^DUMBARTON OAKS MEDIEVAL CQBRARY Jan M. Ziolkowski, General Editor H O LY M EN OF M O U NT A T H OS DOML 40 DUMBARTON OAKS MEDIEVAL LIBRARY Jan M. Ziolkowski, General Editor Alice-Mary Talbot, Byzantine Greek Editor Byzantine Greek Editorial Board Alexander Alexakis Charles Barber John Duffy Niels Gaul Richard Greenfield Anthony Kaldellis Derek Krueger Eustratios Papaioannou Claudia Rapp Byzantine Greek Advisory Board Albrecht Berger Antony Littlewood Wolfram Brandes Margaret Mullett Elizabeth Fisher Jan Olof Rosenqvist Clive Foss Jonathan Shepard John Haldon Denis Sullivan Robert Jordan John Wortley Holy Men of Mount Athos Edited and Translated by RICHARD P. H. G R E E N F I E LD and ALICE-MARY TALBOT ^ Du m b a r t on oaks Me d i e v al o^brary HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS LONDON, ENGLAND 2 0l6 Copyright © 2016 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Greenfield, Richard P. H., editor, translator. I Talbot, Alice-Mary Maffry, editor, translator. Title: Holy men of Mount Athos / edited and translated by Richard P. H. Greenfield, Alice-Mary Talbot. Other titles: Dumbarton Oaks medieval library; 40. Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2016.1 Series: Dumbarton Oaks medieval library; 40 I English translations on rectos with Greek originals on versos. I Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 20150373131 ISBN 9780674088764 (alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Christian saints—Greece—Athos —Biography. I Orthodox Eastern monasteries —Greece—Athos. I Byzantine Empire— Church history. Classification: LCC BX393 .H64 2016 IDDC 271/.81949565—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.l0c.g0v/2015037313 Contents Introduction vii LIFE OF EUTHYMIOS THE YOUNGER I Edited by Alexander Alexakis Translated by Alice-Mary Talbot LIFE OF ATHANASIOS OF ATHOS, 127 VERSION Β Translated by Alice-Mary Talbot LIFE OF MAXIMOS THE HUTBURNER BY NIPHON 369 Translated by Richard P. H. Greenfield LIFE OF MAXIMOS THE HUTBURNER BYTHEOPHANES 441 Translated by Richard P. H. Greenfield and Alice-Mary Talbot LIFE OF NIPHON OF ATHOS 569 Translated by Richard P. H. Greenfield CONTENTS LIFE OF PHILOTHEOS OF ATHOS 613 Translated by Stamatina McGrath Abbreviations 641 Note on the Texts 645 Notes to the Texts 649 Notes to the Translations 659 Bibliography Index 733 Introduction This volume presents selected Lives of holy men who lived on Mount Athos, the most famous Byzantine center of mo- nasticism; it was often termed simply Hagion Oros, or the Holy Mountain. These vitae provide insights into both the history of monastic development on Athos between the ninth and fifteenth centuries and the varieties of monastic life practiced communally in large monasteries as well as individually in huts and caves. We have chosen six vitae of five different saints—Euthymios the Younger, Athanasios of Athos, Maximos the Hutburner, Niphon, and Philotheos of Athos—who were celebrated for their ascetic practices, the gifts of foresight and clairvoyance, and, in most cases, the ability to perform miracles. Euthymios and Athanasios were also famed as founders of monasteries. We offer two ver- sions of the Life of Maximos the Hutburner, to demonstrate how hagiographic accounts of the same saint could vary, even when composed very close in time. It should be noted that, with the exception of Athanasios of Athos, the cult of these saints was essentially limited to the Holy Mountain, as can be seen by the manuscript tradition; almost all the sur- viving manuscripts of these Lives were copied on Athos. Mount Athos is the northernmost promontory of the Chalkidike peninsula, which juts out into the northern Ae- vii INTRODUCTION gean Sea like a hand with three fingers. The promontory is twenty-eight miles long, and quite narrow, with a width of three to six miles. It is connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus just over a mile wide. Almost completely surrounded by the sea, it is the most isolated of all the Byz- antine holy mountains, and the furthest from a major popu- lation center, being located about sixty miles east of Thessa- lonike.1 The peninsula is dominated by the six thousand foot peak of Athos and its foothills, which break up the land- scape into a series of deep gorges. In many places along the coast, the rocky cliffs plunge right into the sea, and there are few natural harbors. The craggy landscape, with little flat land, combined with the lack of good ports, is not inviting for human habitation, and as a consequence the Athonite promontory was only very lightly populated in classical an- tiquity, with perhaps five or six small towns. These set- tlements were abandoned by the third century of the Chris- tian era.2 Athonite tradition traces the Christian character of the Holy Mountain back to the first century CE when the Vir- gin Mary, en route to Cyprus, was diverted by a storm to Athos and converted its local inhabitants. At the same time she supposedly prayed to her son to grant her the peninsula as her special place, and ever after it has been called the "gar- den of the Panagia."3 Local legend places the origins of mo- nasticism on the Holy Mountain in the early fourth century, attributing to Constantine I the foundation of the earliest Athonite monasteries.4 In reality, however, for six hundred years, between the third and eighth centuries, Athos seems to have been essen- tially uninhabited, frequented only by the occasional Greek viii INTRODUCTION or Slav shepherd and his flocks.5 This lengthy period of iso- lation from human activity permitted the Athonite forests to become dense and lush. The earliest documented hermits appear in the ninth century.6 The tenth-century historian Genesios relates that in 843, on the occasion of the celebra- tion of the restoration of icon veneration, the monks of Athos sent delegates to Constantinople to join in the fest- ivities, so it seems quite possible that the occasional her- mit had made his way to Athos before the year 800, with- out leaving any trace in the historical record. According to Athonite tradition, one of the first to settle on the Holy Mountain was a certain Peter, whose vita was written in the late tenth or early eleventh century by Nicholas, himself an Athonite monk.7 We have not included his vita (BHG 1505) in this collection because it is a pastiche based on a variety of hagiographic sources, and Peter appears to have been a semilegendary figure.8 Nonetheless, he is greatly hallowed in Athonite tradition, as one of the pioneers of eremitic life on the peninsula. LIFE OF EUTHYMIOS THE YOUNGER We are on much firmer ground with Saint Euthymios the Younger, who became a hermit on Athos in the mid-ninth century His vita (BHG 655) was written by his disciple Basil, who later became bishop of a town or city near Thessalo- nike. Basil received his tonsure from the hands of Euthy- mios, his spiritual father, and witnessed many of the events of the final quarter century of Euthymios's life, including a number of miracles and episodes illustrating his gift of clair- voyance. Basil's text contains a number of accurate chrono- ix