“[…] This was the simplest way, he says, to ensure celibacy.
The thing that makes Athos different from other monasteries,
he says, is that the whole peninsula ‘is regarded as one huge
monastery’.
[…]
‘The rule is and always has been that men should be capable
of growing a beard if they were going to go to Athos, and
there was a prohibition against eunuchs and boys in the
Byzantine period,’ says Speake. The fear was that a woman
could pretend to be a boy or a eunuch in order to sneak in.
[…]”