Sometimes beautiful treasures are not far away. Our fellow Athos pilgrim Jacques from Haarlem stumbled upon a second hand bookshop in Amsterdam, showing numerous Athos books in the window. When I visited the antiquarian bookshop last week the owner told me he had been able to buy almost 70 Athos-books from a collector who passed away, in many different languages, and also many in Greek. His shop can be reached in this link: antiquariaat Brinkman.
If you buy a book here, please mention my name.
The first I bought is in German by Wolfgang von Löhneysen, published in 1991, 393 pages, with pictures in black and white. Below you’ll see a drawing kept in the Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris: “The drawing must be a template of a woodcut, which precedes the Greek Latin edition of the travel guide Johannes Komnenos as a cover image”. This (rather mystical) text accompanies the drawing, I’ll have to find out later what it might mean.
In past months fellow pilgrim Gert Jan bought these fine maps on the internet as a present for me:
Here Athos is not shown as a separate peninsula: the whole of Chalkidiki is one piece of land under Adrianopolis. The next map is more accurate and dates from 1790:
Copper engraving from 1790 from Von Reilly,Frans Joachim Joseph: Die Landschaft Macedonien no. 17
Here a detail of Chalkidiki and Athos:
This is the second book I bought in the bookshop in Amsterdam: it is published in 1880 and its has ten very early pictures (héliogravures) and two “fac-simile” from Athos. It is in French and the complete title is: L’Athos: D’une excursion a la presqu’ile et a la montagne des moines.
Pictures nr 10 is from a church in Rumenia, not shown here.
Wim Voogd, 14-8-2019
Athos - Agios Oros 
Beste Wim Voogd,
Dit artikel las ik afgelopen donderdagavond, toevallig was ik de avond er voor enkele boeken over Mount Athos aan het zoeken bij o.a. Antiqbooks en het viel me op dat antiquariaat Brinkman het een en ander had en daar was ik al al een tijd niet meer geweest. En uitgerekend de volgende dag las ik je artikel. Gisteren middag even langs geweest en een aantal mooie en interessant boeken aangeschaft.
Met vriendelijke groet,
Ruud Verkerk
Gouda
Beste Wim Voogd,
Een vraag over de kaart van Mount Athos gezien van het oosten, de eerste afbeelding hierboven.
Is daar een jaartal van ? Ik kan er nergens iets over vinden.
In het boek “Athos, through old engravings and other works of art” van P.M. Mylonas.
Athens 1963 , ontbreekt deze kaart.
In het voorwoord door prof. D. Talbot Rice noemt hij dit boek “It is a complete and very delightful collection” !
Met vriendelijke groet,
Ruud Verkerk
Gouda
The paper noted as “The Diamoniterion signed by three chief abts” is not actually a diamoneterion -and is signed by one person only-. It is a letter of recommendation to the abbots and fathers from the Ecumenical Patriarch, to allow abbot Stanislas and his company to visit mt.Athos..
Still today, all clerics of foreign denomination, are required to apply to the EC beforehands in order to get a LoR before applying for a diamoneterion..