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Royal hospitality
There are two kinds of visitors: the intellectuals and the
tourists. The thinking monks prefer the former, even if
they are fans of Nietzsche, who many years ago claimed
that God is dead. While the tourists potter about asking
the self-denial of identity that life on Mount Athos requires naïve questions such as, “how many tomato plants do you
appears more as a salvation than a condemnation. You no have?”, the others request permission to visit one of the 25
longer have a first name or last name, no debt or savings, libraries on Mount Athos, which contain more than 25,000
no mobile telephone. You have no worries apart from tend- rare manuscripts that even the Vatican would envy. They
ing to prayer, chopping wood (all the furniture in the mon- explore the natural landscape and discover that even if the
asteries is built from local wood), cultivating the land, fish- Christian God is dead, the great God continues to live on –
ing and cooking. And if this sounds like a dream, this is the nature itself, whom the monks adore and revere as a moth-
Athonite truth. er – the only woman that is welcome in this male-domi-
nated place after the Virgin Mary. The greatest hope of the
Athonites is still the thoughts that, if Jesus were ever to re-
turn, he would return as a visitor to Mount Athos. This is
why they look after their visitors as if they were kings.

Starting from the 9th century, monastic life became
more organised. Από τον 9ο αιώνα, ο βίος των
μοναχών άρχισε να γίνεται πιο οργανωμένος.

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170 GREC14N S/F 2018