92 Chapter 2 feature of the landscape. Moreover, it is to be seen on the maritime route between the two main cities of the Empire, Thessaloniki and Constantinople. So, as Whalin remarked about monasteries at Meteora and Mount Athos, they are ‘spiritual sanctuaries removed from the world while at the same time being there for all to see’.303 In the actual lives of monks, they could thus go to spaces of relative isolation, to satisfy a desire for solitude and spiritual contemplation (or to present oneself as desiring these). At the same time they might enhance their status as spiritual authorities by making their rejection of the ‘world’ very visible to others. In addition to these spiritual and selffashioning motivations, the choices for this visible isolation might also have had a practical motivation. For stylites this choice corresponded to an urgent need: they depended on others for nourishment.304 In the case of Mount Athos, monks might have been attracted to such a visible landmark so others would see and know about them. This could have the practical benefit that others, knowing about these monastic communities, chose to support them with financial means.305 The representation of spaces of isolation in relatively visible locations might thus reflect a reality that the hagiographer and the audiences were familiar with. In addition, in the narrative, these places of (imagined) visible isolation contribute to the representation (and reflection) of the boundaries of these isolated spaces as permeable. Due to the visibility and proximity of columns and mountains to cities and places constructed as ‘civilisation’, their construction as ‘wilderness’ and as privileged spaces of isolation is imperfect, as visibility and proximity increase the chances of interactions with ‘worldly’ people. Interaction with other people may both be imagined by the audience, from the recognisability of these places in their own lives, but is also represented in the narrative, as we have seen in the examples above. 303 Ibid., p. 103. 304 Georgia Frank has examined how the immobility of the Stylites in fact generate mobility, among others by the visitors that they attract. Andrew Jacobs has compared Stylite saints with (contemporary) celebrities, where he suggested that the more a famous person expresses the desire to be alone, the more people want to gain access to the celebrity, which paradoxically leads to an increase of fame. Frank (2019); Jacobs (2020). 305 On the other hand, this practical consideration might have weighed less heavily in the ninth century. In this period there were no cenobitic monasteries yet on Mount Athos, and so those early monks would require less buildings and nourishment. So perhaps this was more a motivation from the tenth century onwards, when Athanasius founded the first cenobitic monastery there (the Great Lavra). Athanasius indeed depended on a wealthy and (later an) imperial benefactor. The correlation between relative isolation and visibility may also work differently: perhaps the remarkable location was not necessarily the motivation for monks to live there in hope for financial support, but that a strategic location did play a role in the successful acquirement of such support – not only because of their visibility, but also the possibility for monks themselves to travel to other centres relatively easily to maintain and establish networks with potential benefactors - , which gave these monasteries a higher chance of a long-term existence. Other monasteries at less strategic locations might have had more difficulty finding financial support and therefore had less chance to exist for over a longer period of time. Vangelis Maladakis, for example, has argued that Athonite monks travelled to other places, especially Constantinople, to ensure (imperial) financing or acquiring resources and privileges from the Emperor. Maladakis (2018). Andreas Külzer has explored how other factors, apart from the religious standing of a saint, such as a strategic location along main routes, contributed to the success and persistence of a cult site – a conclusion that could be extended to the monasteries at Mount Athos as well. Kulzer (2018).
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw