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206 THE PEACE OF BUKHAREST [chap. xiii.
the deep respect of the Turks, and that was naturally
a source of strength to them in their mediations and
measures.
During the course of M. de Nelidoff’s term of office,
the position of our compatriots at Mt. Athos was
strengthened, as I said before; and the monastery of
St. Pantelei’mon became, with the support of the
Russian Embassy, the representative and recognised
guide of all the Russian monks of the Monte Santo.
Excellent relations were established between these
monks and the Universal Patriarchate. The eminent
Patriarch, Joachim III., a personal friend of M. de
Nelidoff’s, and who more than once occupied thesChair
of St. John Chrysostom, and in the interval retired to
Mt. Athos, was the special protector of the Russian
monks. The relations of the latter with the Turkish
authorities were excellent. Even amongst the Greek
monasteries, several kept up close relations with the
great Russian monastery, especially those in which
the cenobitic rules had been preserved intact.
The faith of the Russian people has always borne a
monastic rather than hierarchical stamp. Frequently
and outrageously deceived in his trust by unworthy
monks, the Russian man of the people was nevertheless
perpetually in search of examples of true cenobitism,
and of monasteries which should fulfil his ideals of
ardent asceticism and constant prayer.
Mt. Athos attracted the thoughts and the
pilgrimages of Russians from the earliest days of their
conversion to Christianity. And when in the last fifty
years Russian monastic life flourished again on the
Monte Santo, and when, at the same time, journeys in
the East had become infinitely easier and possible for
the most modest purse, our pilgrims began to stream
there in considerable numbers. They found in our
monasteries of Mt. Athos all that had always seemed
to them to be the ideal of monastic life: a truly frugal
way of living, severe cenobitic rules, magnificent
services, and more especially almost incessant and
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