Zograf Monastery

The Monastery of Zografou (Greek Μονή Ζωγράφου, Bulgarian Зографски манастир, often monastery Zographou ) is one of the 20 monasteries of Mount Athos. The official name of the monastery is the monastery of Saint George Zograph ( Bulg манастир " Свет ѝ Георги Зограф " / Sveti Georgi Zograph, dt Monastery of St. George of the painter ).

In hierarchical order, it is the ninth monastery of Athos monasteries. The monks there are of Bulgarian origin today.

Main feast days of the monastery are April 23, feast of St. George, and October 10, Day of the Holy Martyrs of Zografou.

Location

Zografou monastery is on the southwest side of the Athos most northerly. The monastery is situated at 152m above sea level on a mountain slope above the gorge of the creek Zográfitikos Lakos and can not be seen from the sea.

History

According to legend, the monastery was the beginning of the 10th century by three brothers, Moses, Aaron, and Ioannes from Ohrid during the reign of Emperor Leo VI. founded. The founding legend reports that the brothers could not agree on a patron saint for the monastery. Then they put in the church on a blank wooden sign and asked for a sign from God. The next morning they found the image is not created by man of St. George on the icon. Therefore, the monastery was dedicated to St. George and was nicknamed Zografou ( Monastery of the painter ).

Already the first Typikon of Athos of 972 has the signature of a monk Georgios o Zographos ( Γεώργιος ο ζωγράφος, George the painter). But since it is not called Hegumen, he was not abbot of a monastery at this time. It is likely that it was the leader of a monastic community, from which subsequently formed the monastery. The monastery was named after the patron saint of this George, St. George, and his profession.

The oldest mention of the monastery can be found in a document of 980, after which it is mentioned again only in sources from the mid-11th century.

On October 10, 1276 were 26 monks, who had argued against the Union of Orthodox with the Catholic Church after the Second Council of Lyons in 1274, burnt by Byzantine mercenaries. A 1873 built marble cenotaph commemorates this event.

Like all Athos monasteries, the monastery was 1307-1309 looted and vandalized by the Catalan Company.

Only through the great support, especially by the Bulgarian Tsar, as well as by the Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos - Michael IX. and John V. and other South East European rulers was the monastery heavy blows of fate, as in 1308 the looting and burning of the convent through the Catalan company overcome.

Buildings

The visible today buildings of the monastery date back to a renewal in the 19th century.

Library

The library includes 126 Greek and 388 Slavic manuscripts and over 8000 books. 1843 there named after the monastery Codex Zographensis was discovered, which represents one of the most important Old Church Slavonic Gospels manuscripts and in 1860 donated to the Russian Tsar. Today it is in the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg. In the monastic library is, inter alia, nor the Vitosha certificate ( Bulg Витошка грамота ) kept.

The library of the monastery is home to continue the autograph of the Slavo -Bulgarian History of Païssi of Hilandar, which was written in the neighboring monastery Hilandar. 1985 succeeded the Bulgarian State Security through surgery " Maraton ", the work to steal from the monastery and bring to Bulgaria. After the fall of communism in Bulgaria was 1998, the Bulgarian President Petar Stoyanov, the original back to the monastery.

General view of the monastery, about 1860-70

Icons inside the katholikon

Arsanas the monastery