Athos, the Sacred Mountain of Christianity, celebrated its thousand years of monastic tradition only 40 years ago. Throughout this entire historical period, the monastic fathers have extolled, exalted, safeguarded and perpetuated the unique religious tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church on this peninsula of Chalcidice. They also wrote, painted, and collected tens of thousands of manuscripts, documents, icons, and relics and –later, as technology improved– photographs, memorabilia, copper engravings, maps, and anything that could make up what we today call ATHOS MEMORY. This path was followed by all 20 monasteries of the monastic community of the Holy Mountain at the same pace: to a greater or lesser extent, all the monasteries and their dependencies have been working for years in order to keep this path firm, strong and as accessible as possible to all. Publications, collections, exhibitions and events, within and outside the Holy Mountain are but a small example of this giant effort.

The work of the monks has been supported by the Greek government, distinguished institutions in Greece and abroad, private foundations, as well as individuals; but also by the European Union: through the Information Society programme, the Simonopetra Monastery has been funded in order to promote its own share of ATHOS MEMORY. The result of this effort is this website. Thousands of photographs, documents and manuscripts have been preserved, digitilased, documented and included in an easy access and search programme.

However, this endeavour has not relied only on the funds from the E.U. Information Society programme, to whose people we owe many thanks. It has also relied on the painstaking work of ten of the monastery’s fathers. To each individually and all together we owe our gratitude - especially to Archimandrite Elissaios, Abbot and spiritual father of the Monastery, to priest-monk Ioustinos, the soul of ATHOS MEMORY and the PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVE, to priest-monk Ieronymos, a worthy assistant to the secretariat, to the monk Theodosios, a tireless worker on processing and rescue of the material. A debt of gratitude is also owed to all those who have professionally or voluntarily supported this programme: Kriton Chryssochoïdis and his assistants Zissis Melissakis, Nikos Livanos and Michalis Karambinis for the documents and manuscripts; Kostis Antoniadis, Yorgos Golobias and Arsenios Toptsidis for the photographs; Vassilis Kalfopoulos and his assistants at Kathimerini newspaper Rania Klissiouni, Andreas Koutsouris, Panayotis Giannarakos for the software and the website design; Dionisis Kallikourdis, Kostas Yalis and their assistants at Plegma S.A. for the overall management of the project; and all directly or indirectly involved. This website and its content is but a small beginning. As long as time adds MEMORY, the goal is to achieve its qualitative, artistic and functional enhancement.

           Yannis Chryssafis