Why Christianity’s Strictest Monks Wear Skulls

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The black hood. The skull and crossbones. To the internet, an Orthodox monk of the Great Schema looks like a dark wizard or a final boss. But that robe is his own funeral shroud, and the skull at the bottom of it belongs to someone you've definitely heard of.

In this video we read the robe line by line and walk into the bone rooms of Mount Athos, where monks keep their brothers' skulls with their names written on them. We look at the monastery that hung a banner reading ORTHODOXY OR DEATH, and at the midnight prayer that runs until dawn. Then we get to the strangest paradox in the religious world: men who give their lives to seeing the light of God, trained to suspect that any angel they see is a demon.

00:00 Why these monks look like death
01:13 Chapter I: The Architecture of Death
04:18 The skull has a name: Adam and Golgotha
05:01 Saint Jerome changes his mind
05:53 Chapter II: The Vault of Skulls
08:51 The remembrance of death
09:08 Chapter III: Orthodoxy or Death
10:30 Chapter IV: The Alchemy of Silence
12:28 Saint Silouan and prayer for all Adam
12:46 Hesychasm and the Jesus Prayer
13:25 The Uncreated Light
13:55 Barlaam mocks the navel-gazers
14:50 Seraphim of Sarov: brighter than the sun
16:26 Is this just the occult?
17:45 The Roaring Lion: prelest and false visions
19:19 The Life of Saint Antony: how to test a vision
20:43 Death to the World

Sources:
- Athelstan Riley, Athos, or the Mountain of the Monks (1887)
- Saint Jerome, letter of Paula and Eustochium (c. 386), and Commentary on Matthew (c. 398)
- John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent (7th century)
- The Philokalia, on the method of the Jesus Prayer
- Gregory Palamas, Triads in Defence of the Holy Hesychasts (1330s)
- The conversation of Seraphim of Sarov and Nicholas Motovilov (1831; published by Sergei Nilus, 1903)
- The Council in Trullo (692), Canon 61
- Ignatius Brianchaninov, on prelest (19th century)
- Athanasius, The Life of Saint Antony (4th century)
- Archimandrite Sophrony, Saint Silouan the Athonite

Footage and images:
- Mount Athos footage by Arthur Bolbos (CC BY) and Georgi Paraskevopoulos (CC BY)
- 1913 and 1918 photographs and film of Mount Athos: Archives de la Planète, Musée Albert-Kahn
- Icon photographs by Francesco Bini (CC BY-SA)
- Public domain icons, photographs and engravings via Wikimedia Commons and the Library of Congress

Take care, and I'll see you in the next one. Peace.
Catégories
vidéos/films
Mots-clés
Orthodox Christianity, Great Schema, schema monk
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