History and present days
The Xenophontos Skete of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary was founded in 1755 by the monk Silvestro and the elders Ephraim and Agapios. In days of great prosperity it had 25 huts and 80 monks who lived there. Today only 5 huts are inhabited, most of which are located in the gully of Buranda, at a level lower than the level of the Kyriakon church. On the slope higher than the Kyriakon, there is the hut of the Ascension of Lord, where the monks Chrysostomos and Hieronymos used to live and occupy with book binding. Few ruins remain of the Hut of the Saints Peiros and Onoufrios (1802) and the Hut of Saint Artemios. The fresco decoration can still be distinguished in the ruins of the church in the Hut of Saint Demetrios. The Hut of the Holy Apostles (1804) is inhabited and is the place that one should visit in order to ask for the Kyriakon to be open. Next to the crypt is the cemetery church (1805), dedicated to Saint Seraphim, bishop of Fanari. The Kyriakon of the skete (dedicated to the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary) was built in 1755. Originally it was a one-room church and its façade was frescoed. In 1902 it was renovated and the spacious austere was added. Its masonry is isostructural, contrasting with the masonry of the nave, which is clay masonry. The lean and the nave each have a dome with a drum and around them there are low, unstamped domes, covered with slates. Recently the church has been the subject of a fixing operation, so that the outer faces are held together with iron beams.
The austere is not frescoed. The chapels of Saint George (north) and Saint Nicholas (south) are attached to its sides with stripped chapels. The frescoes of the church (1766) are the work of the hagiographers Athanasios and Konstantinos from Korytsa, who also painted the Katholikon of the Monastery of Philotheou (1765), of the Monastery of Xeropotamou (1783) and of the Skete of Saint Anna (1757). Parts of the frescoes of the old façade are preserved around the three entrances to the nave. The lintel of the central entrance depicts the Life-giving Spring. The corresponding lintel on the west wall of the nave depicts Jesus Christ Anapeson.
The full-figured military saints are depicted in military uniform, but the floral decoration on their armor takes away the realism and makes them look like cloth. This is a convention of the time. In a strip above the military saints, there are depictions of the scenes from the Akathist Hymn. The iconostasis is wooden, with dark colors and gilt decoration. In the right sanctuary there is the icon of the Annunciation (1757, like the other despotic icons), which bears a silver cover. In the left shrine there is a remarkable icon of All Saints. In an arch on the south side there is an excellent representation of Jesus Christ as Emmanuel. In the fresco of the Nativity of Christ, the representation already introduces the model of the Western-style "Holy Family", with the Virgin and Joseph kneeling and bending over the Divine Infant. The fact, however, that Saint Gregory Palamas is depicted on a pessary within the sanctuary testifies the attachment to the tradition of Hesychasm, which was reviving at that time thanks to the Kollivades. Among other hierarchs depicted in the sanctuary, there are the Saints Achilleios and Vissarion of Larissa as well as the Saint Theophylact of Bulgaria, which may be a testimony to the origin of the owners. The bell tower (1896) rises on the south side of the Kyriakon. The complex of the Kyriakon includes the archontari (1815) with an excellent view of the Buranda gully. The trapeza was located between the cemetery church and the crypt. However, today remain only traces of it.
In the Xenophontos Skete, the holy young martyr Akakios († 1815, Konstantinople) has spent some time before going to the Skete in the Monastery of Iviron.
“I have spent a week in the Xenophontos Skete... Around the hut of Nephon from the Docheiariou Monastery, where I stayed — he was my late patriot and faithful friend — all the neighbouring huts belonged to people from other nationalities... To the east of us there was the hut of Father Seraphim, a Bulgarian, or rather a Greek-Bulgarian monk. On our left, to the north, there was Seraphim, a Russian; below us, to the west, there was Paisios, a Russian; and on our right, to the south, there was Father Ireneus, another Russian. All of them, except the Bulgarian, Father Seraphim, did not know a word of Greek... One Sunday, a bull (for the Russians had introduced these animals to Mount Athos, among other innovations,), had approached Father Irenaeus to the gate of the garden of this area. This gate, like all the courtyard gates of the ascetics, was built to the lower parts with solid planks and to the upper parts with sticks of wood placed haphazardly, with many gaps and empty spaces. The ox, when he saw high and bushy branches within the gate, put his head in. He was caught there as in a snare and could no more move forward or backward. Father Ireneus began to beat the animal on the hindquarters, but the ox continued to have the head inside the trap, remained motionless and moaned. Nephon passed his two hands into the gap, grasped the two horns, pushed the animal's head down, turned its neck slightly, passed the horns through the gap and released the bull... The Russian, grateful, called him to treat him to tea. When he returned, Nephon said to me: "If you drink tea from a Russian good man, you must then turn the cup over after you have drunk it - otherwise it will continue to fill your cup until the next morning." (Alexandros Papadiamantis, Love on the Cliff, 1913)
The vegetation on the coast is dense. Often in the wild vegetation, well-tended olive groves emerge. For decades they were abandoned and now they are reviving thanks to the subsidies of the Agricultural Bank. You can then see the Buranda stream, the boundary between the monasteries of Xenophontos and Saint Panteleimon. According to one version, the name of the stream comes from burada [Turkish word], shouted by a Turkish official when the border was demarcated. High on the slope, the Xenophontos Skete of the Immaculate Conception can be seen. On the right slope of the stream, near the mouth, a complex of four buildings can also be distinguished, built on the sloping ground. It is the watermill of the Monastery of Saint Panteleimon (Russian), where Saint Silouanos the Athonite (1866-1938), a great figure of the 20th century monasticism, spiritual father of the elder Sophronius, founder and abbot of the Monastery of the Holy Baptist in Essex in England, saw Jesus Christ in a vision.
Sitting one day in his cell in the mill, before vespers, he thought "God is relentless" - at the same moment he felt perfect abandonment and his soul sank into the darkness of indescribable anguish for an hour or so. At the hour of vespers, while he was praying, repeating the prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me the sinner," with his eyes fixed on the image of Jesus Christ in the chancel of the mill chapel, he suddenly felt surrounded by a supernatural light, violet and sweet. He saw the Lord alive, gazing at him with unchanging meekness. Divine love penetrated his whole being and snatched his spirit into the vision of God, out of the shapes of the world.
At the edge of Buranda, we see one of those Athonite contrasts that surpass the human mind. On the right side, the majestic buildings of the Russian Monastery of Saint Panteleimon, like the palace of the Pasha in the shadow theatre. On the left, the last Xenophontos Cell of Saint Nektarios, appears full of the care and ingenuity of its construction.
