The Missionary Era · 1750s-1860s · Athos, Greek islands
The Kollyvades & Greek Renewal
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About This Movement
It began as an argument about when to hold memorial services for the dead — Saturday, as tradition had it, or Sunday, as convenience on Mount Athos had made usual. And the monks who insisted on the older practice were nicknamed for the boiled wheat, kollyva, served at those services. The quarrel was small; what came out of it was not. Its leaders argued for frequent communion against a general practice of receiving perhaps once or twice a year, and in 1782 published in Venice the Philokalia, an anthology of Greek ascetic writers on prayer that became one of the most influential books ever printed in Orthodoxy. Under Ottoman rule they also did something with few parallels anywhere in Christian history. They prepared, pastorally and deliberately, people who expected to be executed for refusing to convert, and then wrote up their deaths in a New Martyrologion in 1799. For their trouble the Kollyvades were driven off Athos and scattered through the islands.
Sources
- The Kollyvades fathers' own texts: the Philokalia (1782); Concerning Frequent Communion; Nicodemus's Handbook of Spiritual Counsel; Athanasios Parios; the controversy record (memorial-services dispute, Athonite expulsions) (primary) — This includes voices from both sides of the controversy over memorial services.
- New-martyr preparation: Nicodemus's New Martyrologion (1799) with the documented pastoral practice of preparing candidates for martyrdom under Ottoman rule (primary) — This material is hagiographic in genre, and the executions are recorded only from the Christian side.
- The renewal's spoken and diffused layer: Kosmas Aitolos's teachings and prophecies as recorded by hearers, his school-founding mission and martyrdom (1779); island circles (Paros, Hydra, Chios) in disciples' lives and correspondence (primary) — Kosmas himself wrote almost nothing; what survives comes through his hearers' memory. Treat the disciples' lives of him as hagiographic in genre.
- Constantine Cavarnos, St. Nicodemos the Hagiorite (1974), with Kitromilides's essays on the Orthodox world of the era (secondary) — Cavarnos writes from an insider, devotional stance; Kitromilides writes as an academic historian.
- Cambridge History of Christianity vol. 5, ch. 8 'Orthodoxy and the West: Reformation to Enlightenment' (Kitromilides), with ch. 6 'Mount Athos and the Ottomans' (Zachariadou) (reference)