Афон. Путеводитель

On the Holy Mount Athos Mount Athos is a peninsula in northeastern Greece, eastern projection of Halkidiki far vdavshiysya in the emerald waters of the Aegean Sea about 80 km long and 12 km wide. Mountainous peninsula covered with dense forests, countless rocky ravines pitted. In the south-eastern part of the Holy. Mountains towering Mount Athos height 2033 m. Above sea level.
In pagan antiquity was known as Mount Athos Apoloniadu (the temple of Apollo), later on top of the mountain there was a temple of Zeus, which was called Athos in Greek (in Russian - Athos).
Church tradition tells us that the Mother of God, taking the grace of the Holy. Spirit in tongues of fire, prepared by lot to go to the Iberian land, but had heard from the angel that her apostolate work appear in another land. The ship on which the Mother of God with the Apostles was sent to the island of Cyprus to Bishop Lazarus, caught in a storm and landed on Mount Athos. The people took the pagan Mother of God and listen to her preaching, then believed and was baptized. Many miracles made it the Mother of God before you sail to Cyprus. She put there as a teacher and head of one of the Apostles men and said: "Cue place wake me in the lot, given to me by my Son and God." Then he blessed the people, he added: "The grace of God be upon this place and staying here with faith and reverence, and keep the commandments of the Son and my God. The need for life on earth good will to them with little difficulty in abundance, and the life of heaven prepared for them, and not scanty grace my son from this place until the end of the century. I'll intercessor this place and warm about it hodataitsa before God. "
Since then, Athos entered the era of Christian history. He was under the dominion of Rome, persecuted Christians until 313, when Emperor Constantine the Great issued a decree granting citizenship rights to Christians and religious freedom. By this time Christianity St. Woe was quite developed. There were monasteries, monasticism flourished. There is a legend that in 422, it was a visit to Mount Athos daughter of Theodosius the Great Princess Placidus, but enter the monastery of Vatopedi prevented her voice from the Mother of God. Since then, the fathers of Athos put a law prohibiting access to St. Gore to girls that later was fixed and royal decrees.
In the VII century conquest of Egypt, Palestine and Syria Arab Muslims forced the Christian clergy and monks in these countries leave the land. Many of them, according to the decision VI Ecumenical Council, decided in the monasteries of Byzantium, including Mount Athos.
By the IX century royal charter granted to the monks the right to own mostly Athos. Their number then increased; appears and Orthodox Slavic monasticism: Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian.
During the Crusades, a period of decline of royal power (1204-1261 gg.) Athos suffers persecution and destruction by the Roman papacy, and the forcible imposition of church union with Rome.
XIV century - time reconstruction of destroyed monasteries of the Latins. This helps pious emperor Andronicus II and Andronikos III Palaiologos, many charitable Serbian Tsar Stefan Dusan.
With the collapse of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, a period of Turkish rule, but the Holy Mountain has retained the freedom of the Orthodox faith and the structure of self-government under the obligation to pay the poll tax. Since then liberated from the Tatar yoke material helps Russian monasteries of the Holy Mountain.
In the XVI century with the accession to the throne of the Ottoman Selim II began a difficult period with deprivation of all estates of monasteries; The situation is aggravated following the uprising in 1770 and in 1821
Only in 1830, proclaimed the independence of Greece. Athos came to a peaceful period.
The Holy Mountain is under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople, as part of the Greek state, where a state language - Greek.