In the movies, it’s called a Mexican standoff—a confrontation where no side can win. Sometimes, it’s portrayed as enemies pointing guns at each other. Other times, it’s two armies poised to attack one another, but there is no path to victory for the aggressor.
This time, the drama plays out in Greece, on the holy mountain of Athos, a sacred site for Eastern Orthodox Christians and home to 20 monasteries and about 2,000 monks. One of those religious communities, the 10th-century Esphigmenou Monastery, houses 118 monks in open conflict with the Ecumenical Patriarchate and who, according to Greek courts, have been illegally squatting there since 2002.
The dissident monks call themselves Genuine Orthodox Christians to distance themselves from the Orthodox mainstream from which they have splintered. They subscribe to an uncompromising fundamentalism, have rejected several of the Eastern Orthodox saints, refuse to acknowledge the Greek Orthodox Church’s Revised Julian liturgical calendar adopted 100 years ago—and they are armed.
In 2002, the break-away monks were deemed “schismatic,” a condition under which, according to the Greek Constitution, they would not be permitted on Mount Athos. In 2005, the Ecumenical Patriarch called for their removal.
With explosives and guns, the holdouts have resisted multiple attempts to evict them. The Greek police, wanting to effect a smooth evacuation so that the monastery can be occupied by the New Esphigmenou Brotherhood set up by the Ecumenical Patriarch, are stymied. On July 16, they sent a letter to the Holy Community of Mount Athos, the administrative authority of the region, requesting more police and heavy vehicles “in order for our service to respond immediately and with operational precision to a request submitted by bailiff for the execution of evictions in areas of the Athonian State.”
The occupiers, increasingly cut off from the world—ships that supply other monasteries have refused to deal with them—hung a black banner atop their gate that sports three skulls, three knives and crossbones—and a Greek Orthodox cross. Encircling the image are three words, “Orthodoxy or death!” in Russian and Greek. The phrase, coined in 1972 when the group severed its ties with the Ecumenical Patriarch, has since been banned as extremist material in Russia for over a decade.
The Genuine Orthodox Christians issued a statement drawing a moral equivalence between any police action against the monks (which hasn’t happened yet) and the blockade of Gaza.
“The reference to a sufficient number of policemen for a long period of time, foreshadows an attempt to block the Monastery for many years with the aim of handing over the Fathers from the threat of starvation,” the group said. “This plan would constitute a grave violation of basic human rights. After the global outcry over the blockade of Gaza, to which international humanitarian aid is sent, the possible creation of a blockade center in Greece is going to discredit the country worldwide.”
It’s a lose-lose situation for the police. In 2006, following an attempt to evict the squatters, media photos of bloodied monks being dragged out by uniformed officers shocked the overwhelmingly religiously Orthodox Greek public. Seven years later, the police, in another attempt, were rebuffed with Molotov cocktails and other weapons.
The rebel monks are led by Archimandrite Methodius, an inflammatory figure whose antisemitic rants included the threat that if Jews complained that Hitler killed them, they should be careful that a Greek Hitler doesn’t rise one day.
Sentenced by a Greek court to 20 years in jail for throwing a Molotov cocktail at police during the 2013 eviction attempt, the sentence was then commuted to less than six years.
Methodius says that any attempt to remove his order and his monks constitutes religious persecution and that any intervention by the police would create new martyrs.
“We’re ready to defend the monastery to the death; this is our spiritual homeland. Here we were born spiritually, and here we will die,” he said of the impending third police attempt at eviction. “If the fathers of the monasteries and the police come here to make Greeks fight against Greek monks, they should reconsider. Regardless of the outcome, let them come. Will the monks simply stand by if an officer assaults one of us?”
Father Bartolomeos, the abbot of the New Esphigmenou Brotherhood said, “Greek police should have acted long ago. It’s their constitutional duty to protect Mount Athos, which is part of Greece.”
It’s a problem. The nearly quarter-century-long drama of the courts and police attempting and failing to dislodge Methodius and the rebel monks has provided continuing fodder for the Greek media.
Samuel Noble, a scholar of Orthodox Christianity at Aga Khan University in London, has pointed out the delicate balance of power at stake. There’s the brothers’ defiant siege mentality and the tenuous thread of autonomy from the Greek government enjoyed by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which administers the region.
“Athos is super autonomous in two ways. It’s autonomous relative to the Greek state in that the Greek state touches it very, very gently,” Noble said. “And then there’s a degree of autonomy relative to the rest of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. So anything that touches on Athos touches on this sort of double autonomy that they have. And so trying to do something is really difficult because you don’t want to upset either their special relationship with the Greek state or their special relationship with Ecumenical Patriarchate.”
As of this writing, the police have made no move.
Image credits: Monastery Athos Greece by volos. CC BY-NC 2.0.