1

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 Harts 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
Devils money from the EU, and pray with the Pope. Dont 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 dont 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 aint 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).

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
Webers terms) regarding technology: since Vatopaidis 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.

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 Durkheims 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

Monasticismartificially 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 mans
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 monasterys 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 Virgins 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 Gods 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 Gods 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 passionsPassions. Emotions are against
nature, para-fysin. They come in the night like demons and confuse our
thoughtsLook at the cats in the Garden. They mate only to reproduce
because this is how God wanted it. He (God) didnt want them to mate for
pleasureOnly 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
Gods 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
Johns 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 Mans
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 Ephraims 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 Abbots speech at the Conference on Ecological Crisis and Johns
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 Dryzeks 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 antieconomic 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 prophecys 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 sixtyfive 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 Johns 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 Devils Sign. For zealots these
three unidentifiable lines fulfil Johns 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 Durkheims 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
Gods 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 sin9.

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.

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 Durkheims ideas of solidarity (1933) and Dumonts
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).

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 yearold 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 latters 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

Elder Savvas of the Zealot Cell of St Nicolas at
http://www.esfigmenou.com/Text%20Documents/A%20Letter%20of%20Resistance.htm
11

2
reign of Satan in Johns 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, Esfigmenous 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 Geertzs 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 Webers 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 Johns 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.
13

4. Cultural

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 todays 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

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.
14

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 Allens 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
Webers 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 Esfigmenous 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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