the Longobards Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

The present study aims at giving a comprehensive and consistent account of the founding of the Benedictine house on Mount Athos at the end of the first millennium. It belonged to the first generation of coenobia that started the structured monastic life on the Holy Mountain. It was a Western outpost in the stronghold of the Eastern monastic tradition for three centuries, from circa 985 to 1287 A.D. In spite of the violent split between the Eastern Church and the Western Church and, more generally, between East and West, the Benedictine Athonite house not only took an active part in governing the community of Mount Athos, but became a chief monastery.
Dating and rationale of the construction of this “anomalous” monastery remained an open discussion for a long time. Previous studies acknowledged a reasonable founding date, but due to their misunderstanding of some Latin signatures on Athonite acts, the myth of an Amalfitan foundation of the Athonite Benedictine coenobium was established.
Merlini explains that this once thriving medieval monastery known only since 1010 as Amalfion (Αμαλφιόν) was possibly founded around 985 as “Apothikon” (τῶν Ἀποθηκῶν, of the Warehouses) by Longobards of Benevento. Around the turning of the millennium, other Benedictine fathers from the small but dynamic duchy of Amalfi took possession and ruled it. They could then easily assert themselves over the brothers who founded Apothikon, who enjoyed much less economical resources and were politically less influential.
The study describes the reasons why this monastic foundation was associated with the city of Amalfi in the subsequent Athonite collective memory as well as in most modern scholarship, even if Apothikon originated from the political-religious plans of the autonomous Longobard Principality of Benevento. The Principality of Benevento was basically obedient to the Western imperial authority and often in open diplomatic and military confrontation against the Duchy of Amalfi, which was pro-Byzantine, free of any Longobard political and legal control, and strictly Roman-Orthodox.
The article sets up the origin of Apothikon and the related foundation myth within the Grand Game at the turning of the first millennium that was based on the subtle balance of conflict-cooperation between Mount Athos, the Longobard kingdom and in particular the southern Principalities of Benevento and Capua, the Byzantine Empire, the Papacy, the Benedictine Order, the town of Amalfi, and the powers of Jerusalem. The construction of the Latin house by a Longobard noble person occurred under the tradition according to which the earliest not-Greek Athonite monasteries have been built or taken over by monks who were rulers, in their previous secular life, of their respective countries, or members of the reigning families. They were driven by Christian piety, spiritual prestige, and strategic geopolitical approach. These aristocratic monks arrived and settled at the Holy Mountain in topic moments of the relationship between their countries of origin and the Byzantine Empire.