MOUNT ATHOS (Extrait)

The Romanian Skete Prodromou
The most important Romanian settlement on the Holy Mountain was
to be the Prodromou skete. Originally a cell, its first known Romanian
monks were from the brotherhood of the monastery of Neamț, Fr Justin
and his disciples, Patapios and Gregory. Around 1810–16 they bought the
Prodromou cell from the Lavra monastery. Following a request addressed
by Metropolitan Veniamin Costachi of Moldavia to the Great Lavra, in
1820 the two disciples of Fr Justin obtained for the cell the status of ‘cenobitic skete of the faithful people of the Moldavians’, through an act which
in thirteen sections defined the relation between the skete and the monastery. The Greek Revolution of 1821 saw the two monks banished from
Prodromou. In 1840, when the community had reached thirty monks, the
skete was devastated by an attack of the Turkish army.
In 1852 two other Romanian monks, Nifon and Nektarios, bought back
the Prodromou skete from the Great Lavra for 7,000 grosz and reopened it.
A new document was drawn up, adding four more sections to the existing
thirteen. Prodromou was asked to pay 1,000 grosz annually to the Lavra
and to limit the community to a maximum of twenty monks. The first prior
and founder of the skete is thought to have been Hieroschemamonk Nifon
Ionescu. In 1860 the construction of the church was finished.
This was when the state of Romania was formed by the unification of
Moldavia and Wallachia in 1859. Romania acknowledged the Prodromou
skete as a Romanian settlement and in 1863 the Romanian government
decided to give the skete 1,000 ducats annually, which was later raised to
3,000 and then to 4,000 ducats. In 1871 King Charles acknowledged the
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skete as a Romanian community and changed the seal to ‘the seal of the
Romanian cenobitic skete of the Holy Mountain of Athos’. The maximum
number of twenty admitted monks was exceeded. By then their number
had reached 100.
The history of the skete was affected by events. The secularization of
monastic estates in Romania nullified the Romanians’ request addressed
to the Holy Community in 1880 to obtain for the skete the status of a
monastery. The liberation of the Holy Mountain from the Turks in 1912
and the transfer of its rule to the Greeks mark the beginning of a new
stage, not only for Romanian monks, but for other nationalities as well ‒
Russians, Serbians, Bulgarians, and Georgians.14 The introduction of the
new calendar in 1923 found the Romanian monks on the Holy Mountain
in fierce opposition from their base in the Romanian skete. Consequently,
starting in 1927, the Romanians’ access to the Holy Mountain was practically blocked, being made conditional on the approval of one of the twenty
monasteries, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Greek government, the
archbishopric of Athens, and the renunciation of Romanian citizenship
in favour of Greek.
Despite the vicissitudes of these times, monastic life at the Romanian
skete of Prodromou has been kept alive to the present day. It was in serious
decline by the 1970s, but it has since revived spectacularly together with all
Athonite monasticism. Today the Romanian skete of Prodromou, considered by both Romanians at home and the Romanian Athonites to be ‘the
Romanian monastery’, is completely restored and has a beautiful community of about forty monks gathered around two great spiritual fathers, Fr
Petronios, the thirteenth prior of the skete, and Fr Julian.