6.08 TS – Remembering Byzantium on Mount Athos during the Ottoman Period

Very much along the lines of this congress’ theme, this Thematic Session proposes to examine how Byzantium was remembered on Mount Athos during the period of Ottoman rule. This memorialization of Byzantium encompassed many aspects, including: the preservation, reexamination and forgery of sovereign privileges issued by Orthodox rulers during the medieval period; the adaptation of medieval hagiographic vitae and new oral legends according to contemporaneous tastes; the reimagining of the Byzantine past in the Holy Mountain’s art and architecture; and continuing to commemorate the patrons, pilgrims and monks of centuries past. Of course, choosing which aspects of the Byzantine past were remembered also meant forgetting other parts of the Holy Mountain’s heritage. This certainly applied to the prominence of certain cultural groups that had once played an important role in the monastic center’s formation. The apogee of Georgian monastic life on Athos, attested by numerous manuscripts and material culture, was increasingly forgotten, even though the occasional traveler like Timothy Gabashvili (1703–1764) might show interest in exploring this legacy. Likewise, the memory of the Latin monastery on Athos, Amalfion, as well as Athonite interactions with the Medieval West more generally, faded, even as relations between Athos and the Catholic Church warmed in the seventeenth century, when the Jesuits were active on the Holy Mountain, even founding a Jesuit school at Protaton in 1635.