Eastern Christian Monasticism - Byzantine Monasticism - Later Byzantine Monasticism

Later Byzantine Monasticism

Monastic life on Mount Athos was founded towards the close of the 10th century through the aid of the Emperor Basil the Macedonian and became the largest and most celebrated of all the monastic centers of the Eastern Roman Empire. The peninsula is actually an independent monastic republic, governed by twenty "Sovereign Monasteries", with its own elected president (protos) and governing council. Mount Athos is the site of innumerable priceless cultural and spiritual treasures, and up to this day it is considered the capital of Orthodox monasticism.

The Monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, was inhabited by hermits from the early days of monasticism. But the monastery as it is now was built by order of Emperor Justinian I between 527 and 565, enclosing the Chapel of the Burning Bush which had been built by St. Helena, the mother of St. Constantine the Great, at the site where Moses is supposed to have seen the burning bush. The site has been inhabited by monks ever since and is sacred to three major world religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Many sacred icons there escaped the ravages of iconoclasm because of the remoteness of the location. Probably the most well-known item to come from the monastery is the Codex Sinaiticus, a 4th century manuscript of the Septuagint which is of enormous value for textual research of the scriptures.

Notable Byzantine monks include:

• Leontius of Byzantium (d. 543), author of a treatise against the Nestorians and Eutychians;
• St. Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem (d. 638), one of the most vigorous adversaries of the Monothelite heresy;
• St. Maximus the Confessor, Abbot of Chrysopolis (d. 662), the most brilliant representative of Byzantine monasticism in the seventh century, who in his writings and letters steadily combated the partisans of the doctrines of Monothelitism;
• St. John Damascene (d. 749), together with St. Theodore the Studite defender of the veneration of icons, whose works include theological, ascetic, hagiographical, liturgical, and historical writings;
• Saint Gregory Palamas (1296–1359), who defended the tradition of hesychasm;
• Saint Paisius Velichkovsky (1722–1794), responsible for the renewal of monastic life in the 18th century, on Mount Athos, Romania and Imperial Russia.

The Byzantine monasteries furnish a long line of historians who were also monks: John Malalas, whose hronographia served as a model for Eastern chroniclers; Georgius Syncellus, who wrote a "Selected Chronographia"; his friend and disciple Theophanes (d. 817), Abbot of the "Great Field" near Cyzicus, the author of another Chronographia; the Patriarch Nicephorus, who wrote (815 – 829) an historical Breviarium (a Byzantine history), and an "Abridged Chronographia"; George the Monk, whose Chronicle stops at 842 AD.

There were, besides, a large number of monks, hagiographers, hymnologists, and poets who had a large share in the development of the Greek Liturgy. Among the authors of hymns may be mentioned: St. Maximus the Confessor; St. Theodore the Studite; St. Romanus the Melodist; St. Andrew of Crete; St. John Damascene; Cosmas of Jerusalem, and St. Joseph the Hymnographer.

Fine penmanship and the copying of manuscripts were held in honor among the Byzantines. Among the monasteries which excelled in the art of copying were the Studium, Mount Athos, the monastery of the Isle of Patmos and that of Rossano in Sicily; the tradition was continued later by the monastery of Grottaferrata near Rome. These monasteries, and others as well, were studios of religious art where the monks toiled to produce miniatures, manuscripts, paintings, and goldsmith work. The triumph of Orthodoxy over the iconoclastic heresy infused an extraordinary enthusiasm into this branch of their labors.