Police combed the wooded hills of the Mount Athos monastic community in Northern Greece yesterday after a militant band of monks barged their way in to join an Ascension Day service.

The action by hundreds of bearded and black-clad monks belonging to the Old Calendarists, a sect that refuses to follow the modern Western calendar, brought turmoil to the 1,000-year-old community on the rocky peninsula.

The unrest broke out as President Papoulias of Greece was escorting Heinz Fischer, the Austrian President, on a visit to Mount Athos.

The monks, who had travelled from the mainland, pushed past police at the sole landward entrance to the Esphigmenou monastery, a crumbling yet idyllic cloister facing the sea and the most reactionary of Mount Athos’s 20 organised monasteries.

For years the Calendarist monks of that monastery have been shunned and boycotted by the more moderate Orthodox establishment as extremist. Its inmates have been known to hang banners over the walls calling the Pope an Antichrist. Calendarists from the mainland are banned from Athos.

The police garrison at Ouranoupolis (Heavenly City) at the narrow gateway to Athos was overwhelmed as Calendarist monks surged into what the Greeks call the Holy Mountain. Other monks got into boats and landed on the rocky western shore of the peninsula. About 50 are believed to be still hiding among the wooded peaks.

There were reports of scuffles between the police and the militant monks, but no arrests. Yesterday’s celebration of Orthodox Ascension Day passed without incident.

Mount Athos is best known for its centuries-old ban on women and even female animals (except for cats, which are needed to keep the rodent population down).

The number of foreign visitors seeking peace and solace there has surged in recent years. The Prince of Wales regularly closets himself in the Vatopedi monastery, a neighbour to Esphigmenou but far more moderate and the repository of considerable wealth.

The Old Calendarists are those Orthodox who refused to follow the church’s conversion from the Julian to the Western Gregorian calendar in 1925. They follow the Russian and Serb Orthodox who, for example, celebrate Christmas on January 6. But in a confusing set of compromises, they have agreed to mark Easter and Ascension Day with the mainstream Orthodox.

The Greek state and official church consider the Old Calendarists an illegal organisation. Despite threats of excommunication and occasional imprisonment of its clergy, the Old Calendarists remain militant and maintain an influential centre at Keratea near Athens.

What day is it?

—When Britain switched to the Gregorian calendar in 1752, English mobs rioted, thinking that the Government had shortened their lives. “Give us back our 11 days!” was the slogan coined when September 2 was followed immediately by September 14

—There is an ongoing debate among Zoroastrians over which of their three calendars, the Fasli, Shenshai or Qadimi, is correct

Source: Times archives, antique-horology.org

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