Show ATHOS LAND OF MEN special police bar women wolves from holy community Comm unit capital called earyes meaning nuts to you in english halliburton explores it 4 a D irv N J some of the monasteries are as s big bc as s small villages this one Is a third of ft a mile aroun round dibe the walls life Is ii exactly as it was a thousand years ago by It RICHARD ICHARD hallburton haliburton HALM HALL BURTON MURTON V author of 0 the royal road to romance etc phere HERE exists today in TI i southeastern southeastern europe a little country washed by the aegean sea so fa fantastically different from all other countries in 1 n the world that in writing about it I 1 am aware I 1 shall be straining the credulity of imy my readers to the utmost so lit ipe ie assure you at the out bat every word of this th is true and can A wr e fl baked in any refer fon the subject Is almost a thousand has a government boned interruptedly span pan of time than nent ment on earth but ened t has never intro ew w idea in politics lence the four who inhabit it oc venerable yen erable buildings irea dithe aanie same parchment books wear earthe the same s tyle style clothes lead the same kind of lives to the ml at A yr t cutest detail as their count rys founds founders rs in the tenth century in the ahe midst of progress and evolution it has 1 remained a medieval world C rv k when we examine it we find and to K 4 PUT dur aa astonishment t az oshi nent that every inhabits T male has always been a iii e the beginning up 11 its soil only one woman in a all I 1 its long ong history has ever set foot f r and she remained just fifteen minutes no child has ever been born within chis this count rys boundaries baby boys may maj chaie have been brought here and have grown up here but never once a baby girl 1 I this country Is located entirely on a narrow peninsula at the point where the peninsula joins the mainland the inhabitants inh abi tints have placed special police whose sole dole duty is to k keen wolves olves and women women from cross fath E t lluc 4 rams but B no E ewes wes kotonly fo tonly only are all females of the human race rigorously barred females mileson mi lesof of any other sort eort are barred as aa well there are larie large flocks of roosters in the cotin country costintin tin but not ano one tingle hen plenty of rams but n no a awes awes herds of steer s and bulls but nota not a cow can be found there are thousands and thousands I 1 ot af cats all torn tom innumerable dois dogs all male only female I 1 birds and fe taff mia Q insects have been able to fly Ss crawl 1 l to 10 the states great annoyance boyance across the border Z althe four thousand inh abitanta wear long black beards and long black blacki robes obes haircutting hair cutting cuttina is naw now alf lowed instead hair Is gathered into a knatat knot at the backof back of the neck and a secured ec tired with hairpins hair pins baldness li is unknown the people drink quad quantities wes of liquor but singing is strictly prohibited the capital Is called earyes t which when translated into english gives it the lovely and mellifluous name of nuts this community is t the holy foly community ti of bf mount athos on maps it li is included in greek territory but actually it li Is is as independent as the moon east of kalonika Sal the map of greece shows ahrea long narrow mountainous peninsulas peninsula extending lik ethree infuriated sausages into Ur Aegean sea of these athos is I 1 the ah easternmost thirty miles long A and five wide its it ba bane se however Is vio 10 rat fiat arid and narrow n arrivi that king xerxes nf ft persia bringing his hi fleet beet to ath conquest of greece easily cuta canal across the isthmus to save his ships chips having to round the stormy point rising above the point is if an abrupt and i spectacular peak feit beet high of pure white marble a 7 J and ai oo 00 the rugged sta lea slope slopes and shores of this peninsula placed lour four or five miles apart are twenty lonely and isolated communities each Is enclosed within a huge medieval stone building walled and battlemented and built around a court these communities are monasteries as several of them were founded between the years and 1000 several more in the the monasteries are giants in size the largest measures nearly one third of a mile around its walls another Is ten stories high fortresses castle college church all in one they were all built in beauty and in grandeur by the outpourings of riches from the emperors of old byzantium it Is in these vast religious refuges that the entirely masculine population of athos lives tour four thousand monks and it has been their abbots who have passed the unique laws forbidding any creature of the female sex from profaning the holiness of this long bearded heaven noted for size splendor byzantium now istanbul in the year was the most zealously christian city ever known the eastern orthodox church dominated it completely but for numbers of citizens in this excessively religious metropolis byzantium was not half pious enough these fanatics protected and supported by the state retreated to the wild and uninhabited ablated and dramatically beautiful peninsula of athos here as monks they turned their zeal into the construction of monasteries in the center of each monastic court the monks built a church in the form of a greek cross into these churches were poured the gold and silver and jewels which byzantium then mistress of the western world had wrested from a hundred subject nations not pounds but tons of gold were spread across s the akons and the altars huge gold chandeliers hung from the d domes om es hugo huge gold candelabra higher than a man lit the holy treasuries once these churches were finished the monks held gorgeous services conforming rigidly to the ritual fixed by the patriarch that was in the year and what remains today of all Us this glory I 1 everything ever fleck of gold every jewel every akon every slightest detail in the services exist in 1835 1935 exactly as 1000 years ago the first generations of athenian Ath onlan monks rendered an incalculable 1 I e service to humanity for they pos messed cultural as well as spiritual strength into their monasteries mona sherles they brought all the previously previous ly written books they could lay their hands on sixth fifth even fourth century manuscripts collected from egypt and arabia syria and the east found their way to mount athos and what has happened to these thousands of scholarly books have they been saved nearly every onel B but u t the monks themselves wh who 0 have preserved all these ancient treasures what tort sort ot of people are they aliey after thirty generations without domizi women and without children done with women to T answer that question quei tion we must first understand what tort sort of men come here beri and why they borne come they come mostly because the eastern orthodox church in greece russia serbia and bulgaria has 0 to o emphasized the literal blissos bliss blis of a physical heaven and literal tor ments of a i physical hell b ell that sim ale pleana and susceptible minded youths particularly in times past have fled to athos believing that only by abife alife a ufa ot of abstinence and self seit moru morti fl fi catlon can they hope to escape from eternal trying frying irk in thi fires of hell with a lot of women women tt around round self mortification would be much harder birder there are other monks monk with romantic i ally inclined n natures who have had bad their a souls s slain by the infidelity and In inconstancy constanc y of some woman with broken hearts seeking refuge in religion and solitude they come to athos they are through with women and never want to see one again one diabolical demon who broke broka the law happened to be so the story goes a famous european queen the late queen elizabeth of roumania who died in 1916 whose country had contributed so generously to the support of the monks that she was given a special permit to approach the front door of one of the biggest monas monasteries a favor unique in history all went well up to a certain point the queen gazed for or several moments into the forbidden area wh where C r for one thousand years no woman had ever set foot then to the horror of the assembled monks she suddenly walked resolutely and quickly on through the doorway just because she wanted to and into the courtyard straight toward the entrance of the church itself the church where the unspeakably holy relics lay pieces 0 of f the true cross girdle of the virgin mary toot foot of a saint that lived on top a column for fifty years the monks were almost paralyzed they seize the woman bodily she was a queen and their benefactress fac tress but every step s she he took further wrecked the accumulated holiness of the centuries the monastery would be cheapened and de sanctified in the eyes of all the other monasteries while the poor abbot in despair was won wondering derin g what to do the queen having seen all she sh a cared to see calmly left male or female the most disconcerting female intrusion of all happened one recent summer eummer in june two young danes accompanied compan compa nied led by a third y young oung person wearing a mans attire and proclaiming to be a male came with proper passports to the peninsula to mako make a tour of the monasteries at the first nights stop the monks looked and suspiciously at the third member of the party was it really a boy or a girl in mans clothes As the suspected visitor walked about into the church and library and every sacred corner comer the monks alarm grew most of them had not seen a woman in five ten tea twenty years and be sure sura whether this was one or not the boy had short hair but it was strangely soft and fine his voice was like a girls and there was no sign of a beard and yet the figure was a boys figure athe poor puzzled monks did not wish to humiliate their visitor if he were vire a boy by ex expelling elling him for or being a girl but neither did they wish to be made fools of or to have their iian monastery a i sairy lose caste by sheltering what seemed to be a female the they wit tried every possible ruse every trick that might reveal the sex of f their guest they even set spies to watch the most intimate manners of the troublesome visitor but the visitor was on the alert remained as enigmatic as ever and left the monastery before the distracted monks could come to any dec decision isiom the excitement continued from one nights lodging to the nex next tIt it eve even n began to precede the arrival ot of thi the three danes the boy jirl girl bec became amethe the scandal the sensation the con consternation s ter nation odthe of the entire peninsula the battle over thi the sex of th the e boy girl raged up and down the slopes ot the peak of athos the monasteries where the disturbs disturbing ng visitor had set foot in self defense swore it was a boy the monasteries not so honored in a holler holier than thou mood swore it was a girl 0 to this da day nobody knows the truth auth bu mount i athos still smokes with the controversy e ball syndicate |