Venerable Athanasius of Athos and his Six Disciples

Early Life and Formation

According to the tradition, Athanasius was born in Trebizond about 920 and named Abraham. Orphaned young, he was brought up by a pious nun whose monastic habits he imitated. He was afterward taken to Constantinople, where he studied rhetoric so successfully that he himself became a teacher.

His path to the monastic life ran through Saint Michael Maleinos, abbot of the monastery of Kyminas in Asia Minor, who became his spiritual guide. Abraham received the monastic tonsure at Kyminas and the name Athanasius. It was through Michael Maleinos that he met Nicephorus Phocas, then a military officer, who was deeply impressed by him and remained devoted to him for the rest of his life.

Foundation of the Great Lavra

Withdrawing to Mount Athos in search of solitude, Athanasius settled there around 958. When Nicephorus Phocas asked him to build a monastery, Athanasius undertook the work with imperial backing, and the Great Lavra was dedicated in 963. It became the oldest and most prominent of the monasteries of the Holy Mountain, and Athanasius is reckoned the founder of organized cenobitic monasticism on Athos.

He gave the community a cenobitic rule modeled on the older monasteries of Palestine, with strict observance of the divine services and a common life shared by the brethren. The sources relate that he gathered scattered hermits and incorporated existing sketes into his structured community, while protecting them from raids. His ordering of monastic life on Athos met resistance from some of the established hermits, who preferred the solitary way, and after the death of his imperial patron this opposition forced him for a time to withdraw to Cyprus, until Emperor John Tzimiskes resumed his support of the Lavra.

Miracles & Traditions

The synaxarion relates that during a famine the Mother of God appeared to Athanasius and directed him to strike his staff upon a stone, from which a spring of water flowed forth; the spring is said to have remained when the account was composed.

Death

The tradition relates that Athanasius died about the year 1000 in an accident at the monastery he had founded. While he and several companions were inspecting new construction, the cupola of his church collapsed, and the falling masonry killed them. He is commemorated together with six of his disciples who died with him.