each other. And here, too, of course, Russia is the common enemy. Formerly the Greeks had managed to drive out nearly all the other elements. They had seized and Hellenized Iviron (the Georgian laura), the Russian Panteleïmon, and the Bulgarian monasteries Philotheu, Xenophontos, and St. Paul. But now those days are over, and at Athos, as everywhere, the Russians are eating everything up. They are already the majority. Since the Phanar will not let them have any other laura besides Panteleïmon, they have made that enormously big, and have founded kellia and sketai all over the peninsula, dependent on Panteleïmon, but really larger and richer than many lauras. And so on the Holy Mountain, too, the traveller hears chiefly one endless wail of the Orthodox against each other.[1] This centre of monasticism has specially set its face against any degradation of the monastic ideal into a life of study. Eugenios Bulgaris (p. 250) tried to found a school to teach the monks something of scholarship. Indignantly they tore it down; it still stands a ruin and a warning that the Angelic life has nothing to do with such vanities as knowledge, even of theology. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth. But not every stranger is edified by a scorn for knowledge which is most certainly not caused by great zeal for charity. The Protestant Professor Gelzer, who is exceedingly well disposed towards the Orthodox Church, has this to say about it: "While the Catholic Orders as teaching or nursing bodies have become an important element in the civilization of the 19th century, what have Athos, Sinai, Patmos, or Megaspilaion been doing? The Greeks often bitterly complain of the mighty progress of the Catholic Propaganda; but they must themselves own that the best schools and hospitals in Turkey belong to the Catholic Orders. … It is no good scolding and complaining. If the monks, like their Western brethren, would work for the education and social improvement of their people, then the monasteries would have a real reason for their existence. … The more cultured people, who are full of Western ideas, look on
- ↑ About Mount Athos cf. Gelzer: Vom hlgen Berge, part I. Ech. d'Or. iv. La vie cénobitique à l'Athos, pp. 80–87, 145–153; Les monastères idiorrhythmes de l'Athos, pp. 288–295.
