Echoes of Controversies Related to the Union of Lyons in the Hagiography of Mount Athos

Historical sources of various traditions abundantly testify to the attitude of the monastic circles of Mount Athos towards the Union of Churches. Starting with the texts recorded in the famous Athonite synaxarion, and ending with late, partly legendary reports on the persecutions of Athonite martyrs and confessors, numerous sources feature elaborate attempts to construct an anti-Unionist memory. Extensively analyzed in modern times, these texts can help us better understand the process of merging different traditions and events, especially when compared with surviving diplomatic and narrative sources. To gain a more accurate picture of the nature of the created anti-Unionist memory, we decided to focus our research on an underexplored corpus: the hagiographic texts from the time of the Union and the years after it was rejected. We will analyze the hagiographies created in the monastery of Chilandar at the end of the 13th and 14th centuries. So far, these texts have not been the subject of extensive study in the context of polemical literature on anti-unionist monastic circles.