The Ruined Monastery

The Ruined Monastery

Within the gate – huge wings of four-storied brick buildings with broken windows, roofs half fallen in. To the left, the entire middle section of one building has fallen to the foundation. Iron reinforcing bars lean out into space and droop groundward like the numerous branches of a weeping willow. On the top floor of the remaining structure are the ruins of a basilica-like structure running along the great width from front to back, of which only the front and rear facades remain, trimmed in decorative brickwork. It almost looks like a crumbling crypt, with low blind windows and one round corbelled window in the peak; and the setting sun behind it in a pavement of decorative cumulus clouds, shoots great rays across the sky from behind its high projections.

Beside this, another three-storied building, also with a sagging and partially demolished roof and eaves rotting into dark holes, appears, from its curtained windows, to be in use.

No one was in sight.

We tried a stair that led to locked doors. Returning to the ground floor, we tried another door that led into a long, long hall, lined with beds piled high with blankets. We passed room after room of eight to twelve beds, all made, but with no occupant. The floor was weak, ready in one place to give way.

We went back out into the heat and proceeded toward the rear buildings, looking for someone. In the central courtyard is the great catholicon of St. Andrei’s Skete, the largest church on the Holy Mountain, locked and entirely chained in scaffolding. At last a worker climbed down from behind a roof where a dome was being re-framed and sheathed. He directed us to the rear building in the three-acre-plus complex. This was accessed by a bridge – the basement level descended from the ground across what could have been a moat, were their not windows in the lower level. We passed under an overhanging shelf of exposed brick, held up by iron framing dissolving into rust and appearing ready to fall, and entered the building.

Down another long, long hallway, part of which was shored up with wooden beams. Here the rooms’ side walls had been stripped to the brick. These leaned dangerously both ways at once, as though intoxicated. The hall ended at last in a stair which we climbed. Here at last was the guest-master’s greeting room. There was a pitcher of water, empty glasses, and a half-empty plate of Turkish delight; but there was no one in the eerie quiet.

After perhaps three-quarters of an hour waiting here, another pilgrim came in and sat. Shortly after, a massive novice with unusually disheveled hair and appearance came in, stared around at us, and grunted that he would bring someone.

This was the last person we saw for two hours.

I needed to find a bathroom. Across the hall in the rear of the building I found one, filthy and in poor repair, but the plumbing functioned; and so did I. After I was done, I saw a door that led out onto a balcony. I have never seen a balcony off of a row of toilets, and I was not sure I should trust the under-support, but there was a breeze and fresh air out there – and a view of wide and stunning magnificence.

We were far above the Aegean that spreads north of the peninsula. A mountainous island floated dimly in the northern distance. Cells and churches were scattered across the forested hills around Karyes, halfway up the gently sloping ridge from the shore. Those nearest must have belonged to the skete, as they sat in advanced stages of ruin.

The last pilgrim who had come in got tired of waiting, and went out to find someone. We wondered if we would ever see him again; but he came back announcing that everyone was in the trapeza below the main church.

With a meal in us, our perceptions began to change. The stair we had tried earlier, as it turned out, led to a very elegant Russian Baroque church on the top floor of the front building. The Vespers and Akathist were prayerfully conducted. Afterwards we were assigned rooms, and we set off through the labyrinthine halls searching for a shower.

No shower was to be found. I did not give up. I looked in every connecting wing of every floor. Coincidentally, each time I passed a window and looked out, I saw Gabriel and Ethen exploring the grounds outside. The first time I passed a window and saw them, I pressed my face to the glass to distort it and drooled at them. They seemed a little taken aback. The second time, I limped heavily with a hunched back and pointed down at them. I was really beginning to feel the gothic impression made by the place. When I checked the first bathroom I had seen earlier, I went out on the balcony – and there they were, far below, down in back of the monastery. I pointed at them and grunted loudly, shaking my finger. By now they were laughing uncontrollably.

After performing what self-washing was possible, I went out into the courtyard to try to sketch descriptions of this monastery. The problem here, as I learned later from the fathers at Vatopedi who are responsible for the re-building, is not the age of the buildings. By Athonite time, they are new. Most are a little more than two centuries, with the exception of the old church in the courtyard opposite the great catholicon. But during the period that the monastery was abandoned, the roofs fell into disrepair. Water then traveled down into the iron webbing in the brick and rusted it out. This caused all the damage.

Fr. Ephraim, a younger British monk, talked with me for more than an hour.

As the sun was going down, the bats began to come out of the buildings.

No one could make up this place.

Christopher