Sümela Monastery is dramatically perched on a sheer cliff 300 metres (1,000 feet) above the valley below, in the Pontic Mountains near Trabzon, northern
Türkiye.
It was founded in the 4th century AD, making it one of the
oldest monasteries in the region.
The monastery was built into the cliff for a combination
of religious, practical and defensive reasons.
Sümela Monastery is dedicated to the Virgin Mary and was an
important center of Greek Orthodox Christianity, in primarily a Muslim country, for more than 1,500 years.
It was a long and hot wait to get into the monastery. When
it was built in 4AD they didn’t anticipate that there would be hundreds of visitors at a time. The stairwells and passageways are narrow and surprisingly, they didn't have elevators back then.
According to tradition, two monks from Athens, Greece, discovered a
miraculous icon of the Virgin Mary in a cave on the mountainside in the 4th
century.
Monks looked for a quiet place away from towns where they could
devote themselves to prayer, study and contemplation without distractions. The
steep cliff also made the monastery difficult for raiders or bandits to attack. So it was a perfect combination to found a monastery around the holy cave. That was back in 4 AD, before tourist with cars could easily make the pilgrimage.
Over the centuries, the monastery expanded from a simple cave chapel into a large complex of chapels, monks' cells, kitchens, libraries, and guest rooms, all ingeniously built against the vertical rock face.
The monks at Sümela Monastery were surprisingly
self-sufficient. A spring from the mountain provided fresh water, an
essential feature for a self-sufficient monastery. The monks cultivated small
terraced gardens on the mountainside, growing vegetables, herbs, and fruit
where possible.
They kept goats, sheep, chickens and bees. Goats were
especially well suited to the steep terrain, providing milk, cheese and meat. The surrounding forests supplied firewood, wild berries,
mushrooms, medicinal plants and game.
The monks also relied on support from pilgrims and wealthy patrons.
I think they would be astounded at the number of visitors that come nowadays.
With the combination of natural resources, careful planning and
centuries of patronage, the monastery remained inhabited for roughly 1,600
years.
There isn't a precise historical record of how many monks
lived at Sümela Monastery at any one time, but historians believe the resident
community was typically between 20 and 50 monks. Given the size of the buildings, most historians estimate the monastery could comfortably accommodate 50–100 people when guests and pilgrims arrived.
At its peak in the 18th and 19th centuries, Sümela was one
of the most important Greek Orthodox monasteries in the Black Sea region. Inside are old Byzantine frescoes depicting scenes from the
Bible and the lives of Christ and the Virgin Mary.
You can see some of them have been defaced, particularly people’s
faces.
Sümela Monastery is no longer a functioning monastery. Since 1923, when it was abandoned following the population exchange between Greece and Turkey, it
has operated primarily as a museum and historic site.
The monastery has undergone extensive restoration and
rockfall protection work in recent years. You can see the netting and support beams.
No matter how pretty the setting is, and the fact that monks had beer and wine, John is still not interested
in becoming a monk.
And I am happy with that decision.
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