East as The Holy Mountain[1] on account of its collection of religious houses. Curzon counted 935 places of worship, including churches, chapels, and oratories, every large convent containing from six to twenty chapels, the walls of which are covered from top to bottom with frescoes.[2] The family of the Comneni (a.d. 1058–1204) bestowed special privileges on the monks of Mount Athos. Persecuted and pillaged under the Latin dominance, they appealed to Pope Innocent iii. for protection and were favourably regarded by him. With the recovery of Constantinople by the Palæologi their prosperity returned. Several emperors retired here from the cares of the world. The shrines richly decorated with goldsmith work of a high order, the libraries with their fine illuminated manuscripts, the splendid frescoes, reckoned among the finest specimens of Byzantine art, and the natural advantages of its retreats among rocks and ravines and woody slopes, with glimpses out to the sunny sea, combined to render Mount Athos the choicest spot in Eastern Christendom. The monks were wise in making timely submission to the Turks, with the result that, though they had suffered from earlier Saracen raids and though they had been very cruelly treated by their fellow-Christians from the West, when Constantinople was taken by Mohammed and the rest of the Eastern Church came under the Turkish yoke, Mount Athos was allowed virtual independence subject to a tribute—a unique privilege which it has maintained down to the present day.
But it is neither its lovely situation, its size, its numerous population of monks, its many sacred buildings, its treasures of art and literature, nor its home rule that have given Mount Athos its high honour in the Greek Church. That is due to the renowned sanctity of its monks, and especially to one peculiar characteristic which may be deemed either a sign of the highest spirituality or a mark of the grossest, most ignorant superstition, influenced by the mysticism of the pseudo-Dionysius, and
