"Holy place, but complicated", are the words Greek the worker with whom we secretly traded cigarettes for monastery lemons, dedicated to the Svetogorsk Monastery of Esfigmen, which is considered the center of the Zealot movement in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The monastery itself is located on the east coast Holy Mountain and only half an hour's walk from Hilandar, which makes it the first neighbor of the Serbian Monastery of Svetogorje. This was especially important during the last catastrophic fire when the Sphygmenian monks were the first to arrive to help put out the fire element.
The very meaning of the name Esphygmen from the Greek can be translated as cramped, which corresponds to the location of the monastery, which is located between the sea, three hills and a torrential stream. According to another tradition, one of the first monks of the brotherhood was nicknamed Sphygmen because he always wore a tight belt around his waist. It should be noted that the first surviving written records of the monastery from the end of the 10th century mentioned the name Esphagmen (meaning killed, butchered), which can be attributed to the fact that the monks met a cruel end in one of the frequent pirate raids.
photo: n. Kalezic…religious rituals,…
ABOUT THE SELJUK TURKS, TO THE CATALANS AND THE SULTANCY OF MARI
According to legend, the monastery was founded by the early Byzantine emperor Theodosius II and his sister Pulcheria in the first half of the 5th century, when Saint Gora had not yet become a monastic "republic" and women were not forbidden to enter the peninsula. According to archaeological research, the ancient settlement of Dion used to be located in that place. In any case, in the 11th century one of the abbots, Theoktist, became the proto of Mount Athos (a sort of prime minister of the monastic republic), and the monastery itself occupied a high fifth place in the hierarchy of Mount Athos. In the same century, the ascetic Antonius came from Russia, became a monk there and spent ten years, and upon his return, founded the far-famed Kyiv-Pečensk Lavra in Kiev.
During the Middle Ages, the community gathered around the church dedicated to the Ascension of the Lord had its ups and downs, accompanied by natural disasters such as earthquakes and torrential floods, and troubles in the form of pirates and a Catalan company. Namely, that group represented mercenaries originally from Catalonia who were hired by Byzantium to help them suppress the invasion of the Seljuk Turks at the beginning of the 14th century. As it usually happens, the mercenaries turn against their former employers and join forces with the Seljuk groups to ravage Thrace and, attracted by the riches of the monastery, rush to Mount Athos. The first to be attacked were the Bulgarian monastery Zograf, where former mercenaries burned alive a number of monks, Hilandar who was saved only by the intervention of King Milutin, as well as Esphygmen himself.
As has been the case for centuries, after the destruction secular founders and donors were needed to help the monastic brotherhood in its reconstruction. These were primarily Byzantine emperors such as John V Paleologus, but also Emperor Dušan and despot Đurđ Branković. The charter by which the despot awarded Esphygmen 50 liters of Novi Brda silver per year was made in Žiča and on it is the only preserved portrait of the despot and his family.
Having conquered the Thessaloniki region, the Turks left the autonomy of Mount Athos, which they violated depending on the interests, but also the power of the Padishah to enforce the law in his sultanate. As the Orthodox nobility disappeared in the Balkans, all monasteries were left without their patrons and donors, so they had to resort to selling their estates (metoch) outside the monastic republic. Thus Sultania Mara, daughter of Đurđ Branković and stepmother Mehmed the Conqueror, bought an Esphygmenian estate in the period before 1487.
photo: n. Kalezic...the location of the monastery on Athos,...
BUFFALO PASTURE DISPUTES
And the 16th century brings new troubled times; several times the monastery was the target of attacks by Turkish pirates who in 1533 even ravaged the monastery on two occasions. In the old annals, those events are described in the following words: "Ten days later, the descendants of the Agarjans, godless opponents of Christ, ravaged it again. They took everything and burned the monastery, as well as the ships, and took nine monks as hostages." Disputes also took place among the monastic brotherhoods, primarily over land, so the Esphygmenian monks were in dispute with the Hilanders over some pastures on Jovanjica, known to all of us. Today, the toponym Jovanjica is mostly associated with the port where ferries from Ouranopolis dock and where the largest number of Serbian pilgrims set foot on Mount Athos. It is a larger complex that covers the entire hill, a stream that flows into the sea and a small cape five kilometers from Zograf. Over the centuries, it changed hands several times, with several communities having their pastures on it, primarily Xenophon, Zograf and Hilandar. Since 1577, there has been a dispute over the border between Hilandar and Esphygmen because the Serbian monastery claimed the winter pasture for buffaloes and a large forest. The Ecumenical Patriarch himself was involved in the process, who ordered the Vatopedu monastery to show its original charter from 1316 on the exchange of land. It should be kept in mind that at that time it was not rare to prove ownership based on documents issued more than two centuries ago, because until the appearance of the cadastre, other legal means did not exist. Fortunately, today it's all much easier, more efficient and fairer.
NAPOLEON'S TENT
Over time, Esphygmen loses its status in the ranking of monasteries in Mount Athos, from fifth place in the 11th century, to ninth in 1394, and even to eighteenth in 1594, regardless of the fact that at that time there were more than fifty monks. The collection of alms throughout the Orthodox countries made monastic life somewhat easier, and at the end of the 18th century, Patriarch Gregory V instituted communal living as a way of life for the monastic community. In Orthodoxy, there are two ways of regulating monastic life. Idiorhythmy is related to asceticism and implies that monks do not live in a community, i.e. that they have the right to personal property, but that they are mostly isolated from each other. Common obligations are limited to worship, while they manage on their own for food, clothing and shoes. In contrast to the monastery, where the life of each monk is connected to the community and where they contribute to the whole community by their obedience (obligation). Today, in all the monasteries of Svetogorje, life is regulated by a common life, except for hermits who live isolated in hermitages.
The aforementioned Gregory V is also responsible for the new monastery church, which was consecrated in 1810, together with Abbot Teodorit. The church was built on the foundations of the old one and is dedicated to the Ascension of the Lord. Then the patriarch gave the monastery a part of Napoleon's tent, which is still used during the celebration of the Ascension of the Lord. It is assumed that the Russian emperor gave the patriarch that unusual gift. The painted monastery table was badly damaged at the beginning of the 19th century when the soldiers of the Turkish garrison who were staying in the monastery because of the great Greek uprising lit fires in the room itself. Turkish military presence was not rare, especially in Hilandar, Zograf and Esfigmen, which are closest to the mainland and thus convenient for military crews.
THE ONLY TRUE ONES OR THE SCHOOL ONES
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Zealot movement (translated from the Greek "zealous") arose in the Orthodox churches, which opposed any form of ecumenism and calendar reform. Official churches consider them schismatics and excommunicate such groups from the church community. The zealots themselves call themselves true Orthodox Christians and refuse any dialogue with other Christian denominations, primarily with the Catholic Church. The conflict escalated in 1964 when Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I met in Jerusalem with the Pope of Rome, which represented the symbolic beginning of dialogue between the two churches since the Great Schism in 1054. In the years that followed, the monastic community in Esphigmen ceased to mention their competent patriarch in services and this set in motion a series of events that culminated in 2002 when they were officially declared schismatics by the Ecumenical Patriarchate. In an effort to return the monastery complex itself to the monks who followed the official policy of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, a new brotherhood was founded in 2005, which still resides in Kareja ("the capital" of Mount Athos). Conflicts with the secular Greek authorities are becoming more frequent, in 2006 there was a conflict between the monks themselves, which ended in a real fight with the use of metal batons and fire extinguishers. In the years that followed, every attempt by the Greek police to expel the "dissidents" from the monastery itself was answered by throwing Molotov cocktails and threatening that the brotherhood would destroy the monastery with the help of butane bottles. It should be remembered that these are not empty threats, but that radicalized monks are really ready to sacrifice their lives for the sake of "true Orthodoxy". Representatives of the authorities, who were not ready to accept such a risk until now, are also convinced of this. The last in a series of incidents happened in 2024, when the police "surrounded" the monastery complex without the prior permission of the pro-father of Mount Athos.
In Serbia, there is also such a community headed by Bishop Akaki (born Nemanja Stanković), who himself lived in Esfigmen in the early 1990s and upon his return to FR Yugoslavia in 1996 founded the "Serbian True Orthodox Church". Their unofficial center is the Uteshiteljevo monastery near Ralja, they are more famous for the nunnery Novi Stjenik in the Kučaj mountains. They should not be confused with the so-called "Artemievci" who call their community the Eparchy of Raško-Prizrenska in exile and whose schism was originally political, not canonical in nature.
photo: n. Kalezic…vehicles 5 decades old
BREAD AND COFFEE BAG WITHOUT PACKAGING
The author of these lines has visited Esfigmen several times since 2015. In addition to the visible poverty and scarcity, one detail caught his attention. In the church, there are several prominent icons to which believers usually give gold jewelry, watches, etc. In the Esphygmenian temple, you can see that the icons were "gifted" by the order. This is not a rare case among the Greeks, but it must be admitted that it commands respect. It is one thing to "contribute" valuables worth several hundred euros, and quite another to "gift" your military decorations. The meal is more than modest, it often consists of sour-tasting porridge for which you are not sure what ingredients it contains, you can enrich it with some olives and olive oil, while you get bread from a bag from which the monk grabs with his hand, whatever you like. After the meal, any leftover bread is returned to that same bag to be served at the next meal. Since the corona virus pandemic, the inevitable question that the monk on duty will ask you at the entrance to the monastery is - have you been vaccinated. I can't even imagine the reaction if the answer was yes. Paintings of Greek heroes throughout history dominate the hospitality room, which is not the case in other monasteries. If you want to take coffee to them, you have to make sure that it is in packaging that does not have a barcode printed on it, and in a conversation with the monks, you can hear the story of how the pope takes on his true, reptilian form during the night and nervously walks around the Vatican palaces figuring out how to expel the true Orthodox from Esphygmen. The circumstances in which this community lives are difficult, there is no electricity and there is only one generator that supplies electricity to a lathe for cutting wood logs. All the monks and the workers who help them have flashlights on their heads, with the help of which they move around the monastery buildings. The fleet consists mainly of ancient jeeps that the Greek army received from its Anglo-Saxon allies more than half a century ago. In addition, in the monastery store you can buy a sweet cream that contains hazelnut and cocoa, and the taste is such that no Nutella and Eurocream were even offered to it.
For all the radical views they espouse and the many conspiracy theories they believe in, you can't help but respect a community that has given up most of the benefits of civilization for an idea they believe in. They are rare these days.
