The Greek Archive

The Greek archive of the Vatopedi Monastery includes documents, registers, archival codes, letters and other material from the early years of its existence until the 20th century. In terms of content, this material refers to various topics, such as the acquisition of privileges, possession and management of assets, relations with other Athonite monastic institutions, activities of prominent members of the brotherhood, internal organization, etc. Chronologically, the material is classified into three conventional periods; Byzantine (10th-15th centuries), modern (18th-19th centuries) and modern (19th-20th centuries).

The Byzantine archive

The Byzantine documents of the Monastery number 250 and constitute the largest relevant collection on Mount Athos. The oldest among them is a copy of the libel of a Byzantine official dating from shortly after the mid-10th century. This is followed by a deed of the First of Mount Athos of 998 which refers to a border dispute between the Vatopedi Monastery and another monastery on Mount Athos that no longer exists. Also important are the imperial and patriarchal documents. The oldest imperial document is a copy of a gold bull of Emperor Nikephoros III Botaneiates (1080), while the oldest patriarchal is a sigillate letter of Patriarch Isidore I (1347).

However, the bulk of the Byzantine documents come from the era of the great heyday of the Monastery (late 13th - early 15th centuries) and include chrysobullae and edicts of emperors of the Palaiologos dynasty, documents of state and ecclesiastical officials, monastic documents, etc.

The newest file

The number of documents dating from the 16th century is extremely small, a fact due to the crisis that followed the transition of the Athonite state from Byzantine to Ottoman rule. Moreover, due to this transition, many types of documents were now issued by the Ottoman administration and were written in the Turkish language. With the recovery of the Monastery in the 17th and 18th centuries, the volume of archival material also increases (5000 documents), an indication of its economic prosperity and prestige throughout the Ottoman Empire. In addition to documents, the collection of this period also includes financial records, which from the late 17th century onwards were continuously produced by the Vatopedi secretariat and are kept in the Monastery's archive.

The modern archive

The archival material of the 19th and 20th centuries is particularly voluminous (300.000 documents) and constitutes the largest part of the Greek Vatopedi archive. This impressive number is explained by the spiritual and economic prosperity of the Monastery. Vatopedi is now a powerful organization that has surpassed the size of a simple monastic institution and maintains contacts with a huge number of individuals and organizations.

Of particular interest for the history of the Monastery, and of Hellenism in general, are the voluminous personal archives of prominent brothers, such as Gregory of Ireneopolis, Anthimos of Vatopedi (who also served as the archivist of the Monastery) and Archimandrite Iakovos of Vatopedi. Also of great value are the 210 archival codes and the 880 financial records that the archive includes from this period. The codes contain copies of incoming and outgoing documents of Vatopedi commissioners and representatives to the Holy Community, minutes of meetings of the heads of the Monastery, monastic orders, visitor books, etc. The records are divided into booklets and codes and cover the entire period up to the present day.

History of the archive

The presence in the Monastery of documents from the first decades of its history allows the assumption that the archive began to be formed at that time. The archival material that accumulated over time would have been kept in the sacristy or in the library, according to the Byzantine monastic typology. However, the first testimony about the existence of the archive comes from the Russian traveler Vasily Barskij who saw it in the sacristy in 1744. In 1901 the material was transferred to the tower of Panagia, where it remains to this day.

The archival material of the Monastery during the Byzantine period appears to have been rudimentarily classified. The first indications of systematic recording and classification date back to the late 19th century, but it seems that the work remained incomplete. A new effort (the largest ever undertaken on Mount Athos) was undertaken at the beginning of the 20th century by the archivist of the Monastery, Anthimos, with the assistance of the hierodeacon, Benjamin. The two fathers compiled a large volume of documents (dating from 1645 onwards) in 150 codices in chronological order, while the oldest and most important documents, which remained unpublished, were classified into thematic categories by language (Greek-Turkish) and placed in corresponding wooden display cases (squares). They then compiled lists of the contents of the loose documents, which were later supplemented by the Vatopedi monks Alexander and Arkadius and by the previous Theophilus. The practice of compiling documents was continued by subsequent archivists until 1959, with the result that the codices reached 282.