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Title: ‘The Concept of “Economy” in Two Monasteries of

Mount Athos’

By Michelangelo Paganopoulos (Goldsmiths) 1

Introduction

The notion of “Athonian economy” in Athos is as old as the Republic itself. In

originates to the foundation of the first Royal monastery in Athos in 963 by the

Emperor Fokas and his childhood friend, the charismatic monk Athanasios the

Athonite. The term refers to the “economy of passions” on an individual level, and the

economy of the monastery as a whole. Traditionally, it was first used by the Virgin

Mary in her apparitions to Athanasios the Athonite and the Abbot of the first Royal

Monastery of Meghisti Lavra in 1004, in which she introduced herself as the

“stewardess” of the monastery, its economos, reassuring the monks that she will take

care of the prosperity of their “house” (in Greek (oi)ekos)2. In this way, the Virgin

Mary gave an early definition of the term economos as the person who “takes care of

the house” (see also Hart’s definition of “economy” in similar terms 2000: 5)3.

According to the Athonian tradition, it is their faith to Mary (spirituality) that

guarantees the economic prosperity of the monastery (economics). In other words, the

legend highlights the notion of “economy” in its corporeal sense4, as the form of

1 The author carried out fieldwork towards a doctorate in social anthropology in two

monasteries of Mount Athos for a year (June 2003- September 2004). The paper is based on

ethnographic material from conversations, participant observation, and historical research that I have

gathered during my fieldwork. 2 The Imperial decision to sponsor the first monastery in the Athos peninsula brought to the

surface the first historical conflict over matters of “true faith” –a motif that has survived through

nowadays: on the one side, the hermits that lived isolated in the peninsula before, and on the other, the

reformers led by Athanasios who wanted to organize and establish an institutionalised form of

monasticism, the coenobitic, or communal type of monastic life. The earlier hermits argued that this

type of communal life was a characteristic of the Latin Church and that the Greek monastic model

should preserve its tradition for a life in the Desert as far away as possible from the institutions and

materiality of the world (Archimandrite Lev Gillet 1987: 65) 3 Even nowadays, this monastery does not have a monk in the role of the economos, as the

Virgin Mary still has this role, but the priest-monks of the monastery, in their words, “help” the Virgin

in keeping their monastery prosperous (see also Paganopoulos 2007a) 4 Famously Marcel Mauss (1950) first revealed the corporeality of The Gift as the means of

reciprocal exchange based on obligation and commitment, and his work today in the context of the

“cultural turn” and the “emergence of the market society” (Slater and Tonkiss 2001) remains as

contemporary and influential as ever (see also Csordas 1994, and Hart 2000: 191-196).

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exchange between the material world of the monastery, and the invisible world of

God, highlighting the personal commitment of each individual monk to his

monastery.

In this paper I focus on the contrasted interpretation and practice of “economy” in two

monasteries of Mount Athos, the neighbouring monasteries of Vatopaidi and

Esfigmenou. By “economy” I mean not simply the finances and/ or the products of

the monasteries, but most importantly, in the Christian moral terms of 'not to be

excessive' (as Mantzaridis discusses “economy” in relation to Weber as the “Spirit of

Capitalism” (Mantzaridis 1999: 319) towards nature and/or in relation to others, as

well as the self. In this respect, I discuss “economy” on three levels: First, as a way of

life in relation to the natural environment (ecology, and “symbiosis” as a model of

healthy life); second, as a way of controlling the behaviour of the monks in everyday

life, according to traditional values and practices, such as the Jesus Prayer and

confession; third, in respect to the finances of each monastery as a religious institution

in the Orthodox world (including the impact of telecommunications). I mainly focus

on the monastery of Vatopaidi, which is the most economically developed monastery

of Athos, making it the ideal example of contemporary monastic life. However, in the

final part of the paper, I briefly compare it to the zealot monks of Esfigmenou whose

ideology has a strong anti-economic character (absolutely rejecting money and

technology). By briefly comparing the political economies of the two monasteries as

contrasted illustrations of the concepts of “occult economies” (Comaroffs 2000) and

“cultural economy” (du Gay and Pryke 2002) I highlight the cultural diversity in the

concept itself, which has to be located historically in a particular place, including the

diversity of modes of production.

The two neighbouring monasteries are situated at the isolated north-east of the

Athonian peninsula. For this reason, they also share the same boat that connects their

harbours with the village of Ierissos, Chalkidiki. In June 2003, I took the boat to visit

Vatopaidi. To my surprise, in the boat the monks of the two monasteries did not sit

together. The monks of Esfigmenou used the bottom deck to get off at the first stop;

the monks of Vatopaidi sat on their own on the upper deck, as Vatopaidi is the second

stop. I could not help noticing the animosity between the monks of the two

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monasteries who avoided each other to the point of not even looking at each other. It

was as if for the monks of the lower deck those of the upper deck did not exist, and

vice versa. I was hugely impressed. ‘What happened to those brothers with their long

beards all dressed the same and working hard under the boiling sun that I had seen in

postcards?’ I wondered.

I pursued the point with one of my fellow travellers who had visited Athos numerous

times. He said pointing his dirty finger towards the upper deck where the

Vatopaidians sat: ‘They (the Vatopaidians) are not real monks. They think monastic

life is a luxury. They have heating, electricity, and even an elevator. They use the

Devil’s money from the EU, and pray with the Pope. Don’t go near them!’ I silently

thought that I was actually going to Vatopaidi, but better not tell him. He was

definitely going to Esfigmenou. He was a thin man in scruffy clothes, short haircut,

and a very long beard. I then realized that he looked exactly like the monks of

Esfigmenou: long beard, short hair. This was not the image of Orthodox monks on

postcards: those, like the monks of Vatopaidi sitting on the upper deck, have long

hair. I asked him why the monks of Esfigmenou have short hair in opposition to the

other monks of Athos. He said:

‘According to our tradition, only those who are blessed enough and become

priest monks have long hair. Ordinary monks because of their sins must be

humble and have short hair. This is the real tradition, which the other

monasteries ignore. Those Vatopaidians don’t know what humility is. The real

monks are only the zealots’ (12 September 2003)

He then looked at my ponytail and spat: “With this you ain’t going anywhere”. “-I am

not going to Esfigmenou” I answered, and he then turned his face away staring at the

sea and not mentioning a word during the rest of our trip. After we arrived at

Esfigmenou he got off. I went upstairs to sit with the Vatopaidians for the rest of my

trip to Vatopaidi.

I immediately realized that the Athonian tradition is not homogeneous, peaceful, and

eternal but an arena of contestation over the ‘real’ monastic identity. Conveniently,

these two monasteries represented the two extreme attitudes of the monks of Athos

towards the recent changes that took place during the previous two decades, and

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particularly the impact of technology and tourism. As I learned on my very first day

on the Mount from my discussions with other visitors, the monks of Vatopaidi have

the reputation of being the ‘modernizers’ 5

of Mount Athos because of their huge

economic and technological development over the last two decades, while their

neighbours of Esfigmenou have the reputation of being the ‘fundamentalists’, because

of their zealot ideology and absolute rejection of money and technology. Conversely,

the monks of Esfigmenou call the Vatopaidians ‘false monks’ and ‘traitors’ to their

tradition, because of their adoption of technology and political support for the EU,

and their increasing involvement in the market of faithful, selling holy products

through the Internet. On the other hand, the Vatopaidians see their neighbours as

‘fundamentalists’ who have brought into Athos an Evangelical Americanised version

of zealot Christianity, which they contempt. From the Vatopaidian perspective it is the

Esfigmenou monks who are ‘false’ and ‘occupiers’ of the monastery:

‘The occupying monks of Esfigmenou have kept all the Byzantine sacred

ornaments and icons away from most Christians. Nobody can go to pay

honours and worship our Lady there’ (Father E of Vatopaidi, 6/10/03)

The differences between the two monasteries are on many levels: the monks of the

two monasteries have different personal motives, contrasting personal histories,

organization of everyday life, and an absolute opposite way of understanding and

practising the tradition of Athos. What they contest is the Athonian tradition itself.

Both monasteries claim to be ‘traditionalists’. Vatopaidi bases its claim to their

emphasis on Obedience as the first priority in a monks’ life that guarantees and

reinforces the strict hierarchical system in Vatopaidi, which separates tradition from

the rules of engagement with the ‘cosmopolitan’ world, in other words, the system

functions based on the separation of the sacred (inside life of the monastery) of the

profane (dealings of the monastery with the world outside Athos), as in Durkheim

(1912).

5 I put the characterizations of the two monasteries in brackets (‘fundamentalists/modernizers’)

because the research is interested in showing how the monks both construct and reflect on their existing

tradition. As the material will make it clear, the Vatopaidians are also ‘fundamentalists’ in a sense,

since they also follow their dogmatic tradition in a very strict manner. On the other hand, Esfigmenou

with its multi-ethnic population (from seventeen countries) and 500 sites in the Internet to claim is

certainly not as isolated as its monks argue according to their zealot tradition

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By contrast the zealots of Esfigmenou also claim to be ‘traditionalists’ emphasizing

an isolated life, which rejects technology, money, or anything modernity has to offer,

for a hermit life as lonely for each zealot as possible, according to their hermetic ideal

of monastic life, as each monastery has created its own ‘logic’ (‘rationality’ in

Weber’s terms) regarding technology: since Vatopaidi’s life is based on obedience, it

is communal, and technology is seen as the means to make it happen, the means to

connect the monks wherever they are at any time. By contrast, the zealot life is more a

matter of self-presentation in the monastery, which means the more a monk denies

comfort the higher he gets to the eyes of his brother for his zealotism. But the zealots’

position is self-contradictory, because while they emphatically reject technology, they

use it as much, if not more, than the Vatopaidians, to make their schismatic position

on the Mount famous around the Orthodox world through the Internet (they have as

many sites as the Vatopaidians, such as at http://www.esfigmenou.com). In other

words, technology is as much a matter of organizing the life of a monastery according

to its own ’logic’, but at the same time the means to make its vocation louder and

clearer in the Orthodox world, as well as to make some money. How they use and

interpret technology however differs from one monastery to the other, revealing their

different understanding of the ‘nature’ of monastic life, and the opposite

interpretations of the same tradition.

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1. Ecology and Economy

The Republic of Mount Athos is the oldest surviving Orthodox Christian monastic

state in the world, with the first Christian monks moving there as early as the 2nd

century AC. It consists of twenty autonomous territories that belong to twenty

cardinal monasteries still functioning with their dependencies (smaller sketes, cells,

cloisters, cottages, seats, and hermitages). The Mount is situated on the Mediterranean

coast of Chalkidiki, today northern Greece. It is a physically isolated peninsula, a long

thin piece of land that slides into the north Aegean Sea. On the map, it has the

appearance of a disfigured finger pointing to the south (see map above). An imaginary

line separates the male monastic world from the “cosmopolitan” world as the monks

call life outside their borders. The line forbids women to enter, because according to

its tradition this sacred land belongs to the Virgin Mary (this is the infamous rule of

the Avaton that I discuss elsewhere Paganopoulos 2007b).

A wild green forest covers most of the peninsula from the north leading south toward

the rocky Mount, which hangs above the deep black sea of the north Aegean on its

southernmost cliff. There are no asphalt roads, or electrical wires crossing the

peninsula, only rocky paths. The monks usually travel on foot, but some times take

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the boat that internally connects the monasteries, which are impressively built on the

hanging cliffs of the coast. But there are only two small boats that travel from the

tourist villages of Ouranoupolis and Ierissos to the monasteries, twice a week,

carrying with them visitors, as well as medicine, supplies, personal letters, and other

items that the monks might need. The thick forest functions as the natural border

between Athos and the world, almost impossible to cross, with torrents that flow

through deep ravines and streams that cleave the breath-taking Mount, which

impressively rises 2,033 metres above sea level at the southern cliffs of the peninsula.

In Athos life feels natural, peaceful. It is a unique experience, especially for someone

arriving from the city. The climate of the peninsula is mild in autumn and spring, hot

in the summer, while freezing in the winter under the pressure of the strong northern

winds, which discourage any boats from the sea, or tractors on land from approaching

the premises of the isolated monasteries for weeks on end. On this physically isolated,

rugged, sea-battered mountain, a large variety of plants, insects, and animals form

several ecosystems that overlap each other (Dafis 1997). The wild landscape

accompanied by the absence of women encourages the feeling of isolation from the

modern world. In geological terms, the peninsula is surrounded by a deep black sea

famous for its “blessed” fishing, because of the underwater trench (about a thousand

metres deep). The forest is also buzzing with life. The environment is impressive and

immediately makes an impact on the inner world of each individual monk or

“cosmopolitan”, intensifying the feeling that this land is “sacred” in opposition to our

“sinful” modern life outside Athos. In this sense, the separation of Athos from the rest

of the world illustrates Durkheim’s definition of monastic life as ideally separated

from secular life6.

In the winter, when the nights are longer, the ordinary monks spend most of their time

in their cells praying and contemplating. In the summer, when the days are longer

they spend most of their time working at the fields, or repairing the monastery. They

see themselves living a “blessed life” in total harmony within the natural

6 “Monasticism…artificially organizes a milieu that is apart from, outside of, and closed to the

natural milieu where ordinary men live a secular life and that tends almost to be its antagonist. From

thence as well comes mystical asceticism, which seeks to uproot all that may remain of man’s

attachment to the world. Finally, from thence comes all forms of religious suicide, the crowning logical

step of asceticism, since the only means of escaping profane life fully and finally is escaping life

altogether” (Durkheim 2002: 42, and 1965: 55/ first published in 1912)

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environment, in continuity. They do not consume any meat because they consider it to

be polluted, as it is morally associated with desire. They eat only the things that are

produced in the monastery’s fields; tomatoes, figs, cucumbers, olives, green peppers,

nuts, while they also produce wine, tsipouro (similar to ouzo) and candles to sell to

the outside world. Fish is on the dinner table every Sunday after mass. Their diet

(fasting), hard daily work, and daily exercises (askesis) are responsible for their long

healthy life, as most monks live for almost about a hundred years. Few doctors exist

only in the village of Karyes, and they are very limited in equipment and medicine.

Furthermore, there are no doctors or medicine in monastic satellites, sketes and cells,

which are miles away from their dependent monastery. Still, rarely monks die because

of illness. Because for them illness is “un-natural” (para-physin), the inner result of

sin, and thus, can be only treated with confession.

The Athonian landscape has a moral force of its own both supporting a healthy life

(because of traditional practices, such as fasting, and hard work), and the “logic” of

Christian morality itself: restrain. The invisible force/presence of the Virgin Mary

guarantees the social order of the landscape: a characteristic example is that nowhere

in the peninsula are visitors and monks allowed to bare any part of their body during

the boiling summers, not even their arms or legs, so that they do not insult by

polluting the landscape with their nakedness. In the wild forest, it is impossible for the

Elders to check if any of the monks and visitors has actually taken his long sleeved

shirt off because of the heat. In the forest you only meet people by accident. However,

never in my many visits to Athos I have witnessed anyone breaking this rule by

wearing a t-shirt, or even taking off his long trousers during the hot summer period.

There is a consensus that nobody breaks this law in honor to the Virgin Mary and God

who are watching.

In a similar way, the visitors of the monasteries are not allowed to take any

photographs. Visitors rarely break the rule, and if they do they are black listed by the

central government on the village of Karyes. They are not allowed to enter again

according to the Virgin’s rule of the land, which states that this land belongs to the

Virgin Mary only, and no woman has the right to trespass it (Avaton). The monks do

allow particular photographers who have some spiritual connection to one of the

monasteries, to take photographs for the monasteries’ publications. In this context

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they exhibit a sense of economy: economy in how one is dressed; and economy in the

uses of technology. Conversely, the moral value of economy and the prohibitions of

the land make it a place of constant Divine surveillance that guarantees the moral

order of each monastery, as they reinforce the collective feeling that Mary watches

them. For this reason, another name for Mt Athos is “the Garden of the Virgin Mother

of God”.

In fact, exactly because this is the Garden of Mary, it is thought to be naive to think

that anyone can break the rules of the land unpunished, since the landscape itself has

its own divine “logic”. Priest-monk C. of Vatopaidi explained to me one November

afternoon in 2003:

“There is no logic in sin. It is irrational to go against God’s order. It is crazy.

What Adam did was illogical because he willingly puts himself in pain,

suffering all his life by guilt. Why would a logical human being want to do

something like that? And God’s logic is everywhere in nature. It is how things

run, co-ordinate. Human passions are not logical. For instance, to be proud of

yourself is un-natural because it will make you suffer. The only way to find

salvation is to restore the balance inside you through true repentance and

humility. For the soul to blossom it has to be in order, obedient, for the

continuous fight against the human passions…Passions. Emotions are against

nature, para-fysin. They come in the night like demons and confuse our

thoughts…Look at the cats in the Garden. They mate only to reproduce

because this is how God wanted it. He (God) didn’t want them to mate for

pleasure…Only a life empty of passions is free; free from the pain of human

passion and the Desire which is the Devil transformed.”

In the above discussion, the monk used the monastery cats as a moral example to

demonstrate the danger of human passions: cats show that sexual activity should

never be carried out because of desire, or pleasure, only for productivity. In this sense,

the logic of nature is economy. To be excessive is to sin. The most amazing thing is

that the timetable of the cats is exactly the same as that of the monks: the cats eat

when the monks eat, they gather outside the Church when the monks are inside

praying during the liturgies, while when the monks sleep or stay inside their cells the

cats also rest in at the backyard of the garden. The Vatopaidians learn by imitating

“God’s creation”, which is conceived as the natural order of the universe, in how to

organize the life of their community according to Christian moral terms “within

nature”. In this sense, the monks’ sexual “virginity”, for instance, is not so much a

biological/sexual marking since, nowadays, a number of monks are not virgin, but a

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moral dogma: in the words of the priest-monk, cats aim to reproduce in economic

terms, as this is their nature, but do not enjoy having sex, because this is immoral;

accordingly, in humans the pleasure of sex is the source of guilt and pollution.

Conversely, in a contemporary context, the monks draw a theological attention to the

ecological problems of environmental pollution and global warming by interpreting

John’s Revelation in terms of the current problems of environmental pollution7. For

instance, in a public speech in a conference in Athens in 2002 on global warming, the

Abbot of Vatopaidi, representing his monastery, offered his moral assertion:

In a world of deep ecological crisis, in a world that uses and abuses the natural

environment by polluting and ignoring nature, while not thinking of the future

generations, and acting as the owner and abuser, instead of a good economist

(in Greek ‘economos’) and manager of the natural resources, in a world that

lives on the edge of the abyss of genetic science and its (moral) implications to

the mystery of the human being, with the Ozone hole, the phenomenon of the

‘greenhouse’, the toxic rain, the polluted food products, the nuclear waste

plants, and all these things which they (the scientist) prepare for us in the near

future, the Apocalypse of John is as contemporary as ever… The message of

the Apocalypse is not the destruction of the human race, neither the number of

the Beast Six hundred and sixty six, neither the crying and the mourning and

the fear for the trouble coming with the rising ecological crisis. The message

of the Apocalypse is positive. It is the victory of the Church through Man’s

redemption and his final release into nature… The martyr says: “Yes, I am

running to You, Amen Lord Jesus’ (22, 20)8

In the last decade, the monastery has participated in numerous international

conferences on the environment, such as the “Inter-Orthodox Conference on

Environmental Protection” in Crete, 1991, and the Abbot Ephraim’s participation in

the conference on “Ecological Crisis and the Apocalypse” in Athens, December 2001.

Furthermore, the monastery has been engaged in ecological projects, such as the

7 Despite the alleged virginity of Mount Athos, in which no animals or women are allowed to

enter for a thousand years, the “Virgin Garden” has been transformed several times in the past mainly

because of the great fires of 1580, 1622, 1891 (Eleseos and Papaghiannis, 1994: 48), and most recently,

in August 1990, and February 2004. Priest-monk Eleseos of Simonopetra has underlined as the main

ecological problem of Mount Athos today the desertification of the land, especially at the south of the

peninsula, because of the great fire of 1990, as well as, because of the over-extraction of wood from the

forest, in order to sell it in the market (Ibid: 51-54). Eleseos observes that the introduction of

telecommunications, water pipes, machines, and electrical generators into the peninsula ‘threat the

calmness, form and function of the environment… The pollution of the space from concrete and liquid

waste could be out of control.’ (Ibid: 43, my translation from Greek). 8 Extract from the Abbot’s speech at the Conference on ‘Ecological Crisis and John’s

Apocalypse’ in the University of Athens, December 2001, as published in the magazine Pemptousia

(no8, April-July 2002: 37-43), my transl.

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“Spiritual Ecology Camp” of 1994, which gathered young men around the world to

pray, and work within the natural environment. In such conferences, projects, and

through the publication of their own monthly magazine Pemptousia, the Vatopaidians

present the ancient theological dogmas and practices of the Church as moral solutions

to contemporary problems. Their engagement with nature through notions of

traditional economy and as a practical “symbiosis” illustrates Dryzek’s concept of

“Ecological rationality” (1987) in the sense that the monks use the Athonian tradition

to explain contemporary environmental problems; In turn, through the media,

tradition becomes the vocation of their monastery in the Orthodox world of global

politics: the end of the world is the natural result of human arrogance, which is anti-

economic and wasteful, and thus, sinful. Catharsis is, therefore, as much necessary as

inevitable.

The monastery of Esfigmenou on the other hand has a number of prophecies that

anticipate the imminent End of Time and the Second Resurrection of Jesus, which

mark the end of our material world. The strict fisherman priest-monk X often

confronts the visitors with such prophecies, warning them about their choice for a

‘cosmopolitan’ life outside Athos:

‘What has happened and will happen is already written in the prophecies; they

are history. One of them speaks of the time of the abolition of the Avaton, of

the stigmatisation of people with the mark of the Beast and the unification of

the world under the Antichrist Pope. On this day, which is not far away, the

rock of Athos is going to collapse in the sea and the earth will be torn apart by

a huge wave. Water is going to cover 2000 meters of the mountain and only

thirty-three meters will remain above the sea level. 65 of the monks of

Esfigmenou, the most righteous ones, are going to follow Virgin Mary to the

top of the mountain in order to witness the coming of the End of Time and to

give evidence to the people of the world that this tragedy took place because

of the sins of the monks of Athos, and that they should be prepared for

Judgement Day’ (Discussion with visitors, January 2004)

The prophecy has two contemporary references to our modern life, placing it in a

contemporary context: first, is the obvious connection of this prophecy to global

warming and the real danger of the sea rising and covering the peninsula,

corresponding to our recent anxieties for global warming. This is an inevitable

‘natural’ End. It reveals the wrath of God for those monks who, in their view, do not

literally follow the scripts and dogmas of the Athonian tradition. Such a natural

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disaster is understood in cathartic terms. The planet will be cleansed from its dirt. In

this symbolism, numbers are important: only thirty-three metres will remain

uncovered with water symbolizing the years of Jesus (strangely the Mount is 2, 033

metres high).

This prophecy’s symbolism leads to its second point, the political connotation of ‘the

abolition of the Avaton’, which they regard as a Sign of the coming End. This refers to

the 2003 discussion over the constitutional right of women to enter all European

Athos, a bill that the zealots passionately resisted, organizing since 2000 protests with

secular members of their monastery in Thessalonica and Athens. For them it was a

matter of identity, a ‘matter of faith’. They see the abolition as the natural result of the

increasing numbers of visitors in Athos. Despite the thousands of visitors in

Esfigmenou every year, its monks accuse the monks of neighbouring Vatopaidi, with

its luxurious host-house, elevator, and continuous running hot water, as trying to

make Athos a ‘hotel’. However, they also recognize their own undoing for letting all

these 'cosmopolitans' to visit them every year. Although the prophecy reassures the

monks of their choice for this particular monastery, it promise of salvation for sixty-

five of its members, the ‘most righteous’ of its members. ). Only sixty-five monks

will climb on the Mount to witness the End of Time, but today, a hundred and thirty

monks live in the monastery, which means that only half of its brotherhood will be

saved. The monks of Esfigmenou emphasize personal sin as the cause of the End of

the world. In a self-reflective manner, or Christian guilt, it is, therefore, their sins that

will bring the End of Time. Although they depend on the donations and support of

visitors, at the same time, they understand monastic life as a hermetic one, absolutely

separated from ‘cosmopolitans’. Only the ‘most righteous’ ones, the strictest ones,

will survive that coming End.

The ‘stigmatisation of the people with the mark of the Beast’ refers to the granter

prophecy coming directly from the New Testament, and spread through the media,

which is the most popular prophecy of all, a revised version of John’s Revelation,

interpreted according to the ‘signs’ of our industrial and high-Tech times, which are

manifested on the bar code number on all products circulated in the world market

equals to the Number of the Beast (6-6-6). All bar codes are designed with three

unidentified parallel lines, one at the beginning of the number, one in the middle, and

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one at the very end, each one representing the number six. Hence, according to this

logic, all products and forms of exchange carry the Devil’s Sign. For zealots these

three unidentifiable lines fulfil John’s prophecy that states:

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to

receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads

And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of

the beast, or the number of his name

Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the

beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore

and six (Revelation 13: 16-8)

However, as several Greek journalists have noted, the idea of a coming End with the

rise of the industrial world and in connection to the number Six-Six-Six, was first

‘prophesied’ by the American Anglican Mary Stuart Relfe in the 19th

Century and was

brought to Athos by zealot travelling monks in the 1970s from American Evangelical

Churches preaching extreme right-wing policies of Christian purity (Moustakis 1983,

and Kirtatas 1994). The monastery has close ranks with such far-right religious

groups in secular Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Russia. All these members of different

national churches unite under the new global ‘threat’ of Ecumenism, which for the

zealots of Esfigmenou means ‘the unification of the world under the Antichrist Pope’

(extract from the oral prophecy above).

Conclusion

The different connections the monks of the two monasteries make to the Virgin Mary

and through her to the natural environment as a whole reveal their opposite

interpretations of the same Athonian tradition. The tradition of the Virgin Mary

highlights Athonian tradition as one of unity, homogeneity, and continuity, based on

its separation from the secular profane world. As Durkheim writes:

Monasticism… artificially organizes a milieu that is apart from, outside of,

and closed to the natural milieu where ordinary men live a secular life and that

tends almost to be its antagonist… the only means of escaping profane life

fully and finally is escaping life altogether (Durkheim 1965: 55)

In Durkheim’s terms tradition is ‘sacred’ and 'separated', and the same is monastic

from “cosmopolitan” life illustrating the Athonian monks separation of their land

from the world outside its “virgin” borders. However, each brotherhood connects to

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the “virginity” of the Holy Mount in a totally different manner. This connection

becomes ‘a matter of faith’, of monastic identity itself. Furthermore, as we shall see in

the next chapter, the history of the Republic is marked by violent events, internal

conflicts, and sudden changes that disrupted the continuity of its history. Thus, the

tradition of virginity has to be historically (past) and ethnographically (present)

investigated, as the ideal that is contested between different groups of monks, as well

as rival monasteries.

2. Vatopaidi: Economy of Passions

“Arrogance and overwhelming self-confidence are the main characteristics of

the Devil. The man who wants to get rid of these demonic energies from inside

him has to imitate Jesus, who is calm and humble in heart. In essence,

calmness and humility are the characteristics of the Holy Spirit… it is the

happy sadness of the Heart that comes out of spiritual causes bringing

sweetness, and charismatic happiness. Calmness and humility offer peace to

the man who takes his path peacefully. If the time comes that he has to get

angry, this anger comes only from the lips, not the Heart. In other words, it is

not a passion. On the contrary, it is on straight line with the (Biblical) advice

“be angry but do not sin” (Abbot Ephraim of Vatopaidi 2001: 100-104, my

translation)

The relationship of the monks to the natural environment is based on their economical

actions towards it, meaning on being self-conscious in its use, because this land does

not belong to them, but it is sacred, as it belong to the Virgin Mary. This kind of

respect for the environment characterizes the human relationships as well. Anger is

not a sin, but rather necessary in matters of obedience of the novices to the elders. In

this moral system the value of economy is in learning to control the personal

emotions, rather than eliminate them. This is central to the daily life and conduct of

the monks, as from very young they learn to distance themselves both from their

personal past (memories), and from the material temptations of the present, such as

the unlimited access offered by the recent introduction of the Internet in the

monastery.

Traditionally, the elders teach the young novices the value of economy both as a way

of thinking, practised through fasting, and as a way of daily conduct, practised

through the constant repetition of the Jesus Prayer throughout the day. The training of

1

a novice can last up to three years, and it is during this period that the latter has to

demonstrate economy in his daily behaviour, in order to become a monk. Only when a

novice demonstrates in public appropriate economy in thoughts and actions to his

respective master, can the elder trust and allow him further contact with his new

family of brothers, and in later years, with visitors from the outside world.

During my extensive fieldwork in Vatopaidi in 2003, I spent most of my days under

the supervision of Father E. working for the monastery. One of my daily jobs was to

clean used candles from the burned wax on their surface with a knife, in order to be

re-used at the liturgies. It was a difficult recycling job to do, especially after cutting a

hundred candles out of used wax, and because of my clumsiness I often cut more wax

off the candle than necessary. Father E. advised me to be patient and cut the used

candles properly, because it is a matter of economy, which is the “natural order of

God’s creation: Just like Jesus recycled His body we recycle the wax” he told me. In

learning to handle my hands in terms of economy of movement, I would then be able

to respect the natural environment, and most importantly, learn about the “economy of

passions”.

According to the Vatopaidians, human passions are the cause of sin. Guilt and human

sickness are the external symptoms of the human passions that torture someone

inside. They can be seen as manifested by the sinful individual in his behaviour,

which can be neurotic, excessive, and so on. The monks understand that what tortures

the soul of a monk is usually his past: memories of his family that he left behind, or

even memories of sinful desire that may come in his dreams. Catharsis from this state

of mind comes only through confession. The aim of the practice is to restore the order

inside the monk by self-reflection. Conversely, the practice guarantees the external

social order of the monastery, controlling the behaviour of the monk by making him

realize his “sin”9.

9 For institutionalised rituals see Bloch and Guggenheim (1981) “Compradrazgo, Baptism, and

the Symbolism of a Second Birth” in MAN (16) 3: 376-86. Also, Bourdieu, P. (1991) “Rites of

Institution” in Language and Symbolic Power. (Eds) Thompson, J. 117-126. Cambridge UP. See also

on confession the writings of Foucault on Medieval monasticism in the archive History of Sexuality

Vol. I-III (1992) Penguin: London

1

The practice of the Jesus prayer is also central in learning the value of economy of

passions. The constant repetition of the prayer “Lord Jesus Have Mercy On Me the

Sinner” in combination with the hard work, and circular liturgical life of the

monastery, keep the mind of the monk away from such thoughts that lead to passions,

and consequently to sin. On a first level the fruits of economy, which are obedience

and humility, must be reached through fasting and constant prayer. The aim is to

achieve economy of thoughts and actions during long periods of sincere confession.

With the realization of his sins, the monk moves to the second level of economy, from

the body to the mind, reaching the state of apatheia, meaning “without passions”.

This mental state is revealed in terms of the daily conduct of the monk, as Apatheia

can be seen on the monks’ emotionless but kind face and their mild behaviour:

conversely, a running monk inside the garden is often a sign of trouble.

The monks reflect on apatheia as the “natural” state of mind. Accordingly, they do

not use instruments during their liturgies, but only their human voices, because they

consider that their larynges are the natural instruments that God gave them. The

chorus must not demonstrate any signs of a passionate engagement with the content of

the psalm they are singing. They must sing the passions of Jesus peacefully. As the

landscape is peaceful, so is their soul –if it is cleansed. In this way, through practices

of faith such as, fasting, confession, the Jesus prayer, and the liturgies, that is, the

tradition of their monastery, they connect to the landscape as a whole: their presence

is naturalized, as their daily conduct takes place in economic terms, without signs of

aggression, or antagonism, even when the latter exist, especially between monks of

the same rank. In their mind, the “virginity” of the landscape should reflect the

“virginity” of their soul, and in this way, they illustrate a “meaningful connection

between something inside oneself and the world outside” (Hart, 2005: 13), a

collective consciousness of sacred unity (as in Durkheim 1912). Therefore, the notion

of economy is used to bring balance and order by highlighting the personal

responsibility of each individual towards this external ideal, and offering a practical

way to deal with it on a daily basis: to be economical as an individual equals to

“taking care of the house” the monastery as a whole, despite daily disruptions, such as

disobedience, which are dealt with the traditional practice of confession that restores

the social order by restoring the inner order of each individual monk.

1

3. Vatopaidian Sacred Products

Above, I discussed the notion of “Athonian economy” as “economy of passions” in

relation to the natural environment and the daily conduct of the Vatopaidians on an

individual level. However, a second aspect of the term has to do with the political

economy of the monastery as a whole. Vatopaidi is the richest monastery in Athos

with the reputation of being the most modernized. Since 1990, Vatopaidi was injected

with a new generation of educated young monks, who grew up using the Internet, and

who had an immediate impact on the economic prosperity of their monastery, which

has become the richest in Athos. They sell cds, DVDs, videos, copies of miraculous

icons, and other sacred commodities reproduced through the spiritual blessing of

common items, distributed through a “meta-network” of “individuals, activities and

locales around the world” (as in Castells 1996: 508), Churches, Orthodox schools, and

other religious sites and institutions. For instance, a pilgrim consumer can buy “holy”

products from commercial sites such as ‘Monastery Products on Line’ at

www.monasteryproducts.org, or even virtually visit the Church of Vatopaidi at

www.ouranoupoli.com/athos.

In a paper entitled “Materializations of Faith” (Paganopoulos 2007b) I discussed the

process through which the monks produce miraculous items, such as the healing

ribbons of the Virgin Mary, which have the reputation for miraculously making

women pregnant. The blessed commodities owe the characteristics of an “economy of

qualities” (Callon, Meadel, and Rabeharisoa 2005) since it is based on “the

collaboration between supply and demand in a way that enables consumers to

participate actively in the qualification of products” (Ibid: 45). The success of such a

product depends on rumours: the bigger the rumour, the greater vocation of the

product. For instance, donors to Vatopaidi include the Prince of Wales, while its

property expands all over Europe (metochia). According to its monks, they remain

faithful to the traditional coenobitic life of Athanasios in which obedience and

economy of passions lie at the heart of the social organization of the daily life of the

monastery, as the inner order of each monk is directly connected to the social order.

1

In Economies of Signs and Space, Lash and Urry argue that the new economic and

symbolic processes of the market affect the social life of the institutions and the way

people conduct themselves (1994: 108). Young monks, in spite of their lower ranking,

because of their higher education and extensive knowledge of the market and

technology, are as much important to the monastery as the spiritually experienced

elders. In this way, their knowledge challenges the traditional order of the monastery.

In response, tradition is used to restoring order: Vatopaidi is a highly organized

environment that illuminates Durkheim’s ideas of “solidarity” (1933) and Dumont’s

application of those ideals in his famous analysis of the Hindu caste system, as a

system in which the participants do not feel limited, or “unequal” by the traditional

way of ranking, but instead, the caste is based on both ideals of “equality and

hierarchy”, which are “not opposed to each other in the mechanical way” (Dumont

1972: 306), but complement each other. In our context, the traditional economy of

passions, supported by the regulative practices of the Jesus Prayer, confession, and

fasting, is necessary for each individual monk to behave appropriately and respect his

brothers, in order to maintain this kind of collective consensus despite the recent

changes of social life, especially in relation to the introduction of telecommunications

and the rise of tourism (only last year more than 50, 000 tourist-pilgrims visited

Athos).

Vatopaidi offers us an exemplary model of monastic life and illuminates the notion of

“cultural economy” as a creative family business in which its members are directly

(and faithfully) connected to their group. The monks sell their faith that comes from

inside them, which is in turn reflected on the “virgin” Garden, as “nature becomes a

market place” (Descola and Palsson 1996: 12). The personal connection of the

Vatopaidians to the landscape (ecology), and through it to the world of economics and

contemporary politics, illustrates the term “cultural economy” as defined by Ray and

Sayer, as “culture” springing out from inside the self, and “economy” referring to the

external conditions, which are “social, aesthetic, and geohistorically-specific” (1999:

6).

1

4. Esfigmenou: Under Siege

But five kilometres to the north, the neighbouring monastery of Esfigmenou has a

totally different understanding of monastic life. The two monasteries have a 700 year-

old rivalry for the ownership of the land that surrounds them, the land where the

Church Father Gregorios Palamas spent his final years. Their dispute has taken the

form of a “matter of faith” over the ownership of the Saint itself, and through it of the

tradition of Mou8nt Athos as a whole10

: the Vatopaidians call the zealot monks of

Esfigmenou “fundamentalists”, because of the latter’s idealism of monastic life and

absolute rejection of money and technology. By contrast, the zealots think of the

Vatopaidians as “false monks” and “conspirators”, because of their adoption of

technology in monastic life, which, according to their dogma, contributes to the

“systematic elimination” of their “pure tradition”.

The monastery is famous for its black banner, hanging from its highest tower and

calling for “ORTHODOXY OR DEATH” the Orthodox world for its idealism, as it is

called the “heart of the Old-Calendarist Church”, and the “last tower of zealots”. This

is a sect of the Orthodox Church that does not accept the change of the old Byzantine

Julian calendar to the modern Gregorian calendar as a “matter of faith” and “true

identity”. In this “evil global conspiracy” (in the words of the Abbot), the Pope wants

to unify the world, including Athos, under his power and eliminate their “authentic

Orthodox faith” (Jacob Monk 2000). Accordingly, they consider the communal life of

their neighbouring Vatopaidians, based on the value of obedience to terms a 'spiritual

father', as a 'Western' type of monasticism, threatening to change their 'true faith' and

'distort' the Orthodox tradition. “They teach obedience to the young monks to shut

their mouths because the Elders of the other monasteries are not true Orthodox monks

but Jewish conspirators” (Albanian Archontaris N, January 2003). The zealots find

“economy” a pretentious value that is not “true”, but only used in dealing with the

market11,

consider money and technology as “evil”. But they further politicise their

view by believing in a “Jewish- Papist conspiracy” aiming to first take over first

Mount Athos, and then the world as a whole, as it was foretold in the thousand-year

10

On “contested” traditions see Seremetakis 1991, and Paganopoulos 2007c 11

Elder Savvas of the Zealot Cell of St Nicolas at

http://www.esfigmenou.com/Text%20Documents/A%20Letter%20of%20Resistance.htm

2

reign of Satan in John’s Revelation (more on Prophecy as a product see Paganopoulos

2007b).

For the zealots, their rejection of notions of “economy” is a matter of faith. Economy

is an excuse that covers up the weaknesses of the individual. While the Vatopaidians

have a moral system based on the communal values of obedience, humility, and

poverty, the moral priorities of the zealots focus on praying, the scripts, and praying

again most of the hours of he day isolated in their cells, thus, illustrating the

contemporary type of Christian fundamentalism that Lawrence calls “literalist” (1998:

88-101), in which the faithful concentrates on the readings of the Bible and passionate

action. Consequently the environment of Esfigmenou is very different from that of

Vatopaidi. There is no central authority or order, but seventeen ethnic groups

functioning independently to each other, and often in opposition to each other (as the

Greek and Russian zealots who compete over the control of their monastery). In

comparison to Vatopaidi, Esfigmenou is chaotic, with screams of demonized monks

taking over its dark corridors, no electricity, no heating, and passionate declarations of

personal faith, even in terms of public self-punishment. Hence, in contrast to

Vatopaidi, the central motif in Esfigmenou is that of passion: while the Vatopaidians

emphasize personal contemplation, Esfigmenou’s “True Faith” is that of personal

struggle.

According to their zealot beliefs, they reject all kinds of funding from the EU and the

Greek State, as they have consciously disconnected their monastery from the Holy

Committee of Mount Athos, the central political authority of the Republic situated at

the village of Karyes, and consequently isolated it from the other nineteen Athonian

monasteries. They consider their rich neighbours as “traitors” to their “true faith” and

virginity of the landscape, as they think that the Vatopaidians want to make their

monastery a “hotel”. They believe that Vatopaidi together with the other monasteries

and the Patriarch Bartholomew work for a “Papic and Jewish conspiracy” aiming to

destroy the Orthodox faith. They consider the monasteries who use the modern

Gregorian calendar, such as Vatopaidi and St Panteleimon, as “false monks”,

accusing the communal life of such places as a “Latin custom”.

2

In response, the Patriarchate of Constantinople (Istanbul) and the Holy Committee of

Mount Athos, issued three eviction orders against Esfigmenou, in 1974, 1979, and

more recently in February 2003, calling the schismatic brotherhood “occupiers” of the

monastery, and asking for the arrest of its Abbot and the nine zealot elders, and the

expulsion of the rest of the brotherhood from the Republic, who were not properly

anointed to their position. Since 2003, the monastery is under “embargo” and

according to its monks (at www.esfigmenou.com) five of its members have since died

trying to drive the tractor in the middle of the night, in order not to be seen by the

police, in their efforts to bring some medicine for the elder monks in the monastery.

No boats, no visitors, no funding, is allowed by the central Athonite authorities to the

zealots, but even so, the products of the monastery such as prophecies, rosaries, and

Old Calendarist books, make up to 300,000 Euro a year. With this money the

brotherhood however barely survives, as the expenses to run the whole monastery are

much higher, and the embargo is killing the the monks. The situation became worse in

April 2006, when monks of Esfigmenou were seriously injured fighting the monks

that the Holy Committee has appointed as the “new” monks of Esfigmenou, aiming to

rebuild the monastery in a nearby site, and to totally isolated the zealots. The fight

took place over the konaki of Esfigmenou in Karyes, a humiliating incident that was

heavily exposed by the Greek media.

The main accusation of the other monasteries is the “cosmopolitan” engagement of its

monks with the Greek media and the Internet. The paradox is that while according to

the zealots' understanding “true” monasticism is a return to the hermetic life, as they

reject frequent Communion and confession as practised for instance in Vatopaidi, at

the same time the Abbot of Esfigmenou confesses and blesses the political activities

of far-right religious groups in secular Greece and Russia outside Athos, such as St

Vasillios and ELKIS. The “cosmopolitan” engagement of Esfigmenou with the same

world and technology so loudly rejects, is even more evident in the Internet, as if you

‘search’ in Google for Vatopaidi and Esfigmenou, the so-called “fundamentalists” of

Esfigmenou have almost as many entries as the “modernizers” of Vatopaidi (just

about five hundred). Furthermore, despite their alleged rejection of modern

technology and money, the zealots publish their own monthly magazine called

Voanerges, and they frequently occupy the Greek media with their activities against

the European Union, the European identities, the abolition of the Avaton (the

2

exclusion of women from Athos), and for an increasing involvement of their Church

into secular politics.

Conclusion

The brief ethnographic comparison of the two monasteries above, especially in

respect to their relationship and dependence to the EU, illustrates the notions of

“informal” and “formal” economies (Hart 1973 and 2006)12

: the monastery of

Vatopaidi follows the mainstream Athonian monastic tradition supported by the

spiritual patronage of the Patriarchate of Constantinople to which traditionally the

Republic belongs: the monks follow the communal rule of Athanasios (coenobitic

mode of life) based on obedience, humility and absolute poverty (apatheia). However,

despite their personal poverty, since no private property is allowed in the monastery,

their institution is politically and economically the strongest in Athos today. In other

words, it has the strongest “formal economy”, based on a rigid hierarchical

bureaucratic system centralized around the Abbot with the nine elders, which

produces a number of items from wine to miraculous ribbons, and copies of icons.

Vatopaidi is the perfect illustration of how a “cultural economy” ideally functions: as

a “symbolic economy”/ “economy of qualities” the marketing of the monastery

mainly depending on donations, and the political connection of the monastery to

major institutions outside Athos. Nowadays, this is the model of creative family

business.

By contrast, the poor financial situation of Esfigmenou and its idealist rejection for

technology, funding, the modern market, and the Patriarchate, do not mean that their

monastery is economically isolated. They have several products made of ideology,

such as prophecies, distributed in DVDs, CDs, etc. They are not as isolated as they

claim. On the contrary, their vocation is their business: to struggle against the great

“Jewish-Papist Conspiracy” which today has taken the form of globalisation

12

Keith Hart (1973) developed Geertz’s concepts of “bazaar” and “firm” types of markets

(1963), by highlighting the economic impact of informal types of exchange of people classified as

“unemployed” in African cities. His fieldwork in Ghana helped him to introduce the concepts of

“formal economies” and “formal sector” (deriving from Weber’s ideas of bureaucracy), in opposition

to the bazaar type of “informal economies”, which in time came to generally refer to all types of

underground exchange, from self-employment to the Mafia, as “national bureaucracy excluded the vast

majority from effective participation in development… forced to operate informally, that is, outside the

law, in sectors such as housing, trade and transport” (at www.thememorybank.co.uk, 18/12/2006)

2

threatening with its great project of ‘Ecumenism’ (a global effort to unify all Christian

sections led by the Pope and the Patriarch Bartholomew, whom the zealots hate) to

distort the “purity” of their tradition. Their ideology becomes a product manufactured

into contemporary prophecies about the End of Time, according to contemporary

interpretations of John’s Revelation, which become popular especially among

disillusioned young men (Paganopoulos 2007c). Prophecies are the most commercial

genre (Csordas 1987), because they are exciting, and their cryptic language leaves

open references to their own personal life. The more new interpretations of old

prophecies the zealots reproduce, the more (in)famous their monastery becomes

bringing more young men in its premises, and thus, increasing its political (and

economic) power in the Orthodox world.

4. “Cultural”13

Versus “Occult Economies” 14

In relation to the material above and the comparison of the social life and productivity

of the two monasteries, as a conclusion I will reflect on the concept of “cultural

economies” on three levels: First, as the comparison of Esfigmenou and Vatopaidi

shows, the relationship between economy and culture cannot be generalized into a

single definition. As Ray and Sayer argue that “there may well be more than one

culture-economy distinction” (1999: 4), and Du Gay and Pryke continue saying that

“culture-economy distinctions are continually emerging and re-emerging in specific

sites and contexts” (2002: 9). The multiplicity of markets in today’s markets of

miracles is illustrated by the Comaroffs (1991, 2000) and their work on Christianity

and magic in Africa. Recently they have argued that this reinvention of cultural local

technologies is not a return to tradition, but technology only offers the means to

“fashioning new techniques to preserve older values by retooling culturally familiar

signs and practices” (Comaroffs 2000: 317). With the rise of the electronically

connected market, the concept of ‘tradition’ itself has been certainly re-invented in

places such as monasteries, since the monks have to adjust their monastic life

according to the realities of the contemporary world order.

13

As in Du Gay and Pryke 2002 14

The term is borrowed by the Comaroffs (2000: 310) referring to the impact of media

technology to the rise of the occult in Christian Africa, and elsewhere, in relation to the new “occult

market” that perfectly suits the “magic” of neo-liberalism –the winner takes it all.

2

Second, as the contrasting moral priorities and social reality of each monastery reveal

that at the field “practice is larger, more complex, more messy, than can be grasped

with any particular logic” (as in Law 2002: 34). A single definition of “cultural

economy” according to the “cultural turn” of the 1970s, therefore, is more confusing

than helpful. Hence, it becomes obvious that empirical fieldwork is necessary in

recording the everyday reality of how the two realms of human activity

(culture/economics) are connected in practice, and how they combine “in different

strengths the abstract, the expressive, the affective, and the aesthetic, making each

distinctive, while not making any combination, such as the material and the symbolic

exclusive to anyone sector” (du Gay and Pryke 2002: 13 citing Allen’s article on

“symbolic economies” in the same volume: 39-58).

Third, from the above it is safe to conclude that the vague definition of “cultural

economies” in terms of ‘inside-culture’ ‘outside-economics’, as in Ray and Sayer

(1999) is ahistorical, as it generally refers to a moral ideal of duty, without however

any historical and/or empirical substance. Instead, Du Gay and Pryke for instance use

Weber’s “plural creation of historically specific ethics of ‘life orders’” (2002: 10) to

argue for the necessity to situate cultural economies within their respective historical,

social, and economic contexts, which in turn can explain for the aesthetic and/or

religious values being sold and bought within these contexts. Conversely, there is no

single “market” of faith and/or a global “cultural economy”, but a number of markets

and economies that overlap each other, often crossing the moral boundaries between

religion and magic, ethnicity and class, culture and the occult.

In fact, the comparison between Vatopaidi and Esfigmenou is politically challenging

if we reflect on the concepts of “cultural economies” and “occult economies”. For

example, the poor background of both monks and visitors of Esfigmenou, older in

age, many former addicts, less educated, and a number of them homeless, is certainly

an ironic example of “postmodern choice” –as defined by Bauman 1998, in describing

neo-fundamentalism as a “post-modern” phenomenon. While the monks of Vatopaidi

are higher educated and most of them come from rich families in Cyprus and Britain,

most of the zealots are outcasts, whom the other monasteries denied entrance. The

term “cultural economy” might suit to the middle-class environment of Vatopaidi, but

2

it certainly sounds ironical in Esfigmenou. The way the zealots presented their life to

me, it seems that they did not have a choice, but their only way of escaping poverty

and/or social isolation was indeed this particular monastery. In this sense, both the

visitors and the monks of Esfigmenou are part of a worldwide alternative Christian

occult (Comaroffs), an electronic “collective consciousness” (Durkheim 1933), with

faithful who worship the zealots’ self-proclaimed “purity”. The anti-economic nature

of the zealots’ dogmas is in fact the basis of Esfigmenou’s political economy, because

the monastery depends both economically, and in terms of its population and growth,

to the spreading of such stories through the media. Conversely, the extreme

contrasting interpretations of Vatopaidi and Esfigmenou to the notion and uses of

“economy” highlight the diversity of the Athonian culture itself, challenging the

homogeneity of Mount Athos. Same as the concept of “occult economies” is a strong

critique of neo-liberal capitalism and “cultural economies”, the occult monastic life of

Esfigmenou is nowadays a critique to the mainstream monasticism of their

Vatopaidian neighbours, and the Republic as a whole. No wonder why the other

monasteries insist on expelling the zealots out of the Mount: for them it is simply a

“matter of faith”, a matter of identity.

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(2001) The Charismatic Servant Elder Ephraim the Katounakiotis. Vatopaidian Series No12

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(2007b) “Materializations of Faith on Mount Athos”

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2

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