“Orthodoxy or Death”: Esphigmenou (July 1989)
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I had taken the boat from Vatopedi along the coastline of the Greek monastic peninsula of Athos to Esphigmenou. Georgiou, a fluent English-speaking Greek companion on the boat, pointed out the large black banner which hung below a set of hanging, boxed windows high on the monastery wall, facing the shore to proudly (and defiantly) greet all visitors as they pulled up to the docks at Esphigmenou:
ORQODOZIA H QANATOC*
Georgiou translated it for me: Orthodoxia i Thanatos: Orthodoxy or Death. Noting my incredulity at the sentiment (I was able to decipher the text from the Medieval Greek script, so I believed him), he explained that the monastery of Esphigmenou had disagreements with the administrative policies at Karyes and elsewhere within the Orthodox church hierarchy (the Patriarch in Constantinople). They were declaring their refusal to submit to what they saw as a corrupt form of the faith and proclaiming their intent to remain “true” to the tenets of Greek Orthodoxy.
Our boat neared the concrete quay. Six black-clad monks, most with bags beside them, stood on the shore, awaiting the arrival of the boat which would continue to the mainland. They had been given dispensation to again enter the kosmos — the outer world. Was I leaving or entering the kosmos (which also means “order”) by coming to this monastic fortress at the edge of the sea? Could I be doing both at the same time? I jumped off the boat with several others, Orthodox pilgrims journeying to Esphigmenou or to the inland destination of Chilandariou. We were led by a seventh monk who had been waiting by the quay on the gravel path which paralleled the shore, and soon we entered the narrow gateway with its low arch, entering into Esphigmenou. We were herded up several rickety flights of stairs which clung tenaciously from the three-and-four storey walls, leading to halls dotted with doorways to the monks’ various cells.
We were guided to a room into which the warm, July breeze from the Aegean drifted in. Gauzy curtains murmured into the blue sky beyond the peeling paint of the window frame. Greek coffee and “Turkish” delight were once again brought, as is the custom. A monk in black with a coarse, salt-and-pepper beard was giving instructions to the pilgrims in Greek. I had thrown my lot in with Georgiou as my guide and translator here. It was a relief to take a break from trying to figure out what was being said. Down below, monks wearing grey were weeding and harvesting crops which were flourishing in the monastery garden. My Greek companion asked me if I would like to stay here for a week or so, to which I rapidly and eagerly agreed.
A brief dialogue resumed between Georgiou and the coarse-bearded monk who squinted at me silently for some moments before gesturing to the coffee pot to see if I wanted more. I thanked him but was obliged to refuse, particularly as the acidic coffee was already gnawing its way through my system. I turned to my travel companion and whispered to him, asking if it weren’t against the rules to remain longer than the maximum four days. Georgiou laughed and explained to me that the monks at Esphigmenou felt the administrative center at Karyes was not the true authority of Athos and that if the abbot of Esphigmenou agreed, I could stay for quite some time. The salt-and pepper bearded man would consult the abbot later that day, and it would be determined whether or not the young Protestant would be permitted to remain indefinitely.
I was then escorted to my quarters — a simple room, furnished with two beds. The windows looked into the monastery courtyard, facing the front entrance of the centrally located church. A baptismal font largely dominated the area in front of the church. From this angle I could look straight out the window to see the belltower with its two large, tarnished bells nearly at eye level. There had been an entrance at the foot of the belltower but it had been closed with a heavy wooden gate which, I later discovered, was always kept locked. A sink was located outside this room, from which I was told I was free to drink or wash my face, neck, and hands.
Neither mandates nor restrictions were placed on me in terms of my ability to assist the monastery in its daily routine. A couple of days I spent weeding the garden, another wandering about the nearby hills and coastline, and then my niche was found: assisting in pulling apart the fishnets used to bring in the evening meal-catch. It was a frustrating task to attempt solo, but with three working the nets, it was far easier to remove the sharp spined and poisonous weeverfish. Crab extrication proved the most difficult. It was imperative to remove them without tearing the nets, but those bunched-up mini-monsters were as hard as rocks and more tenacious than St. Anthony with his lost causes. Each afternoon for my stay, after the catch had been removed from the nets, I would head to the fisherman’s hut to help untangle. The hut was a small, dank, stone shack on an irregular rock north of the monastery entrance by a few hundred yards. Buoys and nets hung all about the two-level shack, fish scales littered the ground, seaweed lay in dried-out fragments nearby, waiting for the wind to cast them back into the sea. The shore itself was rimmed with refuse from the monastery — vegetable peelings, discarded clothing, broken furniture, random paper and plastic bits, soggy cardboard boxes, and woodchips. I asked one of my fellow fishermen who knew some English why all this garbage was thrown into the sea. I was told that the monks at Esphigmenou regarded the sea as an evil place, a place of monsters, lust, sharks, and wickedness. One monk related the following story to me:
“A young monk had joined the order and had been carrying out his duties for a year when he requested of his abbot to be permitted to bathe in the sea. The abbot, knowing that a clean body leads to self-indulgence and wickedness, refused. Several months later the monk asked again, and once again the abbot refused. Yet a third time the novice made his request and a third time the abbot refused, this time enjoining the young monk not to make such further requests as it would only lead his mind into worldly and ungodly reflection. And so, in spite of the abbot’s warning, the young monk slipped out of the monastery one night and began to bathe himself in the sea. When all of a sudden, what should the young monk see, but a great shark moving towards him in the dark water. He immediately began to scream for help and began to swim furiously to the shore. His passage to shore became blocked by the shark itself. Still screaming, he heard the alarm bells of the monastery peal and fought his fear to stop thrashing long enough to hear the voice of the abbot asking if he was all right. Just as he was about to reply, the shark came up to him and grabbed both his legs in its mouth and began to pull his entire body into its belly. “Help me!” cried the novice, “Tell me, what must I do to be saved?” The abbot cried out to him to put his arms over his head and pray for deliverance from the Evil One. As the monk put his arms up, the shark neatly devoured the rest of him.”
The fisherman monk explained that there were two possible morals to the story, which were really one and the same: on the one hand, because he disobeyed the abbot, the monk died; yet, his final act was one of obedience and thus he was ultimately saved.
I deduced the moral was that it is better not to bathe in the Aegean near a monastery unless absolutely necessary. Such cautionary stories also increased my wariness of the weeverfish since the nearest hospital was a full day’s journey distant. I further deduced that living in a spectacular, nearly pristine natural environment did not make the inhabitants automatically have any great respect for nature or hesitation about dumping their waste indiscriminately. Perhaps, I thought, my love of nature was actually a function of elite privilege, as I did not have to struggle with nature to win my daily bread.
I would learn, eventually, like the swimming monk in the tale, that whether or not a love of nature was a matter of economic privilege, respect for nature was a vital necessity. But I had not yet fully absorbed the moral of the tale.
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*The Greek Letter Theta has been replaced in this formatting with the letter Q.
