Only to years remain untul 800 summers will have passed since Sava Nemanjic and his aged father Stefan Namanjaraised a unique monastery at Mileja on Sveta Gora, the Holy Mountain, that third arm of Chalkidiki on what was formerly Bizantine and is now Greek territory. This remote and isolated, but also intimate place is surrounded today by cypresses, olive groves and pines - a chosen place  where the most profound trial of the göd-fearing human soul can occur and be resolved, and from where prayer, sometimes solitary, sometimes communal, is offered up. And this without a day's break for almost a full eight centuries ! 

On the history and inportance of Chilandar Monastery as an endowment of the imperial house of ne- manjic, as a monument, as a treasury and as a most precious focus of the spiritual culture of the Serbian  nation and one of the centres of Orthodoxy in general, there already exists a whole library of various writings and documents. But in sprite of allthe books, studies, travel writings, monographs and charters, its complete history can never be fully told. And there will always be those who attempt to retell it afresh.

Perhaps it is therefore worth listening to something about Chilandar from the people who came here long ago to take their monastic vows and never again to leave it. While we are talking with the old monk about the mission of the monastery itself, and also about what it is that so firmly binds the monks to Chilandar, the old quietly moves the beads on his rosary. On the dark brown table in front of him are only a comb full of grey hairs and, yes, a crust of dry bread.

" Well, you see", he replies in nis homely but somehow passionately convincing voice," we consider St. Sava's road the one to follow. You see, he dedicted hinself to work and God and wished to remove himself spiritually and enter into the real meaning, for exemple, of the Orthodox faith. The Greks have always been richer in this. And as St. Sava had, they sey, a Byzantine emperor for a grandfather (because his mother was a Greek), so he perhaps went there several times and liked it. He sought to enrich himself spiritually, in order to help his people as much as possible; we again, wanted to trawel St. Sava's road and we will find all he has left, that which is noblest and best, so that we most easily come to that spititual wealth..."

Our second collocutor, Monk Hilandarac, we ask exactly what brought him to Chilandar. " Chilandar itself", he replies without hesitation. I already knew something about the Holy Mountain and Chilandar from my school, but that pale picture could not atract me,. One day I was recommended to go to slide lecture on the Holy Mountain. I listenad to that lecturer, a Holy Mountain pilgrim, with rapt attention, and as I followed the slides I could hardly wait for Chilandar's turn to come. When it appeared as the last of twenty monastiries on the north-western side of the Athos peninsula, it was really something I had never seen before. The wide-angle lens from the corner beneath the vault of the third monastery gate had caught the courtyard with Milutin's magnificent church, the extremely tall and prefectly shaped cypress in front of it Sava's toweron the tleft-hand side, and the living quarters all around. At that moment I and the others in the hall gasped with excitement. And then something unexpected happened to me. With my whole being I felt that Chilandar was caling me, and that it had only appeared that evening to see me and tell me that..."

The mosaic icon of the Holy Mother in Prayer of the late 12th century, the patron icon of  Chilandar.  Grand Duke Stefan Nemanja is believad to have  expired with it on his chest in the Chilandar parvis. Its exceptional beauty - the minutely detailed drawing, the magnificent colour composition and the teshnical perfektion - is attreibuted to the best Byzantine workshops of Constantinople or Thessaloniki.
 

In St. Sava's time, at the end of the 12th century and beginning of the 13th, there were 90 monks living in Chilandar. With the inflow of Russian and oter Slav monks, there were times when the Chilandar brotherhood numbered as many as 1,500. The so-called ” Little Russia ” quarter is just being renovated, after which  these medieval palaces, which have grown into a ring, into a unique nest of spirituality and asceticism, will be preserved in almost their orginal form. There are at present no more  than 20 monks in the monastery, but one of the two typicons, written by St. Sava (the Chilandar one, as distinct from the Charejan one which is even stricter) says inter alia: " It is vetter for there to be only one full filling the Lord's will, than a host of the lawless."

The story of Chilandar Monasterycould be continued with reference to the miraculous effects of the icon of the Three-Handed Mother of God, to the similary miracolous  vine of St. Simeon which it is believed can help during the begetting of progeny, to the frescoes and icons which rank among the most beautiful in Byzantine art, to the curtain which was donated by the nun Jefimija, to the fate of " Miro- slav's Gospel ", to the greatest medieval Serbian writers who, in the footsteps of the first among them,  St. Sava himself lived and wrote here in Chilandar as in a kind of fortress of the spirit ( Domenitius in the 13th century,Theodosius at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries,Danilo, Isaiah and many others) or perhaps from details such as the enormous mace, hanging on the right-hand side of the entrance - mace which symbolizes the traditional readiness of this inaccessible monastery-castle to resist any possible enemy.

 

The Story, in whichever form, derives its roots from the "flowery" Middle Ages the antumn and winter of which still last today despite a few jeeps, tractors,cassette players or the invasion ( in fact in invasion considerably restricted by the Greek authorities) of tourists, inspiring  with each aspect of its antiquity and beauty which as a "miracle unssen", as described by the celebratet Milo{ Obili} in the national epic poems. Chilandar is in fact the real Vilandar, as it would be called by the same hero.

Some other Holy Mountain monasteries were competing for the attention of the imperial founders, but instead of "buying up" other monasteries Rastko and Namanja had the idea of building a new one on the ruins of an old one, and that it should be "independent, special and self-governing". They were  generously helped in this by the Emperor Alexius Comnenus 3 the Angel ( whose daughter was mar- ried to Nemanja's son, the Grand @upan Stefan, late to be King Stefan the First-Crowned ) who in 1198 issued a chrysobull bestowing Chilandar ” to be an eternal gift to the Serbs”.

Since then many Serbian ( and not only Serbian ) crowned and landed heads have helped by donating montes and lands and protecting Chilandar with their authority and their armies. Thus the monastery walls not only survived but new towers and fortications sprouted up and the church gained in splendour and dignity.

In the 14th century (1303) King Milutin renovated the church of Rastko and Namanja, extended it, had it painted with frescoes and a stone floor made such as cannot be found anywhere else on the Holy Mountain. The Church of the Presentation (the day of that feast also being the day of the church's slava festival ) was built in the tri-conch form, and the cathedral church of Vatoped Monastery ( one of the oldest ) and the church of the monastery of St. Panteleimon were taken as direct models.Next to it, King Milutin erected several other churches, buildings and defence towers.

Emperor Du{an, who raised Chilandar to the highest level in its entire medieval history, visited the monastery in 1347 together with Empress Jelena taking refuge from the plague which was then ravaging Serbia. From that time dates the fact and of course the legend that one woman has nevertheless visited the exclusively male " monastic republic ".

As we said above,Chilandar was supoorted and helped by all the other Serbian rulers, from the families of Hrebljanovi}, Mrnjar~vi},Lazarevi} and Brankovi} right up to those of Obrenovi} and Karadjordje- vi}.

We ask Monk Hilandarac about the monastery's economy today and its sources of income. " The main source of income is our forest. The Holy Mountain has its own form of benison. There is wild red chestnut growing here so densely that the whole peninsula is covered with it".

It would be interesting, we suggest, to hear how big in general the lands of Chilandar Monastery are.
" According to the most recent mesaurements taken for map-making purposes, the area of all monaste- ry lands on the Holy Mountain was calcilated more or less correctly, and it was found that Chilandar, had the largest area of all, 8,000 hectares. This area stretches from coast to coast and includes about 30 kilometres of coastline. Near the Holy Mountain, on the road to Thessaloniki is the afforested monastery estate of Kakovo, 1,500 hectares in size, and also 50 hectares of arable land with olive groves, systematic cultivation, wheat fields and meadows, all leased out. There is also a beautiful small church at Kakovo dedicated to the " Life-Bearing Easterner ",recently painted with frescoes by two of our expert artists ( Dragomir Todorovi} and Dragomir Ja{ovi}).”

" There is a place where Serbs have never spilt a drop of blood, or eaten a piece of meat "... This place is called Chilandar, at the Holy Mountain of Athos, it is the birthplace of our traditions and literacy, the very bedrock of our spiritual existence. If we were to go deep down, to our innermost self, we would arrive at Chilandar. If we were to follow any one of our roots, it would lead us to Chilandar. In Chilandar we shall find, gathered together, all of those whom we have lost, that is where we shell also find our selfs and our own mind"...
"Nations that have such a place know who they are and cannot get lost, whatever may happen to them they can always be revived from that seed."
" Chilandar is older than our discords and no one has ever been so arrogant as to claim that Chilandar was his alone.Chilandar is where there are no sides to be taken.That is how it managed to stay out of our earthly argu- ments, divisions and altercations. Also, perhaps because it was erected otside our tatheriand Chilandar has remained both an indestructible foundation as well as the zenith of spirituality and the spring of life, illuminating us all... "
Matija Be}kovi}

( from  a speach made at the opening of the exhibition of photographs, by Hranislav Mirkovi}, entitled " The Icons of the Monastery Chilandar", in the National Library of Serbian and the Gallery of the Serbian Academy of Science and Arts, in 1989).                                                                    Translated by Jelka Brajovi} Jevremovi}
 

One simple question cries out for answer.To whom does Chilandar in fact belong? ”When our fellow- countryman hears that Chilandar is not Serbian, he suffers a kind of internal stress, because he cannot comprehend it. He cannot see the reason why something which has exisred for 800 years as Serbian, should suddenly not be so now,not of course in the legal sense but in the authentic spiritual sense.That Chilandar is not Serbian is also strange to any ordinary Greek but not, utfortunately, to the Greek administration.  Even it, however, is not of a single mind. For example,the Ministry of Agriculture wrote us an official act in which we were indetified as the "Serbian monastery"while the Ministry of Foreign Affdairs does not even want to hear the adjective "Serbian" in connection with us.

 Never theless Chilandar called itself and continues to call itself a Serbian monastery because it was so designated in the founding charter of Alexius Comnenus 3 and the Typicon of St. Sava, its founder, and
because it is confirmed in article 188 of the Holy Mountain Constitution. In the sense that it is outside our country on Greek ( albeit self-governed ) terittory, in terms of its material side - buildings, antiquities and estates - it cannot be considered as Serbian property ( even though at various times and in various forms Serbia has brought much more of material value into the area of Holy Mountain as aid to Chilandar and other monasteries than today belongs to Chilandar) - but in any event Chilandar is Serbian in terms of its cultural heritage, as a guardian of a historical tradition..."

The aged monk takes us into Milutin's church and shows us the unburnt remains of the centuries - reliquaries in gold and silver, housing the sacred relics of the holy prophet Elijah, St. John the Baptist, St. Gregory the Theologian, St. Simeon Stylites, and St.Barbara, not missing the oppottunity to empha- size how a fragment of the Holy Cross is also preserved in Chilandar.

Later, in the guests part of the cloister on the northem side of the monastery,we continue our discussion on the famous question,which is not overlooked by even the most innocent writer on the circumstances in Chilandar today,the question of the minimal number of monks and the transfer of the monastery into
" other hands " if that number falls below the permitted level.

"With a total of only 20 monks, half of whom are getting on in years, Chilandar is going to have to face such a danger, if the brotherhood dies out and younger men have not taken their place, Chilandar will definitively pass into Greek hands for ever. The number seven is being talked about. I could not sey from when and where that measure originates. But if the monastery was reduced to just two or three monks, Which means that it could not fuction at all, then it would quite cetrainly be lost to us. With numbers of seven, six and five the question would still be open, because at any rate it would not be simple to take away our monastery, especially a monastery which is registered as one of five large monasteries, which has its own superme administration on the Holy Mountain, and which is so well known to the Greek nation, into whose comsciousness it has entered as Serbian..."

I ask the old man what his feelings are when, say, a co-brother or trainee (novice) breaks of and leaves
the monastery because " worldly feeling " has prevailed in him.

" Well, what can I say, like a parent when a son dies. Either they get ill, or won't want anything. What
can You do? You're going to have pain in your soul.You can't see him off with " May you be blessed",
but you asked to go of your own free will, look after yourself"... Our advice didn't work, but we think
like that, and may God will that things be well again!"

We walk about a hundred meters outside the monastery, where the monks' small graveyard lies. Here one can se the fresh grave of an aged brother who has recently passed on, the latest in line of who knows how many Chilandar monks. Another three years and his skull will rise out of the earth to the light of day and take its place among the others on a shelf in the charnel house where, like a miraclous
rosary of eight of the gentlest past centuries lie rows of innocent, white skulls burned clean of flesh,
blood, sight and all their motion for " spirit pure free and ascendant".And if only one of them is yellow,
that would be sufficient sign that its owner has lived sinfully and that his prayers have not been heard.

" Whoever enters our monastery charnel house", notes one of our collocutors, " has the feeling that from this emptiness each skull is quietly calling to him - stay a little with us, so that we can tell you our
secret which, if you don't understand it and don't live with it, you'll never die, for you will be alresdy - dead !"
Thus we return up the narrow path under the strong living wing of our monastery with its clock-hansd
of green cypresses in eternity in the light of the eyes now known to us and prayer that never ceases.
 

 Wisit 

 E-mailbox: Alexander.Polic@mailbox.swipnet.se