The serenity of the remote monastic community of Mount Athos in northern Greece has been shattered this week as attempts to evict an order of rebel monks threaten to end in violent confrontation.
In a move unprecedented in the 1,000-year history of the Holy Mountain of the Eastern Orthodox Church, more than 100 monks face an eviction order from their spiritual leader, the Ecumenical Patriarch, whom they accuse of the cardinal sin of dealing with the Vatican.
The ultra-conservative monks of the Esphigmenou monastery refuse to recognise the Patriarch's authority and condemn his attempts to heal the Great Schism of 1054 with the Roman Catholic Church.
Clutching the Orthodox equivalent of the rosary, Abbot Methodius said his order would not be forced from their idyllic 11th-century home. "We will fight them with our prayer beads," he told reporters yesterday.
Under siege since an eviction order in December, behind the ramparts of their fortress-like home on the shores of the northern Aegean, the zealots have draped banners over the walls bearing the legend "Orthodoxy or Death".
Mount Athos is a peninsula of 20 monasteries in which no women have been permitted to set foot for a millennium. Not even female livestock are allowed to graze there. It is said to be a favourite retreat for Prince Charles and the Duke of Edinburgh.
"You can't throw 117 souls out on to the street because they do not recognise the authority of the Patriarch," Metropolitan Ierontios of the splinter group the Genuine Orthodox Church (GOC) said. "They have been completely shut off, no one can get in and the monks are living on a prayer and very little food." The monks have responded to the attempted embargo by purchasing a speedboat to beat the blockade of food and heating oil.
Bishop Photios, a former resident of Esphigmenou and a GOC spokesman, said any attempt by the police to enforce the 28 January deadline could have dire consequences.
"The monastery is a coastal fortress, a castle built to withstand an assault by pirates. The police won't be able to just go in there and remove the monks. It will need a military operation to get them out," he said.
Abbot Methodius said the rebels would take their fight to Greece's highest court, the Council of State. "They have sworn that the only way they will leave is when dead," said Metropolitan Ierontios.