In this article Cecil discussed the strange rules on Mount Athos.
Nothing to do with this particular subject, but there was an interesting article in last Christmas’ Economist about an incident in 1913 when one of the monasteries was stormed by Russian sailors and 800 monks were shipped off to Odessa and some even jailed.
War and theology
In the name of the Name
Monks who were suppressed by the Tsar’s navy a century ago are still regarded as subversive
To be honest, the argument leaves me completely bewildered - aren’t there more important theological questions to get exercised about?
Reminds me of:
“That piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah!”
There’s more to it than theology. Outside of Protestantism, there is a strong historical trend in Christianity to see in Constantine I a sign that the Roman Empire was somehow a key part of God’s plan. It underlay the coronation of Charlemagne as Emperor in A.D. 800, the medieval division between the Guelph and Ghibelline parties, Dante’s hopes that a Holy Roman Emperor would grow the balls to do something to reign in an out-of-control Papacy, and the assumption by the Princes of Muscovy of the title “Emperor” on the theory that, the First Rome having fallen to heresy (Roman Catholicism) and the Second Rome (Constantinople) having fallen to the Turk, it was Moscow’s fated role to be the “Third Rome”. In recent times, it led to the Crimean War, when Christian Russia wanted, for these reasons, to bully the Ottoman Empire, and Christian Britain, for basic geopolitical reasons, wanted to keep Russia on a leash. In the last century, it led to the strongly rooted Russo-Serbian alliance, which was one of the causes of WW1, and, just a generation ago, to Russian meddling in the Wars of Yugoslavian Succession.
I rather fancy that if this quarrel hadn’t turned up, another would have been found. Every Tsar of Russia has been “the man who would be King of the Popes”.