Monthly Archives: Απρίλιος 2020

Among the oldest structures of the Monastery is the chapel of St Georgios the Trophybearer, which is located on the north side of the monastic complex. The chronology (1431) which exists in the inscription in the chapel had been falsified in the 19th century by Konstantinos Simonidis, who changed the original date of 1554. Its frescoes have been reliably dated to 1552/55, and are attributed to the artist Antonios, who is also known from a 1544 inscription which has survived in the arch of the altar of the old cathedral of the Xenofontos Monastery. The frescoes of Antonios are characterized by an ‘anti-classical’ tendency, while in individual sections, elements of Cretan painting or even of his almost contemporary, the Theban painter Frangkos Katelanos, can be observed. Among the important icons in the chapel are the 16th century icons of Christ Enthroned, flanked by St Georgios and St Pavlos of Xeropotamos, and the icon of the Virgin Mary of Pammakaristos (Παναγίας Παμμακαρίστου), which name is obviously is derived from the similarly-named Byzantine pilgrimage church in Konstantinople. In the same period, at about the middle of the 16th century, the large epistyle of the icon screen of the chapel was installed, with a depiction of the Great Prayer (Μεγάλη Δέηση) following the prototype of the Cretan school. Finally, the altar door of the icon screen is of particular interest, with its representation of the Annunciation (early 16th century) and its large despotic icons of Christ, the Ruler of All and the Virgin Mary.

There are two chapels in the cathedral at the St Pavlos Monastery: the north, dedicated to St Georgios the Trophybearer, and the south, dedicated to the Holy Pavlos, the founder of the Monastery, and to St Gerasimos Kefallonia. Within the Monastery perimeter, there are seven other chapels: St Georgios, St Anthimos Nikomedeias, St Gerasimos, St Nikolaos, St Nektarios Pentapoleos, St Gregorios the Theologian, and the Sts Konstantinos and Eleni.
In addition to the above, the Monastery also has six chapels outside of its perimeter: All Saints (in the cemetery), St Dimitrios (in the old cemetery), St Trifonos (in the garden), St Spyridonos (in the olive grove), St Dimitrios (at the harbour), St Andreas the First-Called (Πρωτοκλήτος) (in the Administration Building (κονάκι) at Karyes), the Transfiguration of the Saviour (at the forest service office on the mountain), and St Nikolaos (at the estate in Monoxuliti).
Southwest of the Monastery, in the cemetery, is the chapel of All Saints, built in 1795 in the type of a ‘compact’ cruciform-shaped church with a dome without a drum, and a narthex. On the southeast side of the Monastery, the old cemetery church of St Dimitrios, which ceased operation when the new chapel was built, still survives.

There are two towers at the St Pavlos Monastery: One is a part of the building complex, and the other is at the beach, a little distance from the harbour of the Monastery.
The first of these was built in 1521/2 with funding from the leader of Vlachia Neagkoe Basarab and his son Theodosios, according to an inscription, but some evidence indicates that the structure was completed several years later. It is an impressive tower, which despite the simplicity of its form and its minimal surface decoration, evidences the detailed attention paid to its design. It has a simple, four-cornered plan, with wooden floors and a wooden roof, elements which were replaced about sixty years ago by tiles of reinforced concrete. However, the stairs leading to the floors are not wooden, but are instead built directly into the north wall, causing that wall to have a greater thickness than the other walls. At the entrance level, high in the four corners, triangular spheres which were used for the seating of semi-circular domes have survived. This feature indicates the possibility of an original intention for this storey to be covered with a dome, an idea which was likely abandoned during the construction. Apart from the usual narrow openings for lighting (i.e. ‘arrow slits’), there are quite large, arched windows allowing light to enter the space. On some floors of the tower, openings for the installation of cannons had also been built, a feature also found in other fortification works on Mt Athos during that period. The defensive strength of the tower is completed by some large machicolations, one of which is located above the entrance, protecting it.
The tower located at the coast is a part of a small barbicon which was renovated by the Monastery a few years ago. The small land area around the structure was completed in at least two construction phases in the 15th or 16th century, while the tower may be even older. In an older phase of the tower, there may have been a cannon installations below each of the two machicolations (of the north and south walls), which may remain buried today in the backfill of the monument.

The refectory of the St Pavlos Monastery is located west of the cathedral, in the west wing of the new land area of the Monastery, an area which was created as part of the large expansion of the building complex during the second decade of the 19th century. According to a dedicatory inscription located above the lintel of the entrance, the building was inaugurated in 1820. The space was originally designed in the shape of the capital letter T, following the type of the Athonite refectory (which in older examples had been the result of adjustments and enlargements of available space).
Built before the expansion of the land area of the Monastery, the former refectory was located in the multi-storey building at the northwest corner of the old building complex, which had been built in the last years of the 17th century. The north wall of that refectory survives until today.
The 1820 refectory was renovated and modernized in 1890-1895, together with the upper floors of the west wing, and one other time soon afterwards in 1902, following the large fire that completely destroyed the southwest sector of the Monastery. The renovation of the interior of the refectory was completed in 1903, under the supervision of the ‘Architect Christodoulos Korfiatos of Skopelos’, as is known from the relevant ‘contract’ which is preserved today in the archives of the Monastery. The work completed in 1902-1903 must have included the metal constructions (i.e., columns, beams and dome supports) in the interior of the Refectory and the ground-level gallery outside (towards the cathedral). Elaborate iron columns with forms similar to the columns in the gallery were common in Europe at that time, and were used on Mt Athos by Russian monks.
The simple marble floor is also worth mentioning, along with the furnishings of the space, with the marble tables supported on marble columns, and the well-designed wooded chairs.

The cathedral of the St Pavlos Monastery is dedicated to the Presentation of the Lord. It is one of the newer cathedrals on Mt Athos, since its construction, which had been begun in 1816, was interrupted by the dramatic events of the Greek Revolution, and was not completed until 1844. It represents an excellent example of the design and construction skills of architects and craftsmen who were active in the wider area of the eastern Mediterranean at the beginning of the 19th century, also illustrating in a dynamic way the era of reconstruction and the spiritual renewal of Hellenism.
This completely new church, set in a different location south of the demolished older cathedral, is part of the large-scale construction programme which transformed and extended the Monastery during the first decades of the 19th century. It is an excellent example of church construction projects both on Mt Athos and elsewhere: Ambitious designs by the architects of the period, who reinterpreted the traditional church plan types in the spirit of discovery. Basic elements of Byzantine architecture coexist in these churches with elements of types and forms of European and Ottoman Baroque, along with the emerging neoclassicism which – particularly for the Greeks – expresses the idea of national rebirth.
Typologically, the church is a variation of the Athonite model with many innovations. The most important of these is the integration of the area of the central nave with the narthex (or outer nave), thus eliminating the intervening wall which traditionally separated them. Through the repetition of the central nave’s typological characteristics in the narthex area, the two traditionally-distinct areas were transformed into one, continuous cruciform area with a dome of the same diameter in the centre. The western transept of the central nave and the corners of the space create at the same time the eastern transept of the cruciform-shaped domed narthex. This design creates a feeling of open space reinforced by the use of columns, five pairs of which are located along the length of the central nave.
Another innovation is the placement of a dome in the eastern arch in front of the central apse of the altar, a design first implemented in the cathedrals of the Xeropotamos and Xenofontos monasteries. This dome is seated directly on the arch in an innovative way, a construction technique unknown in the Byzantine and post-Byzantine periods. There are smaller domes above the altar area (πρόθεση) and the deacon’s area (διακονικό), at the west corner section of the (former) narthex.
The (former) narthex includes an open gallery (supported by columns) in the shape of the Greek letter Π, at the ends of which are two identical domed chapels. The apses of the chapels are incorporated into the walls of the apses on the sides of the central nave. Overall, the complex construction of the cathedral provides an impressive combination of vaulted constructions, consisting of nine domes. It is a particularly demanding design, which required a high degree of technological and engineering expertise to accomplish it.
Apart from the domes, all of the exterior surfaces of the Cathedral are faced with white stone, while the use of decorative elements of sculpted white marble which vitalize the building is particularly extensive. The doors and windows are marble-framed, as are the ceiling cornices, and a band of marble at the base of the walls circles the church, bordering the traditional type of base (κρηπίδα).
Marble is also prominently used in the interior of the cathedral, including the basic architectural sculpture of the columns and the capitals, as well as the large pieces created by sculptors from Tinos: The icon screen and the shrines are works of Io. Lyriti, and were completed in 1901. Both the design – a pioneering one for the period – and its expert execution places the cathedral of the Monastery among the most significant architectural creations of Hellenism in the first half of the 19th century.
The cathedral has remained without wall paintings, since after the construction was completed, the necessary conditions for painting it have not existed. An exception to this is the south chapel, in the dome of which there is a fresco depicting Christ, the Ruler of All (Χριστός Παντοκράτωρ) surrounded by a host of angels. This fresco, completed in the second half of the 19th century, is a significant work of an Athonite workshop. Its existence indicates that there was an intention to add frescoes to the cathedral but, for unknown reasons, it was never realized.

Throughout its early history and before its expansion, the Monastery occupied a very small area. Built upon and restricted by the series of three consecutive, equal-sized, upright rocks almost independent from each other which protruded from the side of the mountain, the Monastery gradually developed. The early design scheme was depicted in the 1744 drawing of the Russian monk-traveller Vasileios Barski, but can still be seen today from the exterior of the north wing, opposite from the deep, sheer-sided ravine. The great tower of the Monastery stands upon the third rock towards the east, while a fourth rock of similar dimensions is found a little further eastwards, outside of the Monastery’s perimeter.
The first installation of monks took place at the end of the 10th century, when the monastery was referred to as Xeropotamos, or as the St Pavlos’ Monastery of the Most Holy Virgin Mary. It seems that the original structure was located at the middle rock, which is the site today of the chapel of St Georgios, built in the 16th century.
The present-day size of the area of the St Pavlos Monastery is the result of a very large expansion, the buildings of which were completed in gradual stages throughout the decades of the 19th century and into the first years of the 20th. Since then, the building complex of the Monastery has been limited approximately to the area occupied by the north side of the contemporary perimeter, from the northwest corner to the tower.
As mentioned previously, the expansion began in 1816 under the aegis of the Archimandrite Anthimos of the Monastery with the construction of the wall and the large west wing (including a new refectory and chapel), and the wooden frames of its upper-floor gallery. In 1819-1820, the present-day bell tower was constructed. During the last decade of the 19th century, extensive renovations and additions were made to the northwest section of the Monastery, from the central area where the chapel of St George is located to the edge of the north wing, up to and beyond the middle of the west wing. Finally, the west and the north wings were destroyed by fire in 1902, and later reconstructed into the form they have today. This work was designed and completed with an academic architectural approach influenced by the eclectic style of the time, as was also true for all the Athonite monasteries. This is very much observable in the most recent work completed during the first years of the 20th century, where the style of the structures surrounding the plaza at the entrance to the Monastery has been designed with an emblematic but restrained, simple and heavily classical look, especially observable in the tower above the entrance.
At the end of the first half of the 15th century, a (then) new cathedral was built at the Monastery, which was decorated with frescoes in 1446/7 and dedicated to the Virgin Mary and to St Georgios. The central nave of the church was located at the upper level of a three-storey building, which had been extended outward from the south side of the pre-existing complex, the entrance to which was remodelled and became the entrance to the Monastery. The three-storey building with its 15th century cathedral survived until about the middle of the 19th century, and is depicted in two very valuable copper engravings from 1744 and 1835, which are discussed in a previous section. Recent excavations by the Archaeological Service have uncovered the northeast corner of the building in the courtyard of the Monastery, northwest of the present-day cathedral.
The great tower of the Monastery was built in 1521/2 and was completed later, in the 16th century. It is likely that the small barbicon (i.e. fortified defensive structure; μπαρμπακάς) located at the front and west of the entrance to the tower must have been built immediately after the tower was constructed. These fortifications seem to have been complete in Barski’s 1744 drawing, but only the north wall and some remnants of the south wall have survived until today.
Upon the top of the rock, the small, two-storey building with the chapel of St Georgios must have been built during this same period, just prior to the middle of the 16th century, with the surviving remnants of earlier constructions being incorporated into it.
Finally, the contemporary building of the Sacristy, which was added in 2015 to the northeast section of the courtyard between the cathedral and the tower, is also worth noting.