Today, the Church commemorates St. Alexander, the founder of the Monastery of the Unsleeping Ones. In the fifth century, St. Alexander brought from Syria a special order of monastic life with more stringent restrictions on property ownership and an increase in the duration of common prayer by reducing the time allocated for obedience. Due to their constant prayerful vigilance, these monks received the name akoimetai (“never sleeping”). This unique feature of the monastery was that the monks, divided into three shifts, served continuously throughout the day and night (hence its name). Initially, the community was multinational, and services were performed in Greek, Latin, and Syrian. According to the life of St. Alexander, at first, he settled with his followers in Constantinople, but after 420, he moved to the Asian shore of the Bosphorus at Gomon. The exact dating of this event is the subject of debate, and it is possible that the new monastery was founded after the death of the first abbot, St. Alexander (430). His successor, John, found the chosen location inconvenient and moved the monastery closer to the capital, Katangion (modern Çubuklu). Under John and his successor, St. Markellos, who, like St. Alexander, was also from Syria, the monastery reached its greatest prosperity: in the middle of the fifth century, it numbered at least a thousand inhabitants. Many akoimetai became bishops, and in 465 some of the monks moved to a new monastery founded by the patrician Stoudios, thereby laying the foundation for the famous Studion Monastery. The prominent role that akoimetai played in the church-political struggle of that time was manifested in monks’ opposition to the Aspar, an Alan by birth, who was relying on Gotthic-foederati mercenaries, which occupied critical positions in the Byzantine Empire in the middle of the fifth century. In addition, the monastery became the center of opposition to Monophysitism: St. Markellos actively prepared the Fourth Ecumenical Council (451). In this struggle, akoimetai relied on the authority of the Roman Church, a position they supported in every possible way during the years of the so-called Acacian schism between East and West due to the Henotikon of Emperor Zeno (474-475), a Christological document attempting to reconcile Orthodox and Monophysites. However, Pope John II in 534 excommunicated certain akoimetai whose rejection of the Monophysite teaching did not allow them to agree with the formula of the Scythian monks: “One of the Holy Trinity was crucified.” The latest information about akoimetai dates back to the 9th century, when their community was already in Constantinople. In 1216, the Abbot of Akoimetai Maxim II briefly became a patriarch in Nicaea since Crusaders occupied Constantinople.
Source:
A.M.Kriukov, Akemity, Pravolsavnaia Entsiklopeida. |
