Show STORIES srn IN A K JL Sf TAMPS STAMPS By I I. I S. S Klein a 1 iY a I 1 NETS NETS- RAISED RA y A WF MEANS MEANS' I SOME Ef Of THE MONASTERIES MONASTERIES' ars r ECHOES of the Dark Ages come from the slopes of ot a mountain peninsula in Greece that in- in juts jut Into into In to the north Aegean Sea There rises Mt Athos the Holy Mountain Moun Moun- tain thin on which some monks have joined in m a sort of unique religious republic from which all females t ven even female animals tre aret excluded Twenty large monas-i monas nonas-I nonas teries are there each with its own ruler and all rulers form a council coun coon cil eil that governs the strange land First under the benign influence of Greece then of ot Turkey about 1000 years ago and now back in Greek hands the monks keep themselves entirely apart from framl the world completely in i l t ance of ot events outside M Mostly Greeks the order also attracted Serbs and Russians who sought the sequestered life To them the sin of sins is sex ac accordingly accordingly ac- ac cordingly all women and even event cats tats cows and hens are barred to keep the Holy Mountain godly and thoroughly masculine One of ot the themon mon monasteries i a on Mt a Athos that bullin bum bull r in mem memory ry of Simon Peter Pete is il illustrated n. n on one otle of the stamps Greece issued in j 1927 1 Copyright 13 NEA Service |