Multilingualism on Mount Athos: Greek and Slavic Inscriptions in the Sacred Space of a Monastic Community

Since its foundation in the 10th century, the monastic confederation of Mount Athos attracted monks, pilgrims, and patrons from several regions of the Byzantine Empire and beyond; in the late Middle Ages it developed into one of the most populous religious centers of the Byzantine world with a profound influence on monasticism on an international scale, especially in the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Building, dedicatory, and funerary inscriptions in visible and easily accessible areas of Athonite sacred spaces attest to the importance of these monasteries for a broad range of audiences. Often, the reach of these inscriptions surpassed the limits of the Athonite peninsula, as their commissioners were active across the expanse of the eastern Mediterranean world and their viewers and readers came from every corner of the Christian universe. Although the majority of these inscriptions were composed in Greek (even those commissioned by patrons and donors of Slavic or Romanian origin), some are written in Slavic languages (Church Slavonic, Serbian, Bulgarian, Russian) and are often displayed together with Greek texts. This paper focuses on the symbiosis between inscriptions in different languages dating from the 14th to the 17th centuries within the sacred landscape of Athonite monasteries. It will examine how the choice of language reflects intended readership and how it shapes the mechanisms of communication between patrons on one hand and pilgrims and monks who populated the monastic buildings on the other. It will also ask whether these choices are evidence of a notion of linguistic correctness in Late and post-Byzantine contexts and whether they can be regarded as statements of ethnic identity.