A black double-headed eagle on yellow: the flag of Mount Athos, the republic of monks of Greece, comes from the last Byzantine emperors.
Every fact about the flag, each with what it means.
Normal flagFIAV symbol: the form of the flag.
CivilFIAV symbol: who may fly the flag.The flag in the words of vexillology and heraldry.
It is a rectangular field with a 2:3 ratio, yellow, with a black double-headed eagle in the centre.
Each element and how many of the 1,390 flags in the catalogue carry it. In yellow, the rarest.
How it was born, how it has changed and what it means.
Mount Athos is a peninsula in northern Greece where only Orthodox monks live, spread over twenty monasteries. Its flag is yellow with a black two-headed eagle: the old emblem of the Byzantine emperors, which the Greek Orthodox Church still uses.
The two-headed eagle was a symbol of the Byzantine Empire. The Palaiologan dynasty, the last to rule from Constantinople, carried it black on yellow until the Ottoman conquest of 1453. After the fall of the empire, the Patriarch of Constantinople, head of the Greek Orthodox Church, kept it as a sign of authority.
Today this flag is used by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, many Greek Orthodox churches and the monasteries of Mount Athos. No law has approved it: it is a custom.
No changes are known. There are versions in which the eagle holds a cross instead of the sword.
Two heads
the dual power, spiritual and temporal. It has also been explained as the empire’s interest in Europe and Asia at once.
Sword or cross
spiritual authority.
Orb
temporal authority, the world.
Crown
the old Byzantine Empire.
Yellow and black
the colours of the Palaiologans.
By Greek law and religious tradition, women cannot enter the territory of Mount Athos. According to tradition, the Virgin Mary blessed the peninsula as her garden.
Athos is an autonomous region of Greece, governed by the community of its monasteries and under the religious authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople.
The first Byzantine emperor to adopt the two-headed eagle was Isaac Komnenos, in the 11th century.
The black two-headed eagle of the flag of Albania comes from the same Byzantine emblem, which the Albanian hero Skanderbeg adopted in the 15th century.
UNESCO declared Mount Athos a World Heritage Site in 1988, for its history, its monasteries and its nature.
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Text based on the article “Flag of the Greek Orthodox Church (Wikipedia en inglés)” from the Spanish Wikipedia, published under the licence CC BY-SA 4.0.
Sources consulted:
Flag image: F l a n k e r, Wikimedia Commons · Public domain.
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