The Icon Workshop near Varlaam Monastery in Meteora, Greece demonstrates the egg-tempura technique. Egg-tempera, an art technique used since the 4th millennium before Christ, has been used continuously, age by age and time after time. Even today artisans copy old icons of Byzantine art.
The artisans start with a soft material prepared with honey and bone-clay, a piece of
canvas. They
hand draw onto the canvas a sketch taken from an original, old icon. First, they
cover the background with a special blue and on the blue, they apply gold leaf with a soft brush and fix
it with a glue/adhesive. The glue is an animal glue which has been made in the
same way since the Olympic times (of rabbit bones and skin.) Next, they mix egg
tempura, a mix of natural color-powdered pigments found in nature, egg yolk and
vinegar. The palettes of color are all accidents of nature, free minerals like Egyptian
blue, and real 24 karat gold, Gold leaf used in the icon is 22 microns (a
human hair is 80 microns.) In the light the gold is almost transparent.
When the colors are ready, they apply the color to the canvas
using many kinds of brushes. The colors are placed on the canvas from the
darkest to the lightest. Very gradually the light comes. This layering has the very
symbolic meaning of coming gradually from the dark to the light. In the
tradition of the icon you will see the symbolic use of color. Jesus is dressed in two colors, inside with red
outside with blue. The red depicts
divinity and the blue depicts humanity. Mary is dressed in also dressed in two colors,
but her attire inside is with blue and outside with red. For Mary, humanity is
inside and divinity outside. We are dressed with Christ, the Apostle Paul
said.
When the painting on the canvas is finished it is put on a wooden
board, very often made from cypress root because the cypress tree is the symbol
for the immortality of the soul.
Finally, on the blue, with a soft brush, they add on to the
face of the frame, adding a patina to make it look old like the original. On the
back they will add a certificate.
Byzantine egg-tempura, an expensive, important artistic technique used in portraits and murals from 4 BC to the 16th century, is still copied today.
Later that evening we arrived for our lodging at Leptokaria Camp. Leptokaria Camp/”Argos Zodhiates” Bible Center is located in Leptokarya Pierias and it covers an area of about 10.5 acres, with the sea on one side and Mt. Olympus on the other. It is near the village of Leptokarya which has a beautiful coast line in Pieria. The Bible Center’s facilities were great. It was a cold night.
After a delicious breakfast we rode in the bus from Leptokaria to Alexadroupolis, a 4 1/2 hr. drive.
Imagine going to the net! If you could not climb up to the top of the monastery at Varlaam in Meteora, the only way up was in the net. People, building equipment, material, and the goods, all had to be placed in a net and pulled up 300 meters.
The monks pulled their nets up and down with a net and pulley system.
Imagine climbing over the edge to get into the net! Don’t start down too soon for a very quick descent to the bottom. Kostas told us that’s how they knew it was time to replace the net!
The photo of the man in the net, on the cover of this book sold at the Varlaam Monastery bookstore, catches our imagination, doesn’t it?
Kostas pointed out the earliest music manuscript.
The monastery water storage system, as used by the monks in this 16th century, included this very large oak water barrel!
One of the most isolated places in the world, the Monastery of Varlaam is one of six monasteries in the area, all built on the top of great sandstone pillars.
We walked back down to the ground, climbed into the bus and rode until we found a great place to take a few pictures.
The Moody Symphonic Band played a concert that night.
In the Eastern church an icon is not just an artifact to be venerated, but it is a book which has to be read – a book where we don’t only see the actual event, because at the same time we can read the doctrine.
And that’s what we were going to do in an early church in a monastery – read icons, trying to see there the Biblical doctrine.
But we were going to start our tour with our lunch first, at a restaurant of the area which was self service – where we could see what they had and how much it would costs to buy it. If we didn’t want to eat, we had the option to drink a coffee or something as a general thing. We would have the opportunity to see a lot of dishes and to try the local cuisine.
The Greek people cook at home every day and so restaurants for the Greeks to eat in their home town do not exist. In the villages you will find that the restaurant in the village is only for the people who don’t have their family in the village. These people simply work there so they don’t have somebody to cook for them.
It was still winter time and so we didn’t have another choice of where we could stop to eat.
And finishing with that lunch we would start our monastic tour.
It’s easy to travel today, by bus and using the stairs. However, for centuries and centuries, communication with a monastery used to be through a pulley, a rock and a net.
People, regardless of who they were, even if they were bishops, princes and kings, when they wanted to visit these monasteries they had to be placed in a net and to be pulled up 300 meters to the monastery.
Even the building equipment, material and the goods, all had to go up there with a pulley. Are you ready for that faith test?
Many times, this pulley helped people “to be glorified” very quickly. The pulley was going down, and the soul up at the same time.
Nearby, close to the Monastery of Santa Barbara, gardeners worked on a new vineyard.
In the front, panoramically, we saw Santa Barbara and at a shorter rock we saw the walls of the ruin Monastery of Mary’s Birthdate .
Winding through the mountains, the bus passed several monasteries and beautiful scenery.
We looked forward to seeing the oldest music chant ever scored, from the 2nd century BC. After lunch we would see it in the monastery.
OK, music students, do you remember your modes? Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian.
The names of the modes correspond to places of the area where we were driving through. Some were on the other side of the Aegean Sea and all are related with places and tribes of Ancient Greece.
Ionian, the Ionic Tribe. Ionia was the coast of Asia Minor. The capital of Ionia was the city of Ephesus and on the Balkan part of Greece the only Ionians were the Athenians.
Dorian. Dorian was the tribe from which Sparta comes from. They
had their own music, their own style.
Locrian. Locris was at the area on the left side of the plain where
we were riding in the bus, (now because of the clouds we could not see the
mountains), but there used to be Locris.
And Phrygian and Lydian are both in Asia Minor – regions and
people who had their own style of music.
The first international community composed the different modes in the ancient Greek music, which was mostly the music of the temple and the theater. Costas told us he hoped we would have the opportunity to see the theater of Philippi and speak a little bit about the classical theater which is close to what we call. today, opera and scored by music.
Among the manuscripts we were going to see music books and the depiction of the Byzantine music (which is still the official church music of the Eastern Church) driven directly from the ancient Greek chant. Music in the 7th century was reformed by Pope Gregory the Great and we call it Gregorian Chant. The notes were simplified. We were going to see the notes first used, the Byzantine notes. Pope Gregory made them a little bit simpler, and they are the predecessors of the notes we use today in the modern art.
Music from Hydraulis – we knew about the Hydraulis, a type of organ with the pipes from written sources and the depictions. Now we go 14 centuries back. We know from the written sources that the Byzantine emperor had sent such an instrument as a personal gift to the King Pepin Sultan, 9th century in Europe, and this is how this instrument was introduced in the west and was developed into what we call church organum today. The Hydraulis is in the Delphi museum.
In a villa of this city they discovered, relatively well preserved, the actual instrument, a Hydraulis, from the second century before Christ. They were able to make a total reconstruction and so today we have one that produces music. It is on display in Delphi (the copy that produces music) and today we are sure that this is the actual predecessor of what we call church organum, which we thought, up to this discovery that it appeared in Europe at 12th century.
We continued our drive to Meteora, talking about music together. We passed an area with the reconstruction of separate scats (Sarakatsani huts) of nomadic shepherds, who had to build and unbuild their own houses to move further according to weather conditions so now they have made a style of museum or something so somebody can see how they made their tents and their huts, this is what we saw on the left side of the road.
Gregory, he was given the job of collecting all the orally
transmitted tunes. At that time
there was not a Catholic church nor Orthodox church. The western church was a
part of the united, state church. The traditions of that time from east to west
and the opposite were moving when the Catholic church was formed the transmission
of traditions was cut off. There was not a relationship with the east any more,
for more than 10 centuries. So, Gregory went everywhere and collected the
chants from the various areas because oral tradition is not written down and it
changes over time. There was not only
oral translation, there was written music and you will see that written music. Since
at
least the 5th century BC music was written, not just oral
tradition. It was
Gregory who simplified the notes we would see today in the monastery that are
still the notes of the Byzantine church.
“This is where we will climb,” Costas teased.
“Extreme ‘sporters’ like you can climb up there.”
.
We went to a restaurant for lunch which was self-service where we could see what they had and how much it cost.
We had the opportunity to see a lot of dishes and to try the local cuisine.
Now
in a minute we are going to have this rock in front of us and so you will have
a better view of this little wide spot on the side of the cave mouth…hmmm…you see that? Just in front of us in
the brown area of the rock just in the middle. Do you see it?
In many of these caves are still traces of inhabitation. A lot of extreme sport athletes come here from all over the world to climb to these rocks but they have firstly to get permission from the monastic community obviously because in some of these caves are some people and so they like to protect them from being disturbed. The life of these people is called with the special term, the term ascetic, ascetic life. This term comes from the word for exercise in Greek which is askētēs, which means exercise. So, these people they have their exercise, spiritual exercise there, living their ascetic life.
So, the first monastery is The Monastery of St. George – with the scarves. I don’t know how many young men today would dare to do what men did here. Young men climbed to the monastery of St. George, without using ropes and other lanyards or any other means of help to them and they hung a scarf on the wall of the church so everybody in the village knew that a young man was no longer a boy but a real man and therefore they could have a family.
I don’t know if a lot of the area ladies had to marry people from other places – because the risk was very high for these young men. But the habit is active today for young men before they join the army. They prove that they are able to go to the army. So on the right hand side, on the face of the rock, you see the Monastery of St. George with the Scarves.
You can see it is not very easy for somebody to climb up there without any help. So, look at the scarves. Most of them indicate family relationships.
In front of us at the end of the road we saw a monastery, one of the smaller, of St. Nicholas and further, one o’clock we see Santa Barbara. On the right at the top of the big rock used to be the Monastery of the Holy Spirit. Since the Ottoman time it has been in ruins. At the lower part of the Rock of the Holy Spirit you see a big cave and on the upper part you see the wooden structures of the hermitages and above you see Santa Barbara.
Communication with a monastery used to be, for centuries and centuries, through a pulley, a rock and a net. People, regardless of who they were, if they were bishops, princes or kings, to visit these monasteries they had to be placed in a net to be pulled up 300 meters to the monastery. Even the building equipment, material and the goods, all had to go up there with a pulley. Are you ready for that faith test? Many times, this pulley help people to be glorified very quickly: yes, after the pulley went down, the soul went up, at once.
The oldest and largest monastery, the Monastery of the Great Meteron, was founded by the Serbian King Ioasaph and his master Athanasios, when the king decided to reach it’s top. The Monastery of the Calligraphers, a rock without anything on its top today, was destroyed in the 17th century. Many precious manuscripts were produced there, but today those manuscripts belong to many different special libraries of the world.
