Mount Athos

choi

沃克尔 Andy Walker, 记者来鸿：杜绝诱惑--女人永远的禁地？ BBC Chinese, June 1, 2016
http://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp ... _greece_mount_athos

, which is translated from

Why are women banned from Mount Athos?  BBC, May 27, 2016.
www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36378690

Note:
(a)
(i) Mount Athos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Athos
(Mount Athos is home to 20 monasteries under the direct jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople; section 3.1 Antiquity: Athos the giant threw a massive rock against (god) Poseidon which fell in the Aegean sea and became Mount Athos)
(ii)
(A) Why is Eastern Orthodox Church in Greece (Besides Russia and Eastern Europe)?

Eastern Orthodox Church
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Orthodox_Church
(is the second largest Christian Church in the world, with an estimated 225–300 million adherents [after Roman Catholic Church's 1.27 billion); United in communion with the Latin Church before the East–West Schism in 1054; Its most prominent episcopal see is Constantinople; Geographically, the majority of Eastern Orthodox Christians in the 21st century reside in Greece, Eastern Europe and Russia; section 3 Organization and leadership)

Quote: "Eastern Orthodoxy has no papacy or similar authority, but instead teaches that all bishops are equal by virtue of their ordination, and each autocephalous church is typically governed by a Holy Synod. This is one of the main reasons for the division between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.
(B) English dictionary:
* bishop (n; from Late Latin episcopus, from Greek episkopos, literally, overseer, from epi- + skeptesthai to look — more at SPY)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bishop
* epi- (prefix; Latin, from Greek): "1. upon <epiphyte> * * * over <epicenter>"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/epi-

choi

(b) "According to Dr Graham Speake, author of Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise [1st ed. Yales University Press, 2002; 2nd ed. Denise Harvey 2014] * * * 'One of the traditions is that the Virgin Mary was blown off course when she was trying to sail to Cyprus and landed on Mount Athos. And she liked it so much that she prayed to her son that she should be given it as her own and he agreed,' says Speake. 'It's still called "the garden of the mother of God," dedicated to her glory, and she alone represents her sex on Mount Athos.' "
(i) The English surname Speake: "nickname for someone thought to resemble a woodpecker in some way, Middle English spek(e) (a reduced form of Old French espeche(e), of Germanic origin)"
Dictionary of American Family Names, by Oxford University Press.
(ii) About Virgin Mary and Cyprus. It might be fictional, for I have found nothing in the Web.

(c) "This applies to both humans and domestic animals, except for cats. 'There are a lot of cats around and it's probably a quite a good thing that there are because they are good mousers. They turn a blind eye, as it were, to the fact that there are female cats,' says Speake. * * * An exception has to be made for wild animals, which would be near-impossible to control."

mouser (n)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mouser
(d) "Other places women are barred[:] * * * Mount Ōmine [in Nara Prefecture 奈良県, whose capital is City of Nara] in Japan. The area is considered a holy site by followers of Shugendō 修験道, a Japanese folk-religion"
(e) "During the Greek Civil War [where Kingdom of Greece, with overwhelming forces, defeated communists], between 1946 and 1949, Mount Athos granted sanctuary to peasants' flocks, and women and girls were part of a raiding party which entered Athos in pursuit of the animals."
(f) "This is President Putin's second visit to the Russian Orthodox monastery of Saint Panteleimon on Mount Athos."

Saint Pantaleon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Pantaleon
(Pantaleon in ancient Greek means "all-compassionate;" if he existed: c 275 - 305, born and martyred in Nicomedia, an ancient city in what is now Turkey)

Quote: His name is spelled "in the West most often as St Pantaleon and in the East as St Panteleimon; to him is consecrated the St Panteleimon Monastery at Mount Athos

(g) captions of two photos:
(i) "The Great Lavra was founded in the year 963"
(A) Great Lavra (Athos)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lavra_(Athos)
(is the first monastery built on Mount Athos, in AD 963)
(B) lavra
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavra
(ii) "The peninsula is home to the spectacular Simonos Petras monastery"

Simonopetra
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simonopetra
(Simonopetra Monastery (Greek: Σιμωνόπετρα, literally: "Simon's Rock"), also Monastery of Simonos Petra; section 1 History: One Simon built the monastery "on top of the rock)