Although monasteries remained important centres of spiritual activity and authority in the eastern Christian world throughout the history of the empire and beyond, many monastic communities were also great landlords in their own right, possessing substantial landed properties in the provinces, from which they derived considerable incomes in money and in kind. Members of all social classes, from peasant farmers to emperors, made donations to such establishments in the hope of gaining spiritual benefit in the future and especially after their death. In return, the monks would pray for the souls of the individual donors.
During the late Byzantine period, and as the empire shrank territorially, monasteries began to play an ever greater role in the secular affairs of the state. Not only did they continue to receive donations or exemptions from various state taxes and fiscal impositions; as the state’s resources shrank with its territory, so monasteries became economically relatively more and more important. In some cases, they controlled so much land and resources that they became responsible for local defence and the maintenance of fortifications or the building of warships. An excellent example of this process is provided by the history of monastic property and taxation in the monastic centre of Mt Athos in the Chalkidike peninsula in northern Greece (see Map 12.2). From both Byzantine fiscal documents, imperial letters of exemption in respect of taxes and other privileges, as well as from the Ottoman detailed tax registers, it is possible to piece together the intricate picture of how the state and monasteries co-operated or competed for resources in the region, and what happened to property rights as well as the peasants and their landlords after the conquest by the Ottomans. Monasteries on Mt Athos acquired ever greater endowments from the middle of the thirteenth century until 1453, and the cumulative wealth of the richer monasteries was, by the end of the fourteenth century or not already some time before, considerably greater than that of the state. Even so, from 1371 the government was able to impose some limits, even redistributing monastic lands to support soldiers for the army, for example.
Until the Turkish occupation of much of Asia Minor in the last years of the eleventh century one of the most famous and populous centres for monastic activities was Mt Olympos in Bithynia. Others were to be found in the western coastal region - at Kyminas, Galesion and Latros, for example, but all were permanently damaged by the Byzantine-Turkish conflict of the later eleventh century and afterwards. In the north-eastern area around Trebizond a number of important monastic houses appeared in the last centuries of imperial rule, those at Soumela and Vazelon being the two best known. In Europe, already by the late tenth century Mt Athos was becoming a famous centre; there were other, much smaller, centres in Thrace; and from the thirteenth century the great monastic centre at Meteora in Thessaly began to grow. As many as a thousand different monasteries are mentioned in the documentary sources across the life of the empire, although not all of them were active at the same period. There were several important monasteries also in Constantinople, such as the famous St John of Stoudios, but several new monasteries were founded during the eleventh and twelfth centuries under imperial patronage.
The surviving typika or foundation charters for these establishments provide a great deal of evidence about their internal administration as well as their spiritual life and aims. Monasteries and convents varied greatly in size. Some of the larger establishments grew to have several hundred monks, but the majority remained much more modest, with tens rather than hundreds as the norm. Their functions varied. Charity and alms, the relief of the poor and the ill were key aims, and several monasteries had almshouses, hostels and hospitals attached to them, with considerable staffs of trained personnel to care for the inmates. Food might be distributed daily to the poor in an urban monastery, for example, or in particular times of dearth in the countryside. Since there were no monastic orders as such, the typikon of one monastery might serve as the basis for those of one or more other establishments. Thus the typikon of the Evergetis monastery in the suburbs of Constantinople, founded in the middle of the eleventh century, served as the model for those of several other Constantinopolitan and provincial communities.
One of the hallmarks of late Byzantine monastic development is the appearance and increasing popularity of so-called ‘idiorrhythmic’ monasticism, whereby the monk did not observe a common round of prayer and other duties with his brethren, but followed rather a more individual form of prayer, contemplation and work, eating alone, for example, rather than in a refectory. This was never fully condoned by the eastern church because it set up a challenge to the fundamentally cenobitic principles of the monastic life, but it nevertheless became very popular in the fourteenth century, and remained an important facet of orthodox monasticism thereafter, where it is to be found in the orthodox world today.
An equally significant development which impacted on the whole eastern orthodox world, including monasteries, in the fourteenth century was the so-called ‘hesychast’ movement. In the eleventh century Symeon the Theologian, building on a long tradition, argued that divine activity could be experienced both through the spirit and through the senses. On Mt Athos, the idea was developed that such experiences were open to all, provided that the right means was employed to attain them. It was argued that deep concentration and repetitive prayer, accompanied by special breathing techniques, could open the consciousness to visionary experiences, a development which contrasted strongly with traditional modes of spiritual devotion, and which divided the church as well as lay society. The debate became closely entwined with the political issues of the day. Hesychasm only came to the fore for a short period, but it left its mark on the history of orthodox spirituality, and the tradition of mysticism it entailed continued to play an important role after the Ottoman conquest.
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