In the 5th century, the ascetics of Egypt, the Nitrian desert and Nubia found their writer in the Monk Palladius, who compiled for the ruler Lavs a collection of historical tales about the lives of many reverend men. One of the most profound experts on Svyatogorsk history, Archimandrite Gabriel of Dionysiates, testifies with his book that Athonite monasticism not far removed from the exploits of the holy organizers of monasticism. And although life on the Holy Mountain of our days is very different from that spent by the ancient fathers, it still remains fundamentally the life of ascetics and silent ones.