The Athoniada School

From the beginning of the 18th century, the need for a school to provide cadres for the Church and the enslaved Genos for their education had begun to be felt on Mount Athos. This need was met by the Athonia School, which was founded on the initiative of the previous abbot Meletios of Vatopedi and the brotherhood of the Vatopedi Monastery. The founding sigil of the School was issued by Patriarch Cyril V in 1748, while a magnificent building was rebuilt on a nearby hill at the expense of the Monastery to house it.

The first director and teacher of ancient Greek was Neophytos Kafsokalyvitis, and then Agapios Agiotafitis. In 1753, the famous scholar Eugenios Voulgaris took over the direction. The reformed teaching program of the School included classical philology, ancient and modern philosophy, mathematics and physics. Panagiotis Palamas was appointed as Voulgaris's assistant, who taught grammar lessons.

The School quickly gained great fame and attracted a multitude of students. However, the modernity of Eugenios' teaching for the time and the internal conflicts and factions negatively affected its operation, resulting in Eugenios' resignation from the directorship and his voluntary removal from Mount Athos in 1759 and his assumption of the directorship of the Patriarchal Academy in Constantinople. However, the School continued to operate.

The successive attempts to renew it did not bring lasting results. The first was due to Patriarch Seraphim II and ended with the resignation of the director Nikolaos Zerzoulis in 1761 and the abandonment of the Athonia by the students, who preferred the traditions of Eugenius at the Patriarchal Academy. Other attempts by the same patriarch in 1769 failed due to the reaction of the Vatopedi people who apparently did not approve of the promotion by the former Patriarch Seraphim II of Kozani of Cyril as director of the school for reasons that we do not know, just as that of Gabriel IV in 1782 and later of the Vatopedi brothers failed. The School ceased its operation in 1809, to the great disappointment of the scholars of the time. However, its graduates, who represented all the dominant ideological currents of the Balkans in the second half of the 19th century, played a key role in the renaissance of Hellenism.