Russian monks on Mt. Athos - Nicholas Fennell and Nikolaos Farmakidis compare to Kevin McGrane - can rebut Orthodox Review 1863

[Steven Avery]

https://forums.carm.org/threads/cod...entity-fraud-theft.15475/page-14#post-1334569

A Review of : “The Forging of Codex Sinaiticus” By Dr W. R. Cooper
Against Detailed Background of the Discovery of the Codex
By Kevin McGrane 2018 Page 61, Footnote 146:
"In any case, a hierodeacon was not permitted to be a hegumen of a coenobitic monastery in Eastern Orthodoxy, such as the Panteleimon monastery on Athos: a hegumen was required to be an ordained priest." {Emphasis added}

These are complex questions, and Kevin McGrane does not give any reference.

So I would take it with a grain of salt, noting also that sometimes it is an elected office.

The next post shows you that McGrane's bravado was ill-placed, and his unsourced claims unreliable

=====================

Figure 10 Letter of 1833 of Ecumenical Patriarch Constantius confirming the election of Hieromonk Gerasim as Hegumen of the St Panteleimon ('Russian') monastery.

Why a 1831 confirmation letter if he was hegumen uninterrupted from 1822?
(C'mon TNC, did you really miss that???)
Kevin McGrane - "continuously from 1821 until his death in 1875."

Nicholas Fennel, Russian Monks on Mount Athos: The Thousand Year History of St Panteleimon's (2021)
"He (Gerasimos) was elected abbot upon his return to St Panteleimon Monastery in 1830"

Plus Gerasimos returned to Athos from Morea (Peloponnese peninsula in southern Greece) in 1830.

So it looks like there were some significant errors by Kevin McGrane.
btw, McGrane used an earlier book by Nicholas Fennel:

Nicholas Fennell:
Parfeny Aggeev and Russian Pilgrimage to Mount Athos in The Monastic Magnet: Roads to and from Mount Athos (2008)

+====================

• Add bookmark
• #280

Farmakidis. Page 34
".... Benediktos Rossos and Prokopios Dendrinos, chased by the Turks, go to Mount Athos in 1820 and after the revolution there (1821-22), to Poros. Benedict becomes [Greek ηγούμενος] abbot [Or: "Hegumenos"] of the Monastery of Ag. Panteleimonos. Benedict resides in the Monastery of Zoodochos Pigi of Poros, from 1822 until the end of 1825 at least. Benediktos and Procopius were later appointed by Kapodistrias, as teachers at the Great School of Spetses (1828 – July 1830) and then (October 1830), at the Priestly School of Poros..."

So now that we have some of the Kevin McGrane errors corrected, this looks like it might be accurate. Understanding that more checking would be helpful.

 

[Steven Avery]

https://books.google.com/books?id=Q...elimon"&q=Makarios#v=snippet&q=makary&f=false

Makary ordained priest in July 1868
https://books.google.com/books?id=QklEEAAAQBAJ&pg=PP85

 

[Steven Avery]

Russian Monks on Mount Athos: The Thousand Year History of St Panteleimon's (2021)
Nicholas Fennel
https://books.google.com/books?id=QklEEAAAQBAJ&pg=PP74

I am informed on trustworthy authority that Russian agents are at this moment actively engaged in promoting a rising of Greeks and Bulgarians, and that the intrigues and money for this object come chiefly from the Greek convents of Mount Athos. The principal person employed in the matter by the Russians is a certain Makarios [Abbot Makary], a man, I am assured, of a princely family, and who, by expenditure of a good deal of money, has had himself elected head (Hegumen) of the monastery of Pantelimon [sic].

 

[Steven Avery]

https://forums.carm.org/threads/cod...dict-identity-fraud-theft.15475/#post-1218468

 

[Steven Avery]

Add to #1

Benedict bio - three names - Elliott extracts from Memoir

Simonides said he was 1) Basileion 2) Bessarion (Vissarion) (at Kydonies) 3) Benedict at Esphigmenos till his death (monk at Athos) Benedict of Symi Syme Benedict composed a famous hymn to the virgin that is still sung today. ... his teaching activities, the group behind the schools, the...

purebibleforum.com

post #5

 

[Steven Avery]

John Eliot Hodgkin - Dec 1, 1863

Codex Sinaiticus and the Simonides Affair
James Keith Elliott
https://forums.carm.org/threads/cod...edict-identity-fraud-theft.15475/post-1335362

Simonides further says that Benedict was the spiritual head of the monastery, though during the last few years of his life he retired from the
secular duties connected with his position. He refers you to the Patriarch of Constantinople for confirmation of the truth of this statement.

I hope to be able to discover from some of the Greek newspapers, what was the position of Benedict at the close of his life; the part which he took in the re-establishment of the Rossico monastery was one of the points in dispute between Simonides and Melchisedec. - p. 75

 

[Steven Avery]

Russian Monks on Mount Athos

The Aegean Sea laps the shores of the Holy Mountain of Athos, a self-governing monastic republic on a peninsula in Northern Greece. Twenty ruling monasteries comprise the republic; one of those is the monastery of St Panteleimon, where services are conducted in Slavonic. It has become known as...

books.google.com

From the latter quarter of the nineteenth century some Greeks have continued to
maintain that St Panteleimon Monastery had never been Russian, despite the fact
that it was and is still known as Rossikon / the Russian Monastery, or Ton Ros /
[Belonging to] the Russians. N. Mylonakos, a one-time policeman serving in Karyes,
claimed that the Rossikon had always been called Russian because pious Greek
Athonite monks insist on sticking to traditional names; and that the name does not
denote whom the monastery belonged to, as in the case of Iviron, which is only
nominally Iberian [Georgian] because the last of the Georgians lived in it in the
fourteenth century.16 According to a report written in 1926 by the Athenian
Professors Alivisatos and Petrakakos, who were commissioned by the Greek
government to prepare new statutes for Mount Athos, St Panteleimon’s was known
as Rossikon / the Russian Monastery, or Ton Ros / [Belonging to] the Russians because
at some unspecified date in the past it was inhabited by Slavs from a Dalmatian
town called Rosa. In 1874, in the Constantinople anti-Russian journal I Thraki, it was
reported that the name Rossikon or Roussikon is based on the surname of the
monastery’s unknown founder, who came from Thessaloniki.17
The next abbot after Savvas was perhaps the first non-Greek in charge of St Panteleimon Monastery by the sea. Before his death Savvas had chosen two successors: Priest-Schema-Monk Gerasimos and Deacon-Monk Venedictos, a Greek. The ethnicity of Gerasimos is uncertain. The eminent Greek historian of Athos, Monk Gerasimos (Smyrnakis) Esphigmenitis, calls him “the monastery’s last Greek abbot”18; in the “Monahologion of St Panteleimon Monastery” he is also billed as a Greek,19 but the Russian writer, Fr Serafim (Vesnin), who joined the brotherhood under Gerasimos in 1843 and wrote under the pseudonym of Svyatogorets, calls him Bulgarian.20 Archimandrite Porfiry (Uspensky) observed: “He looks Slav. I was told that he is not a Greek but a Bulgarian.”21 Gerasimos was a native of Macedonia; he hailed from the village of Evdomista (Tur. Kioup-Kioi), now known as Ano Vrondou, in the district of Serres. He spoke or had a working knowledge of several languages—
probably Turkish, Bulgarian, Russian, and his native Macedonian Slav dialect, as well as Greek.

 

[Steven Avery]

Monastic

The Monastic Magnet

Mount Athos has been exercising its magnetic attraction on monks and pilgrims for over a thousand years. As the papers collected in this volume show (many of them delivered at a conference convened in Helsinki in 2006 to mark the opening of an exhibition of treasures of Mount Athos), monks have...

books.google.com

 

[Steven Avery]

A Review of : “The Forging of Codex Sinaiticus” By Dr W. R. Cooper Against Detailed Background of the Discovery of the Codex By Kevin McGrane 2018 Page 61, Footnote 146:
"In any case, a hierodeacon was not permitted to be a hegumen of a coenobitic monastery in Eastern Orthodoxy, such as the Panteleimon monastery on Athos: a hegumen was required to be an ordained priest." {Emphasis added}

A direct refutation (try to get on CARM, some problems today)

  - Codex Sinaiticus and Constantine Simonides - the Benedict identity fraud/theft

John Eliot Hodgkin - Dec 1, 1863 Codex Sinaiticus and the Simonides Affair James Keith Elliott Simonides further says that Benedict was the spiritual head of the monastery, though during the last few years of his life he retired from the secular duties connected with his position. He refers...

forums.carm.org

The next abbot after Savvas was perhaps the first non-Greek in charge of St Panteleimon Monastery by the sea. Before his death Savvas had chosen two successors: Priest-Schema-Monk Gerasimos and Deacon-Monk Venedictos, a Greek.