Metochi
Metochi ( Greek μετόχι ( n. Sg. ), Plural metochia μετόχια ( n. Pl. )) Are medieval monastic communities in the Orthodox churches .
The Greek word metochi means "community", which specifically means a religious community. The Greek word “Metochia” is derived from this and denotes the lands that are owned by a monastery or a church. The Metochien landscape also derives its name from it.
Daughter monastery or cloister courtyard
A metochi is a small monastery, which is subordinate to another monastery, so a kind of monastery branch. In these monastery branches, which were distributed among the villages, mainly the gifts of the faithful for the mother monastery were collected, often there were only a few or a single monk in such a branch.
In the Byzantine Empire , from the 9th century, in particular through the monasteries of Athos , many metochia (monastery branches) were founded, which were assigned or subordinate to one of the monasteries. In the further course of time under Byzantine as well as Ottoman rule (from the 14th century), settlements of peasants formed around the monastery estates, who either transferred their own land to the monastery property or cultivated the land already owned by the monastery.
For example, the Rila monastery in Bulgaria (until 1878 under Ottoman rule) had over 100 monastery branches all over the Balkan peninsula in the 19th century. In Bulgarian these monastery branches are called Metoch (Bulgarian метох (singular)) or Metosi (Bulgarian метоси (plural)).
Church legation
Metochi is also used to denote an ecclesiastical embassy (embassy / diplomatic representation) from an autocephalous church to another autocephalous church. The local church allocates a piece of land or a church building to the ecclesiastical legation on which the other church is represented. This area is then considered "extraterritorial", according to canon law it belongs to the foreign church.
There the service is often held in the language of the foreign church and the congregation of that church is often composed of immigrants and visitors to the nation from which this foreign church comes. Typically, such a metochi is limited to a few parishes at most.
Individual evidence
- ↑ David Urquhart: The Spirit of the Orient explained in a diary about traveling through Rumili during an eventful time. Volume 1. Cotta, 1839, p. 70
- ↑ a b David Urquhart: The Spirit of the Orient ... , p. 114
- ↑ Wolfgang Schmale, NL Dodde, Fikret Adanır: Revolution of Knowledge? Europe and its Schools in the Age of Enlightenment (1750–1825). A handbook on European school history. D. Winkler, 1991, ISBN 3924517339 , p. 443
- ↑ a b Wolfgang Hage: The oriental Christianity. W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3-17017668-3 , p. 108 and others.