L’Athos e L’Occidente

The Holy Mountain of Athos, the last great refuge of the monks of the Byzantine Empire, which first the Arab invasion and then the advance of the Seljuk Turks had progressively pushed back to the West, is the spiritual heart of Orthodoxy: a place of search for God and welcome for man in search, an open space for the preservation of tradition (or rather of the multiple traditions of the Orthodox Churches: Byzantine, Slavic, Romanian, Georgian and, until the 13th century, also Latin), but above all a living testimony of life according to the Spirit.
With its twenty monasteries with monks of different nationalities, Mount Athos is an authentic laboratory for the integration of cultural diversity, a bridge for the reconciliation of different cultures and traditions and, finally, a concrete sign of how, while respecting the freedom of the person, unity in diversity is possible.
The essays collected in this second volume of the series also bear witness to the multifaceted cultural heritage and the living spiritual reality of the Holy Mountain. Mount Athos: Paths of Spirituality, with the suggestive title of Athos and the West.