MIRACULOUS MIRACLES™

Saint — Athanasius the Athonite

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St. Athanasius the Athonite
c. 920 AD, Trebizond, Byzantine Anatolia (Greek-Pontic Byzantine family) — c. 1001 AD, Great Lavra, Mount Athos — killed when the dome of the church under construction collapsed
Founder of the Great Lavra (963); father of the Mount Athos monastic tradition
Great Lavra (Megisti Lavra), Mount Athos, Greece — his foundation of 963; the mother-monastery of the Mount Athos monastic federation, in continuous Catholic-Orthodox use 963 to present, Greece
Feast
July 5
Canonized
Pre-congregation; venerated jointly in the eastern-Catholic Byzantine-rite and Orthodox calendars as the father of the Mount Athos monastic tradition
Life

Athanasius (baptismal name Abraham) was born around 920 in Trebizond on the Black Sea coast of Byzantine Anatolia, to a Greek-Pontic Byzantine family. Orphaned in childhood, he was educated at Constantinople where he became a distinguished scholar in the imperial school.

Around 952, drawn to the monastic life, he entered the Monastery of Kyminas on the Bithynian Mount Olympus under the Abbot Michael Maleinos (the uncle of the future Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas).

Around 958 the young Byzantine general Nikephoros Phokas — preparing for the reconquest of Crete from the Saracens — sought Athanasius's spiritual counsel; the deep friendship between the monk and the future emperor produced the royal patronage that would underpin the Mount Athos foundation.

Around 961 Athanasius withdrew to the Mount Athos peninsula in northern Greece — a rocky promontory already inhabited by scattered Greek hermit-anchorites. With the massive imperial endowment from Nikephoros Phokas (who became emperor 963–969), Athanasius founded in 963 the Great Lavra (Megisti Lavra) — the principal monastery of Mount Athos.

The Lavra was established as a fully cenobitic (coenobium, communal-life) monastery — the deliberate alternative to the previously dominant eremitic-hermit tradition of Mount Athos. The tension between the new cenobitic discipline of Athanasius's Lavra and the older hermit-tradition of Athos produced the hermit-revolt that produced the famous Athonite Typikon of 972 (under Emperor John Tzimiskes) — the legal-disciplinary document that established Mount Athos as the unique mixed cenobitic-and-eremitic Byzantine monastic federation that survives to the present day.

Athanasius died around 1001 when the dome of the expanding Lavra church collapsed during construction — killing the abbot and several monks who were inspecting the work.

The Great Lavra survives in continuous Catholic-Orthodox liturgical use to the present day as the principal and largest of the twenty monasteries of the Athonite monastic republic.

Miracles & Phenomena

  • The Mount Athos monastic federation

    Athanasius's founding of the Great Lavra in 963 — and the foundation of the nineteen other major monasteries of Mount Athos over the two centuries — produced the unique Athonite monastic republic: the autonomous Catholic-Orthodox monastic federation of the 30-km Mount Athos peninsula in northern Greece, governed by the Athonite Holy Community (Hiera Koinotita), autonomous from Byzantine and Greek civil authority. The Athonite federation remains an autonomous monastic republic to the present day — under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, one of the longest continuously-functioning autonomous monastic federations in world religious history.

  • The Athonite Typikon (972) and the cenobitic-eremitic mixed monastic tradition

    The Athonite Typikon of 972 — composed under Emperor John Tzimiskes to resolve the tension between Athanasius's new cenobitic discipline and the older hermit-tradition of Athos — established the distinctive Mount Athos mixed-monastic discipline that combines the cenobitic-communal large monasteries (the nineteen 'idiorrhythmic' and cenobitic monasteries) with the eremitic-hermitage tradition (the Sketes and the individual cave-hermitages of the southern Athonite peninsula). The Athonite Typikon shaped the Catholic-Orthodox cenobitic-and-eremitic monastic-tradition development across the entire eastern Christian world.

Relics
  • Body
    Tomb of St. Athanasius the Athonite
    Great Lavra (Megisti Lavra), Mount Athos, Greece — in continuous Catholic-Orthodox liturgical use 963 to present

    His tomb at the Great Lavra has been the principal pilgrim destination of Mount Athos for over a thousand years. The Great Lavra survives in active Catholic-Orthodox liturgical use as the principal monastery of the Athonite monastic republic. (Note: Mount Athos maintains a 1,000-year prohibition on the presence of women, preserved by Greek law and the Athonite Holy Community's governance.)

Iconography
  • Athanasius founding the Great Lavra

    The mid-10th-century Byzantine monk-founder in Athonite black monastic schema-habit on the rocky promontory of Mount Athos in 963 directing the construction of the Great Lavra, the architectural plan of the cenobitic foundation unfolding on the parchment before him, the southern Aegean Sea visible in the distance — the iconography of eastern-Catholic Athonite monastic-foundation tradition.

Patronages
Mount Athos (the autonomous Catholic-Orthodox monastic republic of the Athonite peninsula)Catholic and Orthodox cenobitic monastic traditionCatholic and Orthodox architects of churches and monastic buildings
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