Sound Testament of Mount Athos

by Arsenije Jovanovic

A rare soundscape from Mount Athos by Arsenije Jovanovic presented at Ear to the Earth:

“Mount Athos, or Sacred Mountain, or Áyion Óros, on the Khalkidhiki peninsula that extends towards the southeast from the northern coast of the Aegean Sea, is the only independent monastic state in the world. There are currently twenty Byzantine monasteries on Mount Athos — seventeen Greek, one Russian, one Bulgarian, and one Serbian — together housing about two thousand orthodox monks living in hundreds of cells. Many of these monasteries, built on high and inaccessible rocks, look like huge eagles’ nests. Since the ninth century when the sacred community began to allow no woman to set foot on Mount Athos, the population has been only men, only monks and occasional pilgrims. No one was born there, millions of men died there.”

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