Mount Athos and Lemnos. Thousand Years of Interaction (Presentation of the Exhibition 2019)

MOUNT ATHOS AND LEMNOS

Since Byzantine times, the islands of the North Aegean have been a critical living space for the monasteries of the Holy Mountain. Lemnos in particular, the largest of these islands, lying only 57 kilometres from the Athos peninsula and with highly-developed agriculture and stock-raising already in medieval times, was associated with Athos very early on. Athonite monastic dependencies (metochia) are mentioned from the tenth century. 

By the mid-thirteenth century most of the Athonite monasteries possessed vast properties, controlling the economic and –by extension– the social life of the Lemnos.

The monasteries’ systematization of agriculture (specifically viticulture) and animal husbandry resulted in the island’s economic development, keeping its Christian populations there and boosting its demographic recovery.  

Furthermore, the thousand-year Athonite presence on Lemnos has left behind significant material cultural remains, such as churches, chapels, fortified towers, moveable artworks, which after the expropriations in the twentieth century were either transferred to the monasteries of the Holy Mountain or remained on the island as incontrovertible witnesses to the Athonite cultural presence, with is still prominent to this day. 

ATHONITE ENGRAVING

From the last quarter of the 18th until the end of the 19th century, hundreds of engraving plates were created in the ateliers of the Holy Mountain, from which tens of thousands of images, with mostly Athonite but also other religious subjects, were printed on paper. 

Throughout the 19th century, there was an upsurge in the activity of the Athonite workshops. However, it is only in recent years that research has rescued Athonite engraving from obscurity. The pioneer in the study and publication of these works was Dory Papastratos, with her monumental edition ‘Paper Icons. Orthodox Religious Engravings, 1665-1899’. Her efforts have been continued by the Monastery of Simonopetra, in particular by Hieromonk Ioustinos and the late researcher George Golobias, who located, recorded, and studied Athonite engravings in collections all over the world. In fact, the monastery has assembled the most complete collection of Athonite engravings anywhere in the world.

ATHONITE PHOTOGRAPHY

The first complete series of photographs of the Athonite monasteries was created by the French photographer Ernest de Caranza in 1853, followed by the atelier in the Monastery of Saint Panteleïmon at the end of the 1860s. We are indebted to the Athonite photographic workshops because their staff had a sensitive eye for the monastic obediences, which they captured in a manner that was historically faithful and artistically excellent. They have thus given us authentic material which enables us to study everyday life on Athos. 

At the time when Athonite monasticism was experiencing a decline, that is in the years after World War II, Athonite photography also went through a downturn. The older photographers had departed this life and their work was beginning to be forgotten. Even the usefulness and value of the glass plates began to be forgotten. It was the Mount Athos Photoarchive, of the Monastery of Simonopetra, which set the ball rolling for this salvage work, collecting and verifying this forgotten photographic material, which it found in sketes, kellia and in the ateliers of Karyes. So the monastery has created a most important photographic collection with an Athonite content, equal to anywhere in the world. Through the exhibitions and publications of the Mount Athos Photoarchive, as well as the research which has gone into these activities, much new photographic evidence has come to light, confirming the historical value of the testimony of the older material.