were capital nuts; but as it was before dinner, and I was ravenously hungry, and my lord the agoumenos had not brought a bottle of sherry in his pocket, I did not particularly relish them. But there had been great talking during the morning between the agoumenos and Pater Joasaph about a famous large fish which was to be cooked for dinner; and, as the important hour was approaching, we adjourned to my sitting room. Father Joasaph was already there, having washed his hands and seated himself on the divan, in order to regulate the proceedings of the lay brother who acted as butler. The preparations for the banquet were made. The lay brother first brought in the table-cloth, which he spread upon the ground in one corner of the room; then he turned the table upside down upon the table-cloth, with its legs in the air: next he brought two immense flagons, one of wine, the other of water; these were made of copper tinned, and were each a foot and a half high; he set them down on the carpet a little way from the table-cloth; and round the table he placed three cushions for the agoumenos, Pater Joasaph, and me; and then he went away to bring the dinner. He soon reappeared, bringing in, with the assistance of another stout catechumen, the whole of the dinner on a large circular tray of well-polished brass called a sinni. This was so formed as to fix on the sticking-up legs of the subverted table, and, with the aid of Pater Joasaph, it was soon all tight and straight. In a great centre-dish there appeared the big fish in a sea of sauce surrounded by a mountainous shore of rice. Round this luxurious centre stood a circle of smaller dishes, olives, caviare, salad (no eggs, because there were no hens), papas yaknesi, and several sweet things. Two cats followed the dinner into the room, and sat down demurely side by side. The fish looked excellent, and had a most savoury smell. I had washed my hands, and was preparing to sit down, when the Father Abbot, who was not thinking of the dinner, took this inopportune moment to begin one of his interminable stories.

"We have before spoken," he said, "of the many kings, princes, and patriarchs who have given up the world and ended their days here in peace. One of the most important epochs in the history of Mount Athos occurred about the year 1336, when a Calabrian monk, a man of great learning though of mean appearance, whose name was Barlaam, arrived on a pilgrimage to venerate the sacred relics of our famous sanctuaries. He found here many holy men, who, having retired entirely from the world, by communing with themselves in the privacy of their own cells, had arrived at that state of calm beatitude and heavenly contemplation, that the eternal light of Mount Tabor was revealed to them."

"Mount Tabor?" said I.

"Yes," said the agoumenos, "the light which had been seen during the time of the Transfiguration by the apostles, and which had always existed there, was seen by those who, after years of solitude and penance and maceration of the flesh, had arrived at that state of abstraction from all earthly things that in their bodies they saw the divine light. They in those good times would sit alone in their chambers with their eyes cast down upon the region of their navel; this was painful at first, both from the fixedness of the attitude required, with the head bent down upon the breast, and from the workings of the mind, which seemed to wander in the regions of darkness and space. At last, when they had persevered in fasting day and night with no change of thought or attitude for many hours, they began to feel a wonderful satisfaction; a ray of joy ineffable would seem to illuminate the brain; and no sooner had the soul discovered the place of the heart than it was involved in a mystic and ethereal light."[18]

"Ah," said I, "really!"

"Now this Barlaam, being a carnal and worldly-minded man, took upon himself to doubt the efficacy of this bodily and mental discipline; it is said that he even ventured to ridicule the venerable fathers who gave themselves up so entirely to the contemplation of the light of Mount Tabor. Not only did he question the merits of these ascetic acts, but, being learned in books, and being endowed with great powers of eloquence and persuasion, he infused doubts into the minds of others of the monks and anchorites of Mount Athos. Arguments were used on both sides; conversations arose upon these subjects; arguments grew into disputations, conversations into controversies, till at last, from the most peaceful and regular of communities, the peninsula of the holy mountain became from one end to the other a theatre of discord, doubt, and difference; the flames of contention were lit up; every thing was unsettled; men knew not what to think; till at last, with general consent, the unhappy intruder was dismissed from all the monasteries; and, flying from the storm of angry words which he had raised on all sides around him, he departed from Mount Athos and retired to the city of Constantinople. There his specious manners, his knowledge of the language of the Latins, and the dissensions he had created in the church, brought him into notice at court; and now not only were the monks of Mount Athos and Olympus divided against each other, but the city was split into parties of theological disputants; clamour and acrimony raged on every side. The Emperor Andronicus, willing to remove the cause of so much contention, and being at the same time surrounded with difficulties on all sides (for the unbelieving Turks, commanded by the fierce Orchan, had with their unnumbered tribes overrun Bithynia and many of the provinces of the Christian emperor), he graciously condescended to give his imperial mandate that the monk Barlaam should [here the two cats became vociferous in their impatience for the fish] be sent on an embassy to the Pope of Rome; he was empowered to enter into negotiations for the settlement of all religious differences between the Eastern and Western churches, on condition that the Latin princes should assist the emperor to drive the Turks back into the confines of Asia. The Emperor Andronicus died from a fever brought on by excitement in defending the cause of the ascetic quietists before a council in his palace. John Paleologus was set aside; and John Cantacuzene, in a desperate endeavour to please all parties, gave his daughter Theodora to Orchan the Emperor of the Osmanlis; and at his coronation the purple buskin of his right leg was fastened on by the Greeks, and that of his left leg by the Latins. Notwithstanding these concessions, the embassy of Barlaam, the most important with which any diplomatic agent was ever trusted, failed altogether from the troubles of the times. The Emperor John Cantacuzene, who celebrated his own acts in an edict beginning with the words 'by my sublime and almost incredible virtue,' gave up the reins of power, and taking the name of Josaph, became a monk of one of the monasteries of the holy mountain, which was then known by the name of the monastery of Mangane, while the monk Barlaam was created Bishop of Gerace, in Italy."