(δείγμα παρουσίασης)
Kalpakis Dimitrios,
A Geographic Overview of the Athonic Estates during the Byzantine era
A macroscopic approach
Summary
The present volume is a first attempt to depict the presence of the Athonites outside the peninsula of Athos throughout the Byzantine era. It is a macroscopic view of the whole phenomenon, focusing primarily on its spatial aspect.
The Athonic estates can only be seen as a single and complex phenomenon, with many interacting factors and various perspectives. The sum of these estates forms what we call the Athonic vital space. Beyond the painstaking process of forming a new approach methodology, the main part of the research was the documentation mainly through the texts of the original Byzantine documents preserved in Athos’ libraries. One of the most critical stages was the definition of the “estate” itself, towards the adoption of a common denominator, even conventional.
This volume does not intend to be any kind of an Athonic cadaster for the Byzantine era; that would be impossible after all. Neither could it settle on searching only for the official “metochia”, as the term mostly refers to the administrative centers of the estates. From this point of view, an estate is conventionally considered as a distinctive spatial unit, consisted either of a single property or a group of them under certain criteria.
The international bibliography about Athonic landed property is rather occasional or fragmentary, being deliberately subject to specific temporal and/or spatial limitations. This research aimed in the first place at writing down the “totality” of those estates, as they are referred within the original sources, and depict them on a map towards a holistic view of the whole phenomenon, which could point out its major aspects.
All estates had a clear economic background, especially given that they existed in the context of a pre- industrial society. In other words, they were mainly agricultural units aimed at the production of foodstuff in such quantities as to ensure the monasteries’ survival, but also to create a surplus for exchange or trading. However, beyond this main type of estate, many other types could be found, such as those which included installations for processing produce or even providing local services of economic nature. In addition to this, older practices also survived, such as the donation of villages and entire regions to monasteries (donations referring mainly to taxation revenues). In terms of management, the estates were usually organized in a way similar to the later metochia: minor estates gradually formed larger territories with an organized “administrative” center, whose typology followed specific management, defense and transportation needs.
The monastic estates, especially the rural ones, had a major impact on the organization of the Byzantine countryside, not only in strictly economic terms. Surpassing their certain domination over the local markets, those estates often became nodal points of the spiritual, social and intellectual life throughout their regions. Thus, they soon evolved to something deeper; the estates became the main means for Athos itself to get in touch with the outside world; a tool for communication, transaction, and osmosis.
The specific period of study coincides with the first period of the phenomenon itself: from the foundation of the Athonic “state” to the Ottoman occupation. The sources on which the research is mainly based consist of the published Byzantine documents kept in the monasteries themselves, while in some cases additional information comes from Post Byzantine documents, secondary bibliography, and other sources as well.
Although estates can be found from the Aegean Sea to the Balkans and the Danuban territories, what we could name as a typical Athonic space is the wider region from the valley of Axios river to the west and Eastern Macedonia and Thrace to the east; and from Meleniko to the north, to North Aegean islands to the south. However, the major concentrations have been documented in Chalkidiki and the Valley of Strymon, as well as in Lemnos Island after the 14th century. That, of course, was a result of careful planning in most cases, complying to simple management needs and principals, such as direct control, ease of access and shortage of distances, which is critical for foodstuff preservation. All those were common terms for the agricultural pre-industrial economic model, of which the monastic estates were a typical example.
