Vatican City State and Mount Athos
The upcoming Pope’s visit to the UK has caused a stir as it is an official State visit rather than a pastoral visit. Pope John’s visit back in 1982 was a pastoral affair.
Some question the legitimacy of the tiny Vatican as a Sovereign State and consequently claim the Pope isn’t a “proper” Head of State.
This argument knocks on to the issue of State funding for the visit and the fact that Gordon Brown originally invited the Pope in a ‘State’ context is conveniently forgotten.
Here’s a snippet from the Sunday Times back in Feb 09:
Gordon Brown assured Pope Benedict XVI of a “warm welcome” when he invited him to Britain today.
After an audience with the Pope lasting more than 35 minutes – far longer than scheduled – Mr Brown said he had told the pontiff “that many millions of people would not only welcome his visit but it would be a great moment for our whole country”.
So all of those folk opposed to state funding of the Pope’s visit have Gordon Brown to thank.
Anyway, I got a little side-tracked as I wanted to highlight the fact that the Vatican is not the only tiny Christian Sovereign State, there is another, namely, Mount Athos:
The following is taken from Diarmaid MacCulloch: A History of Christianity – The First Three Thousand Years – Page: 467-468
Most recent previous post on ‘A History of Christianity’ can be found here.
The assertion of uniform values within the Orthodox Church and the new wealth in the tenth and eleventh centuries also led to the great investment in the institutions which had defended (or invented) the tradition so successfully in the years of conflict: the monasteries. Naturally much of this investment went into ancient well-established foundations, much of which were in the capital or in great-cities, but as a result, the restlessness of the monastic spirit led to the inspirational holy men moving out to find new wilderness. This was a great age of colonisation of ‘holy mountains’, the chief active survivor of which is the monastic republic of Mount Athos, a peninsula thrusting into the Aegean sea in Great Macedonia. Although a few hermits had been attracted to the Athonite peninsula’s wild grandeur and isolation in earlier centuries, the great Lavra, the most important among its monastic communities had multiplied, other language groups from Eastern Churches also founded monasteries here.
Subsequent historical shifts of fortune have propelled the Holy Mountain into one of the most important resources of Orthodoxy worldwide, now enjoying autonomy within the Republic of Greece. It is the only state in the world with an entirely male population, including any animal or bird with human control.
Fascinating….well I think so anyway….
Tags: Christianity, Church Life