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This volume examines aspects of spiritual guidance as developed on Mount Athos and upon communities of monks and nuns, spiritual fathers and confessors and lay men and women, in other parts of Greece and in the world. Most of the papers were originally delivered at a conference convened by the Friends of Mount Athos, Cambridge, in 2013.

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Spiritual guidance is the serious business of Mount Athos, the principal service that the Fathers offer to each other and to the world. Athonites have been purveyors of spiritual guidance for more than a thousand years in a tradition that goes back to the fourth-century desert fathers. The recent monastic renewal on the Mountain is testimony to the Fathers´ continuing power to attract disciples and pilgrims to listen to what they have to say. The papers included in this volume examine some of the many aspects of this venerable tradition, as it has developed on Mount Athos, and as it has devolved upon monks and nuns, spiritual fathers and confessors, lay men and women, in other parts of Greece and in the world. Most of the papers were originally delivered at a conference convened by the Friends of Mount Athos at Madingley Hall, Cambridge, in 2013.

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Contents: Metropolitan Kallistos Ware: What Do We Mean by Spiritual Guidance? - Archimandrite Ephraim of St Andrew´s Skete, Mount Athos: Spiritual Fatherhood on the Holy Mountain - Metropolitan Kallistos Ware: Spiritual Guidance according to the Philokalia - Father Methody/Kirill Zinkovskiy: Spiritual Guidance in Mount Athos and Russia and the Theological Notion of Person - Father Maximos of Simonopetra Monastery, Mount Athos: Charisma and Institution at an Athonite Cloister: Historical Developments and Future Prospects - Father Liviu Barbu: Spiritual Fatherhood in the World: A Practical Approach - Father Andreas Andreopoulos: The Challenges of Spiritual Guidance in Modern Greece - Sister Theoktisti of the Monastery of St John the Forerunner, Anatoli: The Renewal of Women´s Monasticism in the Twentieth Century through the Guidance of Athonite Monks.

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Graham Speake studied classics at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was awarded a doctorate by the University of Oxford for a thesis on the Byzantine transmission of ancient Greek literature. He is the founder and Chairman of the Friends of Mount Athos and author of Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise (2nd edn., 2014), for which he was awarded the Criticos Prize. He is also a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.
Kallistos Ware holds a doctorate in theology from the University of Oxford where from 1966 to 2001 he was Fellow of Pembroke College and Spalding Lecturer in Eastern Orthodox Studies. He is a monk of the monastery of St. John the Theologian, Patmos, and an assistant bishop in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain. In 2007 he was raised to the rank of metropolitan.

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