Photograph by H. G. Dwight 



the feast of the; annunciation at vaTopethi monastery: mt. athos, Greece; 



A crowd of pilgrims, monks, and hermits from all parts of the peninsula attends this 

 feast. Huge caldrons of rice and other food are prepared for them, and they are served in 

 the courtyard, seated in long rows on the flagstones. 



pethi did not exist at the time the eon- 

 sort of Justinian was passing through 

 her checkered career, those saintly ob- 

 jects perhaps came from the last of the 

 Macedonian dynasty, sister to that fa- 

 mous Empress Zoe, who, having spent 

 the greater part of 48 irreproachable 

 years as a nun, suddenly blossomed forth 

 on the throne into excesses that aston- 

 ished even Constantinople. 



the girdle of the virgin 



The relic which Vatopethi cherishes 

 most tenderly is the girdle of the Virgin 

 Mary. Our friend, the assistant libra- 

 rian, gave us the entire history of it, from 

 its presentation by the Queen of Heaven 

 to doubting Thomas until its recovery 

 during the Greek revolution from a Eu- 

 ropean consul, to whom the Turks had 

 sold it. If the earlier stages of the story 

 are involved in some obscurity, the last 



six or seven hundred years of it are un- 

 questionable. The girdle has now been 

 divided into three parts, one of which is 

 never allowed to leave Vatopethi. It oc- 

 cupies a little domed chapel in the court- 

 yard. The other two parts often go out 

 on tour, especially when invited by the 

 faithful; and many are the miracles re- 

 ported to have been performed by them. 

 The assistant librarian himself had re- 

 cently returned from such a tour, when 

 he and an older monk traveled for nine 

 months in Thrace and Macedonia with 

 the sacred relic, bringing back some 

 14,000 francs for the monastery. 



I fear I was profane enough to take a 

 deeper interest in certain other treasures 

 the assistant librarian showed us. These 

 were opened, on top of a tower at an 

 angle of the sea-facade, by an old libra- 

 rian with a beard so long and so white 

 that he might have walked out of a Bv- 



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