Skete

A Skete (also: hermitage, σκήτη of Greek η; Skit, Russian скит ) is a monastery-like community of monks or monk's village, which is under the formal sovereignty of a large monastery and is guided in self-administration of an elder.

The term derives from the Sketischen desert in Egypt from and is today mainly used in connection with the Mount Athos, a monastic state in northern Greece, the monastic life is organized into 20 major monasteries and many depend on them Skiten.

These can either consist of large, monastery adhere systems, however, do not enjoy the privilege of being one of the conditions laid down in their number 20 large monasteries, or of a loose grouping of individual houses, in each of which one or more monks live. If it is at a Skite a monastery-like building ( on the Athos eg Andreou hermitage, hermitage Prodromou ), the monks follow as the 20 monasteries ( since the 60s ) the cenobitic life, ie they have no private property, and the whole of life is jointly organized. If, in contrast to a " monastic village" (eg Nea hermitage, hermitage Agias Annis ), the monks live idiorrhythmisch, ie they live in individual houses, can have private property and may only meet for Sunday worship services in the central church of the Skete.

The term is also used for the Skete monastic hermitages, ie for the dwellings of hermits. These were particularly common in Russia and was founded as an offshoot of existing Russian Orthodox monasteries. A theological foundation for these settlements created by the Russian starets Nil of Sora.

In the German -speaking world exists in Geilnau since the late 1980s, the Skete of St. Spyridon, a man's monastery, which belongs to the Serbian Orthodox Church. Since 2005 there is also near Munich, in book village, the Skete of St. Elizabeth, a Russian Orthodox convent of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad.