Skite
A Skite (also: Skiti , from Greek η σκήτη; Skit , Russian скит ) is a monastery-like monastic community or a kind of monastic village that is under the formal rule of a large monastery and is run under self-administration by an elder.
The term is derived from the Sketical Desert in Egypt and is nowadays mainly used in connection with Mount Athos , a monastic state in northern Greece , whose monastic life is organized in 20 large monasteries and numerous skites dependent on them.
These can either consist of large, monastic complexes, which however do not enjoy the privilege of being one of the 20 large monasteries specified in their number, or of a loose grouping of individual houses in which one or more monks live. If a Skite is a monastery-like building (e.g. Skiti Andreou, Skiti Prodromou on Mount Athos), the monks, like the 20 monasteries (since the 1960s), follow the coinobitic way of life, i.e. they have no private property, and all of life is organized collectively. If, on the other hand, it is a “monk's village” (e.g. Nea Skiti, Skiti Agias Annis), the monks live idiorhythmically , ie they live individually in houses, can have private property and may only meet on Sundays for worship central church of the skite.
The term skite is also used for monastic hermitages , i.e. for the dwellings of hermits . These were particularly widespread in Russia and were founded as offshoots of already existing Russian Orthodox monasteries. The Russian Starez Nile of Sora created a theological foundation for these settlements .
In the German-speaking area, the Skite of St. Spyridon , a male monastery belonging to the Serbian Orthodox Church , has existed in Geilnau since the late 1980s . Since 2005 there is also near Munich, in Buchendorf, the Skite of St. Elisabeth , a Russian-Orthodox convent of the Russian-Orthodox Church abroad.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ DS Lichatschew, GK Wagner, G. Wsdornow and RG Skrynnikow (translation into German: Marcus Würmli): Russia / Soul - Culture - History , Bechtermünz Verlag im Weltbild Verlag GmbH, Augsburg, 1997, page 323
- ^ Scott Mark Kenworthy: The Heart of Russia / Trinity-Sergius, Monasticism, and Society after 1825 , Oxford University Press, New York, 2010, p. 480